All-American Girl

by Meg Cabot

  “Excuse me!” Theresa yelled. She double-parked (it was unlikely the car was going to get towed with half a dozen cameramen draped over it) and, shielding me with her leopard-print raincoat, and using her elbows and purse as battering rams, ran with me to the studio door.

  “Samantha,” the reporters yelled as we went barreling through them. “How do you feel about the fact that Larry Wayne Rogers has been judged incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness?”

  “Samantha,” someone else screamed, “what political party do your parents belong to?”

  “Samantha,” another one called. “America wants to know: Coke or Pepsi?”

  “Jesu Cristo,” Theresa yelled at someone who made the mistake of tugging on her purse to keep us within microphone reach a little longer. “Hands off the bag! That’s Louis Vuitton, in case you didn’t notice!”

  Then we burst into the bottom of the stairwell leading up to Susan Boone’s…

  …practically running over David and John, who had apparently come in just seconds ahead of us, though I hadn’t noticed them in the crowd.

  Theresa was so mad about someone having touched her purse, she couldn’t say anything except Spanish swear words for a whole minute. John, David’s Secret Service agent, tried to calm her down by saying that he had called for police backup and an officer was going to escort her back to her car. Also that the reporters would be held back by barricades when we came out again.

  I looked at David, and noticed that he was smiling his secret little smile again. He had on a Blink 182 T-shirt under his brown suede jacket today, indicating that his musical taste was not, as I sometimes feared mine was, too restrictive. The shirt was black, which somehow seemed to bring out the green in his eyes more than ever. Either that, or it was just the lighting in the stairwell, or something.

  “Hey,” David said to me, the secret smile getting a little wider.

  I don’t know why, but something about that smile made my heart do this weird skittering thing.

  But that of course was impossible. I mean, I don’t even like David. I like Jack.

  Then for some reason I remembered Rebecca and her stupid frisson thing. Was that it? I wondered. Was it frisson when you saw a guy smile and it made your heart act all weird?

  All I could say was, I was glad David didn’t go to Adams Prep, and so hadn’t heard all the Lincoln Bedroom stuff that had been going around. I mean, it was bad enough I felt frisson for the guy. The last thing I needed was him knowing everyone in my entire school seemed to know it.

  Just the thought that I could feel frisson for anyone but Jack put me in a really bad mood. Or maybe it had been all the reporters. In any case, instead of saying hi or whatever to David, I went, “Doesn’t all that bother you?” I jerked my cast in the direction of the reporters. “I mean, that’s just scary, and you’re smiling.”

  “You think the press is scary?” David asked. Now he wasn’t just smiling. He was laughing. “Aren’t you the girl who jumped on the back of a crazy man who was holding a gun?”

  I blinked at him. Laughing, I couldn’t help noticing David looked even better than when he was smiling.

  But I quickly squelched any such notion, and said in a businesslike way, “That wasn’t scary. It was just what I had to do. You’d have done it, if you’d been there.”

  “I wonder,” David said thoughtfully.

  And then Theresa’s police escort arrived and when she opened the door to go back out again, all chance of having a conversation in the stairwell was lost in the shouts of the reporters. John kind of herded us up the stairs, and we went in and there were the benches, exactly as they’d been the last—and only—time I’d been there. The only real difference was that the fruit that had been on the table in the middle of the circle of benches was gone. Instead there was just this white egg sitting there. I thought maybe Susan Boone had forgotten part of her lunch, or something. Either that or Joseph was really Josephine and nobody had bothered to mention it to me.

  “So,” David said as we settled onto our benches and got our drawing pads all ready, and stuff. “What’s it going to be today? Pineapple again? Or are you going to try for something a little more seasonal…squash, perhaps?”

  “Would you shut up already,” I said, not loudly enough for anyone else to hear, “about the pineapple thing?” I couldn’t believe I had actually experienced frisson with a guy who did nothing but tease me.

  “Oh, sorry,” David said, but he didn’t look very sorry. I mean, he was still smiling. “I forgot about you being a sensitive artist and all.”

  “Just because I’m not willing,” I muttered, glaring at Susan Boone, who was over at the slop sink rinsing out some brushes, “to have my creative impulses stamped out by some art dictator doesn’t mean I am overly sensitive.”

  Both of David’s eyebrows went up at the same time. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Susan Boone,” I said, sending a dirty look in the elf queen’s direction. “This whole draw-what-you-see thing. I mean, it’s bogus.”

