White House Autumn (14 page)

No one else even tried to approach her, and when the bell rang, she let everyone else leave first, pretending to fumble through her knapsack. Walking to the door, she saw Josh in the hall, leaning against a locker, his hands nervously in his pockets.

She was barely hanging on right now, and if he hugged her, she was going to fall apart. So, she carefully kept her distance.

Everyone else in the hall was staring at her, as if she had lost a limb or been horribly burned or something, and no one knew how to treat her anymore.

“Uh, hi,” he said.

“I need to be alone,” she said stiffly. “Okay?”

“Oh.” He stopped. “I’m sorry.”

“What, is sorry your new word?” she asked.

He stepped back uneasily. “No, I—I mean, I just—”

“Well, quit saying it, okay?” she asked. Did he have to act so damned nervous? He was supposed to be her closest friend, for Christ’s sakes. What was he doing being afraid of her?

“Is it okay if I walk with you?” he asked, still keeping his distance.

Jesus Christ. Would it be possible for him to be
more
tone-deaf? She frowned at him. “You have to ask permission?”

“No, I just—I don’t know what you want me to do,” he said.

It would probably be a mistake to answer that honestly. She frowned at him. “Right now, that might not be such a great question, Josh.”

“I’m sorry. I mean—” His expression was very unhappy. “I just don’t want to upset you.”

“Too bad, because you’re doing a hell of a job.” She moved past him and down the hall, knowing that he wouldn’t come after her. None of this was his fault—why did she keep yelling at him? She couldn’t tell if she fell like falling down and crying, or turning around and hitting someone.

People were watching her, and she gave the entire hall a mean look, afraid that if anyone came near her, she might do something irrational.

Because, of course, barking at a sweet, nice—if sometimes infuriatingly tentative—guy made perfect sense.

Her whole French class stopped talking when she walked in and she had to gulp, suddenly very nauseated. There was an empty desk in the back and she took it, praying that no one would come over to her—which people either seemed to sense, or word had gotten around that she wanted to be left the hell alone.

When class started, her teacher’s voice sounded like the robot-teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoons, and she looked at her desk, concentrating on not throwing up. If he called on her, she would probably pass out.

Neal was on his way to school now—were his agents taking care of him? He was so small. It was awful to think of a crowd of agents surrounding an eight-year-old. Was he as scared as she had been? As she still was? When the bell rang, her stomach jumped as much as she did.

“Mademoiselle Powers?” her teacher asked.

Great. She was going to throw up all over Mr. Thénardier. She walked up to the front of the room, gripping her knapsack.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Powers,” he said. “I wanted to—”

“Could I talk to you tomorrow, sir?” she asked. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“Of course,” he said. “Would you like me to take you down to the clinic?”

“No, thank you.” She headed for the door, taking deep breaths. She didn’t want to throw up. If she did, she would never live it down. No one ever forgot people who threw up at school—or on top of Japanese prime ministers, for that matter. She had a brief flash of Anne-Marie Hammersmith vomiting all over the place in the third grade. During geography. The last she’d heard, Anne-Marie had lost the election for Homecoming Queen. She was incredibly beautiful, so it was probably because of people who remembered her throwing up.

Only, now she had to go to physics. The last time she had gone to physics—and wished for something,
anything
, to get her out of class—how would her mother feel if she knew?
She
felt like King Midas.

She veered over to the nearest water fountain, pretending to take a drink, but really hanging on for support. But before her agents
could talk to her, she started walking again, her legs weak. The science lab didn’t have any windows—like the waiting room at the hospital, when they were sitting there, wondering whether her mother was—she pulled her sweater sleeve across her face, ordering herself not to be dizzy. Then, she sat in the back of the room and opened her book, the page blurring in front of her eyes.

As her teacher began his lecture, his voice seeming unnaturally loud, she hung on to her book, the corners digging into her hands. She should be taking notes, but she was afraid to move and get a pen, since the motion might make her feel worse.

“Hey,” someone next to her—Nathan?—whispered. “You okay?”

She nodded, sucking in a deep, nausea-controlling breath. It didn’t work, and she shoved away from her desk, running out of the room and down the hall to the nearest girls’ lav, two of her agents right behind her. There were three juniors standing around by the sinks, and they stared at her, then hurried out.

“Meg,” one of her agents said, “are you—”

“Leave me alone!” She leaned against the wall, resting her head on her arms, fists tight.

“We just have to make sure you’re all right,” he said, but she could also hear them checking the room to make sure that there was no one else in there, no potential threats. Oh, yeah, they were
great
at their jobs.

“Okay,” Wayne said, “we’ll—”

“Jesus Christ!” She whirled around, her face flushing with a sudden hot fury. “Can’t I even throw up in private?”

They nodded, both edging towards the door.

“You follow me everywhere,” Meg said, hearing her voice shake, “make my stupid life miserable, and then,
then
, when we god-damn need you, no one’s around! Mom probably would have been better off without you—all you do is make things worse.
Tempt
people to hurt us!”

“Meg,” Wayne said quietly, “calm—”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” she said. “You’re not my parents—you’re not anybody! You’re just stupid jerks who can’t even do their jobs!”

“Meg,” he put his hand on her shoulder, “just—”

She jerked away.
“Touch
me, and I’m getting new agents! I don’t have to put up with that.”

“Okay.” He moved to the door. “We’ll be right outside.”

She nodded. “Of course. A bunch of professional voyeurs. Professional
cowards.”

Neither man said anything.

