“Did you tell your mom you’re retaking the test?” Max asked before he bit into a scone.
“No way. She’d kill me. And then my father would sweep up the remains and ask his engineers to rebuild a cyborg daughter, one who didn’t eke out worm-low scores on the SAT and disgrace the Abbott family name.”
“Isn’t it a little early in the morning for melodrama?”
“I’m serious! I’ve got a lot to live up to: genius parents, blue-blood pedigree, and oh, my mother is the freaking president of the United States.”
“Hey, come on. Don’t worry so much about disappointing everyone. You’re going to do great. I’ve seen you get out of worse scrapes and come up smelling like a rose. I have faith in you.”
“Thanks, Max. That helps. Lots.”
“Maybe this will help even more.” He settled his lips on mine, and I felt my toes curl. Whoa! Being with Max made my day—my life, actually—even if we had to sneak around. It was totally worth it.
For the next several minutes we forgot about scones and lollipops and SATs and politicians and the Secret Service and hovered in a blissful place, population of two—Max and me. When I was kissing Max, the rest of the world, and all my problems, faded away.
I’d completely mellowed out until I happened to glance at the massive Swiss watch on Max’s wrist. Then my world came crashing down.
“Omigod, I’m late!”
Chapter Three
George was waiting for me in the residence hallway when I emerged from the basement stairwell. Her tiny foot tapped in her steel-reinforced boots. “Have a good time?” she inquired.
I hid Max’s lollipop bouquet and pencils behind my back. “I, uh, needed to, uh, check something.”
“On the ground-floor level?”
“Yeah. I was near the electrical room looking at…boiler valves. An upcoming project for physics class.”
Boiler valves. Pathetic. She wasn’t buying it, obviously. “Hope it was worth it, because you’re going to be late for the test. The advance team is onsite now but we can’t hold things up for the other students—even for the president’s daughter.”
I had cajoled my Secret Service detail into keeping my retest a secret from my parents, and for once, they’d sympathized with me. Even George. Guess everyone’s afraid of disappointing their parents.
I started to hyperventilate. “I can’t be late, George.”
She nodded, businesslike. “Then we’ll do our best to get you there on time.”
For once, George’s demanding nature served me well, because the driver of the unmarked car didn’t argue when she told him to take the shorter, unauthorized route to the local community college, where the test was being given. We arrived in the parking lot of a 1960s-era cinderblock building with five minutes to spare. No press, either, thank god. I tried to remember Max’s test-taking tips: Do the easy questions first, use the process of elimination for questions where I wasn’t sure of the answer, and don’t get hung up on one question for too long.
I barely registered following George through the maze of classrooms and labs until I was suddenly in a lecture hall packed to the gills with desks. The test proctor looked about eighty years old. He wore super-thick glasses and smelled like licorice, but the Grateful Dead shirt under his blazer was his salvation. After making me empty my pockets of everything but Max’s mechanical pencils and a calculator, he herded me to the only seat left in the room.
As I made myself as comfortable as I could in the hard plastic seat, I noticed that right across from me was an overprocessed bleach-blonde who looked like Brittany Whittaker. She was checking herself out in a purse mirror while swabbing gooey, glittery lip gloss over her pouty lips.
Wait a minute, it wasn’t a Brittany look-alike; it was the genuine evil article. Ugh.
Brittany Whittaker was my nemesis at Academy of the Potomac—or AOP, as everyone calls it. This was the girl who’d stolen my election platform in order to rig the senior class presidential elections in her favor. Who’d smuggled unflattering photos of me to the press. Who acted like I hailed from Hicksville, USA, because I liked wearing jeans and T-shirts (today’s sartorial choice: Psycho Bunny) instead of pastel minis and stilettos.
Brittany’s frost-green eyes slid over me and her gloppy-glossed lips curdled into that poo-smelling expression she wore whenever she saw me.
“Abbott,” she cooed. Her voice sounded like honey—with a fly drowning in it. “Surprise, surprise. So Mommy President can’t get you out of taking the SAT? She gets you out of everything else.” She sneered at George, stationed in the doorway.
