Long May She Reign (2 page)

Right. Meg nodded.

“Sleep well,” her mother said.

Highly unlikely. For both of them.

“Yeah,” Meg said. “You, too.”

*   *   *

IT TOOK A
couple of hours for her to fall asleep, during which she made a significant dent in
Winesburg, Ohio
, but she woke up after what felt like only about ten minutes, terrified and confused, and out of breath.

A nightmare. Just another nightmare. Okay. She reached for the glass of water on her bedside table, her hand shaking so badly that she spilled most of it across the front of her t-shirt. Then, she waited. If she'd screamed—which she did more often than not, apparently—one of her brothers or her parents would show up to see if she was all right, and she would have to go through the whole polite “No, no, I'm fine, don't worry” routine.

After five minutes, she figured she was safe. The dream had either been silent this time, or quiet enough so that Steven, whose room was right next to hers, hadn't heard her.

Instead of trying to go back to sleep, she just lay there, watching the grey light through her draperies gradually get brighter. It would be nice to stay in bed and skip her classes, but if she did it once, she would be tempted to do it again—and again, and again, so she forced herself to sit up.

She was tired, and her head hurt, and—well, most people had problems, right? She should just grow up, and get on with it already.

How cheering. She swung her bad leg over the edge of the bed, the normal jolt of pain jarring through her entire body in response. Just to make things seem worse, she took off her nighttime splint, and tried flexing her right hand, which was full of pins and wires and metal plates and so forth, where the bones wouldn't heal properly. Her middle and ring fingers could only flex about an inch—sometimes—and the pinky occasionally twitched. For all intents and purposes, her index finger and thumb had turned into a rigid little claw.

All of which hurt like hell.

Yes, that was probably her cue to sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.” Being as she had such a jovial outlook on life and all.

Showers required standing in the tub with a cane and leaning against the wall, wearing a special waterproof knee brace—a process which wore her out so much that she usually took baths, or sat underneath the spray on a small plastic bench, instead. It also always took forever to get dressed, using various assistive gadgets the therapists had given her, along with the cloth loops, hooks, and Velcro tabs someone or other had sewn into most of her clothes—including her bras, which was mortifying. Her parents' former rule that sweatpants were to be solely reserved for sports and hanging around at home, not for going to school, was now tacitly ignored by one and all, since they were easier for her to put on than anything else. Her brother Neal, who was ten, rarely took advantage of this unspoken change in policy, but Steven—big, tough ninth grader—did constantly.

When she was finally finished, she packed her knapsack with the books and notebooks she would need for her two classes. Like wow, big day ahead. But even though she would be home by lunchtime, she was already so tired that she—

“How you doing this morning?” her father asked from the doorway.

Terrible. Rotten. Lousy. “Fine,” she said. Swell.
Nifty
.

He came over to carry the knapsack for her, and they walked very slowly down the Center Hall towards the Presidential Dining Room. Meg wasn't hungry in the morning—or really ever, anymore—but in her Quest for Normalcy, she usually made an effort to sit at the table and fake it.

Her brothers were already eating, and her mother was sipping coffee and glancing at her watch.

Great. Now she and her brothers could watch her parents pretend to be civil to each other, until her mother took advantage of the first possible opportunity to escape to the West Wing.

“Good morning,” her mother said, looking so chic and perky—and overly thin—in her burgundy houndstooth designer suit that most people weren't even going to notice that she clearly hadn't slept much.

“Hi, Meggie,” Neal said. He was so god-damn respectful to her these days that it kind of drove her crazy.

“Hi,” Meg said, and sat down, dropping her cane on the floor.

Steven grunted—sort of—and kept eating.

Their father frowned at him. “You can't manage ‘good morning'?”

“What?” Steven put his spoon down, his eyes widening. Much wider than necessary. “I mean, yo, I am like, totally sorry. I was just, you know, sitting here, and thinking all the stuff I think, and just like, all caught up in it, and—I am
totally
sorry.”

