Somehow, I didn’t think I would mind that. I picked up the remote control, looking for a sports channel. I hadn’t caught the Indians’ result from last night’s game, and I was dying to know who’d won—it had gone to the thirteenth inning before I finally went to bed.
“Can you quit doing that, please?” Emma asked.
“Quit doing what?” I replied.
“Checking out every channel,” she said. “You’re driving me nuts.”
I laughed. “That’s funny.”
“What? It’s not funny,” she said.
“Yeah, it is, because you’re allergic to nuts, so if I drive you nuts, you’ll be allergic to yourself!” I thought it was pretty brilliant of me to point this out.
She glared at me. Her sense of humor was down in the polls—my poll, anyway. Way, way, way down.
I could tell she was about to go on another tirade when there was a knock at the door. Three knocks, actually, then a pause, then two knocks.
“That’ll be the governor.” Kristen raced to open the door, nearly tripping over the ironing board.
Governor Brandon walked in, followed by Stu and the general. Her security detail stayed out in the hallway. “Guess what came?” The governor held up a brown box with overnight-delivery stickers all over it.
“My glove!” Emma cried.
“Well, uh, no …”
“Mom!”
“I forgot. I’m sorry,” the governor said. “We’ll buy you one right away. But look!” Governor Brandon lifted a clarinet case from the box. “Now I can play beside Aidan.”
“Oh, joy.” Emma glared at me.
“I’m going to get changed quickly and then we can see what’s what. I have a feeling I’ll need some new reeds.” The governor disappeared into one of the rooms that branched off the main room of the suite. As soon as she was gone, the general took the remote out of my hand without asking and started clicking through the news channels.
See? Here was another problem. Even when I did get to watch cable, I had no rights on what to watch—whether I was at home or on the road.
“I have a question,” I said.
“Shoot.” The general didn’t look away from the TV, reading the scrolling headlines at the bottom of the screen.
“Do you ever watch anything but cable news channels?” I asked.
He didn’t even take his eyes off CNN. “Why? What would be the point?”
“Well, there are movies. Cartoons. Sports. And you know, other important, normal stuff.”
He didn’t respond. On the TV, a newscaster was using a SMART Board to illustrate the differences in the latest poll results. “Despite her falls, one candidate is still rising in the polls,” the reporter said.
There it was: video footage of my clumsy crash onstage, knocking down the governor. I looked like an out-of-control bowling ball that had taken out several pins.
The general clicked to another news station. They were playing a medley of “Presidential Falls Throughout History,” which seemed to feature a lot of President Gerald Ford (number thirty-eight). On yet another station, there was a photo of me and underneath it: brandon’s fall guy.
“Wow. We’ve learned something today,” said Stu, coming closer, mesmerized.
“What’s that?” asked Kristen.
Stu turned to me. “We need Aidan. This campaign was in trouble before you showed up. You’ve got a golden touch.”
The general frowned. “I don’t know if I’d call it golden. More like bronze. The governor’s going to end up with a broken bone if this keeps up. I’m thinking we need to establish a perimeter. You, my friend, will stand outside it.”
“But he’s effective,” said Stu.
“Effective? I think you mean defective,” Emma said under her breath, but loudly enough so I could hear her.
Governor Brandon walked into the room, dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt. “So maybe we just need another way for Aidan to be involved. We didn’t invite him along to give speeches or dance across stages,” she said.
“And now we know why,” said Emma, turning on her laptop.
“Ha-ha,” I said in a monotone. “Ha.”
Emma’s mother ignored her. “So, what do you think so far?” the governor asked me. “Everything going all right for you?”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “I guess.”
“Is it like you expected?” She sat down in a chair opposite me.
“Um … I actually didn’t know what to expect,” I admitted. “I didn’t really have time to expect anything. One minute I was playing in my marching band, and the next thing I know …”
“You got sucked into the political machine,” said Stu, nodding. “Same thing happened to me. I went to a rally in college, and it changed my life. You can really get swept away when you believe in something. Or someone.”
I didn’t respond. That wasn’t exactly what had happened to me. My experience was more like an alien abduction than being swept away. Now I was on a foreign planet where the only things that mattered were polls and sound bites. I wasn’t Stu. I didn’t know what I believed in.
“Well. Here we are.” Governor Brandon lifted a tray off the table and offered it to me. “Have an oatmeal raisin cookie?”
“Don’t bother. He only eats Lime Brains,” said Emma in a disdainful tone.
“What’s a Lime Brain?” the governor asked me.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a cookie off the tray.
“I don’t want to know,” the general added.
“Sweet-and-sour gummy candy with a crunchy brain middle,” I told them.
“Sounds interesting,” said the governor.
“Sounds disgusting,” added Emma, glancing up from her laptop.
“Well, why don’t you have some cookies from your peanut-free stash, Emma?” the governor asked.
“No, thanks, Mom.” Emma smiled. “I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself. Listen, I had a thought earlier.” Governor Brandon set down the tray, put her feet up on the coffee table, and dropped a small cookie into her mouth. “Aidan, you know how your words really got out there, how you made an impact with people?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, and in unison, Stu and the general said, “Yes.”