I ignored the jab at my mom. “What are you doing here, Whittaker? I thought you aced your test.” I remembered hearing her brag all over school that her scores were in the highest quadrant and that all the Ivies were after her.
She smirked. “I did. I’m…trying to get a higher score.”
Oh really. Now it was my turn to smirk. I recognized a white lie when I heard it.
Brittany coolly tossed a lock of flat-ironed hair over her shoulder and checked the oversize LCD screen on the most expensive-looking calculator I’d ever seen, one with about a million buttons. Despite her best efforts she still looked a little uncomfortable. For the first time ever, I felt a teensy iota bad for her.
Sure, she’d made my first few weeks of senior year a living hell. But she’d recently gotten the mother of all comeuppances when she was arrested for assaulting the president of the United States. She pulled my mother’s hair at a press conference, thinking it was me wearing a wig. The Secret Service took her down for breaching the president’s bubble of security—and those guys don’t mess around. Mom had the charges dropped, but the resulting firestorm of bad publicity prompted AOP’s student council to strip Brittany of her class presidency and give it to the person who had earned the second-highest number of votes in the election.
Me.
Actually, if I thought about it, things had gone from bad to worse for Brittany. She no longer ruled the school’s social calendar nor did her posse of minions follow her around like obedient puppies anymore. I also think her father, Senator Chet Whittaker, leader of the opposition party and my mother’s main political adversary, must have grounded her because I hadn’t seen her at any school events in a while.
Eep. Am I feeling bad for Brittany? The thing is, she wasn’t wrong about me impersonating my mother that night at the American Business Leaders banquet. Her timing had been a little off, that’s all. And thank gawd it was, because if she had caught me playing my mom, my mother’s presidency would have been finished. Mom and I only agreed to the switch due to a super-secret conference she needed to attend to avoid a possible nuclear war in Africa.
The smell of licorice snapped me back to attention. The proctor was moving through the aisles and had slapped a test booklet in front of me.
Focus, Morgan. Focus. Twenty-five minutes per section does not leave a lot of time for daydreaming.
Mindful of Max’s hints, I worked steadily through page after page of algebra equations, feeling semiconfident. Pencils scratched; the clock on the wall ticked. A few coughs and sighs of frustration punctured the quiet. After about fifteen minutes, I lifted my head to uncrick my neck muscles. Next to me, Brittany was staring at her test booklet, and I couldn’t help but notice all the bubbles in her test sheet had been filled in.
No way. Not even a genius like Max would be done with an SAT math test after fifteen minutes. And she hadn’t even scribbled any problem sets in her test booklet.
Then I noticed Brittany’s hand protectively cupping that ridiculous calculator. I could see the letters A, C, D, A glowing between her fingers on the LCD screen.
An awful suspicion sprang into my mind. I’d heard rumors that test grids could be loaded into high-end calculators.
Could Brittany Whittaker be cheating?
The ominous smell of licorice hit me before I heard a throat clearing next to my ear. I jumped. “Keep your eyes on your own test, or I�
��ll have to disqualify you for cheating,” the proctor whispered.
“But I…”
“You have four minutes left before pencils down,” he said firmly.
Crud! I still had about five problem sets to go. I began scribbling, the proctor’s eyes burning holes in the side of my head the entire time. When the bell rang for pencils down, I’d managed to finish two more equations.
I leaned back in the chair and heaved a big sigh. One down. Next up: physics.
While the proctor was gathering Scantron sheets, Brittany leaned over. “Oh my. Look at all the questions you left blank. Have trouble with basic high school algebra, Abbott?”
She laughed. I ground my teeth together.
We had a twenty-minute break between sessions, and I took the opportunity to get some fresh air and try to shake the sick feeling in my stomach.
“How’d it go?” George asked as she escorted me to the grungy patio area off the cafeteria.
“Okay, I guess. I didn’t get to finish three of the problem sets.”