  “Bogus?” David had finally stopped smiling. Now he just looked confused. “How is it bogus?”

  “Because where would the art world be,” I whispered, “if Picasso only drew what he saw?”

  David blinked at me. “Picasso did only draw what he saw,” he said. “For years and years. It was only after he’d mastered the ability to draw whatever he was looking at with absolute precision that Picasso began experimenting with perceptions of line and space.”

  I stared at him. “What?” I asked intelligently. I hadn’t understood a word he’d said.

  David said, “Look, it’s simple. Before you can start trying to change the rules, you have to learn what the rules are. That’s what Susan is trying to teach us. She just wants you to learn to draw what you see first, before you move on to cubism, or pineapple-ism, or whatever-ism it is you choose eventually to espouse.”

  It was my turn to blink. This was all news to me. Jack had certainly never said anything about getting to know the rules before trying to break them. And Jack knew all about breaking the rules. I mean, wasn’t that what he was always doing in order to show people—like his dad, and all those people at the country club, and Mr. Esposito, back at school—the error of their ways?

  Then Susan Boone stepped away from the sink and clapped her hands.

  “Okay, class,” she said. “As I’m sure all of you know by now, there was some excitement last week after class”—this caused some laughter from Gertie and Lynn and the others—“maybe a little more excitement for some of us than others.” Susan Boone smiled meaningfully at me. “But we’re all here now, and thankfully unscathed…well, for the most part. So let’s get back to work, shall we? See this egg?” Susan Boone pointed to the egg on the table in front of us. “Today I want you all to paint this egg. Those of you who are unaccustomed to paint may use colored pencils or chalk.”

  I looked at the egg on the table. It was sitting on a piece of white silk. I looked down at the handful of colored pencils Susan Boone had dropped onto my bench. There wasn’t a single white one.

  I sighed, and raised my hand.

  Well, what was I supposed to do? I mean, here this woman had practically blackmailed me into coming back to her class, and then when I got there, she didn’t even give me a white colored pencil…yet she expected me to draw what I saw? What was she thinking? I mean, I am all for learning the rules before I break them, but this didn’t seem like it was even on the rules list.

  “Yes, Sam,” Susan said, coming over to my bench.

  “Yeah,” I said, putting my hand down. “I don’t have a white-colored pencil.”

  “No, you don’t,” Susan Boone said. Then she just smiled down at me and started to walk away.

  “Wait,” I said, conscious that David, who was sitting next to me, was probably listening. He looked pretty absorbed in his own painting, which he’d started as soon as Susan Boone had stopped talking to the class, but you never kn
ew.

  “How am I supposed to draw a white egg sitting on a white sheet when I don’t have a white pencil?” I didn’t mean to sound whiny, or anything. I really couldn’t figure out what it was Susan Boone wanted. I mean, was I supposed to work with negative space, or something? Just put in the shadows and leave the rest white? What?

  Susan Boone looked at the egg. Then she said the most astonishing thing I had heard in a while, and I had heard some pretty astonishing things lately, not the least of which was that my best friend, Catherine, wanted to be part of the In Crowd.

  “I don’t see any white there,” Susan Boone said mildly.

  I looked at her like she was crazy. Why, that egg and that sheet were as white as…well, as white as the hair streaming down her shoulders.

  “Um,” I said. “Excuse me?”

  Susan bent down so that she was looking at the egg on my same eye level.

  “Remember what I said, Sam,” she said. “Draw what you see, not what you know. You know there is a white egg on a white sheet in front of you. But do you really see any white there? Or do you see the pink reflected from the sun in the window? Or the blue and purple of the shadows beneath the egg? The yellow of the overhead light, where it is reflected on the top curve of the egg? The faint green where the silk meets the table? Those are the colors I see. No white. No white at all.”

  It didn’t seem to me that, in any part of this speech, there was anything remotely smacking of an attempt to stamp out my natural creativity and style. You have to learn the rules, David had pointed out, before you can break them. Susan Boone was really trying, just as he had said, to get me to see.

  So I looked. I looked hard. Harder, really, than I’d ever looked at anything before.

  And I saw.

  It sounds dumb, I know. I mean, I’ve always been able to see. I have twenty-twenty vision.

  But suddenly, I saw.

  I saw the purple shadow beneath the egg.

  I saw the pink light from the sun outside the window.

  I even saw the little yellow moon of light reflected on the top of the egg.