Meg grinned. “I'm still not hearing a ‘good morning' in there.”

“Oh. Well, I meant to,” he said. “I was just—you look so fat and ugly, I was like—I was
dumbstruck
.”

Neal mouthed the word “dumbstruck,” and laughed.

“I am just so sorry,” Steven said, then looked at their father, who was still frowning. “What?”

Their father motioned towards his head, and Steven whipped off his Red Sox cap.

“Oh my God,” he said, putting the hat on Neal. “
Every
day, you tell me, and
every
day, I forget.”

The kid had to be mainlining testosterone—there was no other explanation. By the time he was sixteen, one, or both, of her parents was going to be in a Home for the Extremely Tense. But, Christ, at least he was funny.

“Miss Powers?” one of the butlers, Jason, asked, standing by her chair.

“Oh.” Her mind was a blank. “Just some—toast, please. Whatever you have.”

“Are you sure you don't—” Her father started, then apparently thought better of the idea and busied himself with his coffee.

“I think she ought to have some eggs,” Steven said. “In fact, I think everyone at the table ought to—”

“Steven,” their mother said, very sharply, and he returned to his cereal. Since their father was generally the strict one, when their
mother
said something, they were more apt to listen.

Jason served her, and Meg nodded her thanks, then picked up one of the toast quarters, self-conscious about the crunch it was probably going to make when she bit into it. Somehow, breakfasts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were even more uptight than the other days. Like they all assumed she wasn't going to make it home again.

“Sleep all right?” her mother asked.

Meg nodded, losing interest in what was left of her toast piece and putting it down. “Did all of you?”

Steven put his hand to his forehead. “I—I was a little restless,” he said, making his voice quaver.

Throw the kid a straight line, and he never missed. “I, too,” Meg said, and drank some orange juice. Sometimes—not too often, of course—she considered letting her sense of humor come back.

Considered
it.

“Are you coming home after your Astronomy class, or—?” her father asked, too casually.

Or what? Have lunch with her many new college friends? Run out to Bethesda or Rockville for a few rousing sets of tennis, and maybe a round of golf? Obviously, he was worried, but it was pretty god-damn suffocating. Especially since she didn't have anywhere to go. Her stomach hurt, and she pushed her plate away. “I should be home at about quarter to twelve,” she said. Through her teeth.

“You don't need to be on a schedule,” he said, glancing at her mother, who was glaring at him. “I just meant—”

“No problem.” Her stomach was starting to ache so much that it was definitely time to leave. “I'd better get going.”

Her father was already up, handing her the cane and her knapsack.

Meg nodded and took them. “Thanks.” Every time she said good-bye now, it seemed so damned ceremonial.

So ominous.

“Where's your jacket?” her mother asked, looking away from the papers Frank, her personal aide, had just brought in. “I think it's pretty chilly out there.”

Her coat, which was unusually heavy, because of the Kevlar—or whatever the hell it was—lining it just happened to have. These days, regardless of the weather, they were
all
expected to wear terribly heavy outer garments, whenever possible. Presumably, helmets would be next.

Neal went to get her jacket, and then tried, ineptly, to pull it on over her splint, which made forcing her hand through the sleeve that much more painful.

“Do you want it zipped?” he asked politely.

Jesus, how old did they think she was? “
No
,” she said, and then sighed. “I mean, thanks, anyway.”

“Have a good day,” her mother said.

A good couple of hours was more accurate. Meg nodded. “Yeah. You, too.”

“Yo, wait up.” Steven took his hat back from Neal, then picked up his own knapsack and coat from the floor. “Later,” he said to everyone else.

“You'll be home after basketball?” their father asked.

Meg limped out to the hall so she wouldn't have to listen to Steven getting grilled about
his
itinerary for the day.

“Maybe,” Steven was saying. “Gotta stop on the Mall first, see if I can score some coke.”

When he finally came out, they rode down in the elevator together, leaning against the polished wooden wall on either side of the mirror, Steven significantly more subdued now.

