3. You notice your name (scrawled next to Katie Holmes’s) across the front of a freshman boy’s notebook—with hearts around it, no less.
2. The whole Mrs. Krebbetts/peanut-butter pie thing.
And the number one way you can tell you are now a member of the In Crowd:
1. At the sophomore class meeting last period, when the student advisor asks how the surplus funds in the tenth-grade account ought to be spent, and you raise your hand and say, “On new paint brushes and other supplies for the art department,” your suggestion is seconded, put to the general assembly for a vote . . .
And wins.
It only took about two hours for it to make it all the way around John Adams Preparatory School that I was bringing the President’s son with me as my date to Kris Parks’s party on Saturday night.
For some reason this was more interesting to people than the fact that I had stopped a bullet from entering the skull of our nation’s leader, or that I was the country’s new teen ambassador to the UN. While I could not help but be thankful that I was no longer constantly being complimented on my bravery—all the more upsetting because I truly did not believe what I had done had been all that brave—it was somewhat disconcerting that everyone was, instead, making jokes about what may or may not have gone on between the President’s son and me in the Lincoln bedroom.
“Look, you’re taking this the wrong way,” Lucy said when I remarked upon this at the kitchen table after school. “The fact that you and this David dude are an item—DO NOT PINCH ME AGAIN—is only going to elevate your already sky-high stock. You, Sam, are the new It Girl of Adams Prep. If you would just give up the whole black-on-black thing, you could be voted prom queen like that.” Lucy snapped her fingers in the air, and Manet hurried over, thinking she might have dropped some of the chocolate-chip cookies Theresa had made and that we were all now chowing down on.
“Well, I don’t want to be prom queen,” I said. “I just want things to be back to normal.”
“I’m going to take a wild guess that that‘s not going to happen real soon,” Jack said. He pointed to the reporters we could see holding their cameras up over the backyard fence, hoping to snap a picture of us through the glass atrium.
“Jesu Cristo,“ Theresa said, and she went to the phone to call the police again.
I sunk my chin down into my hand and went, “I just don’t see why you had to tell everybody that. I mean, it is so far from the truth.” I said this very clearly, so that Jack would hear. I mean, I wanted to make sure he knew that, if ever he changed his mind about Lucy, I was still available.
“How was I supposed to know what the truth is?” Lucy asked, primly. “You won’t tell me where the two of you disappeared to last night.”
I couldn’t believe she would even bring any of that up in front of Jack. Although seeing as how Lucy was unaware of Jack’s status as my soulmate, I guess I couldn’t really blame her.
“Because it isn’t any of your business!” I cried. “I mean, you don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together.”
“Ha!” Lucy stabbed a finger at me, her smile triumphant. “I knew it! You two are going out!”
“No, we aren’t,” I said. “I didn’t say that.”
“Yes, you did. You just admitted it. You said, ”You don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together,“ which must mean you and David are going out, just like Jack and I are.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t mean that at all—”
My extremely lucid argument was interrupted, however, by Theresa, who, having gotten off the phone with the police, had then gone to intercept a package that had arrived by special delivery.
“For you,” she said, setting the package down in front of me. “From the White House, the man said.”
We all looked down at the package.
“See,” Lucy said. “It’s from David. I told you you two are going out.”
“It isn’t from David,” I said, opening it. “And we aren’t going out.”
The package turned out to be a packet of information about my new role as teen ambassador.
Lucy, seeing this, turned back to her magazine, clearly disappointed. But Jack got quite excited, reading all the little pamphlets and stuff.
“Look at this,” he said. “Hey. There’s going to be an international art show. From My Window, it’s called. ‘The show will feature teen artists from around the world, depicting, in a variety of media, what they see every day from their window’.”
Rebecca, who was going over her spreadsheets down at the other end of the table, went, “What about teens who don’t have windows? Such as the teen aliens who are being held against their will in Area 51? I don’t think they’re going to be represented, are they? Is that very fair?”
As usual, everyone ignored her.
“Hey,” Jack said, getting excited. Anything involving art excited Jack. “Hey, I’m going to enter this. You should too, Sam. They’re going to display each participating country’s winning entry at the UN for the month of May. That’s some great exposure. And it’s New York. I mean, you get something displayed in New York, you’ve got it made.”
I was reading the letter that had come along with the From My Window pamphlet.
“I can’t enter,” I said, with some astonishment. “I’m a judge.”
”A judge?” Jack was delighted to hear it. “That’s great! So I’ll enter, and you pick my painting, and I’ll be breaking into the New York City art scene in no time.”
Rebecca looked up from her spreadsheets and stared at Jack in disbelief. “Sam can’t do that,” she said. “That would be cheating!”
“It’s not cheating,” Jack said, “if my painting is the best.”
“Yeah, but what if it’s not?” Lucy wanted to know. She is the worst girlfriend. I never saw anyone so unsupportive of the man she supposedly loves!
“It will be,” Jack said with a shrug of his big shoulders, like that settled that.
Jack was right, of course: his painting would be best. Jack’s paintings were always the best. They had been good enough to get him into every single art show he’d ever applied to. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that next fall, in spite of his bad grades, lack of extracurriculars and poor attendance record, Jack would get into one of the top art schools in the country—Rhode Island School of Design or Parsons or even Yale. He was just that good.
And my opinion had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to be madly in love with him.
I pretty much managed to forget the whole David thing until Catherine called later that evening while I was trying to do my German homework.
“So,” she said. “Are you going to Kris’s party?”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Um, because Kris Parks is the spawn of Satan,” I said, in some surprise. “You know that better than anybody.”
There was this pause. Then Catherine said, slowly, “Yeah. I do know that. But I’ve always wanted to go to one of her parties.”
I couldn’t believe it. I actually took the phone away from my face and stared at it for a few seconds before putting it back up to my ear and going, “Cath, what are you talking about? After the way she’s always treated you?”
“I know,” Catherine said, sounding miserable. “But everyone always talks about Kris’s parties afterwards, like about how fun they were. I don’t know. She gave me an invitation too. And I was kind of thinking of going. If you were going, that is.”
“Well, I am not going,” I said. “Even Larry Wayne Rogers could not force me to go there, if he threatened to make me listen to ‘Uptown Girl’ fifty million times and break BOTH my arms.”