Meg Cabot - All American Girl

“She won’t say anything mean to me if you’re there,” Catherine said. “And you bring David.”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it.

“David?” I cried. “Cath, I am not going to Kris’s party, and even if I did, I would never bring David . I mean, I don’t even like him. You know I don’t. You know who I like.” I couldn’t say the name out loud though, just in case Lucy picked up the extension, which she does frequently, to complain that I’ve been on too long and that she needs to make a call.

I didn’t have to say his name, though. Because Catherine knew who I was referring to.

“I know, Sam,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded small again. “Only . . . well, I just thought ... I mean, if you think about it, he’s kind of like your Heath, you know? Jack is. I mean, he doesn’t live in Australia, but. . .”

. . . my chances of ever getting him were like nil. She didn’t have to say it. I knew what she was thinking.

Except that Catherine was wrong. Because I was going to get Jack someday. I really was. If I was just patient, and played my cards right, he’d look around one day and realize that I was—that I had always been—the perfect girl for him.

It was just a matter of time.

Top ten Signs that Jack Loves Me and Not My Sister Lucy and Just Hasn’t Realized it Yet:

10. Whenever he sees me, he asks if I’ve read the latest issue of Art in America . He never asks Lucy if she’s read it, because he knows all Lucy ever reads is the Star Track section of Parade magazine’s Sunday supplement.

9. He burned that CD for me. And true, all it had on it was whale music, which is what Jack likes to listen to while he paints, but the fact that he went to the trouble is indicative of his yearning for us to make an emotional connection.

8. He paid for my double cheeseburger meal that time at the mall when I forgot my wallet.

7. He let me have all the yellow ones out of his box of Jujubes when we all went to see the Harry Potter movie (even though technically Jack is opposed to the commercialization of children’s book characters: he just went because the Jackie Chan movie playing at the theatre next door was sold out).

6. He said he liked my pants that one time.

5. He complains that Lucy takes too long putting on her make-up. He told me he prefers a girl who wears no make-up. Um, that would be me. Well, except for concealer. And mascara. And lip gloss. But other than that, I wear no make-up at all.

4. When I told him my theory about how all left-handers were once part of a pair of twins, he said that made sense: he is left-handed too, and has always felt a sense of aloneness in the world. Rebecca’s theory—that we are all descended from a race of aliens who accidentally crash-landed on this planet and lost all their advanced technological knowledge in the ensuing fiery conflagration of the mother ship—did not impress him nearly as much. And Lucy’s theory—that Mr Pibb and Dr Pepper are the same drink, just with different packaging—impressed him not at all.

3. When the Drama Club needed volunteers to paint scenery for the production of Hello, Dolly , Jack and I both signed up, and later ended up painting the same plywood street lamp (he did the trim, I did the highlights). If that was not kismet, I don’t know what is.

2. Jack is a Libra. I am an Aquarius. Libra and Aquarius are known for getting along. Lucy, who is a Pisces, should really be going out with a Taurus or Capricorn.

And the number one sign that Jack loves me and just doesn’t know it yet:

1. Fight Club is his favourite book too. Right after Catch-22 and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance .

On Tuesday , when Theresa drove up to the corner of R and Connecticut, across from the Founding Church of Scientology, you couldn’t even see Capitol Cookies. You couldn’t see Static either.

That’s because so many reporters were standing on the corner, waiting to interview me as I made my way into Susan Boone’s.

Don’t even ask me how they found out what time my drawing lessons were. I guess they figured out when David’s were, since they knew he and I were in the same class (that had been in the papers, when they’d explained how I’d happened to be standing on the same street corner at the same time as Larry Wayne Rogers and the President).

Whatever. It didn’t really matter how they’d found out. The fact was, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, they were everywhere, these reporters. Outside our house. Outside Adams Prep. Outside the Bishop’s Garden, when I made the mistake of going to walk Manet there. Outside Potomac Video, for crying out loud, where they’d practically ambushed me and Rebecca the other day when we’d been returning her favourite movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind .

And while I could fully appreciate that they had a deadline or whatever and needed a story, I could not for the life of me fathom why that story had to be about me. I mean, all I did was save the President. It’s not like I have anything to say .

“Excuse me,” Theresa yelled. She double-parked (it was unlikely the car was going to get towed with half a dozen cameramen draped over it) and, shielding me with her leopard-print raincoat, and using her elbows and purse as battering rams, ran with me to the studio door.

“Samantha,” the reporters yelled as we went barrelling through them. “How do you feel about the fact that Larry Wayne Rogers has been judged incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness?”

“Samantha,” someone else screamed. “What political party do your parents belong to?”

“Samantha,” another one called. “America wants to know: Coke or Pepsi?”

“ Jesu Cristo ” Theresa yelled at someone who made the mistake of tugging on her purse to keep us within microphone reach a little longer. “Hands off the bag! That’s Louis Vuitton, in case you didn’t notice!”

Then we burst into the bottom of the stairwell leading up to Susan Boone’s . . .

... practically running over David and John, who had apparently come in just seconds ahead of us, though I hadn’t noticed them in the crowd.

Theresa was so mad about someone having touched her purse, she couldn’t say anything except Spanish swearwords for a whole minute. John, David’s Secret Service agent, tried to calm her down by saying that he had called for police back-up and an officer was going to escort her back to her car. Also that the reporters would be held back by barricades when we came out again.

I looked at David, and noticed that he was smiling his secret little smile again. He had on a Blink 182 T-shirt under his brown suede jacket today, indicating that his musical taste was not, as I sometimes feared mine was, too restrictive. The shirt was black, which somehow seemed to bring out the green in his eyes more than ever. Either that, or it was just the lighting in the stairwell, or something.

“Hey,” David said to me, the secret smile getting a little wider.

I don’t know why, but something about that smile made my heart do this weird skittering thing.

But that, of course, was impossible. I mean, I don’t even like David. I like Jack.

Then for some reason I remembered Rebecca and her stupid frisson thing. Was that it? I wondered. Was it frisson when you saw a guy smile and it made your heart act all weird?

All I could say was, I was glad David didn’t go to Adams Prep and so hadn’t heard all the Lincoln Bedroom stuff that had been going around. I mean, it was bad enough I felt frisson for the guy. The last thing I needed was him knowing everyone in my entire school seemed to know it.