From my vantage point, I can see that the guests in the restaurant are on their feet, clapping along almost in time to the beat. They laugh and make loud whooping noises. The loudest yelling comes from the president, who punches the air and throws his head around like he’s at an actual concert. I catch the first lady’s eye. She gives me a nod of approval and, for the first time since I’ve met her, a genuine smile. Even the Secret Service agents who were not thrilled about being coerced into this performance have little smiles on their faces. The guy who caught the plastic baby doll is tossing it from hand to hand in time to the music.
The Cheerminators take up position behind the girl who holds me on her shoulders. I mouth a silent prayer and let myself fall backward. I keep my eyes tightly shut until I feel the hands of the Cheerminators catch me. The band stops playing, and we hit our final position, with big beaming smiles and arms stretched up to heaven.
The applause is deafening.
The cheerleader who played the waitress looks like she’s going to explode with happiness and excitement.
She sees me looking at her and goes to hug me, but she stops before making contact.
“Is it okay?” she says.
I grab my little sister and squeeze her tight. “I told you I was going to make it up to you,” I want to tell Natalie, but if she knew who she was hugging her head would explode.
“Oh my God!” shrieks the Cheerminator who carried the plastic baby. “It’s everywhere already!”
She holds up her phone, and the clip of Jamie Brennan’s dance routine is an instant sensation. Did I imagine when I hatched my insane plan six hours earlier that I would salvage Jamie’s disastrous public image and reboot her as a live wire with a sense of humor who owned her mistakes and came back a hundred times stronger? Let’s say I had hope.
When I got the first lady to call Natalie and say, “I have my daughter, Jamie, here. She’d like to ask you something,” I had no idea what was going to happen. But then I heard the calm in Natalie’s voice. She was totally unfazed that the first lady had called her. It did not throw her that she was talking to the first daughter and being asked to throw a dance routine together with a few hours’ notice. It was not a stunning surprise to her that she and her team would be whisked from Reindeer Crescent on a private plane to Santa Barbara to perform in front of a completely unsuspecting audience. When you’re Natalie Wilder, that’s just what you expect from life. She was given a ridiculous mission, and she rose to the occasion.
The president is actually standing up on the table. “Play it again!” he yells at the band.
The guests also take up the chant. “Play it again!”
Even the two Secret Service guys are mouthing, “Play it again!”
The band, who probably never gets a chance to play anything other than soft background music, seizes the opportunity to make noise.
I turn to Natalie, who is on her phone. “Mom, Mom!” she screams. “Did you see it? It’s on YouTube . . . yeah, Jamie’s cool, she’s nice. Mom, no . . .”
Natalie looks at me with a pained expression on her face. “I’m so sorry, it’s my mom. She wants to say hi.”
Mom? Talking to her is not a smart idea, but I’m having an amazing night because of Natalie. And I want to hear my mom’s voice.
I take the phone. “Hi?” I say.
“Miss Brennan?” I hear Mom’s breathless voice. “I just want to thank you so, so much for giving Natalie such an incredible opportunity. That was so brave of you, and it was so much fun, and so awesome to watch. . . .”
“I know!” I shout back. “It was all Natalie, she pulled it out of nowhere. I just did what she told me. You know me, I’m just about coordinated enough to move my hips, she had to work around me. But it turned out great. Did Dad see it?”
“I’m sorry,” Mom says. “I didn’t quite catch that. Are you asking me if my father was watching?”
“Yes. No. Sorry,” I yammer. “So loud here. I should go.”
“It’s wonderful to talk to you,” says Mom. “Thank you again for thinking of Natalie.”
And, because I can’t help myself, I say, “I only wish I had the chance to meet your other daughter.”
There’s a silence. It stretches two, maybe three seconds.
“Dancing’s not really her thing,” my mother replies. “She hasn’t really found her thing yet.”
It’s funny how your mood can change in a moment. How you can go from feeling total euphoria to not feeling so good about yourself. I hand the phone back to Natalie.
“There’s my girl!” shrieks Jocelyn Brennan, who rushes toward my sister and scoops her up in a hug.
“Talk to my mother,” demands Natalie. “She’ll die.”
“And there’s my girl,” booms the president. He grabs me by the hand and drags me out in front of the band, where he starts throwing himself around to the beat. The fund-raiser guests join him and attempt to copy his unique dance moves.
“Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?” He laughs. “I’m so proud of you tonight, Jamie.”
Wait, what?
“You know I’m not Jamie, right, Mr. President?” I say, moving closer to him.
“Sure, sure.” He nods. “I’m just putting on a show.” He doesn’t seem like he’s putting on a show, though. He seems like he’s having fun with the daughter he wishes he had. I look across the restaurant and see Natalie and the first lady taking selfies. And then I think about the two or three seconds it took my mother to think of anything to say about me.
Because all I do is lie. Even my face is a lie.
The band is too loud and there are too many people, and I feel like I’m about to start crying.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I tell the president. “For real this time.”
I don’t need to go the bathroom. I just need to be myself and not wear this mask.
