When Audrey Met Alice (2 page)

“Not tonight, sweetness. Your parents are on their way home, so you can eat with them.” Debra looked up from the vegetables she was chopping. The knife was whipping up and down in a controlled frenzy. Perhaps you
could
train a spy at culinary school.

“Seriously? I’m not Little Orphan Audrey tonight? Cool.”
Now
if
only
my
parents
would
check
their
phones
at
the
door. Unlikely.

“Nope. Brace yourself for quality time with your parental units.”

“Did I hear myself referred to as a ‘parental unit’?” My dad walked into the kitchen behind us. He was still wearing his lab coat, embroidered with JEFFREY RHODES, MD/PHD.

“Dad! You’re actually home!” I hopped up to give him a hug. He smelled like lab soap.

He ruffled my hair. “You’d think I’d been in Antarctica, not at Hopkins.” My dad’s research is on cancer treatment, and his grant was for an experiment on a protein called p53. So far, it looks like the mice in his lab with the p53 gene can fight off malignant tumors, which could be a huge breakthrough for human treatment. Sometimes Dad spends days at a time holed up at Hopkins, monitoring the progress. “First Gent” activities are squeezed into his downtime. Same with parental stuff. Sadly, I think the only way I could get more time to spend with him would be if I wore a mouse costume and pretended to be one of his subjects.

“You might as well be there. I think the last time I saw you, I still had braces.”

“Hey, now—I know you’ve been rid of metal mouth for months.”

We went upstairs to the Family Residence Dining Room and sat down at the place settings some silent employee had whisked onto the table before we entered. My dad reached for his briefcase on autopilot and opened it, then stopped short of pulling out some lab reports and clamped it back shut. Maybe he sensed me glaring at the briefcase. “Tell me about your day while we wait for Mom.”

“Well, right now my whole class is at the movies together. Without me.”

My dad pressed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and examined me. “Bummer. But you and Harrison still got to see it before opening night, right? That’s pretty nifty.”

Before I could respond, the door opened and my mom strode into the room, trailed by several aides and her chief of staff, Denise Colbert. Mom was nodding and
mmm-hmmm
ing as she finished signing several documents that the aides were holding in front of her. She stood up and pushed her silvery-blond hair, cut in a signature bob, behind one ear.

“What about the statement regarding the gay-marriage legislation being proposed, Madam President? Are you ready to promote a stance on the issue? The special-interest groups are waiting.” Denise shoved another fat memo folder in front of my mom.

Mom shook her head and passed it back to Denise, unopened. “I thought we discussed that this is a low-priority issue for now. I can’t afford to distract anyone from the peace summit or the energy initiatives.” I frowned. It isn’t low priority for some people, including Harrison and Max. I opened my mouth to say something, but my dad motioned to zip it. He never used to do that—my parents always encouraged me to share my opinions at the dinner table.

My mom smiled as Denise stuck the folder into her overstuffed attaché case. “We’ll get to it, eventually. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m overdue for a family dinner.”

Denise had already swept over to stand beside my dad’s chair, hovering like a vulture. “Jeffrey, I’d like to speak with you about school visits that we need representation at this month. I already spoke to Susan.” Susan Pierpont is my dad’s chief of staff. “Perhaps you can give me a call after dinner?” Denise never turns off work mode. I’m convinced that she works even while she sleeps, that the dream version of Denise composes e-mails and drafts memos and writes meeting agendas during every REM cycle.

“Why don’t we set up the dates right now?” My dad stood up from his chair and started conferring with Denise. I swear, getting my whole family to sit down together is like herding cats.

My mom, out of her staffers’ clutches, sat down at her place and smiled at me. “Hi, dear.” She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her heavy-lidded eyes betrayed the chronic tiredness her makeup artist works so hard to hide. She looked way older than she used to, but I knew better than to tell her that. “How are you doing?”

“Decent. How’s, um, the country doing today?”

