I yanked my arm out of their reach and went, “Uh, no, thanks.”
Jack looked crestfallen. “I was just going to draw a disaffected youth on it,” he explained. “That’s all.”
A disaffected youth would have been cool, I had to admit. But if I let Jack draw on my cast, then everybody would want to, and soon all that lovely whiteness would be a big old mess. But if I said only Jack could draw on it, then everyone would know about my secret crush on my sister’s boyfriend.
“Um, thanks anyway,” I said. “But I’m saving my cast for my own stuff.”
I felt bad about being mean to Jack. He was, after all, my soulmate.
Still, I wish he’d hurry up and realize it, and quit hanging out with Lucy and her dopey friends. Because these guys were acting like total idiots, tossing corn chips at one another and trying to catch them in their mouths. It was revolting. Also irritating because they kept jostling the table, making it hard for those of us who had to eat one-handed to keep our food steady. I realize that football players are very large and maybe can’t help shaking the table, but still, they could have shown a little restraint.
“Hey,” I said, when one of the corn chips landed in Catherine’s apple sauce. “Cut it out, you guys.”
Lucy, poring over a magazine article about how to get perfect thighs—which she, of course, already had—went, in a bored voice, “Geez. Just because she’s getting a medal, she thinks she’s all that,” which is totally unfair, because what was I supposed to do, just meekly accept the whole corn-chip-in-the-apple-sauce thing?
Catherine stared at me, wide-eyed. “You’re getting a medal too? You’re teen ambassador to the UN, and you’re getting a medal?”
Unfortunately so. A presidential medal of valour, to be exact. The ceremony was going to be held in December, when the White House was decorated all Christmassy, for optimum photogenic effect.
But I didn’t have time to reply. That’s because my second slice of pie suddenly disappeared and travelled down the row of football players like a frisbee in a game of keep-away.
“MAY I PLEASE HAVE MY PIE BACK?” I yelled, because I’d been planning on giving the extra piece to Jack.
Lucy, of course, didn’t know this. She just went, “God, it’s just a piece of pie. Believe me, you do not need the extra calories,” a typically Lucy remark to which I started to respond, until I was distracted by an all-too-familiar voice behind me.
“Hello, Samantha.”
I turned to see Kris Parks—looking like the perfect class president that she was, clad in Benetton from head to toe, including the pink cashmere sweater thrown oh-so-casually across her shoulders—simpering down at me.
“Here’s the invitation to my party,” Kris said, handing me a piece of folded paper. “I really hope you can come. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’d really like it if we could bury the hatchet and be friends. I’ve always admired you, you know, Sam. You really, really, um, stick to your convictions. And I didn’t mind paying for the drawings. Really.”
I just stared up at her. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. Really, out of all of it—the caseloads of soda, the Thank You Beary Much bears, having dinner at the White House—the fact that Kris Parks—Kris Parks—was sucking up to me was the strangest thing of all. I was starting to know how Cinderella probably felt after the Prince finally found her and got the shoe to fit. Her stepsisters had probably sucked up to her pretty much the same way Kris Parks was sucking up to me.
The thing was, though, like Cinderella I totally didn’t have the heart to tell Kris where to go. I should have. I know I should have.
But it was like this: why? I mean, what was the point? So she’d been a bitch to me her whole life. Like my being a bitch back to her was going to teach her a lesson? Bitchiness was all she knew.
Kindness. That was what Kris Parks needed. An example to follow. Someone whose gracious behaviour she could emulate.
“I don’t know,” I said, slipping the invitation into my backpack instead of following my instincts and tossing it into the nearest trash receptacle. “I’ll have to see.”
Leave it to Lucy to ruin everything by going, without taking her gaze off the magazine in her hands, “She’ll be there.”
Kris sucked in her breath excitedly. “You will? Great!”
“Actually,” I said, shooting Lucy a glare that she missed because she was studying an article about proper cuticle maintenance, “I’m not sure I can go, Luce.”
“Sure you can,” Lucy said, flipping the page. “You and David and Jack and I can all go together.”
“David?” I echoed. “Who said anything about—”
“I just think it is so sweet,” Kris said with a sigh. “About you and the President’s son and all. When Lucy told me, I nearly died.”
“When Lucy told you what?” I demanded.
“Well, about the two of you going out, of course,” Kris said, in some surprise.
I really could have killed Lucy then. I mean, you should have seen what happened when Kris uttered these words. Catherine, who’d been gnawing on a chicken leg, watching the whole little drama unfold before her, dropped the chicken leg into her lap. All the cheerleaders stopped gossiping and turned to look at me like I was some kind of new sparkly nail polish, or something. Even Jack, who by then had gotten my piece of pie back, paused with a bite of it halfway to his lips and said, “No freakin‘ way.”
I mean, it was a little upsetting.
“Right,” I said. “Jack is absolutely right. No freaking way. I am not going out with him. OK? I am not going out with the President’s son.”
But Kris was already babbling, “Don’t worry about it, Sam, I am the soul of discretion. I won’t say a word to anyone. Do you think reporters will show up, though? I mean, at my party? Because if anyone wants to interview me, you know, that’s all right. They can even take my picture. If you want me to sign a waiver, or whatever . . .”
All this, while Lucy just sat there, flipping through her magazine. I couldn’t believe it. And I had thought the thing with the drawing lessons was bad?
“Hey,” Lucy said, for once noticing by my expression that I wasn’t exactly happy with her. “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who went all frisson on the guy, not me.”
“I do not,” I said, darting a look at Jack, to make sure he was listening, “like David. OK?”
“OK,” Lucy said. “Don’t get your panties in a—OW!”
Really, if anybody deserves to be pinched, and on a daily basis, it’s my sister Lucy.
Top ten Ways You Can Tell That You Have Suddenly Become One of the In Crowd:
10. Kris Parks invites you to one of her notorious make-out parties.
9. In PE Coach O’Donnell picks you as team captain for the first time all year, and when it comes to choosing players, all the good athletes actually beg to be on your team.
8. A lot of the freshmen girls reappear after lunch in new, all-black outfits fresh from the Gap.
7. The Adams Prep Red Steppers—who perform at half-time during games—ask if you know of a musical selection they might choreograph their next dance number to.
And when you suggest “Pink Elephant” by the “Cherry Poppin” Daddies, they actually take you seriously.
6. In Deutsch class, when you admit you did not finish your homework, someone hands you theirs.
5. You begin to notice that a lot of girls who used to wear their hair like your sister’s are now teasing their hair into these giant mushroom clouds that look not unlike the one that is sprouting from your own head.
4. Everyone in the hallway, instead of painfully averting their gazes as you pass by, like they used to, goes, “Hi, Sam!”