“We were just watching the news about that,” Stu said. “Very impressive results.”
“Well, we’ve been wondering,” the governor said. “Don’t you think maybe it’s time for you to speak again?”
“Speak? You mean, in public?” Emma asked. “Him?”
“We’d like to set up some interviews. Tell me what you think. Also, I want you to play,” said the governor.
“Play?” I repeated.
She tapped the black case on the table. “Clarinet, what else? Emma, if you want, we can work in the flute. Make this a trio,” said her mother.
“Oh, no, not on your life,” Emma said under her breath.
“What’s that?” her mother asked.
“I was just—it’s just that, um, your duet will be better without me.” Emma smiled. Why did I get the feeling she was up to something?
“Where exactly would this performance be?” I asked. “At a campaign rally, like today?”
The governor and Stu exchanged awkward glances, as if there was something they didn’t want me to know. “Sort of,” Stu said.
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What does ‘sort of’ mean?” I asked.
“It would actually be on TV,” Stu explained. “Bettina’s rolling out her education platform tomorrow, which includes restoring funding for music and other arts. We’ve gotten her a spot on Wake Up, America! She’ll be talking about the importance of music education, about how schools are being forced to cut programs and how wrong that is for our future.”
That was pretty much what Mort had said. If her issues were Mort’s issues, playing clarinet with her would be okay, right?
“She wants to back up her passion for music with some physical evidence. Namely, you,” Stu s
aid.
“Oh,” I said.
“Go figure,” said the general.
I knew that’s why they’d asked me to come along. They were only asking me to do what I’d agreed to. So why was I nervous?
“We’ll practice together, right now,” Governor Brandon said. “If things go well, we can play a duet. If not, there could be a brief, patriotic solo. What do you say, Aidan?”
I looked at Emma. I didn’t want to play in front of her. She would mock me; I just knew it. “Uh, is there anywhere we could play that’s kind of, you know, more soundproof?” I asked. “Someplace where we wouldn’t disturb anyone?”
“Yeah.” Emma cracked her gum. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“These walls are ironclad. I’m not allowed to stay anywhere that isn’t practically a concrete bunker,” said the governor with a laugh. “No worries.”
“Actually, it’s more of a, um, focus thing,” I said. As in, focus on not being humiliated by Emma. This wasn’t good. If I couldn’t handle her as an audience, how was I going to deal with however many millions would be watching Wake Up, America!?
Kristen turned off the iron and pushed the ironing board out of the way. “Fine, we’ll give you privacy. Come on, Emma—let’s hit the pool.”
“Yes!” Emma jumped up. I’d never seen her move so fast. She’d changed into her swimsuit, and was out the door with Kristen and a Secret Service agent in about two minutes.
Great. She got to go swimming, while I was stuck inside rehearsing with someone who hadn’t played the clarinet in forty thousand years. So we could both embarrass ourselves on live TV. That was why Emma had muttered, “Not on your life!”
“I’m headed to the conference room to work on the next speech,” Stu announced. “I need to streamline some talking points. You coming?” he asked the general.
“I’m staying put. I’ve got to get to the root of this kid’s appeal,” he said as if it made absolutely no sense to him.
After seeing those videos, I kind of had to agree. Although I had sounded cool at the mike. Maybe was a natural-born public speaker. Everyone has a gift. Maybe mine wasn’t clarinet or playing shortstop, the way I’d thought. Maybe it was—
No. That was too boring. I wasn’t going through life like these people.
I went into my room and came back with my clarinet. The general took one look at me and pulled a pair of noise-canceling headphones out of his briefcase. He plugged them into the TV and settled back on the recliner to watch.
“So, what do you have for music?” I asked the governor.
“I was counting on you, actually. I’m not sure what Dan put in here. At least he remembered the new reeds I asked for.” She sifted through the sheet music in the box. “How about these?”
We practiced for about an hour: Benny Goodman, a Cole Porter piece, some Sousa marches, “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful,” which I played much, much better this time around. I decided not to show her the Mozart music I’d brought along. I didn’t think she was up to that, and I didn’t want to embarrass her.
The governor wasn’t bad. She wasn’t good, either, but she wasn’t bad. If we practiced some more, we might actually do well at this.
For a few minutes I even forgot where I was. When I’m getting all the notes right, when everything is quiet and I can concentrate, I can go totally inside the music. Sometimes I don’t want to come back out.
“That’s real playing,” Mort had said to me once when I described the feeling to him. “That’s what it’s all about.”
When we had finished playing, the governor looked at me and nodded. “Nice. You have an ear.”
“Two of them, actually,” I joked.
She smiled. “Musicality, I mean.” She told me about her family, how she grew up singing at church. She came from a big family, like Simon’s, and all her siblings would get together and sing as a group. “Sometimes I loved it; sometimes I hated it, and it was the last thing I wanted to do. But the thing about music is that it’s kind of like public speaking. Learn the skill, and you can go many places with it.”
“That’s what Mort always says about the clarinet! Learn it and you can learn any wind instrument afterward,” I said. “He’s my music teacher,” explained.
