After asking the doorman to bring Sameera’s suitcases upstairs, Tara and Westfield climbed back into the limo and disappeared into the dark D.C. night.
Sameera rode the elevator to the top floor, but as she walked closer to the door of the apartment, it flew open, and her parents came barreling down the hall.
“Sparrow! You’re here. We couldn’t believe it when we heard you were coming back!”
Wrapped in her parents’ embrace, Sameera took a deep breath—and immediately started coughing. What was that fierce, musky smell? It was a new perfume emanating from Mom, and Sameera was definitely allergic to it.
They walked into the apartment, Sameera still hacking away, and Dad brought her a bottle of purified water and a box of tissues. She checked out her parents as she dabbed at her eyes. Dad looked the same in one of his classic navy blue jackets, white shirt, and red tie. Mom was wearing an ivory linen sheath with matching heels and stockings that were almost the exact color of her skin. The all-of-a-color ensemble made her blue eyes stand out like sapphires, and her figure looked sleek, as though she’d lost ten pounds during the weeks Sameera had been away. Her hair was styled into a bun, with a few loose blonde tendrils cascading in a calculated-but-casual way to her shoulders. She seemed polished and perfect at first glance, but when Sameera looked a bit closer, she saw that the dark circles under Mom’s eyes were camouflaged with ivory-colored makeup.
“We spent the whole day up in Baltimore, Sparrow,” her mother said wearily. “It’s a miracle we’re actually back in time to greet you. I read aloud to three hundred kids, your father handled questions at a televised town hall meeting where calls came in from around the country, and we took a dinner cruise on the harbor with a gang of Maryland power players. I’ve had four hours of sleep for three nights in a row, and my feet are killing me. And ... I’m still not done with that freakin’ ...”
Her voice trailed off. She slipped out of her pumps and collapsed into one of the apartment’s uncomfortable armchairs, which was upholstered in exactly the same ivory as her dress ... and her skin. SHE looks invisible now, Sameera thought, as Mom shut her eyes and propped her feet on the brocade ottoman. Within minutes, her mother was breathing deeply.
“Wow,” Sameera said. “I had no idea someone could plunge into REM sleep so quickly.”
Dad perched on the sofa, yawning and loosening his tie. “We’re so glad you joined us early, Sameera. Turns out there’s no way your mother and I could have visited Maryfield this summer. The three of us will campaign throughout the country starting in September, after the convention, but for now, we’ll stay based in D.C.”
“Will we travel by plane?”
“Some of the time. But the rest of the time we take buses. It could be fun, if we don’t drop dead of exhaustion before then. Sometimes I wonder if this is what I should be doing with my life.”
Dad leaned back in his chair. He looked so despondent that Sameera remembered the message her grandfather had wanted her to relay. Although the topic was tough to broach, she made herself say it: “Poppa told me to tell you, Dad, that—that a lot of presidents started praying during their terms, even though they didn’t pray much before. Like Lincoln. And Reagan.”
Dad was quiet. Then: “Your grandfather’s a wise man,” he said. “I’ll give that some thought.”
“You don’t have to know all the answers about religion, Dad. I’ve got tons of questions myself.”
“You’re right about that, Sparrow. People of faith have to keep asking questions. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t talk about it with my own parents—they were so sure they had all the answers. Everything was black and white.” He yawned again and closed his eyes, as though the conversation had now totally exhausted him.
Great, Sameera thought. I haven’t seen them in weeks, and they’re comatose. But at least Dad and I had our first real “religion” talk. It was short, but I think he heard me.
She looked around at the immaculate, sterile apartment that was supposed to be their home, trying not to think of the cozy family room in Maryfield. Her parents had been based here for months, and they hadn’t done anything to personalize the place.
Somebody knocked, and Dad leaped to his feet. “I’m awake! I’m awake,” he insisted, still in a daze. “Did they get that on camera?”
“Dad. It’s okay. You’re just here with me and Mom.”
It was the doorman, bringing up Sameera’s suitcases. Mom hadn’t even heard the knock; she was actually snoring now. Dad, who had managed to wake up all the way, tipped the doorman and picked up the suitcases.
