Meg Cabot - All American Girl

Then he pulled out something from the pocket of his jeans. It was one of those little Swiss Army knives. He started gouging into the wood. I probably wouldn’t have said anything about it if I hadn’t seen that the first letter he’d carved was an S.

“Hey,” I said, with some alarm. I mean, I am an urban rebel and all, but vandalism that isn’t for the sake of a good cause is still just that. Vandalism. “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” David said, grinning up at me. “Who deserves it more than you? Not only are you possibly related to a president, but you saved the life of one too.”

I looked nervously back over my shoulder at the door, behind which I knew stood a Secret Service agent. I mean, come on. Son of the President or not, this was destruction of public property. Not just public properly, but the White House . I’m sure you could go to jail for years for desecrating the White House.

“David,” I hissed, lowering my voice so no one would overhear me. “This isn’t necessary.”

Intent upon his work—he had gotten to the letter A now—David did not reply.

“Really,” I said. “I mean, if you want to thank me for saving your dad, the burger is enough, believe me.”

But it was too late, because he was already starting on the M.

“I suppose you think just because your dad is the President,” I said, “you can’t get in trouble for this.”

“Not that much trouble,” David said, as he carved. “I mean, I’m still a minor, after all.” He leaned back to admire his handiwork. “There. What do you think of that?”

I looked down at my name, Sam, right there with Amy Carter’s and Chelsea Clinton’s, not to mention David’s. I hoped a large family would not move into the White House next, as there would be no more room left on the window sill for the kids to add their names.

“I think you’re insane,” I said, meaning it. It was a shame, too, because he was so cute.

“Oh,” David said, folding up the Swiss Army knife and sticking it back in his pocket. “That really hurts, coming from a girl who flushes crab-stuffed flounder down the toilet and likes to throw herself at strange men with guns.”

I stared at him for a minute, completely taken aback.

Then I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. It was pretty funny, after all.

David started to laugh too. The two of us were standing there, laughing, when the Secret Service agent from the hallway came in and went, “David? Your father is looking for you.”

I stopped laughing. Busted again! I looked guiltily down at the window sill—not to mention the empty plates where the burgers had been.

But I didn’t have time to dwell on my misdeeds, because we had to get back to the dining room in a hurry. I mean, you don’t keep the President of the United States waiting.

When we got in there, though, it turned out the President hadn’t been the only one waiting. Everyone’s face was turned expectantly towards the doors. When David and I walked through them, to my very great surprise all the people in the room burst into applause.

At first I couldn’t figure out why. I mean, were they clapping because David and I had finally found our way back from the bathroom (they couldn’t possibly have known, could they, about the burgers, unless Carl had told them while serving the chocolate mousse)?

But it turned out the reason they were clapping had nothing to do with that. I found out why they were clapping when, on my way back to my seat, my mom suddenly stopped me and leaped up to give me a big hug.

“Oh, honey, isn’t it great?” she asked. “The President just named you teen ambassador to the United Nations!”

And all of a sudden that delicious burger felt like it might come right back up.

“So where ’d you go then?” Lucy asked me, for like the nine hundredth time.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

“I’m only asking,” Lucy said. “Can’t I ask you a simple question? You don’t have to get all upset about it. Unless, of course, you were doing something . . . you know. Something you weren’t supposed to be doing.”

I had been, of course. Only not what Lucy thought. I’d just been eating burgers with—and having my initials carved into a White House window sill by—the son of the leader of the Free World.

“It’s just that you two looked—I don’t know . . .” Lucy was examining her lips in the mirror of her compact. She had spent about half an hour lining them that morning—her lips, that is—conscious that today, my first day back at school after the whole saving-the-President thing, a lot of people were probably going to be taking her picture.

A lot of people did take her picture—and mine—as we walked out of our house and down to the station wagon (the Secret Service had suggested that for the next few weeks or so, it might not be such a good idea for Lucy and I to take the bus to school, so Theresa was driving us). So Lucy had been right about that, anyway.

What she wasn’t right about was that there was anything going on between me and David.

“. . . chummy,” she finished, snapping the compact shut. “Didn’t you think they looked chummy, Theresa?”

Theresa, who is not the world’s greatest driver, and who had been completely unnerved by all the photographers who had thrown themselves across the hood of the car in an effort to get my picture, only said a bunch of Spanish swearwords as the car ahead of us cut her off.

“I think you looked chummy ,” Lucy said. “Definitely chummy.”

“There was nothing chummy about it,” I said. “We just ran into each other on the way out of the bathroom. That’s all.”

Rebecca, seated in the front seat, remarked, “I detected a frisson.”

Lucy and I both looked at her like she was crazy. “A what ?”

A frisson,“ Rebecca said. A tremor of intense attraction. I detected one between you and David last night.”

I was flabbergasted. Because of course there’d been no such thing. I happened to be in love with Jack, not David.

Only of course I couldn’t say that. Not out loud.

“There was no frisson . There was absolutely no frisson . Where would you even get an idea like that?”

“Oh,” Rebecca replied, mildly. “From one of Lucy’s romance novels. I’ve been reading them, in an effort to improve my people skills. And there was definitely a frisson between you and David.”

No matter how many times I denied the existence of any frisson, however, both Rebecca and Lucy swore they’d seen one. Which doesn’t even make sense, since I highly doubt frissons, if they even exist, are detectable to the human eye.

And while David is cute and everything, I am totally one hundred per cent committed to Jack Slater, who, OK, does not exactly seem to love me back, but he will. One of these days, Jack will fully come to his senses, and when he does, I will be waiting.

Besides which, David so fully doesn’t like me that way. He was just being nice to me because I saved his dad. That’s all. I mean, if they’d heard the way he’d been teasing me about the whole pineapple thing, they so totally would give up on this frisson business.

But whatever. Everyone, it seemed, was determined to make my life a living hell: my sisters; the reporters staked out on my lawn; the manufacturers of certain brands of popular soft drinks, who would not stop delivering samples of their products by the caseload to my home; my own family. Even the President of the United States.

“What exactly does the teen ambassador to the United Nations do?” Catherine asked me later that day. We were standing in the lunch line, where we had stood together every weekday of my life, with the exception of my pre-K days, summers, national holidays, and that year I had spent in Morocco.