She laughed. “It’s doing fine.” My dad sat back down at the table. Like clockwork, a kitchen employee materialized from behind the doors with plates full of food. Just a normal night at the Rhodes family dinner table, if eating scalloped potatoes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can ever be considered normal. And if I can’t consider it normal, I doubt anyone else can.

Friends Academy is too
fancy
to have a normal bell. Instead, a recording of the theme from Mozart’s Sonata in C major tells us when fifty-five minutes are up. “Mozart stimulates the brain,” the smarmy guide had explained during my tour. Whether or not that’s true, I think using music as a bell is pretty cool; my public school in Minnesota used your typical earsplitting buzzer.

On Friday when Mozart started wafting out the speakers at the end of second period, I lingered around my desk until the other kids filed out of the room. French class had been
odieux
. During small-group conversation practice, my partners, Stacia and Claire (who happen to be Madeline’s besties), refused to talk about anything but the
fête
at Madeline’s country house the coming weekend. Of course, she hadn’t invited me. I fiddled with my charm bracelet and tried to act like I wasn’t listening to the conversation. “
Vas-tu à la fête
, Audrey?” asked Stacia. “
Je
ne
peux
pas
,” I replied. I hung my head and flipped to the index of my textbook as though I was looking for something.
Is
it
too
late
to
switch
to
independent-study Mandarin?
The fewer classes with Madeline and her minions, the better.

Quint was waiting outside the room when I slunk out at the tail end of the sonata snippet. “Who died, Rhodes?”

I secretly love that he calls me by my last name. That is a good type of pet name for someone (in contrast to
Fido
). “My soul, a little.” I heaved my bag over my right shoulder. “Why—is it that obvious I’m miserable?”

“To me, maybe. Your mouth is doing its frowny-face thing, you know, when you’re not exactly frowning but you’d like to be. Also, you’re superslouchy.” Quint smiled and continued before I could think of some snappy comeback. “Which is weird for you. What’s wrong?”
How
does
he
know
so
much
about
my
posture
and
facial
expressions?
Thinking about Quint thinking about
me
made my heart flutter.

“Madeline’s
fête
this weekend, which I wasn’t invited to. Not that I could go, anyway. I think there’s a State Dinner or something.”

“I probably can’t, either,” Quint shrugged. “My parents are kinda strict about parties. I was only going to beg if you were going.” He quickly added, “You know, because you don’t go to a lot of parties.”

I blushed and muttered thanks. I was glowing inside, knowing that he wanted me to be there.

Everyone wanted to be around me when I first started at Friends. Some kids still do. It freaks me out, actually. I’d been popular back in St. Paul—a comfortable kind of popular, without social-climbing drama or anything. I’ve known all of my Minnesota friends since preschool and so with them my mother’s political rise wasn’t weird. Politics was simply what my mom did, like how Kim’s dad is chancellor at UM and Tessa’s mom is a Target exec and Paul’s dad runs the newspaper. In D.C., I can tell just by the way people look at me—the way their eyes search my face, like they are trying to see my mom in it—that they are more interested in my family than me.

A week after starting school, my parents arranged a party at the White House for all fifty kids in my class. (All classes at Friends have exactly fifty students—no more and no less—so I’m the odd-duck fifty-first student in my class.) Everyone came except Quint, who was out of town. We took a tour, swam in the White House pool, and ate incredible food that Debra and the rest of the executive dining team had whipped up. I kept walking up to kids at the party and trying to start a conversation.

“Hi, I’m Audrey. I don’t think we’ve met,” I said to Alexander Wade.

“Cool, I’m Alexander. Can I see the Lincoln Bedroom?”

Or to Naveen: “Hi, Naveen! I’m glad you could make it.”

“Yeah, me too. So are we going to get to hang out here all the time? Where’s the Situation Room?”

I understood why everyone was excited about being in 1600, but I got a bit annoyed that they seemed more interested in finding the Oval Office than meeting me.