Sameera followed her father into yet another color-free cream-and-glass room, picturing the bright, homemade quilt on her four-poster bed in Maryfield. Not to mention the golden warmth that Jingle’s fur added to the scene. Can you overnight express a live animal? she wondered wistfully.
chapter 25
The next morning, she found a note in Mom’s large, sprawling handwriting on the kitchen counter: “We’re in Delaware all day, and we’ll be back quite late—after midnight, probably. Stay safe. Call my cell if you need me.” Dad had added a few words in his neat, upright printing: “Don’t go out on your own. D.C.’s a dangerous city. Love you. Dad.”
Sameera sighed. Obviously her parents weren’t done with being overprotective.
She showered and slipped into comfortable jeans, a T-shirt, and the fleece from Poppa that she’d rescued from annihilation in L.A. Then she pulled back the curtains and watched countless Starbucks-cup-clutchers walk their dogs around the Mall. Poor pooches, she thought, thinking of Jingle roaming freely through the woods, jumping into the pond for a swim anytime he wanted, not knowing that terrible things like leashes existed.
The apartment felt quiet. Too quiet. I need to blog, she thought suddenly.
Without any new posts from Sameera, her circle of twenty-nine had been comparing summer jobs and complaining about how boring vacation always got by the end. The most recent comment had come from Miranda, telling everybody how awesome it was to be almost famous, and how much she was going to miss Sameera. “Now I’m back to the cows,” she wrote. “And our grandmother’s bustling around the kitchen again. When she isn’t writing in that journal Sparrow gave her.” This last sentence cheered Sameera up immensely.
Then she started typing.
Here I am, immersed once again into the excitement of my father’s campaign! This time, though, my main job is to ... CATCH UP ON MY MATH! Wahoo! I’ll be making my official appearance at the convention in three weeks. Until then I’ve been commanded to stay OUT OF THE NEWS because Wilder’s mysteriously disappeared, and hence there can’t be any new SammySez.com posts to do damage control if I blow it. So once again, I must be invisible. I WILL challenge this decision, as I’m feeling more and more confident about handling tricky questions on my own. In the meantime, I’m going to have to figure out a way to go out incog or else I’ll go nuts. Are any of you going to be in D.C. anytime soon? Wanna meet for a cappuccino? Remember: keep your comments short, clean, and to the point. Peace be with you. Sparrow.
Short, clean comments came pouring in from the four corners of the globe, making her feel much less lonely.
“Jingle howled at the moon all night,” Miranda wrote. “And so did I. I’m working on Mom and Dad to let me join you, Sparrow. What do the rest of you think? Should I come before or after the convention?”
The consensus of the circle seemed to be afterward, when the campaign would ramp up considerably and get even more interesting. Sameera waited for someone to ask if it wouldn’t be hard on her small-town cousin to handle the stress and attention of being in the public eye, but nobody did.
Promptly at ten Westfield arrived, equipped with sharpened pencils, notebooks, textbooks, and a calculator. And a grocery bag full of food. “Let’s start with algebra,” she said brightly, putting out bagels, cream cheese, and a bowl of pistachio nuts along with two bottles of icy diet soda.
Sameera’s math teachers had
always been the kind who droned on for a whole hour without pausing for breath; she’d escaped into Ahmed or Matteo fantasies to survive the excruciating boredom. She especially hated algebra and had barely gotten a C-minus last year when. they’d covered it, just like the C-double-minus-almost-a-D she’d scraped out this year in geometry. But as Westfield started the session, Sameera discovered that it was impossible to zone out when you were one-on-one with a top-notch teacher. Westfield patiently broke the problems down into such small steps that even a self-labeled math dummy could grasp them.
After an hour, Westfield announced that it was time for a “refreshment break.”“Are those oatmeal scotchies from Maryfield that I see on the kitchen counter?” she asked, eyeing the packet that Miranda had sent along for Sameera’s parents.
