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Authors: Ellen Emerson White

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BOOK: The President's Daughter
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She squinted at the board, scribbling down the diagram of wealthy New York societal structure Mrs. Simpson had drawn on a clean, neatly dated page in her notebook. Soon, there would be drawings of cats, concentric circles, and small figures running or skiing, but right now, it looked pristine and far too well-organized. Which made her nervous, and she scrawled a fast cat curled up on a rug. It was out of proportion and very ugly, but relieved the perfection of the page.
Sometimes—she drew a skier slaloming down a steep slope—sometimes, she had extremely graphic thoughts. Not too often—she tried not to encourage them, but sometimes—like, if she saw someone really, really handsome—and, well, she had the feeling that she was about to have some good ones. Very detailed. Although it was kind of funny that people could have graphic thoughts without really having a frame of reference. She had seen an old movie once where this character was going on and on about sex and passion and that sort of thing, and another character said, “How do you know?” “Well,” the first character admitted shyly, “I read a lot.”
Once, when she was about twelve, she was in her parents' room—putting on make-up because no one else was home—and she found an old paperback called
The Sensuous Woman
, which she hid in her room and studied at great length. It was more confusing than informative, and late one night, when her mother was home and they were alone in the den, she asked her if she was a sensuous woman. Her mother, who was drinking iced tea, choked, and then laughed for about ten minutes.
“What do you think?” she'd asked, finally.
Meg wasn't sure how to answer.
Then, her mother had gotten serious, and they discussed Sex in much more detail than the time her mother had explained that there was going to be a little sister or brother because she and Meg's father loved each other so much. She was given one of those
A Doctor Talks to Kids
books, which was kind of clinical, and equally obscure, and
she mostly forgot about all of it until the night she got her period, and her father had to deal with it because Trudy had gone home and her mother was in Washington. He was very calm, seemed proud, but kept turning red. He'd hurried out to the store, returning with several brands of pads and tampons, so she could choose. In retrospect, it was pretty funny to imagine what the clerk in the store must have thought of the man who was buying out the feminine protection department. Meg hadn't been able to decide which was best, and called her mother for suggestions. Tampons weren't as easy as the directions led her to believe, and she'd had to practice for a few months before catching on. Until then, she had been convinced that she was deformed, although her mother assured her she wasn't, finally offering to take her to a gynecologist so she could get an expert opinion. The idea of
that
was so mortifying that Meg immediately learned how to use them, and never mentioned the problem again.
It had taken a very long time to go through all of the boxes her father had gotten.
She heard Mrs. Simpson asking a question and looked up, realizing that she had been in school for about twenty minutes—and was already having trouble paying attention. Junior year was the most important one for her transcripts—at least, according to guidance counselors—and she needed to make sure to keep up her average. Of course, being the President's daughter, she would undoubtedly get in anywhere she applied to college, but it would be nice to be accepted—or not—on her own merits. Since Harvard was a Vaughn tradition and they would be sixth generation, either she or one of her brothers was going to have to go there. Maybe she would make Steven do it. She would rather be at some little school in the mountains where no one would know who she was. She glanced around the room, seeing almost everyone else still sneaking looks at her. She would rather go
anyplace
where no one knew who she was.
“Hard to concentrate the first day,” Mrs. Simpson said, smiling at her.
Meg realized that the bell had just rung, and flushed—again. “Kind of, yeah.”
“Well, we're very happy to have you with us,” Mrs. Simpson said.
For now, maybe—but probably not once they got to know her. “Thank you,” Meg said. She gathered up her books and put them in her knapsack—at least the knapsack felt familiar. Her next class was History of the United States, and she was glad that Jeff was out in the hall, so at least she wouldn't have to worry about walking alone, while everyone else in the school walked with their many friends.
“Hi,” a chubby blond girl said. “I'm Gail. Do we call you Meg?”
Meg shrugged affirmatively, albeit shyly.
“What's it like living in the White House?” another girl asked, most of the class still in the room.
“Uh, I don't know.” Meg shifted her knapsack to her other shoulder, flustered. “Big. Very big.”
“Do you get to go wherever you want?” someone else asked.
“I thought you were supposed to have Secret Service agents,” someone else said.
“Do you get waited on?” another person asked.
This was like reporters. Worse, even. She gripped her knapsack strap, too intimidated to answer right away.
“Told ya the kid'd be a snob,” she heard a guy say, heading for the door.
“It's, um”—her voice still wasn't coming out right—“it's kind of weird, I guess.” Oh, yeah. Nice and articulate. She was
definitely
headed for a top college.
