Meg Cabot - All American Girl

And wouldn’t you think that if you were the President, you could get the owner to send you a personal supply of cookies, so you wouldn’t have to go ducking out of your limo, in the rain, just to get your hands on some? I mean, if I owned a bakery and I found out that the President of the United States liked my cookies, I would fully make sure he got a steady supply of them.

On the other hand, the people who owned Capitol Cookies would probably prefer to have the President be seen ducking into the store. That is way better publicity than you could ever get by privately shipping him his own supply.

And then, as I stood there in the dark and the rain, with the red lights from the top of the SUV in front of me flashing in my face, I saw Mr. Uptown Girl throw back his rain poncho.

And it turned out what he’d been doing under there had nothing to do with him being a shoplifter. Not at all. It turned out what he’d been doing under there had to do with a great big gun, which he brought out and pointed in the direction of the door to Capitol Cookies . . . the door through which the President, his cookies having been secured with miraculous swiftness, was just exiting.

I am not what most people would call a particularly brave person. I stick up for the kids at school who get picked on only because I remember what it was like to get picked on back when I lived in Morocco, and during the whole Speech and Hearing thing.

But that does not mean that I am the sort of girl to throw herself into the path of danger without the slightest concern for her own personal safety. I mean, the closest thing I have been in lately that could qualify as a physical altercation would be the last time Lucy and I wrestled over possession of the remote control.

And obviously I am not much for confrontations. I mean, yeah, I was striking a blow for the creative spirit by boycotting Susan Boone’s and all. But really, I was just too embarrassed to go back in there after my humiliation the last time.

But whatever. What I did next was so atypical of my normal behaviour that it was like someone else took over my body for a minute, or something. All I know is, one second I was standing there, watching Mr. Uptown Girl raise his gun to fire at the President as he exited Capitol Cookies . . .

. . . and the next, I had jumped him.

It turns out if you jump on to the back of a would-be assassin, and he isn’t expecting you to or anything, you can really throw off his aim. So the bullet Mr. Uptown Girl had meant to send speeding into the President’s head went speeding harmlessly off into the stratosphere instead.

Something else happens when you jump on to the back of a guy with a gun, though. He tends to be very surprised, and loses his balance, and falls over backwards on top of you, so that you get all the wind knocked out of you and your Gore-tex parka rides up and rainwater soaks through the seat of your pants and you get all wet.

Plus the guy lands on your right arm, and you hear a crunching sound, and it really, really hurts, and you can’t help wondering, Was that what I think it was ?

But you don’t really get a chance to mull it over for very long because you are too busy trying to keep the guy from getting off another shot, which you do by yelling, “Gun! Gun! He’s got a gun!”

And even though by now everyone already knows this—that the guy has a gun, since they heard the stupid thing go off the first time—this seems to do the trick, since all of a sudden, about twenty Secret Service agents crowd around you, with their guns pulled out and pointed right into your face, all of them yelling, “Freeze!”

Believe me, I froze.

And then the next thing I knew, Mr. Uptown Girl was lifted off me—much to my relief: that dude was heavy—and then people started pulling on me too. Somebody pulled on the arm that the guy with the gun had landed on, and I yelled, “Ow!” really loud, but nobody seemed to hear me. They were all busy speaking into their walkie-talkies, saying things like, “Eagle is secure, repeat, Eagle is secure.”

Meanwhile, sirens started to wail. People came running out from the wrap places and burrito bars to watch.

And suddenly, all these cop cars and ambulances showed up from out of nowhere, practically, brakes squealing and rainwater getting sprayed all over the place.

It was just like something out of a Bruce Willis movie, only without the soundtrack.

And then one of the Secret Service agents started going through my backpack, while another stooped to pat down my ankles—like I might have a bowie knife or something strapped down there—while a third was digging around the pockets of my Gore-tex parka without even asking my permission (and ended up getting a handful of Capitol Cookie crumbs for his efforts).

He also jostled my right arm some more. I yelled, “OW,” again, only even louder than before.

Then the agent who was going through my pockets went, “This one seems to be unarmed.”

“Of course I’m unarmed,” I yelled. “I’m only in the tenth grade!”

Which is a totally lame thing to have said, because of course there are tenth graders who have guns. They just don’t happen to go to Adams Prep School. Only I wasn’t really thinking straight. In fact, I was almost crying. Well, you would have almost been crying, too, if

you were wet all over.

your arm was most likely broken—which actually wasn’t so bad, really, because it wasn’t my drawing arm or anything, and now I had a built-in excuse not to take part in volleyball, which Coach Donnelly is making everyone do in PE next week—but it still really, really hurt.

people were yelling but you couldn’t hear so well on account of Mr. Uptown Girl’s gun having gone off very close to your ear, probably causing hearing damage that for all you know might be permanent.

you had found yourself looking down the mouths of twenty or so guns. Or even one gun, for that matter. And

it was starting to seem pretty likely that your parents were totally going to find out about your skipping your drawing lesson.

I mean, any one of those things would have been upsetting. But I had all five .

Then this older agent came up to me. He looked a little less scary than the other agents, maybe because he stooped down until his face was level with mine, which was thoughtful of him.

He went, very seriously, “You’re going to have to come with us, miss. We need to ask you some questions about your friend over there.”

That was when it really hit me:

They thought Mr. Uptown Girl and I were buddies! They thought we’d been trying to kill the President together!

“He’s not my friend!” I wailed. I wasn’t almost crying any more. I was bawling my head off, and I didn’t even care. It was raining, I was wet all over, my arm was killing me, my ears were ringing, and the United States Secret Service thought I was some kind of international terrorist assassin, or something.

Heck, yeah, I was crying.

“I’ve never even seen him before today!” I hiccupped. “He pulled out that gun, and he was going to shoot the President, and so I jumped on him, and he fell on my arm and now it really hurts, and I just want to go ho-o-ome!”

It was really embarrassing. I was crying like a baby. Worse than a baby. I was crying the way Lucy cried the day her orthodontist told her she was going to have to keep her braces on for another six weeks.

Then a very surprising thing happened. The older Secret Service agent put his arm around me. He said something to the other Secret Service agents, then walked me away from them, towards one of the ambulances. Some paramedic types were standing there, waiting. They opened the doors to the back of the ambulance and the Secret Service agent and I climbed in.