Secret Service agents clear a path through the congratulating crowds. None of their love is for me. No one here knows me.
Right now, I feel like no one anywhere really knows me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Officially Obsessed
Morgan Font, the independent candidate who is President Brennan’s closest rival, looks like a raven. He has dark hair that begins in a little clump at the center of his forehead and then fans out into a cresting wave. His eyes are eerily far apart and his beak-like nose comes to a sharp point. His mouth is talking about me.
“No, I didn’t watch the first daughter dancing, but I’m happy for her that she gets to live such a perfect life. She’ll never know what the children of my constituents know: what it’s like to walk through a metal detector before they can get into school. What it’s like to come home in the afternoon and not know whether there’s going to be electricity or gas. What it’s like to be scared to play in the streets. What it’s like . . .”
Click.
I aim the remote control at the TV and flip channels to see if I’m being talked about in a more positive fashion.
Click.
“We’re officially obsessed with Jamie Brennan. Who knew the first daughter had those moves?”
Click.
“President Chester Brennan surged three whole points in the polls this morning, and some folks are saying it’s all because of the viral video of his dancing daughter.”
Click.
“Yesterday, she was the girl who hid from the cameras, but what a difference a day makes! Today Jamie Brennan is hot-hot-hot. We’ve heard the White House is seriously considering an offer from Dancing with the Stars.”
Click.
“Join us after the break when the Sacramento cheerleader who taught Jamie Brennan to dance will show us the steps that caused a sensation.”
Click.
Here’s my old friend Morgan Font again. He’s standing on a stage in front of a curtain emblazoned with a big red, white, and blue striped F. Font is surrounded by gloomy-looking kids wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with the words Font
Force.
“When I built the Font Foundation, here in Washington, DC,” he says, “it was to give these children a place to gather, to play sports, to enrich their minds, and to plant the seeds for a future. A future where they’ll contribute more to the world than just dancing.”
Ugh.
Click.
I switch off the TV and sink back into the pillows of my huge California-king-size bed in my huge bedroom in my even huger hotel room. I roll on my side and look at the nanomask, which sits on the other pillow. That round piece of plastic has made me invisibly famous. Invisible fame is a strange sensation to describe. It’s like being the voice of a beloved animated character. Or a rapper’s ghostwriter. Or an action star’s stunt person. The world loves what you do, but no one knows you do it.
My phone receives a text. It’s from the first lady.
Get up. Get dressed. Got a surprise for you.
I hate surprises.
In my experience, a surprise is a smile that hides a slap in the face.
“Surprise! You’re getting to spend two whole weeks with Grandma!”
“Surprise! We didn’t get you the puppy you wanted. That would be too much work for you. We got you a cactus instead!”
I wash, dress, and wait in the living room for the Secret Service double-knock that is our agreed-on code for me to don my mask. The knock comes. Time for me to hide behind a popular face again.
Jocelyn Brennan bounces into the room and almost blinds me with her insanely radiant smile. She’s in a very good mood.
“Three points!” are her first words to me. She grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me. “Three points. That Morgan Font can kiss my you-know-what. I knew bringing you in was a good idea.”
I step back a few paces before her enthusiastic shaking makes me nauseous.
“So this surprise?” I say.
“You’re going to love it.” She laughs and gestures for me to follow her out of my room.
We walk the length of Hidden Willows’ top floor, the entirety of which has been taken over by the presidential party. Jocelyn, looking lovely and youthful in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, repeats “Three points” to herself as we reach the door at the end of the hallway.
She turns to look at me.
“Mmm,” she murmurs. “Mask on? Mask off? Just for fun, let’s keep it on.”
I slip my glasses over the mask.
FLB double-knocks on the door.
I touch my X-ray glasses. The door turns transparent. Inside, I see Jamie Brennan sitting on the arm of a chair, putting on a sneaker. The door becomes solid again.
I gasp. “Your daughter’s here?”
The first lady looks shocked. “How did you know that?”
“Spy,” I say.
A Secret Service agent opens the door and then steps aside.
“Go in,” urges Mrs. Brennan. “You two have a lot to talk about.”
I step into the doorway, and a sneaker hits me in the face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
First Daughter
If my glasses had more than six seconds of X-ray capability, I would have seen that Jamie Brennan was taking off her sneaker. Didn’t I say I hated surprises?
The impact of the hurled shoe knocks the nanomask from my face. I scramble on the ground to pick it up and examine it for damage.
Behind me, I hear FLB’s voice. There’s a pleading tone to it. “Jamie, honey, we talked about this. We agreed you’d meet with Bridget and you two would get to know each other, and when you felt comfortable, we’d transition you back into the public eye.”
“I never agreed to anything!” Jamie shrieks. “You’re a liar. You’ve been lying so long you don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“Jamie, baby,” the first lady begs.
“Get out, I hate you!” yells Jamie.
I see FLB beat a tearful retreat from Jamie’s room. I go to follow. FLB shakes her head and mouths “please” at me. One of the Secret Service agents closes the door, and now I am stuck in a lavish hotel suite with a furious girl who detests me and has a shoe she has yet to throw.