“You know, I’ve heard that, too. Clarinet’s the most versatile instrument in the world, isn’t it? I read that somewhere.” She nodded. “You know what, Aidan? It’s been so long since I could actually just sit and talk with one person. No microphones.”
I sighed. “I know what you mean.”
She smiled at me. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” I said as I started to take apart my clarinet, removing the bell first.
“Don’t be nervous about tomorrow. I’ve been on the show a hundred times,” the governor said. “Nicest people in the world.”
“I’m not that nervous,” I said.
Then I started thinking about it. Everyone I knew watched that show. My parents watched it. Christopher. My grandparents. Simon and his family. Mort. T.J. The entire population of Fairstone. The entire country.
I reassembled my clarinet. “But if it’s all the same to you, Governor, I think we’d better keep practicing,” I said.
That night I couldn’t sleep. One, I was extremely nervous about this plan to be on Wake Up, America!
And speaking of waking up, our wake-up call was scheduled for five a.m., so we could get to the station at six and go on live at seven-something. What point was there in falling asleep if I had to get up that early?
Two, these days everything I did ended up on TV, anyway, or at least on YouTube. So why did we need to go to them?
Three, if I played on TV, I wanted to be really, really, really good. I didn’t want to be like the small-town freak show that should have stayed home. I wanted to show everyone that my slip-up on “America the Beautiful” was due to the fact I’d been tackled by Secret Service agents, then frisked and suspected of terrorism. I was better than I’d been that day. Much better. I didn’t want Mort cringing when he heard me.
Four, I’d promised to get revenge on Emma. How was I going to do that, exactly?
Whenever I’ve had trouble in baseball, or learning long division, or the upper register of the clarinet, I’ve always dealt with it by practicing over and over.
When I was little, I used to say, “If you don’t get a success, try, try again.” Then Christopher made fun of me, so I switched it to “If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.”
That also got some laughs, because I got the wording wrong, but that’s the thing with me. I don’t give up easily.
I pulled on a sweatshirt over my T-shirt, grabbed my clarinet case from beside the bed, picked up a key, and crept out of the room.
I had to find a place that was quiet enough. Maybe a broom closet would work. I could ask at the front desk. Maybe I could use the ballroom, or the exercise room, if no one else was using it at midnight. This hotel was so fancy, it probably had rehearsal space for its guests.
When the elevator doors opened onto the spacious lobby, I was shocked to see Emma lounging on a sofa by the fireplace.
There was a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table beside her, next to a can of soda and a plate of sliced apples with caramel dip.
“What are you doing down here? You’re not allowed to leave the room!” I looked around frantically for Kristen, or a Secret Service agent or two, but didn’t see anyone. Were they hiding behind the plants?
“Well, don’t tell anyone,” she said. “But sometimes I grab a key—”
I was stunned by her boldness. “You get around the Secret Service? I thought that was impossible!”
“Oh, please. I’ve been around this kind of security forever. They’re only human. They have to sleep sometimes, too.”
“Yeah, but don’t they work in shifts?” I asked.
She shrugged. “All I know is, no one was around. I took advantage.” She ate a handful of popcorn. “Why, how
did you manage to get out?” She made it sound like we’d escaped a maximum-security prison.
I shrugged. “I grabbed a key card that was sitting on top of the TV. It wasn’t complicated.” I sat down in an armchair. She was watching a baseball game with the sound down low. Not just any game, either: it was the Minnesota Twins against the Cleveland Indians. And the score was tied, in the eleventh inning.
“Well, no, because nobody cares about your safety,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
She laughed. “I just meant—”
“I know you don’t care, but some people do. Like my parents. They’re just not here right now,” I said.
“I know, I know. I only meant that no one’s watching you twenty-four/seven, the way they’re watching me,” she said. “I can’t even go to the bathroom without it being a major security alert.”
“Why? What could happen?” I asked. “Do I want to know?”
Her face turned pink. “Nothing.”
“What do they think is going to happen to you?” I asked.
“They think I’m going to escape out the window or something. Or get kidnapped, I guess. Since I’m famous. They refuse to let me out of their sight.”
“I’d never heard of you before yesterday,” I said.
“Well, you probably don’t even get cable where you live.”
“Well … er … actually, no. Not anymore.” I shrugged.
“What do you mean, not anymore?” she asked.
“We had to give up a few things since my mom’s been out of work,” I said.
“Oh, sorry. That must be hard.” She actually looked nice and sort of honest for a second. “Anyway, have a seat if you want. Chuck over there made me some microwave popcorn, and we tracked down some apples from the breakfast stash.” She waved at the clerk working behind the desk. “It’s okay, Chuck—he’s a friend,” she said.
I was? Since when was I a friend?
“So what were you planning? A serenade?”
“Huh?” I asked, distracted by the baseball game.
“Your clarinet.” She pointed to the instrument case I was still cradling in my arms.
“I thought I could practice. I couldn’t sleep,” I said. “But now that I know this is on, forget it. I’ll watch this instead.”
How Not to Run for President Page 8