All-American Girl (9 page)

Top ten
things not to do at a press conference:

• 10. When the reporter from
  The New York Times
  asks you if you were scared when Larry Wayne Rogers (a.k.a. Mr. Uptown Girl) pulled a gun out from under his rain poncho, it is probably better not to say no, that you were relieved, because you'd thought he'd been pulling out something else.
  
• 9. Just because they put water out for you doesn't mean you have to drink it. Especially if when you drink it you accidentally miss your mouth because it is so slippery with lip gloss, and all the water goes dribbling down the front of your sister's blouse.
  
• 8. When the reporter from
  The Indianapolis Star
  asks if you are aware that Larry Wayne Rogers attempted to shoot the president out of a desire to impress the celebrity with whom he was obsessed for many years—Billy Joel's ex-wife, the model Christie Brinkley, about whom Billy wrote the song “Uptown Girl”—it is probably better not to say, “What a loser!” Instead, you should express your concern for the very serious problem of mental illness.
  
• 7. When a CNN correspondent wants to know if you have a boyfriend, it would be cooler just to say, “Not at the current time,” than to do what I did, which was choke on my own spit.
  
• 6. Staring fixedly at Barbara Walters's head, wondering if that is really her hair or some kind of space helmet? Yeah, not such a good idea.
  
• 5. When Matt Lauer stands up to ask his question, it is probably best not to squeal into the microphone, “Hey! I know you! My mom has the hugest crush on you!”
  
• 4. If a piece of your own hair becomes affixed to your lip gloss, it would probably be better to brush it away with your hand, rather than try to blow it out of the way as if you were Free Willy.
  
• 3. When a reporter from
  The Los Angeles Times asks if it is true that
  you just met the president and his family, and wants to know what that was like for you, you might want to come up with something more descriptive than, “Um. Fine.”
  
• 2. Just as a general thing, when you have saved the life of the leader of the free world, most people really want to hear about that and, sadly, don't care to hear a long-winded description of your dog.
  

And the number-one thing not to do at a press conference:

• 1. Don't forget your sunglasses. Otherwise, because so many people will be snapping flash photos of you, all you will be able to see in front of you is a big purple blob, so when you descend from the podium, you will trip because you can't see where you are going, and you will land in local news anchorwoman Candace Wu's lap.
  

Here's what
happens when you stop a crazy guy from killing the president of the United States:

Suddenly, everyone—everyone in the entire world—wants to be your friend.

Seriously.

And I am not just talking about get-well balloons and Thank-you-beary-much! bears (all of which we donated to the children's wing before leaving). When I got home from the hospital the day after that little incident outside Capitol Cookies, there were a hundred and sixty-seven messages on our answering machine. Only about twenty of them were from people I actually know and like, such as Grandma or Catherine or whoever. All the rest of them were from reporters or people like Kris Parks, who seemed to have forgotten all about the whole speech and hearing thing.

“Hi, Sam,” she sang into the machine in her smarmy Kris Parks voice. “It's me, Kris! Just calling to see if you want to come to my party next Saturday night. My parents are going to be in Aruba, so we're going to have a blast! But it won't be any fun unless you're there.”

I couldn't believe it. I mean, you would think Kris would at least
try
to be a little more subtle than that. She hadn't invited me to a party at her house since the third grade, and here she was, making out like we'd never stopped being friends. It was unreal.

Lucy didn't share my outrage, though. She just went, “Cool, party at Kris's. I'm bringing Jack.”

To which both my parents replied, “Oh, no, you aren't,” then added that we weren't allowed to go to parties at which there wasn't at least one parent in attendance. Especially with Jack, who got caught skinny-dipping in the Chevy Chase Country Club pool during last year's Christmas ball. (The Ryders were members, though, so the incident was hushed up. Unfortunately not enough to keep it from my parents, however. I suppose they would be happier if Lucy was going out with a guy who never questioned authority and meekly accepted what was doled out to him, like most people of our generation, instead of someone who thought for himself, like Jack.)

Lucy didn't look too upset about my parents' saying she wasn't going to be allowed to take Jack to Kris's party. Instead, she went to the window to wave some more at all the reporters who were out on our front lawn.

Kris Parks's message wasn't even the most unbelievable one, however. We also got calls from half the reporters who'd been at the press conference, wanting to know if they could arrange exclusive interviews with me. All the television news shows—like
60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Dateline, 20/20
—wanted to do a feature on me, and asked us to call them at our earliest convenience.