“Yes. Help yourself. Westfield, what do you know about Victoria Banforth?” Sameera munched on another half a bagel. They were good. Westfield, meanwhile, her eyes closed as she slowly chewed, was savoring a scotchie. Note to self, Sameera thought. Tell Ran to send Westfield one dozen scotchies.
“Funny you should ask,” Westfield said when she’d swallowed her bite. “I tutored Thomas Banforth about ten years ago, when he was in high school, and Victoria was running for a second term. They’re lovely people; we still stay in touch.”
Sameera groaned. “You’ve tutored everybody. Don’t you feel like a traitor, party-hopping like that?”
“Not really. You’re all good people. In fact, you’d love Thomas. He’s a gem.”
“Let me guess—he was a whiz kid even back then, right?”
“He has his strengths, Sparrow. And so do you. Which reminds me: let’s get back to math, shall we?”
Sameera couldn’t believe how much she learned in her first tutoring session. Westfield went back to review stuff that should have been learned in elementary school, slowing everything down—way down—until she was sure her pupil got it. Sameera actually understood the concepts of “majorities” and “percentages” for the first time in her life. She felt like she’d started climbing a mountain range and reached a couple of minor peaks. I claim you, Mount Percentage, she thought jubilantly, remembering how she used to dread even hearing the word. You’re mine forever, Majority!
When the session was over, Sameera stretched and wandered over to the window while Westfield packed up. Lines of summer camp kids were snaking into museums, and people endured the August heat by eating ice-cream cones and sun-bathing facedown, wearing tiny bikinis. Suddenly, Sameera noticed half a dozen people with cameras around their necks loitering across the street. Paparazzi! Were they waiting for her, or for someone else?
“Do the reporters know we’re here, Westfield?”
“You bet. They’ve been keeping track of your parents’ whereabouts 24/7. Well, I’ll see you on Monday, Sparrow. Got anything planned for the weekend?”
“Not really. I don’t know a soul in D.C.”
“If Tara hadn’t told you to sit tight, you could head over to one of the colleges or take a walk along the Potomac. There’s a lot to see and do in this city, especially on the weekends.”
Something clicked in Sameera’s mind. As soon as Westfield left, she ran into her room to find the white beaded clutch purse she’d been carrying that evening at UCLA. Ah! There it was, and the card was still safely inside. It was time for some quick online research.
chapter 26
She entered “SARSA” and “George Washington University” and “students” into the search engine, and bingo—she found it. “SARSA@GW: South Asian Republican Students’ Association.” So that was it! When she browsed the site, she found the same cryptic information that was on the card with a bit more information: Fridays. 4—6 P.M. Revolutionary Café. Foggy Bottom, District of Columbia. A small line of print did say “Meetings resume in the fall.” It was only the third week of August, and according to the George Washington University Web site, school didn’t start until the first of September. Would they be meeting today? Brief but well-written directions at the bottom of the page informed interested visitors how to get to the coffee shop by Metro.
Sameera glanced at her watch. It was two o’clock now; the SARSA meeting, if there was one, started at four. She might make it in time if she could figure out a way to avoid the paparazzi. Besides, even if there wasn’t a meeting, it would be nice to enjoy a cup of good coffee after drinking Poppa’s instant stuff all summer.
A disguise, I need a disguise.
Suddenly, she remembered the salwar kameez she’d brought with her from Brussels. Where was it? She rummaged through her suitcase.Yes! Blessed Mrs. Mathews had folded the cotton knee-length top, loose-fitting pants, and matching scarf carefully in Ziploc bags at the bottom of the suitcase.
After putting on the pants and tunic, Sameera took the long scarf and wrapped it completely around her head the way she’d seen Muslim women wear it. She gazed into the mirror. No, something still wasn’t right. Quickly, she grabbed the dark eyeliner pencil out of Constance’s makeup supply and outlined her eyelids heavily with it, both top and bottom. Then she wrapped the scarf again until it covered her head and most of the lower half of her face, and pinned it into place. There. That was much better, even though she could hardly breathe.