Jamie lies facedown on the white couch, her fingers trailing back and forward in the carpet. She no longer acknowledges my presence. This is not the kind of situation in which I thrive. I never know the right things to say when people are upset. The only thing I can think of to do is to throw Jamie’s mother under the bus.
“I didn’t know about this, either,” I say to the back of Jamie’s head. “She didn’t tell me she was going to put us together.”
“Shut up!” spits Jamie as she springs up from the couch, her face red and blotchy. “You’ve made things worse.”
She kicks the cushions off the couch and onto the floor and falls on top of them, all the while staring at me with seething hatred. “I only made it through the last four years because I knew my dad’s popularity was going down the drain. He didn’t fix the economy. He didn’t address climate change. He sent troops to Trezekhastan. There was no way he was going to get reelected. And then what happens?”
She jumps up from the cushions and comes stomping toward me. Is this going to get physical? Am I going to have to throw down with the first daughter?
“Three points,” she snarls, stopping a few inches from my face. “He’s up three points. You did your stupid dance, and now he’s going to get reelected, and I’m stuck with the dumb jock and the pageant queen for another four years of living in that big house with those Secret Service goons.”
She pauses for breath. I feel scalded by her anger.
“I did my best to stay off the radar.” Jamie sighs. “The internet had almost forgotten I was the girl who fell over. But now . . .” She adopts a high-pitched screech. “Do your dance like the puppet you are.” Jamie moves her hips and lurches into a miserable, mocking impression of my world-famous dance moves.
I wince in sympathy. Jamie Brennan wants no part of being a public figure, and I just shoved her back into the spotlight.
“And what’s your story, anyway?” she demands, her expression contorted with dislike. “How much must you hate who you are to hide behind someone else’s face? And who becomes a spy at, what are you, thirteen? What kind of hole in your life are you desperately trying to fill?”
I’ve been insulted and talked down to by criminal masterminds, but they didn’t make it sting like this girl.
Jamie gives me a vicious grin. “Oh, wait. I’ve seen your sister. Jocelyn adores her, and is it just me or does she look nothing like you? So, okay, I get it. You’re a ghost. You don’t exist. But you really think being me is going to make you feel better about being you?”
Do not kick the first daughter in the face, I tell myself. No matter how good it will feel.
Jamie gives me a contemptuous head-to-toe gaze. “It must be nice to pass for one of the pretty girls,” she sneers. “Even if it’s only for a few days.”
And then . . . her face changes. The hate fades away. Jamie inhales sharply. Her eyes widen, and her mouth opens. She grabs at my wrist. I try to pull away, but she has a surprisingly strong grip. The first daughter looks up at me with an expression of pure astonishment.
“What did they say?”
I don’t understand.
Jamie squeezes my wrist. Tight enough to break the skin.
Her voice is hoarse. “What did those marks on your arm say?”
What is it with these Brennan women and their insanely good eyesight? I scrubbed the Magic Marker words away a dozen times. I look down at my arm. There are tiny remnants, barely visible to the human eye.
“Did they say . . . ?” She trails off, her eyes shining with hope.
“Cadzo Army.” I nod.
Jamie Brennan lets out a loud, piercing, sustained shriek.
The Secret Service agents burst into the suite, guns drawn.
“Get out,” says Jamie, not even bothering to look at them. “I’m hanging out with my friend.”
Friend?
All hail the
healing power of L4E! Ten minutes ago, Jamie Brennan hated me. Now we sit on the cushions she threw onto the floor, gazing at her iPad. We watch an old interview where the boys are celebrating their first hit song. “How does it feel?” the interviewer is asking them.
“Dinnae pay nae mind tae seein’ us on ra boax, wur jist like youse, so we are,” Cadzo is saying. “Schemies and manky weans frae up a close. See aw this? Nae idea.” Cadzo looks at the rest of the band.
“Aye,” they chorus. “Nae idea.”
Cadzo continues, “But we’d be glaikit if we didny gie it laldy frae noo on, so we would.”
Jamie pauses the clip and stares at me. “What do you think he’s saying?”
I tap my bottom lip. “Obviously, I’ve given this a great deal of thought,” I tell her. “I think he’s telling us that even though we might have seen them on TV, L4E are no different from any of us, they’re normal kids who grew up in a normal environment. They never expected this sort of success. But now that it’s happened, they’re going to pursue it to the best of their ability.”
“Wow,” Jamie breathes. “I have watched that a hundred times and it just sounded like they were grunting and swallowing things.” She beams at me. “You’re like the Cadzo Whisperer.” Jamie picks up her iPad and starts scrolling down L4E’s YouTube channel for more interviews that I can translate. Suddenly, she stops and moves her cushion closer to mine with a mischievous smile on her face. Lowering her voice, she says, “What’s your L4E fantasy?”
I feel myself blush because I never expected to be asked that question . . . and because I don’t even have to think about the answer.
“Okay, I’m at the airport lounge and the flight’s overbooked. They say, we’re looking for someone to give up their seat so we can take off on time. You’ll get an upgrade on the next available flight.”
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