Secrets of a First Daughter (2 page)

I gripped the blazing-hot thermos of coffee
in one hand and a bag of scones in the other as I headed down two flights of stairs. Luckily it was Saturday, so the multitude of staffers working in the White House basement—flower shop, the curator's office, the kitchens—didn't start their weekend shifts until later. I scooted down the basement hallway, deftly avoiding housekeeping carts, stacks of hotel pans, and a forgotten delivery of kale left out of the cold storage room. My destination: the carpenter's shop.

Hey, it wasn't glamorous, but at least it would be private.

The smell of sawdust did not add to the romance of the occasion, but as soon as I saw Special Agent Max Jackson lingering near an elephant-size wide-belt sander that buffed scratches from the White House furniture, we might as well have been in a gondola floating down a Venice canal. Or at the very least walking along the National Mall
at night when the Washington, D.C., skyline lit the horizon like a galaxy of stars.

Max's face brightened when he saw me, and I about keeled over right there. God, he was adorable. “Was it hard to get away?” he asked.

Max Jackson was the smartest, most chill guy I'd ever dated, and when he looked down at me with his gorgeous blue eyes that crinkled at the corners, all I wanted to do was run my fingers through his short-cropped curls, pull him close, and kiss him.

And don't even get me started on Max's kissing prowess. Every kiss was DEFCON 1—an all-out nuclear meltdown.

“No prob. You should know I'm an expert at giving my security detail the slip.”

“Do I ever.” He smiled ruefully. Max had been the head agent on my Secret Service detail until a few weeks ago. He was one of an elite team of young agents trained by the National Security Agency to go undercover where an older agent would stick out like a senior citizen at prom. In other words, he'd been specially trained to guard this National Disaster.

From the get-go, Max and I had butted heads and squabbled until we finally realized the reason sparks flew whenever we were together was because we were crazy about each other. Max asked to be reassigned when his
focus shifted from being my bodyguard to being my boyfriend, and now he served on the White House rotation squad. Basically he acted as backup in case one of the regular Secret Service agents was sick or a miscellaneous dignitary needed temporary Secret Service–level security. Maybe it wasn't quite as prestigious as guarding an immediate member of the president's family, but he never complained.

I sensed Max had gotten a lot of flack from his boss about the reassignment. Specially trained agents who were only twenty years old didn't grow on trees, and Max left big shoes to fill. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on my mood), Special Agent Georgina Best had just passed her super-duper First Daughter security instruction. Apparently guarding Tornado (me) required special, intensive training and probably additional hazard pay.

Despite his reassignment, the relationship between Max and me—whatever it was—had to be kept top secret. No one could find out that we were dating. If word leaked, Max would be moved as far away from me as possible. It was strictly forbidden for Secret Service agents to get involved with the protectees. And I wasn't sure how my parents would react to the news that we were together. Mom hated breaking rules. She had also hand-picked Max for my Secret Service detail and was already disappointed
when he asked to be reassigned. She might go into a rage if she found out the reason he asked for the reassignment was because he had the hots for me. Besides, my relationship with Max was too important to be dissected in the media spotlight. Paparazzi had a way of killing a mood and crucifying my boyfriends.

So for now it was secret meetings in unromantic places like carpentry shops and storage areas. But when I was with Max, nothing else mattered. It was kind of nice keeping him all to myself…sometimes.

“Got you something,” Max said. He held out a silvery gift bag.

“That's so sweet. Here, take the scones. They're still warm.” I dove excitedly into the bag. “It's…pencils.”

“Mechanical. So you don't have to worry about broken lead when you fill in the bubbles on the SAT.” He beamed at me.

Okay, so Max was also a bit of a nerd. Comes with the whole him-being-a-genius thing—I mean literally a genius. But since he also knew how to fire a government-issued sidearm, held a black belt in karate, and still maintains the record on the Farm's boot-camp obstacle course, he was the coolest nerd on the planet.

“Wait, there's more.” Max whipped out a bouquet of lollipops from behind his back. “Pencils for the hard work
now, candy for the reward later.”

“Aww, Max!” I nudged him with my shoulder. “Thank you.”

He nudged back affectionately.

“So, you ready to retake this bad boy?” he asked.

“As ready as I'll ever be, I guess. I studied the
Princeton Review
test prep book until my eyeballs threatened to fall out. And it wasn't easy with the noise coming from the annual Governors' Dinner downstairs, especially when the concert started.”

Max raised a brow. “Did you blow off studying to see it?”

“Not this time. No siree. I focused on the task at hand.”