“Hadn't all of you better get along to your next classes?” Mrs. Simpson said from the front of the room.
People started for the door, and Meg let a small, relieved sigh escape, relaxing slightly.
“Hi.” The guy with the rugby shirt came over, holding out a confident hand. “Adam Miller.”
“Hi.” She tried to return the handshake perfectly, not holding on too long, not letting go too quickly. What a production. So, she let go. “I'm Meg Powers.”
In case he hadn't gotten the word.
“Oh, yeah? How do you feel about being called Meghan?” he asked.
She was completely in love.
He held the door for her. “Must be something, living in the White House.”
“I guess. It doesn't seem very real yet.” She smiled nervously at Jeff, as he stood up from his chair. “Um, Adam, this is Jeff. Jeff, this is Adam.”
“Hi.” Adam glanced at her. “Friend of yours?”
She nodded. “My husband. He's very possessive.”
Adam looked surprised, maybe not expecting her to have a sense of humor, then laughed. “Where are you going now?”
“History,” she said.
“So'm I.” He held out his hand. “Let me see your schedule.”
She handed him her official schedule grid, and he ran down the list, nodding.
“You're going to have the same kids from English in most of your classes.” He gave her back the card. “What, were you a brain at your old school?” He grinned. “Or, do your parents have pull?”
“Um, well—” Meg wasn't quite sure how to answer that.
“Come on, it's down here.” He started down the hall, then turned left, with Jeff trailing behind them. “He always follow you around?”
Meg nodded. Not that it would necessarily always be Jeff, but there would unquestionably be agents nearby whenever she was out in public. She had asked her father if it would be possible, once school started, for them to give her more space—and his immediate response was a very open-minded “Absolutely not.”
“What happens if you go out or something?” Adam asked.
“I don't know,” Meg said. But, did that mean he maybe wanted to ask her out sometime? She would probably die. She was going to have to figure out a way to take a surreptitious picture of him with her cell phone, and email it to Beth and Sarah—who were bound to approve.
“This is it up here.” He pointed down the crowded corridor. “Patterson—he's the teacher—he's been looking forward to having you come for days.”
Which made it sound like he'd been marking them off on a little calendar—which seemed unlikely. “Oh, yeah?” she said.
Adam nodded, smiling at her as he opened the door.
She smiled back. He had nice teeth. Very nice, white teeth. And a nice mouth, too. He'd probably never had chapped lips in his life, or—she should stop looking at his mouth, already. She should look at his eyes; it was always more appropriate to look at someone's eyes. He had a great mouth, though.
“Hope you're ready to tell everyone about ‘your experiences,'” Adam said. “He's really into it.”
Meg forgot about his mouth. “My experiences?”
Adam nodded. “Yeah. He can't wait.”
She made an effort to keep her sigh inaudible.
MR. PATTERSON
DID
WANT to share her experiences—it was almost like being home again. As usual, she stuttered a lot and couldn't think of anything to say. Why did they always do that? On the first day, even.
Of course, if he'd wanted to hear about the efficacy of school vouchers, she could probably have given him a nifty little speech about
that
.
Barry and Jeff switched assignments at lunchtime, with Barry taking a position along one of the cafeteria walls. She had to say that she didn't envy them this particular duty—they were going to be bored out of their skulls.
Adam brought her over to his table and spent a couple of minutes introducing her to everyone: Gail, the girl who had said hello at the end of English class; Matt, curly, dark hair, wearing a Georgetown sweatshirt; Phyllis, who had suspicious eyes and kept her arm locked through the arm of a tall, very good-looking black guy named Nathan; Zachary, almost as good-looking, but with a goofy quality, too; Alison, who was wearing a long white button-down shirt, with a striped, fitted vest and filmy long scarf—reminding Meg very much of Annie Hall; and Josh, a boy with brown hair and glasses, who ate with quick motions, either tense because she was there—probably
not
—or just generally tense. But, his sweater was pretty nice, argyle and all.
She took a seat at the far end of the table, wishing that she had her mother's ability to remember names.
“What's the matter, Josh?” the boy in the Georgetown hoodie—Mike? Mark? Matt?—asked. “Where're the jokes?”
Josh—the one with glasses—concentrated on his sandwich. “What jokes?”
“Usually, we can never get him to shut up,” Adam said, taking a napkin out of the holder in the middle of the table, brushing his arm against hers.
Wow. Had he done that on purpose? What a nice arm. She wanted to grab him, throw him down, and kiss him. Hell, do a lot more than kiss him.