“It’s really hard to finish the whole thing, if I recall. They design the test that way.”
“Brittany Whittaker somehow managed,” I answered glumly.
“She must be some kind of math whiz then.”
“She’s not.” I bit my lip.
George, somewhat of an expert now on reading my body language, knew something was up. “What is it?”
“I think Brittany was cheating.” I explained about the calculator and what I saw in the LCD screen. “But I have no proof. It’s just a suspicion anyway.”
George’s expression didn’t change, but her slanty elf eyes went hard.
“Forget about it,” I said. “I need to get a snack before the next test. I’m starving.”
“Oh? You mean you didn’t get a chance to eat any of the scones you made while you were down in the electrical room this morning?”
“Uh…no.” I hurried away to the bank of vending machines before she could see me flush.
I bought an energy bar and barely had time to scarf it down before it was time to take the next test. As we took our seats, Brittany pointedly ignored me.
Physics is not my thing at all, and this test was going to be my biggest challenge yet. My previous score was so low, it was embarrassing. I took a couple of deep breaths and focused on the first question. I was barely aware of George moving to the front of the classroom and whispering to the proctor. Brittany’s outraged squawk jarred me out of my concentration. “Who do you think you are? I demand you give back my property.”
The test proctor loomed over Brittany, holding her calculator and examining the LCD screen. “I need you to come with me, please.”
The entire room gasped.
Brittany rose. Scarlet streaked her cheeks, and I thought I saw a shimmer of tears in her eyes. She swiveled toward me. “I’ll get you for this,” she hissed through her clenched, whitened teeth. “Watch your back, bitch.”
Chapter Four
“Serves Brittany right, Morg.” My BFF, Hannah Davis, riffled through my closet, throwing outfits that passed her critical judgment on my bed. It was late afternoon, and I’d spent the entire morning draining my brain over SAT questions. Now Hannah had come over to offer a little mental relaxation and some sorely needed fashion advice for the London trip.
She continued, “Little Miss Wonderful tried to game the system by cheating and she got caught. I wouldn’t waste one drop of sympathy on her. She wouldn’t on you if the situation was reversed.”
“I know, I know.” I sprawled in my beanbag chair, feeling miserable for some weird reason. Brittany Whittaker got caught cheating because of me. And the thing is, I had an inkling of the desperation and pressure she must have felt to get good scores. Everyone growing up in Washington, D.C., had power-broker parents who didn’t settle for second rate—especially in their children.
“Dear gawd. Don’t tell me the White House social secretary seriously expects you to wear this in London?” Hannah pulled out a milky-colored dress with hideous navy-blue trim adorning the padded shoulders. “This is like some nightmare uniform from a cruise line.”
“She expects it, all right. I’m forbidden from even bringing jeans and T-shirts to London,” I said. “I mean, I know I’m not supposed to wear flip-flops to meet the queen, but jeez. Everything she bought is so blah. Thanks for helping me sort through all this, Hans.”
“And thank you for talking your mom into letting me come along on the trip! We are gonna have a blast!”
“Luckily Mom thinks you’re a good influence. She’s not taking any chances on me making another classic Morgan Abbott mess, and she expects you to help me not humiliate my country.”
“Heh. Little does she know, right?”
“Seriously, Hans. We’ve got to tone it down when we’re over there, or Mom will have my passport revoked.”
“Don’t worry, there will be no drama on this trip. Just good times. In fact, I’ve got a heads-up on a killer clubbing hotspot in Piccadilly Circus.”
“Hannah! Did Prince Richard text you this morning?”
“He did,” she replied modestly, but I could tell she was busting with happiness. Hannah had hooked up with Prince Richard, heir to the British throne and the planet’s hottest royal, on his official visit to Washington, D.C., last month and they hadn’t stopped texting or webcaming each other since. Not that he could be blamed. Hannah looked stunning today in a ruby-red satin dress that set off her chocolate skin to perfection. My BFF was a born fashionista who knew how to make the most out of her assets, which were considerable. And she helped me make the most of mine, which were difficult to find.