What I told Max was true. I did not go down to take a peek at the New Orleans zydeco concert playing at the Governors' Dinner. I'd learned my lesson the last time I skipped studying for the SAT to watch Zed Lassiter jam for my father on his birthday. I had figured I could cram in the Presidential Baby Beast limo on the way to the test, but that plan hit a snag when a Level Two security alert went out as we were leaving for the test center. George made me wait in a secured room under the West Wing portico until the false alarm was over, and in the kerfuffle I'd forgotten my test prep notes in the limo. All the test-taking hints in the world from Max weren't enough to hide the fact that I'd
shot myself in the foot, and I wasn't going to do that again. This time I had studied.

“Did you tell your mom you're retaking the test?” Max asked before he bit into a scone.

“No way. She'd kill me. And then my father would sweep up the remains and ask his engineers to rebuild a cyborg daughter, one who didn't eke out worm-low scores on the SAT and disgrace the Abbott family name.”

“Isn't it a little early in the morning for melodrama?”

“I'm serious! I've got a lot to live up to: genius parents, blue-blood pedigree, and oh, my mother is the freaking president of the United States.”

“Hey, come on. Don't worry so much about disappointing everyone. You're going to do great. I've seen you get out of worse scrapes and come up smelling like a rose. I have faith in you.”

“Thanks, Max. That helps. Lots.”

“Maybe this will help even more.” He settled his lips on mine, and I felt my toes curl. Whoa! Being with Max made my day—my life, actually—even if we had to sneak around. It was totally worth it.

For the next several minutes we forgot about scones and lollipops and SATs and politicians and the Secret Service and hovered in a blissful place, population of two—Max and me. When I was kissing Max, the rest of the world, and
all my problems, faded away.

I'd completely mellowed out until I happened to glance at the massive Swiss watch on Max's wrist. Then my world came crashing down.

“Omigod, I'm late!”

George was waiting for me
in the residence hallway when I emerged from the basement stairwell. Her tiny foot tapped in her steel-reinforced boots. “Have a good time?” she inquired.

I hid Max's lollipop bouquet and pencils behind my back. “I, uh, needed to, uh, check something.”

“On the ground-floor level?”

“Yeah. I was near the electrical room looking at…boiler valves. An upcoming project for physics class.”

Boiler valves. Pathetic. She wasn't buying it, obviously. “Hope it was worth it, because you're going to be late for the test. The advance team is onsite now but we can't hold things up for the other students—even for the president's daughter.”

I had cajoled my Secret Service detail into keeping my retest a secret from my parents, and for once, they'd
sympathized with me. Even George. Guess everyone's afraid of disappointing their parents.

I started to hyperventilate. “I can't be late, George.”

She nodded, businesslike. “Then we'll do our best to get you there on time.”

For once, George's demanding nature served me well, because the driver of the unmarked car didn't argue when she told him to take the shorter, unauthorized route to the local community college, where the test was being given. We arrived in the parking lot of a 1960s-era cinderblock building with five minutes to spare. No press, either, thank god. I tried to remember Max's test-taking tips: Do the easy questions first, use the process of elimination for questions where I wasn't sure of the answer, and don't get hung up on one question for too long.

I barely registered following George through the maze of classrooms and labs until I was suddenly in a lecture hall packed to the gills with desks. The test proctor looked about eighty years old. He wore super-thick glasses and smelled like licorice, but the Grateful Dead shirt under his blazer was his salvation. After making me empty my pockets of everything but Max's mechanical pencils and a calculator, he herded me to the only seat left in the room.

As I made myself as comfortable as I could in the hard plastic seat, I noticed that right across from me was
an overprocessed bleach-blonde who looked like Brittany Whittaker. She was checking herself out in a purse mirror while swabbing gooey, glittery lip gloss over her pouty lips.

Wait a minute, it wasn't a Brittany look-alike; it was the genuine evil article. Ugh.

Brittany Whittaker was my nemesis at Academy of the Potomac—or AOP, as everyone calls it. This was the girl who'd stolen my election platform in order to rig the senior class presidential elections in her favor. Who'd smuggled unflattering photos of me to the press. Who acted like I hailed from Hicksville, USA, because I liked wearing jeans and T-shirts (today's sartorial choice: Psycho Bunny) instead of pastel minis and stilettos.

Brittany's frost-green eyes slid over me and her gloppy-glossed lips curdled into that poo-smelling expression she wore whenever she saw me.

“Abbott,” she cooed. Her voice sounded like honey—with a fly drowning in it. “Surprise, surprise. So Mommy President can't get you out of taking the SAT? She gets you out of everything else.” She sneered at George, stationed in the doorway.

I ignored the jab at my mom. “What are you doing here, Whittaker? I thought you aced your test.” I remembered hearing her brag all over school that her scores were in the highest quadrant and that all the Ivies were after her.

She smirked. “I did. I'm…trying to get a higher score.”

Oh really. Now it was my turn to smirk. I recognized a white lie when I heard it.

Brittany coolly tossed a lock of flat-ironed hair over her shoulder and checked the oversize LCD screen on the most expensive-looking calculator I'd ever seen, one with about a million buttons. Despite her best efforts she still looked a little uncomfortable. For the first time ever, I felt a teensy iota bad for her.