That
would attract attention. She glanced at Josh to take her mind off what might be turning into graphic thoughts, and he flushed and dropped his sandwich, both of them immediately looking away.
Christ, with her luck,
he
would be the one who ended up liking her.
Then, Gail motioned toward her brown paper bag. “Hey, who packed your lunch?”
“Your mother?” Adam asked, and they all laughed.
“No, um, I did,” Meg said.
“You mean, a chef did,” Phyllis said.
“No, I did. See, I always figure—” She stopped, wishing that she could just crumple herself up, along with the bag, and get rid of this whole conversation.
“What?” Matt or Mike or Mark asked, when she didn't go on.
“It doesn't matter, it's pretty stupid.” Looking around, she could see that they wanted her to tell them, anyway. “See, the thing is, I guess I'm neurotic or something, I don't know, but I can't stand tomato seeds.” Which Trudy, of course, knew, and so, she
trusted
Trudy's sandwiches. “And just about everyone puts tomatoes on sandwiches, so I almost always make my own, so I can take the seeds out.”
“How do you do that?” Gail asked dubiously.
Very, very special sleight of hand. “You cut off the top, and—” Meg pantomimed squeezing a tomato, then turned red, realizing that they were all going to think that she was a maniac.
“Like this one here.” Zachary pointed at Josh with a half-eaten apple. “He won't eat hot dogs or bologna or anything.”
“Are you kosher?” Meg asked him.
“N-no, only at Passover.” He didn't meet her eyes. “I saw a film about how they make all that stuff, and I haven't been able to eat it since.”
Matt-Mike-Mark laughed. “That film was probably fifty years old.”
“Beef lips?” Josh looked up with sudden animation. “You like to eat beef lips? And hearts? And—”
“Enough already,” Nathan said. “I got a sandwich to finish here.” He frowned at his bologna sandwich, then bit off about a third of it.
He wasn't quite in Adam's league, but Nathan was pretty damn cute himself. No wonder Phyllis was hanging on to him. But—okay, if looks could kill, she had just barely escaped a very painful death. Meg Powers, femme fatale. What a joke.
“What's that?” Matt-Mark-Mike asked.
Meg looked down at the small plastic bag of delicate cookies in her hand. “What do you mean?”
“Did someone bake them, or do they buy them, or what?” he asked.
Oh. Meg frowned. “Well, they were, uh, left over.”
Gail looked very curious. “Left over?”
“There were receptions all weekend, and there was stuff leftover.” Meg put the bag down, too self-conscious to eat now.
“Did the chefs bake them?” Zachary asked.
No, her mother had—slaving away for hours, more pressing professional responsibilities entirely ignored. “I guess so. Or, you know, the pastry people.” She held out the bag. “You want some?”
He nodded. “If it's okay, yeah.”
Well, whatever floated his little boat. “Sure.” She looked around uncertainly. “Anyone else want a cookie?”
Just about everyone did, so she put the plastic bag in the center of the table. Even Phyllis helped herself to one. When they had all finished, Meg took a bite out of one of the two that were left.
Hell, they weren't even all that
good
—she'd take a regular old Oreo, any day.
 
IT WAS A relief when school ended, and she could escape. She'd spent the entire day feeling like a tiny deer at the zoo, having everyone come up to the fence, then say nervously, “Does it bite?” Some guy had held the door for her and exchanged a few pleasantries as she left her French class—and two girls had given her incredible scowls. Being the President's daughter was a royal pain. Why couldn't her parents own a hardware store or a coffeehouse or something?
When she got back to the White House and ducked through the vestibule and into the Diplomatic Reception Room to head upstairs, she saw Preston lounging in one of the upholstered yellow armchairs by the fireplace, clearly waiting for her.
“Well,” he said. “If it isn't Meghan Winslow Powers, her very own self.”
Oh, swell. “No, I'm the doppelgänger,” she said.
He motioned towards the chair across from his, with a quick jerk of his head. “Have a seat.”
She was almost sure that these two particular chairs were generally reserved for heads of state—but that probably didn't mean that she and Preston would be imprisoned for sitting in them. Not indefinitely, anyway.
“Did you know,” he said conversationally, “that the President recently appointed a Secretary of Education?”
She might have heard something about that, yeah. “Well, actually, she has to undergo confirmation hearings,” Meg said.
Preston nodded. “So, you're hoping you still have a shot?”
“Yeah,” Meg said. “Which would be good, because I think it would put me sixteenth in the line of succession.”