So I hadn’t made many friends other than Quint. He was my lab partner in science my first semester at Friends, and he never seemed to care that I was no longer a normal person. Maybe that’s because his parents are big deals too: his dad is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and his mom is an important professor at Howard University. Lately I
have
developed the teensiest little crush on Quint, but there’s no way I’ll act on it. The logistics of me having a boyfriend are too complicated. For example, when Chelsea Clinton lived here, the Secret Service chaperoned all of her dates; I could expect at least the same.
Awkward.

“Earth to Audrey,” Quint said, waving his hand in front of my face. “Seriously, you look upset.”

“It’s nothing. Nobody else needs to wallow in misery with me.” I paused. “But I have to admit I like having you for company.”

“Then I shall call you Misery, because you love my company.”

I punched his arm. “Dork!”

“Watch it, Misery!” Quint laughed as he grabbed my hands. His palms were full of calluses from playing the drums, but his fingertips were soft and smooth. I tried to jerk out of his grasp, giggling as he held his grip. We stayed like that for a few minutes, until I heard an
ahem
behind us. I turned and saw Agent Simpkins tapping his watch. Mozart started playing his final warning, meaning passing time was almost up. Quint dropped my hands like a hot dish.

“I should go to class. See you in music history?”

“But of course,” Quint bowed in a sarcastic chivalrous display (probably for Simpkins’s benefit), then turned and ran off down the hall.

My heart pounded in my chest as I took my seat in science class. Mei, my benchmate, smiled as she pushed her notebooks to the side. She’d been hinting that her older brother wanted a West Wing internship for weeks. I tried to focus on my lab notebook, but I still felt amped up. I replayed the scene in my head: Quint grabbing my hands in his and pulling me toward him. I liked having his hands hold mine. I shivered as I pictured his face smiling down at me. Quint was pretty tall, and he towered over me. That was another thing that I liked. I couldn’t wipe the hint of a smile from my face.

It reminded me of what life used to be like, in Minnesota, when I’d had plenty of friends, including a crush with serious potential. Paul Clausen of the sparkling blue eyes, few zits, and white-blond hair. He loved to hike at Itasca and wanted to become a large-animal vet. He had known me since kindergarten and didn’t care that my mom was a politician. I know Paul liked me too, and it seemed inevitable that we’d start going out. And then the campaign happened, and things got weird and then I moved.

I hadn’t felt anything like what I used to feel around Paul until today. Somehow, Quint holding my hands…it was stupid, but I felt a sliver of that giddiness again.
But
what
good
could
come
of
liking
Quint?
I couldn’t risk jeopardizing my one real friendship in D.C. with a crush.
He’d get tired of all my First Daughter drama, and forget about me like Paul did.
Plus, Denise would totally freak out about me dating because she tries to act like I am still a little kid.
She even thought that my jazz dance involved too much “gyrating” and that I needed to switch to ballet. A First Boyfriend was totally not part of her perfect public image for my family. Conclusion: Boyfriends are what normal people with normal lives have—not
Fido
s.

• • •

After dinner I brought my nightly cookie fix to my room and settled in with a good book. After a couple of hours of reading, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only 10:00 p.m. I had that itchy feeling I’d been getting a lot lately, like the walls of my room were slowly closing in and my clothes were too tight and there wasn’t enough air left for me to take a deep breath.
Time
for
some
tea
. I shut my book and hopped up off the rug. I had a box of lavender chamomile somewhere in the Family Kitchen. I padded down the short hallway to the kitchen, pulled out the teapot, filled it up, and set it on the stovetop.

While I waited for it to whistle, I wandered into the Family Residence Dining Room. Seriously, there are as many dining rooms in 1600 as members of my family: the State Dining Room, Family Dining Room, and the Family Residence Dining Room. Plus, in warm weather we can eat up on the Promenade or take breakfast in the Solarium. Whenever my family eats together we eat in this dining room, but I hadn’t poked around its nooks and crannies—even during the traditional scavenger hunt that the staff hosted for me and my Minnesota friends right after we moved in. I wandered around, stopping to open an ornately carved door, which to my disappointment only led to a closet. Once upon a time, this room had been a bedroom too. Another room type that 1600 has way too many of, at least for my family of three.