  And so, moving really fast, I picked up the first pencil I could reach and started sketching.

  Here is what I love about drawing:

  When you are drawing, it is like the whole world around you ceases to exist. It is just you and the page and the pencil, and maybe the soft classical music in the background, or whatever, but you don’t actually hear it, because you are so absorbed in what you are doing. When you are drawing, you are not aware of time passing, or what is happening around you. When a drawing is going really well, you could sit down at one o’clock and not look up again until five, and not even have any idea that so much time has gone by until someone mentions it, because you have been so caught up in what you are creating.

  There is really nothing in the world, I have found, that is like it. Watching movies? Reading? Not really. Not unless the story is really, really good. And very few are. When you are drawing, you are in your own world, of your own creation.

  And there is no world better than that.

  Which is why, when you are that deeply engrossed in a drawing, and something happens to bring you out of that world, it is about a hundred times as annoying as when you are doing geometry or something and your sister comes barging into your room to ask if she can borrow a Scrunchie, or whatever. When you are drawing and someone does something like that, I think it would be almost justifiable to murder that person.

  Of course, if the person is a big black crow, you would be even more justified.

  “Squawk!” Joe the crow yelled in my ear as he yanked a half dozen hairs from the top of my head, then took off, his wings flapping noisily.

  I screamed.

  I couldn’t help it. I had been so involved in my drawing, I had been completely unaware of the bird’s approach, totally oblivious to his sneak attack. I didn’t scream so much because what he’d done hurt—although it did—but because I just wasn’t expecting it.

  “Joseph,” Susan Boone cried, clapping her hands. “Bad bird! Bad bird!”

  Joe fled to the safety of his cage, where he dropped my hairs and let out a triumphant “Pretty bird!”

  “You are not a pretty bird,” Susan Boone corrected him, like he could actually understand her. “You are a very bad bird.” Then she turned around and said to me, “Oh, Samantha, I am so sorry. Are you all right?”

  I touched the raw place on my scalp Joe had created. As I did so, I looked around and noticed something: the light had changed. It was no longer pink. The sun had set. It was already after five, but to me, only about two minutes seemed to have passed since I’d started drawing, not nearly two hours.

  “I forgot to lock his cage,” Susan was saying. “I’ll have to remember to do that every time you’re here. I have no idea why he is so obsessed with your hair. I mean, it is very bright, but…”

  It was around this time that I began to notice that the bench next to mine was shaking. I looked over there to see if David was having a seizure or something, then realized he wasn’t seizing at all. He was laughing.

  He noticed my gaze and said, between gasps from laughing so hard, “I’m sorry! I swear, I’m sorry! But if you could have seen your face when that bird landed on you…”

  I can take a joke as well as the next person, but I did not happen to think this one was particularly funny. It hurts when someone—or something—pulls out your hair. Not as much as breaking your wrist, maybe, but still.

  David, whose shoulders—not as big as Jack’s, but still undeniably impressive as guys’ shoulders go—were still shaking with laughter, went, “Come on. You gotta admit. That was funny.”

  Of course he was right. It had been funny.

  But before I had a chance to confess this, Susan Boone was at my side, looking down at my drawing. Since she was looking at it, I looked at it, too. I had, of course, been looking at it all afternoon. But this was my first chance to sit back and really see what I had done.

  And I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a white egg. Sitting on a piece of white silk. It looked exactly like the white egg and the white silk in front of me.

  But I hadn’t used a single bit of white.

  “There,” Susan Boone said in a satisfied voice. “You’ve got it. I knew you would.”

  Then she patted me on the head in a distracted way, right on the tender spot where her crow had stolen my hair.

  But it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. Because I knew Susan Boone was right: I had got it.

  I had begun, finally, to see.

  Top ten duties of the U.S. 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 soul mate, Jack Ryder.

  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 it finds me. Some of these people even send me money. Unfortunately, this money is immediately put into a trust fund to send me to col
lege, 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 Dolley Madison hanging in the Vermeil Room, stumble across a peace summit.

  2. It is strongly advised that teen ambassadors to the UN not dress all in black, as this, according to the White House press secretary, might give the public the false impression that the U.S.’s teen ambassador is a practicing witch.

  And the number-one duty of the U.S. teen ambassador to the UN, so far as I can tell:

  1. Sit still. Keep quiet. And let the press secretary do his work.

  16

  “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 that was what Catherine had said.