I am so sure. Like there is an hour's worth of stuff to even say about me. My life so far has basically been just a long series of one humiliation after another. If they want to go in depth on my lisp and how I was cured of it by my irrational desire to call Kris Parks every bad
S
-word I could think of to her face, well, then, more power to them. But somehow I suspected they were after something a little more triumph-of-the-human-spirit-y.

Then there were the calls from the soda companies. Seriously. Coke and Pepsi wanted to know if I was interested in endorsement deals. Like I was going to stand in front of a camera and go, “Drink
Coke like me. Then you, too, can throw yourself at a crazed Christie Brinkley fan and get your wrist broken in two places.”

Finally, but most disturbingly of all, was the call I had most been dreading. I'd actually hoped against hope that, when we played the messages back, this one wouldn't be there. But I was wrong. So wrong.

Because message number one hundred and sixty-four contained the following, in an all-too familiar voice:

“Samantha? Hi, this is Susan Boone. You know, from the studio. Samantha, I would really appreciate it if you would call me back as soon as you get this message. There are some things we need to talk about.”

Hearing this, I panicked, of course. That was it. All those pleas to the Secret Service guys had been for nothing. My cover was blown. I was dead.

I had to return Susan Boone's call in secret—so no one would overhear what I suspected was going to be a lot of groveling on my part—which meant that I had to hang around and wait while my dad called the phone company and got our number changed to a new, unlisted one. We had to do this on account of the fact that some of the one hundred and sixty-seven messages had been a little too effusive, if you know what I mean. Like some Larry Wayne Rogers types—Larry Wayne Rogers was now tucked safely away in a maximum-security prison cell, awaiting arraignment—who really,
really
wanted to meet me. Apparently, to them, my heinous school ID photo was not a turnoff at all.

The Secret Service guys recommended that we change our phone number and perhaps install an alarm system in the house. They were still hanging around outside, generally keeping people back, while some metro cops directed traffic along our street, which was suddenly getting four or five times the amount of traffic
it usually got, with people who'd found out where I lived driving by very slowly, trying to catch a glimpse of me—though don't ask me
why
. I am very rarely doing anything interesting. Most of the time I am just sitting in my room eating Pop-Tarts and drawing pictures of myself with Jack, but whatever. I guess people wanted to see what a real live hero looked like.

Because that's what I am now, whether I like it or not. A hero.

Which is just another name, it turns out, for someone who was at the wrong place at the very worst possible time.

Anyway, when Dad was done dealing with the phone company, I called Susan Boone back—but not until after I'd consulted with Catherine.

“Dinner?”
That was all Catherine could say. “You take a bullet for the president of the United States of America, and all you get out of it is
dinner
?”

“I didn't take a bullet for him,” I reminded her. “And it's dinner at the White House. And could we please stick to the subject at hand? What am I going to say to Susan Boone?”

“Anybody can have dinner at the White House if they pay enough money.” Catherine sounded truly disgusted. “I would think you'd get something better than just
dinner
. You should at least get a medal of valor, or something.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe I will. Maybe they'll give it to me at dinner. Now, what should I say when I call Susan Boone?”

“Samantha,” Catherine said in a voice that was as close to impatient as I'd ever heard her speak. “They don't hand out medals at dinner. They have a special ceremony for that. And you saved the president's life. Your drawing teacher is not going to care that you skipped her stupid class.”

“I don't know, Cath,” I said. “I mean, Susan Boone is very serious
about art. She might be calling to kick me out of her class, or something.”

“So? I would think you'd
want
to be kicked out. I thought you hated it, right?”

I thought about that. Had I hated it? Well, not the drawing part. That had been pretty fun. And the part where David had said he liked my boots.

But the rest of it—the part where Susan Boone had tried to wipe out my right to creative expression and keep me from drawing from my heart, totally humiliating and embarrassing me in front of all those people, including, I knew now, the son of the president of the United States—that had been pretty mortifying.

On the whole, I decided, getting kicked out of Susan Boone's art class would not be a bad thing at all.

So as soon as I hung up with Catherine, I dialed Susan Boone's number, anxious to get the whole thing over with already.

“Um, hi,” I said, hesitantly, when she picked up. “This is Samantha Madison.”

“Oh, hello,” Susan Boone said. I heard a familiar cawing in the background. So Joe the crow didn't live at the studio, but traveled to and from it with his owner. Some life for a big, ugly, hair-stealing bird. “Thank you for returning my call, Samantha.”

“Um, no problem,” I said. Then, after a deep breath, I took the plunge: “Listen, I'm really sorry about the other day. I don't know if you heard what happened—”

Susan Boone surprised me by chuckling. “Samantha, there isn't a human being south of the North Pole who hasn't heard what happened to you outside my studio yesterday.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I hurried to spill out the lie I'd made up. If I had been Jack, I'd have just told her the truth; you know, that I'd
resented her attempt to subjugate my artistic integrity.

