I had begun, finally, to see.
Top ten Duties of the US Teen Ambassador to the UN, as Perceived by Me, Samantha Madison:
10. Sit around in the White House press secretary’s office and listen to him gloat over how high the President’s public approval rating has shot in the wake of the botched assassination attempt on him.
9. Also listen to the press secretary moan about how the city is complaining about all the cops they keep having to dispatch to my house to keep away the press, and why can’t I just go on Dateline or 60 Minutes and get interviewed already. Then after they show it a million times, everybody will get sick of me and leave me alone.
Yeah. Like I have anything to say that the American viewing public will find even remotely interesting. As if.
8. Make photocopies of the rules and regulations of the international From My Window art show for all of my artistic friends, of which I have one, my sister’s boyfriend and my soulmate, Jack Slater.
7. Autograph photos of myself for all the kids who are writing in asking for signed photos of me. Though why anyone would want to hang a photo of me in their room is completely beyond me.
6. Read my fan mail (after it has been irradiated and checked for razor blades and explosives). An enormous segment of the population seems to feel the need to write to me to tell me how brave they find me. Some of them even send me money. Unfortunately, this money is immediately put into a trust fund to send me to college, so it is not like I can buy CDs with it.
I also supposedly get a lot of letters from pervs but I don’t even get to see those. The press secretary keeps all those in a special file and won’t let me bring them to school to show Catherine.
5. In spite of the fact that the UN is in New York, no one has shown any sign of actually taking me there. To New York, I mean. Apparently, actually going to the UN isn’t really part of the top ten duties of the Teen Ambassador to the UN.
4. Bouncing a Superball off the side of the wall of the press secretary’s office, while it helps to pass the time while I am stuck in there, which I am supposed to be every Wednesday afternoon, is not technically a duty of the Teen Ambassador to the UN and only serves to annoy the press secretary and his staff, who confiscated the ball and told me I could have it back when my tenure as Teen Ambassador was over. Apparently they are unaware of the fact that you can buy Superballs on just about every street corner, and for less than a dollar.
3. Teen Ambassadors to the UN are not encouraged to roam around loose in the White House hallways, however familiar with the layout they might be, as they could inadvertently, while checking to see if there happened to be a portrait of Dolly Madison hanging in the Vermeil Room, stumble across a peace summit.
2. It is strongly advised that Teen Ambassadors to the UN do not dress all in black, as this, according to the White House press secretary, may give the public the false impression that the United States’s Teen Ambassador is a practising witch.
And the number one duty of the United States Teen Ambassador to the UN, so far as I can telclass="underline"
1. Sit still. Keep quiet. And let the press secretary do his work.
“He said yes!”
That was how Catherine greeted me at school Thursday morning. I had just fought through a throng of about a hundred reporters to get from the car to the front entrance of John Adams Preparatory School, so I have to admit my ears were kind of ringing from all the yelling (“Samantha, what do you think of the situation in the Middle East?” “Coke or Pepsi, Samantha?” etc.). But I was pretty sure this was what Catherine had said.
“Who said yes?” I asked her as she fell into step with me on my way to my locker.
“Paul!” Catherine was clearly hurt that I didn’t remember. “From church! Or Beltway Billiards. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is, I asked him out and he said yes!”
“Whoa, Cath,” I said. “Way to go.”
Only I didn’t mean it. Well, I did and I didn’t. It wasn’t very nice of me, I guess, and I would never have said so out loud, or anything. But the fact was, happy as I was about Catherine having a date, at the same time I felt kind of weird about it. I mean, what she had done—calling a boy and asking him out—seemed way braver to me than what I’d done—stopping an assassination attempt on the President. All I’d risked was my life . . . which, if I’d lost it, would be no big deal, since, you know, I’d be dead, and wouldn’t even know it.
Catherine had risked so much more than I had: her pride.
The fact was, I was probably never going to get up the guts to ask out the boy of my dreams. I mean, for one thing, he was dating my sister. And for another, well, what if he said no?
“Is it OK if I tell my mom that I’m spending the night at your house?” Catherine wanted to know. “I mean, I know they like Paul—my mom and dad, I mean—but you know they think fifteen is too young to date.”
“Sure,” I said. “After you guys go out, come on over. And if you want to borrow something to wear—I mean, you know, if your own stuff won’t cut it—come over beforehand and we’ll let Lucy do a makeover on you. You know she loves that stuff.”
Catherine’s face was shining. I had never seen her so happy. It was kind of nice. I mean, even though I was jealous and everything, I couldn’t help feeling glad for her.
“Oh, Sam, really?” Catherine cried. “That would be so great!”
“It’ll be fun. So what are you two going to do?” I asked her. “I mean, on the big date.”
Catherine looked at me like I was a mental case.
“We’re going to Kris’s party, of course,” she said. “Duh. What did you think I invited him to do?”
I was doing the combination to my locker at that point. But when Catherine said that—about going to Kris’s party—the numbers (fifteen, the age I am now; twenty-one, the age I’d like to be; and eight, the age I never want to be again) went clean out of my head.
“Kris’s party?” I hung on to the lock, staring at her. “You’re taking him to Kris’s party?”
“Yeah,” Catherine said, ignoring someone who’d walked by and, seeing her long skirt, went, “Hey, where’s the hoe down?”
“Of course I invited him, Sam,” Catherine said. “We’re going, aren’t we? You and me and Paul and David.”
“What?” Now I didn’t just forget my locker combination. I forgot my class schedule, what I’d had for breakfast, you name it. I was shocked. “Catherine, are you high? I never said I was going to Kris’s party. In fact, I distinctly remember saying Larry Wayne Rogers would have to hold a gun to my head before I’d go.”
Catherine’s pretty face, which a moment before had been shining like a new penny, crumpled with disappointment and—I did not think I could be mistaken about this—hurt. Yes, actual hurt.
“But, Sam,” she cried. “You have to go! I can’t go to Kris’s party without you! You know Kris only invited me because she thought you were going—”
“Yeah, and Kris only invited me because she thought I’d bring along a bunch of reporters and she could get her rat face on TV. Not to mention, she thought I’d bring David.” I couldn’t believe Catherine was trying to pull this on me. Catherine, my best friend since the fourth grade! “Which I’m not going to do. Because I don’t like David that way, remember?”
“Sam, I can’t go without you,” Catherine wailed. “I mean, if I show up at Kris’s without you, people are going to be like, “What are you doing here?”
“Well, you should have thought about that,” I said, wrenching open my locker door—I had finally managed to remember the combination—“before you asked Mr. High Score on Death Squad to go with you.”