“Actually, you'd be fourteenth, because Morales and Kimura”—two of the other Cabinet members-to-be—“weren't born in the United States,” he said.
So much the better.
“But, maybe you should aim for Interior or Agriculture,” he said, “because then, you would be in the top ten.”
Good advice.
He straightened his tie—red silk with a gold paisley pattern—even though it was already perfectly aligned. “Of course, since you're not thirty-five, the line would skip over you, and everyone else would move up another slot.”
Damn. Meg frowned. “That means it'll be years before
you
can assume office, either.”
He nodded. “I know. It's a great disappointment.”
They looked at each other, and she gave him her very most winning smile—which he returned with a half-grin.
“Living here doesn't mean that we're going to abrogate your First Amendment rights, Meg,” he said, “but common sense should still trump intellect every so often, don't you think?”
For a hip guy, he could talk the talk with the best of them. And since that was an absolutely fair and reasonable argument, she nodded. “Is Linda going to come and yell at me, and say I need a full-time handler, and I'm not allowed to talk about policy, and all of that?”
Preston shook his head. “No, I promised I'd do it for her.”
Oh. “Has that already happened?” she asked. Since it was kind of hard to tell.
He nodded.
Okay. Good. “You know, I
could
go to public school,” Meg said. In fact, she had offered to do so, back when her parents had started discussing which schools she and her brothers would probably attend in the city. “I mean, if it would take some heat off her.”
He shook his head again.
“It's hypocritical,” she said. “Saying there are ‘security issues' doesn't quite do it.”
Preston sighed. “There
are
security issues.”
Yeah, whatever. It was still hypocritical.
“They're not going to send you to a halfway decent public school, when they can send you to a
great
private school,” he said.
Meg nodded. “Some animals are more equal than other animals.”
He just shrugged. “And maybe you wouldn't be able to snap off a quote like that if you hadn't gone to
excellent
schools your entire life.”
They had all been public schools—but, okay, public schools in an affluent suburb.
“Give her a chance to try and fix a few things,” Preston said. “If everything's still exactly the same four years from now,
then
you can hammer her.”
Which didn't allow for the probability that Congress would not be entirely cooperative about passing her legislation, of course. She looked around the room—an extremely
pretty
, and intimidating, room, feeling as though someone should come and serve them nectar, at once. And bow and scrape, too, maybe.
“Do you think we're both a
little
bit too comfortable in the world leaders' chairs?” she asked.
He grinned at her. “I won't tell, if you won't.”
 
AFTER HE HAD gone back to his office in the East Wing, she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself. She talked to Barbara, who worked in the flower shop, for a few minutes, and then went up to the First Floor to goof around on the piano in the East Room for a while. She played “Greensleeves”—which really was just about the only song she knew, then part of “My Favorite Things,” the first nine bars of “Deck the Halls,” and the introduction to “No Business Like Show Business.” Her repertoire exhausted—except for the last part of the “Mapleleaf Rag,” which she quickly played—she got up from the piano and went to sit in the Green Room. She slouched in a Sheraton mahogany armchair, resting her feet on an undoubtedly
priceless New York sofa table. After a few minutes of that, she got bored—and very briefly considered going down to the Oval Office to say hello—but, her mother would be busy, and she would be in the way.
The Oval Office was very impressive. Her mother had taken them in there on the second day, and it was the kind of room that made Meg want to stand up straight. The room had been—swiftly—redecorated, her mother giving the room a soft blue emphasis, and there were quiet hints of gold and yellow, too, which coordinated nicely with the Presidential Seal rug. There were two darker blue couches, and then, two formal armchairs on either side of the fireplace. A plant that had been growing for
decades
—being reproduced by countless cuttings, no doubt—covered most of the mantelpiece, and there were busts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Although there was usually a slight Western influence in the Oval Office, since her mother despised horses, she had had all of that removed. She had also added many more books to the built-in bookcases than Presidents usually displayed—because, she said, shelves covered with tchotchkes—even ones with historical significance—made her nervous.
There was a huge, mostly blue, impressionistic painting of Fifth Avenue on a rainy day by Childe Hassam in the White House collection, and her mother had had it hung over the fireplace. A Monet was on the wall to the right of her desk, and there was also a John Singer Sargent and a disturbing Margaret Bourke-White photograph that had been taken at a concentration camp at the end of World War II—both of which were on loan. The other art she had chosen was more traditional—although she had mostly stayed away from the predictable portraits of stern male statesmen.
BOOK: The President's Daughter
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