“Maybe you
should
zip up,” he muttered.

Okay. She looked at Mickey, the elderly operator, and Garth, the head of her Secret Service detail, both of whom were pretending they couldn't hear their conversation. “If you do, too,” she said.

Steven nodded, zipped his jacket, and then helped her with hers.

Meg looked over at him—as tall as she was now, slouched in his Red Sox cap, bullet-resistant Spyder ski jacket, New England Patriots sweatshirt, jeans, and high-tops. Out of nowhere lately, he'd been growing, and his voice was much deeper. Hard to get used to.

When the elevator stopped, they all waited for her to go first. Meg limped out into the Ground Floor Corridor, where the rest of their Secret Service agents were waiting to meet them. She and her brothers all had full details now, with at least six agents, and sometimes, eight. And God only knew how many unmarked cars and so forth. Their agents were also a lot more overt and aggressive than they had been six months ago. Although two of her three daily shifts had one female agent each, she was mostly surrounded by hulking armed men, which was more than a little unnerving. And not even slightly discreet.

They went through the Diplomatic Reception Room, Meg acutely aware of the degree to which she was slowing everyone else down, and out to the South Grounds, past the ever-alert and expressionless Marine guards. Their respective cars were waiting for them, parked along the driveway, and she could see some press people standing around, too.

She hadn't been surprised when they had followed her the first few times she left the White House, but it had taken her a while to figure out why at least a couple of reporters and camera people were almost always close by—more often than not these days, she had a death watch. Journalists who wanted to be sure they were on the scene to record the event when and if something bad happened. Her mother, of course, had one, the Queen of England had one, the Pope had one, and for the time being, ridiculous as it was,
she
seemed to have one. It went without saying that it was expensive to send reporters out to do nothing—with luck—so, to be cost-effective, press organizations only set up body watches on people who had a very good chance of making news—or getting knocked off. Comforting to know that she now fell into that category.

Although, so far, their efforts had only been rewarded by one morning when a man threw an egg at her—which was, bizarrely enough, hard-boiled, and another day when some lunatic ran across H Street screaming weird accusations about a massive cover-up and black helicopters, plus the time she fell on the stairs going into Corcoran Hall, and the days when protestors and demonstrators of various kinds were all over the campus, armed with signs and taunts, and the afternoon when some paparazzo guy on a motorcycle had tried to—actually, considering how rarely she went out, arguably, the press was getting its money's worth.

“Well.” Steven looked around, and then zipped his jacket a little higher. “Okay, then.”

Christ, the poor kid was only fourteen. “No one's going to shoot us, Steven,” she said.

“Hell, no,” he said. “Later.”

She watched until he was safely inside his car—because, yeah, some god-damn maniac with a rifle
might
be perched somewhere with a good view of the South Lawn, then put on a pair of very dark sunglasses and turned to go to her own car. Her left foot flopped unexpectedly—it happened pretty frequently, because of the nerve damage in her knee—and she lost her balance to the degree that even one of the stolid, unmoving Marine guards jumped towards her. But, she caught herself with her cane and a quick crouch on her good leg, waving everyone off with her splinted hand, although Garth and one of her other agents, Kyle, stayed significantly closer to her than they had been before.

And, damn it, she could hear cameras clicking. Christ, she couldn't even
trip
without having it documented.

There was no question in her mind that she would have been much better off if she had just stayed in bed today.

2

GW WAS PRACTICALLY
next door to the White House, so it wasn't much of a drive. Meg sat in the back, with Garth up front in the passenger's seat, and another agent, Paula, driving. These days, she had so many conflicting feelings about the Secret Service, that there was never much conversation when she was with them, although she did, at least, always try to be courteous.

“Do you have plans today, or just your two classes?” Garth asked. Although he was wearing a tie and a grey suit, he mostly looked like a burly Irish former offensive tackle from Boston College—and, in fact, he
had
gone to BC, but he had been a defensive lineman.