Sure, she'd made my first few weeks of senior year a living hell. But she'd recently gotten the mother of all comeuppances when she was arrested for assaulting the president of the United States. She pulled my mother's hair at a press conference, thinking it was me wearing a wig. The Secret Service took her down for breaching the president's bubble of security—and those guys don't mess around. Mom had the charges dropped, but the resulting firestorm of bad publicity prompted AOP's student council to strip Brittany of her class presidency and give it to the person who had earned the second-highest number of votes in the election.

Me.

Actually, if I thought about it, things had gone from bad to worse for Brittany. She no longer ruled the school's social calendar nor did her posse of minions follow her
around like obedient puppies anymore. I also think her father, Senator Chet Whittaker, leader of the opposition party and my mother's main political adversary, must have grounded her because I hadn't seen her at any school events in a while.

Eep. Am I feeling bad for Brittany? The thing is, she wasn't wrong about me impersonating my mother that night at the American Business Leaders banquet. Her timing had been a little off, that's all. And thank gawd it was, because if she had caught me playing my mom, my mother's presidency would have been finished. Mom and I only agreed to the switch due to a super-secret conference she needed to attend to avoid a possible nuclear war in Africa.

The smell of licorice snapped me back to attention. The proctor was moving through the aisles and had slapped a test booklet in front of me.

Focus, Morgan. Focus. Twenty-five minutes per section does not leave a lot of time for daydreaming.

Mindful of Max's hints, I worked steadily through page after page of algebra equations, feeling semiconfident. Pencils scratched; the clock on the wall ticked. A few coughs and sighs of frustration punctured the quiet. After about fifteen minutes, I lifted my head to uncrick my neck muscles. Next to me, Brittany was staring at her test booklet, and I couldn't help but notice all the bubbles in her test
sheet had been filled in.

No way. Not even a genius like Max would be done with an SAT math test after fifteen minutes. And she hadn't even scribbled any problem sets in her test booklet.

Then I noticed Brittany's hand protectively cupping that ridiculous calculator. I could see the letters A, C, D, A glowing between her fingers on the LCD screen.

An awful suspicion sprang into my mind. I'd heard rumors that test grids could be loaded into high-end calculators.

Could Brittany Whittaker be cheating?

The ominous smell of licorice hit me before I heard a throat clearing next to my ear. I jumped. “Keep your eyes on your own test, or I'll have to disqualify you for cheating,” the proctor whispered.

“But I…”

“You have four minutes left before pencils down,” he said firmly.

Crud! I still had about five problem sets to go. I began scribbling, the proctor's eyes burning holes in the side of my head the entire time. When the bell rang for pencils down, I'd managed to finish two more equations.

I leaned back in the chair and heaved a big sigh. One down. Next up: physics.

While the proctor was gathering Scantron sheets,
Brittany leaned over. “Oh my. Look at all the questions you left blank. Have trouble with basic high school algebra, Abbott?”

She laughed. I ground my teeth together.

We had a twenty-minute break between sessions, and I took the opportunity to get some fresh air and try to shake the sick feeling in my stomach.

“How'd it go?” George asked as she escorted me to the grungy patio area off the cafeteria.

“Okay, I guess. I didn't get to finish three of the problem sets.”

“It's really hard to finish the whole thing, if I recall. They design the test that way.”

“Brittany Whittaker somehow managed,” I answered glumly.

“She must be some kind of math whiz then.”

“She's not.” I bit my lip.

George, somewhat of an expert now on reading my body language, knew something was up. “What is it?”

“I think Brittany was cheating.” I explained about the calculator and what I saw in the LCD screen. “But I have no proof. It's just a suspicion anyway.”

George's expression didn't change, but her slanty elf eyes went hard.

“Forget about it,” I said. “I need to get a snack before the next test. I'm starving.”

“Oh? You mean you didn't get a chance to eat any of the
scones you made while you were down in the electrical room this morning?”

“Uh…no.” I hurried away to the bank of vending machines before she could see me flush.

I bought an energy bar and barely had time to scarf it down before it was time to take the next test. As we took our seats, Brittany pointedly ignored me.

Physics is not my thing at all, and this test was going to be my biggest challenge yet. My previous score was so low, it was embarrassing. I took a couple of deep breaths and focused on the first question. I was barely aware of George moving to the front of the classroom and whispering to the proctor. Brittany's outraged squawk jarred me out of my concentration. “Who do you think you are? I demand you give back my property.”

The test proctor loomed over Brittany, holding her calculator and examining the LCD screen. “I need you to come with me, please.”

The entire room gasped.

Brittany rose. Scarlet streaked her cheeks, and I thought I saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes. She swiveled toward me. “I'll get you for this,” she hissed through her clenched, whitened teeth. “Watch your back, bitch.”