Meg Cabot - All American Girl

“I’m not disputing that you’re a really good artist,” David went on. “Just that, you know, you’re kind of a hothead.” He cocked his head back towards the direction of the dining room. “And a bit of a picky eater. You hungry?”

I looked at him like he was crazy. In fact, I was pretty sure he was crazy. I mean, his taste in music and footwear not withstanding, it seemed to me that the First, Son had some screws loose.

Although he had admitted that I am a really good artist, so maybe he wasn’t that nuts.

Before I had a chance to deny that I was feeling hungry, my stomach did my talking for me, letting out, at just that moment, the most embarrassing rumbling sound, indicating that all it had in it was tomato garnish and a bit of lettuce and that this was unacceptable.

David didn’t even pretend, like a normal person, that he hadn’t heard it. Instead, he went, “I thought so. Listen, I was going to go see if I could round up some real food. Want to come?”

Now I was sure he was crazy. Not just because he had gotten up and left the table in the middle of dinner to go look for alternative food, but also because he was asking me to look for alternative food with him. Me . The girl he’d just caught throwing away a napkin-full of perfectly good dinner.

“I,” I said, completely confused, “I mean, we ... we can’t just leave . In the middle of dinner . At the White House .”

“Why not?” he asked, with a shrug.

I thought about it. I mean, there were a lot of reasons why not. Because it was rude, for one thing. I mean, think how it would look. And because . . . because you just don’t do things like that.

I mentioned this, but David looked unimpressed.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he asked. Then, backing down the long, Persian-carpeted hallway, he went, “Come on. You know you want it.”

I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, that dinner in there was for me and as the guest of honour, I knew I couldn’t just dine and ditch. Also, the First Son was clearly a crazy person. Did I want to go wandering around a strange house with a crazy person?

On the other hand, I was starving. And he had said I was a good artist . . .

I looked at the Secret Service agent to see what she thought. She smiled at me and made a motion like she was locking the side of her mouth and throwing away the key. Well, I decided. If she didn’t think it was such a bad thing to do, and she was an adult and all—one responsible enough to carry a side arm—maybe it was all right. . .

I turned around and hurried after David, who was halfway down the hall by that time.

He didn’t seem very surprised to see me there beside him. Instead, he said, like he was continuing some conversation we’d been having in a parallel universe, “So what happened to the boots?”

“Boots?” I echoed. “What boots?”

“The ones you were wearing the first time I met you. With the White-Out daisies on them.”

The boots he’d said were nice. Duh.

“My mom wouldn’t let me wear those boots,” I said. “She didn’t think they were appropriate for dinner at the White House.” I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes. “ None of my own clothes are appropriate for dinner at the White House. I had to get all new clothes.” I tugged uncomfortably at my navy-blue suit. “Like this thing.”

“How do you think I feel?” David asked. “I have to eat dinner at the White House every single night.”

I looked sourly at his shirt. “Yeah, but they obviously don’t make you dress up.”

“Not for dinner. But I have to dress up all the rest of the time.”

I knew this wasn’t true, though. “You weren’t dressed up in drawing class.”

“Occasionally I get a reprieve,” he said, with another one of those grins. There was something kind of mysterious about those grins of David’s. Most of the time they seemed to be over some private joke he was having with himself. They made me kind of want to be let in on it. The joke, I mean. Whenever Jack thought of something funny, he just blurted it right out. Sometimes three or four times, just to be sure everyone heard it.

David seemed perfectly content to keep his witticisms to himself.

Which was kind of irritating. Because how was I supposed to know whether or not it was me he was laughing at?

Then David hit a button in a door, and an elevator slid open. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised there was an elevator in the White House, but I was. I guess because for a minute I forgot where I was, and thought I was just in a regular house. Also, they never showed the elevator on the school tours.

We got into the elevator, and David hit the down button. The door closed and we went down.

“So,” he said, as we rode. “Why’d you skip?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Though of course I should have. “Skip what?”

“You know. Drawing class, after the Pineapple Incident.”

I swallowed hard.

“I thought you already had that all figured out,” I said. “You said it was on account of my being a sensitive artist, and all.”

The elevator door slid open, and David gestured for me to get out before following me. “Yeah, but I want to hear your version of why.”

Yeah, I bet he did.

But I was fully not going to give him the pleasure. He would only, I knew, make fun of me. Which would, in essence, be making fun of Jack. And that I would not stand for.

Instead I just went, lighly, “I don’t think Susan Boone and I exactly see eye-to-eye on the issue of creative licence.”

David looked at me, one eyebrow up and one down again. Only this time, I was pretty sure he wasn’t being playful.

“Really?” he said. “Are you sure? Because I think Susan’s pretty cool about that kind of thing.”

Yeah. Real cool. Cool enough to blackmail me into coming back to her class.

But I didn’t say this out loud. It seemed impolitic to argue with someone who might momentarily be supplying me with food.

We went down another hallway, this one not carpeted or very fancy. Then David opened another door and we were in a big kitchen.

“Hey, Carl,” David said, to a guy in a chef’s outfit who was busy putting whipped topping on a bunch of glasses of chocolate mousse. “Got anything good to eat around here?”

Carl looked up from his creations, took one glance at me and cried, “Samantha Madison! The girl who saved the world! How you doing?”

There were a lot of other people in the kitchen, all busily cleaning and putting things away. Theresa, I saw, had been wrong about the gold-rimmed plates. You could totally put them in the dishwasher, and in fact, the White House kitchen staff was doing so. But they all stopped when they saw me, and gathered around to thank me for keeping their boss from taking one in the head.

“What was the matter with the flounder?” Carl wanted to know, after congratulations had been issued to me from his staff. “That was real Maryland crab stuffed into it, you know. I bought it fresh this morning.”

David went over to the industrial-sized fridge and yanked it open. “I think it was just, too, you know.” For a guy who went to Horizon, David certainly didn’t talk much like a certified genius. “You got any more of those hamburgers we had for lunch?”

I brightened at the word hamburger. Carl saw this and went, “You want a burger? The lady wants a burger. Samantha Madison, I will make you a burger the likes of which you have never had in your life. You sit right there. Don’t move. This burger’s gonna knock your socks off.”

I was wearing pantyhose, not socks, of course, but I didn’t feel it was necessary to point this out. Instead I sat down on the stool Carl had indicated. David sat down on the one next to it and we watched as Carl, moving so fast he was almost a blur, threw two enormous hamburger patties on to a stovetop grill, and started cooking them for us.