“I can’t believe you’ve snagged a royal,” I said, and tried to smile. I was thrilled Hannah was going to get to see Prince Richard again but was also tragically bummed that my time in London would be Max-free if I didn’t think of some way to get him assigned to the security entourage for the trip.
“Oh. Mahgawd.” Hannah pulled a two-piece business suit in a grotesque shade of oatmeal out of the closet. “Are you sure this isn’t one of your mom’s?”
“Looks like it could be, doesn’t it? Maybe the social secretary thinks I look good in noncolors.”
I slipped into the suit and peered at myself in the full-length mirror. I raised my arm, Mom-style. “My fellow Americans. Join me on my important new initiative to eradicate shoulder pads and harem pants in our lifetime.”
“Man, it’s freaky the way you sound just like her. Hold up.” Hannah grabbed a wide tortoiseshell hair band from my dresser and eased it over my head, pushing my choppy bangs back off my forehead with it. A little smoothing, a little fluffing, and she eyed me critically. “Dang, I’m good. May I present President Sara Abbott?”
“Whoa.” I took a closer look in the mirror. Hannah was right. Now I really looked like my mom.
“I still have nightmares about turning into her,” I said. “The boring haircut. The sensible suits. Ugh.”
“Well, you only look like her,” Hannah reassured me. “And sound like her. And act like her when necessary. Typical mother-daughter doppelganger stuff. Your abnormal similarity to each other is completely normal.”
“You’re not helping.” I threw a pillow at her.
She ducked. “And you’re freaking out over nothing. Besides, how awesome is it that you can become the president of the United States with just the right outfit, a wig, and my skill with makeup?”
“We need to make sure you use your powers for good instead of evil.”
My cell phone chirped, and I glanced at the screen. “It’s Max,” I said happily. “He’s got a fifteen-minute break and wants to see me. Hans, do you mind…?”
“No way! Go get your Max fix. I’ll send Rich a text and see if he’s up for a chat.”
Hannah settled into my beanbag chair while I debated changing out of the fugly suit and back into my jeans and T-shirt. But I didn’t want to miss a moment with Max and time was ticking away. Aw, forget
it. I’d only be gone a few minutes anyway, I rationalized.
Quickly I texted him to meet me in the Solarium, the third-floor sunroom off the Promenade. We used the sunroom and connecting porch for family barbecues and informal parties. Plus it had the added bonus of being away from the main hub of activity on the floor. Perfect for a rendezvous with Max.
I slipped out of my room wearing the suit and nearly tripped over a bronze bust of Teddy Roosevelt sitting in the middle of the hall. The furniture had been pulled away from the wall for the weekly cleaning of the residence wing common areas. The scent of Brasso and lemon furniture polish tickled my nose.
Suddenly, a member of the housekeeping staff emerged from one of the spare bedrooms. “Afternoon, Madam President,” she said as she breezed by me.
I opened my mouth to correct her, but she’d already ducked into another room. Short of chasing her down to set her straight, I’d have to let it go.
I tiptoed down the center hall, dodging a vacuum cleaner and janitor’s cart and hoping to avoid being seen by whoever happened to be on duty at the Secret Service desk at the end of the hall.
Two agents stood at the desk. My heart stalled. Max! God, he looked so cute in his boring brown business suit. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him….
And there was George standing right next to him.
Chapter Five
My step faltered. George, yikes! I did not want her interfering and asking a bunch of questions about why Max was waiting for me. Should I abort the mission, as Max would say?
In that split second of indecision, George looked beyond Max and saw me.
“Good afternoon, Madam President,” she said deferentially.
Ha! She thought I was my mom. Maybe I could take advantage of the situation.
I straightened my shoulders and told myself to look presidential. I modulated my voice to my mother’s measured tones. “Good afternoon, Agent Best. Agent Jackson.”
“Good afternoo…” Max did a double take.
Secrets of a First Daughter Page 2