Quietly, Sameera headed down the back staircase at the end of the hall. The photographers and reporters waiting outside the building didn’t even glance her way. They’d heard that a giggly, kiss-blowing hottie named “Sammy” had entered the hotel the night before, and they were waiting for any sign of her to appear. Why would they notice a devout Muslim girl exiting a STAFF ONLY door that opened into a side alley?
The Metro station was starting to get crowded with people heading home for the weekend. Sameera had ridden the train before when she and her parents came to D.C. for brief visits, but it still took her a while to figure out how to pay the fare. The blue train was arriving just as she reached the platform, so she boarded it. To her dismay, a woman on the train gave her a suspicious look. What’s up with her? Sameera thought. Does she recognize me? Oh, well. She’d have to worry about that later. Right now, she had to concentrate on getting off at the right stop and finding the Revolutionary Café.
The streets around George Washington University were bustling with Friday afternoon activity, and a still-sweating Sameera stopped an elderly woman and showed her the card. “You go straight down the street for three blocks, love,” the woman said, clutching Sameera’s hands. “And please, let me welcome you to America. We’re so glad you’re here and hope you’ll consider becoming a citizen of this country.” She beamed, peering over the reading glasses she must have forgotten to take off.
An ancient, real-life Statue of Liberty, Sameera thought.
“Thanks, but I’m an American already,” she said, hating to disillusion this hospitable stranger.
Sure enough, the woman’s face fell, and she released Sameera’s hands. “Really? I thought you must be a newcomer, and I vowed, after 9/11 happened back in 2001, always to welcome new-comers, because those terrorists might have thought about what they were about to do if someone had been kind to them in this country. What do you think?”
So that was it. Sameera’s veiled head was reminding people of all sorts of strange things. “Er ... maybe. I don’t know. Thanks for your help.”
She looked around furtively—not a reporter in sight. With a sigh of relief, she headed for the Revolutionary Café.
chapter 27
Sameera had hoped to find the place swarming with Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Burmese, and Sri Lankan SARSA@GW members, but most of the students inside weren’t South Asian at all. Sameera stood to the side, scanning the room for any sign of the robust, friendly girl she’d met so briefly all those weeks ago. There she was! So they were meeting! Sangita Singh and three South-Asian-ish companions were clustered around a small, round table. One was a girl with waist-length hair; she had her back to Sameera along with one of the guys.
Sameera hesitated at f
irst. They looked like such a cozy circle that she hated to interrupt. But as she watched, the four of them burst into laughter, and she couldn’t bring herself to turn around and go back to an empty apartment. She edged a bit closer.
“It didn’t hurt to give fund-raising a try, Bobby,” Sangi was saying. “But nobody’s giving us anything, that’s for sure.”
“We’re not about raising money for Righton’s campaign,” the guy with his back to her said. “What happened at your booth last spring, Nadia?” Sweet Southern accent, Sameera thought.
The girl with the shiny long hair sitting next to him answered; Sameera couldn’t see her face, either. “When I set up my ‘Righton for President’ table at the student center, someone actually snatched the three dollars I’d put in the can myself.”
“Let’s face it,” the other guy said, sighing. He was tall and skinny, and wore glasses rimmed with rhinestones. “We might be the only Republican South Asian students at George Washington University.”
“That can’t be true.” It was Delicious Southern Voice again. “There are a lot of closet conservatives around here. But let’s leave the fund-raising to Righton’s middle-aged staffers. This group’s about convincing the under-twenty-five crowd that he’s exactly the kind of global leader our generation needs.”
“We have to revamp our site,” Sangi said. “George, you’re our token Web-savvy geek. I’m sure you could morph it into a state-of-the-art portal for us.”
Rhinestone Rims shook his head. “I could make it look sharp and hum along, but good sites need content. What could we add that Righton’s official site doesn’t have already?”
Just then, Sangi caught sight of Sameera, who quickly side-stepped away until she was standing in the line of people waiting to order coffee.
Sangi stood up and marched over. “Can I help you?”
“I’m waiting in line,” Sameera answered.
“Did you want to join us?You’re welcome if you do.”
First Daughter Page 14