“What would you do if someone was in here, anyway?” she asked. “Let them shoot me a couple of times, and
then
react?”

Still, neither of them responded.

“Oh, I forgot—I’m the President’s daughter. God forbid any of you talk to me.” She shook her head. “I should have figured. If you’re scared to
talk
to us, naturally you’re going to be too scared to protect us. Jerks.” She pushed past them and out to the hall, every muscle trembling, fists clenched to keep from bursting into reaction tears. Then, she stopped. “By the way,” she said, “thanks for getting me kicked off tennis.”

SHE WENT STRAIGHT
to the car, not even stopping by the office to let them know that she was leaving. She slouched in the backseat, not speaking—or even putting on her god-damn seat belt—and they drove her home in silence.

At least the stupid reporters were gone. Probably off tormenting Steven and Neal. Sons-of-bitches.

At the White House, she left the car without her usual thankyou, going directly up to her room and putting on a nightgown. Trudy came in with ginger ale and fussed over her for a while—tucking her in, fluffing her pillows, and adjusting the draperies to make the room darker, so that she could maybe get some sleep.

But she was still too upset to even try, so she sat down behind her computer and started looking for film, photos, analysis—anything she could find about the shooting. Except that it was mostly all stuff she had already seen—more than once—and it was exhausting and unpleasant to read the latest conspiracy theories: that the Pentagon was behind it, as a way to remove her from office; that the Trilateral Commission was behind it, for primarily economic reasons; that
her father
was behind it—and so on. Endless, stupid, paranoid theories, with specious, but detailed, “evidence.” When she started to come across a stream of misogynistic, practically
gleeful
blogs and comments, she couldn’t bring herself to look any further. Instead, she picked up the phone, calling down to the chief usher’s office and asking him to send up the latest news magazines.
US News & World Report, Time, Newsweek
—all of the usual suspects. Because, somehow, something she could actually hold in her hand would seem more
real
. Less easy to scroll past.
He was reluctant to do it—her parents had probably asked to have the magazines kept away from the three of them, if possible—but she insisted, and a butler appeared with several issues a few minutes later.

Her mother was on all of the covers, except for one, which had a picture of the Presidential Seal, with a silhouette of a gun in front of it. Two of the covers were close-ups of her mother’s expression as the bullets hit: surprised pain. Eyebrows up and startled, mouth tightening in a wince. The fourth cover was a picture of her seconds before; smiling, arm lifting in a wave, framed by dark-suited agents.

She dropped the magazines in her lap, afraid to look inside. The prevalent message on the covers was
“Again?”
And again and again and again.

She opened the first magazine and found the predictable five or six stories associated with assassination attempts: the editorial lament, the minute-by-minute account, the biography and personal profile of the gunman, along with a rehash of other assassins from Lee Harvey Oswald on, the requisite article about the challenges faced by the Secret Service in a dangerous world, and finally, the one describing every detail of the doctors’ work. All accompanied by pictures in living color. Terrific. Some enterprising person was always there, taking pictures of leaders crumpling in agony.

There were lots of photographs of the assassin, smirking in most of them, and often dressed in military surplus clothing—or jail-house jumpsuits. He was also quoted more than once, saying things like “Too bad I missed” and “Guess that showed
her.”
It wasn’t like there was any doubt that he was insane. Insanity was no excuse.

The post-shooting photos of her mother were only staged ones of the “active meetings” in her hospital room. There weren’t any pictures of her walking around, “on the road to recovery,” since she still couldn’t
sit up
for extended periods of time.

There were shots of the Vice-President, and of senior staff and cabinet members, all working to keep the United States going, without missing a beat. Pictures of her father, very pale, appearing not to have slept in days. There was even one of her, going into the hospital with Neal and Steven the morning after it happened. She had a hand in Neal’s, the other on Steven’s shoulder, and the three of them looked very grim. The President’s children, demonstrating what the caption described was “unsettling gravitas.” Preternatural, even. Would the writer have been happier if they had staggered up the sidewalk, sobbing?

The coverage in all of the magazines was pretty much the same. Some of the pictures were duplicates; some were just different angles. She was in all four: with Steven and Neal, the same picture, in two; then, in the third, she was alone, rushing into the hospital that first afternoon, her eyes dark and huge—which was dubbed “controlled terror.” The one in the fourth magazine was the worst, because she couldn’t remember its being taken, except that she was wearing her black Levi’s, so it must have been Saturday. She was sitting by herself on a bench in a hospital corridor, with her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands. The First Daughter, in a moment of private grief, the caption said. And it
was
private. It didn’t seem right that they could publish that in a national magazine. She looked small and scared, and as if she were trying as hard as she could to hold herself together. The kind of picture that was going to show up in Year-in-Review issues. Not very fair.

The articles all talked about her mother’s courage. The slim, physically fragile woman, and her incredible inner strength. About her gallantry, her unquenchable sense of humor. About an Administration so well managed that “the wheels of government continued turning without a hitch.” About Vice-President Kruger’s superb clutch leadership, and reactions to the incident from world leaders, all of whom were appalled—her mother was very well-liked.

And the articles talked about the family. “Public composure” was the big phrase. Public composure and private agony. Loving family shattered by gunfire. All of which had apparently led to her mother jumping a good fifteen points in the polls. What a way to do it.

She knocked the magazines onto the floor, sick of reading about it. The thing the magazines ignored was that all of them were real people. The stories were glib, play-by-play analyses, without any emotion. Stories that were, after all, out to sell magazines. Maybe even to entertain.