But since I am not Jack, I just blabbed the first thing that came into my head:

“The thing is, the reason I wasn't in class was because it was raining really hard, you know, and I got really wet, and I didn't want to come to class wet, you know, so I stopped into Static to dry off, you know, before class, and then I don't know what happened, but I guess I just sort of lost track of time, and before I knew it—”

“Never mind that, Samantha.” Susan Boone, to my great surprise, had interrupted me. I will admit it wasn't the greatest lie, but it had been the best I could come up with. “Let's talk about your arm.”

“My arm?” I looked down at my cast. I was already getting so used to it, it was like it had always been there.

“Yes. Was the arm you broke the one you draw with?”

“Um. No.”

“Good. Then I'll see you in class on Tuesday?”

I had an ungenerous thought, then. I thought that Susan Boone, like Coke and Pepsi, only wanted me to stay in her art school so she could use my celebrity to promote it.

Well, and why shouldn't I have thought this? It wasn't as if she'd fallen all over herself trying to tell me what a good artist I was or anything, the one time I had shown up for class.

“Listen, Mrs. Boone,” I said, wondering how on earth I was going to say what I had to say—about her stifling me creatively, and where would we be if someone had done that to Picasso—in a way that wouldn't offend her. Because, you know, she seemed like a pretty nice lady, aside from the whole not-liking-my-pineapple thing.

“Susan,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Call me Susan.”

“Uh. Okay. Susan. I really just don't think that I have time for drawing lessons right now.” So what if there wasn't a chance this was going to work? It was worth a try. And it was better than telling her the truth. And, I mean, it was entirely possible, what with the reporters camped outside on our lawn, and the rubberneckers cruising up and down our street, and all the sickos leaving messages on our answering machine, that my parents might completely forget about the whole art lesson thing. Under the circumstances, that C-minus of mine in German might not seem so dire….

“Sam,” Susan Boone said in a no-nonsense voice, “you have a lot of talent, but you are never going to learn to draw really well until you stop
thinking
so much and start
seeing
. And the only way you are ever going to do that is if you take the time to learn how.”

Learn how to see? Hello. Maybe Susan Boone thought it was my eyes and not my arm, that had been affected by my little altercation outside her studio.

Too late, I realized what she was trying to do. Exactly what Jack had warned me about! She was trying to make me into an art clone! To make me start drawing with my eyes, and not my heart!

But before I could say anything like “No, thank you, Mrs. Boone, I don't care to be made into another one of your art automatons,” she went, “I will see you in class on Tuesday, or I am afraid I will have to tell your parents how much we all missed you yesterday.”

Whoa. Now
that
was harsh.
Way
harsh. Especially for the queen of the elves.

“Um,” I said. So much for fighting the system. All the fight went instantly out of me. “Okay. I guess.”

Susan Boone said, “Good,” and hung up. Right before I heard the click, Joe went, in the background, “Pretty bird. Pretty bird.” Then, nothing.

She had me. She fully had me, and what's more, she
knew
it.
She
knew
it! Who would have thought that an elf queen could be so
devious
?

And now I was going to have to go back—go back to Susan Boone's with everyone in the whole class knowing that I'd ditched last time. And probably knowing why I'd ditched, too. You know, about the whole being publicly humiliated part during the critique session the class before.

God! It was all so unfair!

I was still sitting there, shaking my head over it, when Lucy came into my room without knocking, as was her custom.

“All right,” she said.

I should have known then and there that I was in trouble, because Lucy had a clipboard and a pen with her. Plus she was wearing her most executive outfit, the green plaid mini with a white shirt and sweater vest.

“I've got you down for lunch and shopping in Georgetown tomorrow with the girls,” she said, consulting the clipboard. “Then tomorrow night, you and Jack and I are going to see the new Adam Sandler. You'll have to put in an appearance both at the show and then at Luigi's afterwards for pizza. Then Sunday we've got brunch with the squad, then the game. Then Sunday night is dinner with the president. We can't get out of it; I've already tried. But maybe if there's time afterwards we can get someone to whiz us by Luigi's again, just to see what's up. Some of the gang show up there on Sunday nights to do their homework together. Then Monday—now, this is important, Sam, pay attention—Monday we are going to launch your new look. You are going to have to get up at least an hour before you usually do, too. I mean, there can't be any more of this rolling out of bed, putting on the first thing you see, then slouching into school like it's community service and nobody's going to care how you look, or something. You are really going to
have to start making an effort. Besides, it's going to take at least half an hour every day to do your hair.”