Meg Cabot - All American Girl

I joked that the 7-Up was a particularly fine vintage, but nobody got it, everybody there being pretty much humourless . . .

Except for David, of course. But I didn’t notice he was there until after I’d told my little joke. And when I did, of course—notice David, I mean—I practically spat a mouthful of 7-Up at the Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

He—the ambassador—looked at me like I was crazy. But that was better than how David was looking at me, which was like I was something furry that had crawled across his salad plate. His mom, I saw, had made him dress up too. But since he had no stupid cast on one of his arms, David actually looked good. Really good. In fact, in his dark suit and tie, he looked hot.

When I realized I was thinking this, however, I almost started choking again. David? Hot? Since when had I started thinking of David that way? I mean, sure, I’d always thought of him as cute. But hot?

And then all of a sudden I felt hot—though whether it was because I’d realized I thought of David as hot, or because I was merely experiencing the consummate embarrassment a girl feels when she bumps into a guy she’d used to try to make another guy jealous—I couldn’t say. All I know is, my face turned about as red as my hair. I know because I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors on the wall.

Was this, I wondered, part of the whole frisson package? Because if it was, I wanted nothing more to do with it. Rebecca could have her stupid frisson back. It sucked as much as the hors d’oeuvres.

David, of course, was too mature, and too much of a gentleman, to snub me. He came up and said, with another one of those smiles that was just polite, nothing else, “Hi, Sam. How are you doing?”

I had to choke back what I wanted to say—which was ‘Terrible, thanks. And you?“—and just give him the standard, ”Fine, thanks,“ since I didn’t think it would be too cool to get into the whole thing—you know, my apology—in front of all the celebrants for the International Festival of the Child.

“How about you?” I asked. “We missed you on Tuesday at Susan’s.”

David’s green eyes were cool. “Yeah,” he said. “Couldn’t be there. Prior commitment.”

“Oh,” I said. Which wasn’t what I wanted to say at all. What I wanted to say was, David, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, all right? I mean, I know what I did was horrible. I know I’m a terrible person. But could you please, please, please forgive me?

Only I couldn’t say that. For one thing, it would smack—just slightly—of grovelling. For another, David’s dad came up to the front of the room and asked us all to take our places as the concert was about to begin.

So we all filed into the room where the concert was and sat down. I ended up sitting behind and sort of off to the side of David. So I had a pretty solid view of him through the whole thing. Well, of his left ear, mostly, but still.

And I swear, I didn’t hear a note those famous musicians played. All I could think, as I stared at the back of David’s left ear, was: how am I going to make this right ? It kind of surprised how much I wanted to. Make it right, I mean. But I did.

After the concert, everyone went up and shook hands with the Beaux Arts Trio. The President introduced me to them as the girl who had saved his life and the US Teen Ambassador to the UN. The cellist raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. It was the first time any guy outside of my immediate family had ever kissed any part of my body. It felt weird. But that was probably only because he was so old.

“And what,” the pianist wanted to know, “does the Teen Ambassador to the UN do?”

The President told him about the From My Window contest. Then he added, with a laugh, “And she’s been giving Andy a run for the money.”

Andy was the first name of Mr. White, the press secretary. And I had not been giving him a run for the money, that I knew of. In fact, I had surrendered all of my Superballs to him, and had even stopped begging to look at the perv letters.

“Apparently,” the President said, in a jokey voice, “there’s some disagreement over which entry to the art contest best represents American interests.”

This surprised me. I had not been aware before that David’s dad knew what was going on in the press office.

“There’s no disagreement,” I said, even though the President hadn’t exactly been talking to me, and also, there most certainly was a disagreement. “Maria Sanchez’s painting is the best one. It’s my pick for winner.”

I wasn’t, you know, trying to start an international incident or anything. I didn’t even really think about what I was doing. You know, arguing with the President of the United States. It—the thing about Maria Sanchez—just sort of came out before I stopped to think about it.

The President said, “If Maria Sanchez is the artist of that painting with the illegal aliens, it is not the one going to New York.”

Then he turned and said something in French to the Prime Minister, who laughed.

And I forgot all about David looking like such a hottie in his suit. I forgot all about how I wanted to apologize to him, and how rotten I felt over the way I’d treated him. I forgot all about my uncomfortable dress and pantyhose. All I could think about was the fact that the President had given me this one thing to do—this teen ambassador thing—supposedly as a reward or something for saving his life . . .

And I was happy to do it, even though, you know, I kind of was beginning to feel like I was being under-utilized. I mean, there were a lot more important issues out there for teens that I could have been bringing international attention to than what kids see out their window. I mean, instead of sitting in the White House press office for three hours after school every Wednesday, or attending International Celebration of the Child concerts, I could have been out there alerting the public to the fact that in some countries, including this one, it is still perfectly legal for men to take teen brides—even multiple teen brides! What was that all about?

And what about countries like Sierra Leone, where teens and even younger kids routinely get their limbs chopped off as ‘warnings’ against messing with the warring gangs that run groups of diamond traffickers? And hello, what about all those kids in countries with unexploded land mines buried in the fields where they’d like to play soccer, but can’t because it’s too dangerous?

And how about a problem a little closer to home? How about all these teenagers right here in America who are taking guns to school and blowing people away? Where are they getting these guns, and how come they think shooting people is a viable solution to their problems? And why isn’t anybody doing anything to alleviate some of the pressures that might lead someone to think bringing a gun to school is a good thing? How come nobody is teaching people like Kris Parks to be more tolerant of others, to stop torturing kids whose mothers make them wear long skirts to school?

These are important problems that I, as US Teen Ambassador, should have been addressing. But what did they have me doing instead? Yeah, that’d be counting paintings.

And you know, it was starting to occur to me that the whole teen ambassador thing had just been made up; a way for the President—who I was starting to think cared more about his image than he did about the teens of this country—to look good. You know, giving a high-profile job to the girl who’d saved his life, and all.

But I didn’t say all that. I should have. I totally should have.

But I was conscious of all these people—the Beaux Arts Trio; the French Prime Minister; the Ambassador to Sri Lanka; not to mention David—standing there, listening. I couldn’t make a speech like that in front of all those people. I mean, I couldn’t even talk to the reporters who hounded me every day, and all they wanted to know was which I liked better, Coke or Pepsi.