The closet was empty but for some boxes, and I started to push them aside, wondering what was in them. Books, maybe? One got caught on a plank of wood that was raised higher than the rest.
You’d think they’d have higher standards for carpentry in the White House
. When the box finally came free, I noticed that the plank was a slightly different color than the others, lighter and smoother but not varnished. I bent down to look more closely at it. There was something written on the short end of the piece. I kneeled down and wiped the dust and crud off it, revealing a crude inscription. It looked like it said, EAT UP THE WORLD, 1903.

I sat back on my heels, wondering why someone would use a written-on piece of wood to patch the floor in the White House.
Unless
that
was
intentional, duh
. The way the plank was raised—I could pry it out, maybe. I slid my fingernails under the raised edges—
So
long, purple nail polish
—and pulled. Nothing. I pushed down as hard as I could on the un-raised side of the plank, and voilà! The raised edge popped up a little higher. When I tried prying at it again, it grudgingly snapped up and away from the rest of the floor, releasing a little cloud of dust.

Coughing, I set the wood aside and peered into the small hole in the floor. I could see red-and-white checked fabric, some sort of little bundle. I hesitated before reaching into the gaping hole, hovering my hand above while summoning up the nerve. Then I quickly reached in before I could imagine what gross stuff could be lurking in between the floorboards. I grasped the bundle and pulled it out, shaking the dust off. It was tied tightly shut, so I had to pick at the knot until the edges of the fabric spilled onto the floor.
What’s inside? It better not be bones or dried blood, or I will puke all over this room.

In the middle of what looked like an old handkerchief laid a few old postcards, each with tinted pictures of the same girl; a small, fat leather book; and a pack of cigarettes, unopened. I grabbed the cigarettes, which were some brand I’d never heard of. “Murad.” Everything about the package looked old-timey, from the artwork to the script boasting “finest Turkish tobacco leaf.” I set the pack down and gingerly picked up the first hand-tinted postcard, being careful of the frayed scalloped edges. The lady on it had an old-fashioned hairstyle and beautiful, piercing blue eyes. She stood in the middle of a garden or a jungle, with lush plants sticking out all around her. Her hands were clasped behind her back, lips pursed, and she looked down at the camera in a formal pose, although her eyes twinkled like she was about to laugh. Her clothes were Victorian-ish. I flipped over the card. On the back, it read:
Alice
Roosevelt
in
the
White
House
Conservatory, 1902
. I quickly flipped through the other postcards; they were of her too, and one image was labeled “Princess Alice.”
Holy
crap, holy crap!
I recognized the name—Alice was a former First Daughter. Really former. Teddy Roosevelt was POTUS back at the beginning of the 1900s.
No. Freaking. Way. Is this Alice Roosevelt’s
stuff?
My hands trembled a little as I finally picked up the leather book. I had a suspicion that it wasn’t a book but a journal, and although I’m not sure why, I really wanted that hunch to be correct.

I fiddled with the clasp, but the whistling of the teapot startled me. I cursed at it and hurried into the kitchen, filled my huge mug, and ran back to the closet, hot tea sloshing all around. While the tea cooled, I took another look at the contents of the bundle. Right away, I noticed the embroidery on the corner of the handkerchief. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE AN APPETITE FOR LIFE. YOUR REWARD? MY WORDS.

“So I guess Alice Roosevelt, or whoever left this, wanted it to be found,” I murmured. Gingerly, I picked up the journal. The rusted metal clasp on it opened easily now, to my delight. I carefully flipped through and saw that all of the pages were filled with a cramped, slanted handwriting.
How
the
heck
does
anyone
read
script
like
this?
I could barely make out the dates for some entries—1901, 1902. Glancing at the inside cover, clearer handwriting said:

The
Diary
of
Alice
Lee
Roosevelt

Intensely
Private
Contents. No Peeking.