Now, it was Samantha’s jaw grazing the floor, though she recovered more quickly than Maura, who was still standing there, dumbly, debating if she was supposed to keep walking or wait for the exchange to be over.
“Definitely,” Evan said, gaining a little more confidence after seeing how impressed Samantha was.
“You two are dating? How sweet,” Samantha added, giving Evan the warm smile she hadn’t seen in weeks. It was almost shocking how quickly Samantha was reversing her treatment of Evan. Though considering Hunter’s father was the attorney general and extremely close to the president, maybe it wasn’t so surprising. Samantha had always told her D.C. was all about access to those in power, and now, thanks to her relationship with Hunter, Evan had a little.
It wasn’t exactly the way Evan would have wanted to regain Samantha’s respect—she would have preferred to earn it by breaking a news story or something with a little more journalistic integrity—but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Maybe this was the beginning of a fresh start for them.
“Okay, then,” Paul said. “See you later, Evan. Lots of work to do. We’ve got to keep ahead of this V.P. story.”
“Evan may end up knowing who it is before we do,” Samantha added in a light tone, showering Evan with another beaming smile. This time Evan returned it.
“I don’t doubt that. I hope you keep us in the loop, Evan,” Paul chuckled as they walked away.
Maura waited a full three seconds before she began leading Evan and the P.A.s down the hallway again, everyone completely silent as if unwilling to act like what had just transpired was any sort of big deal.
When they reached the studio, Maura finally turned to her. “Evan, actually, can you do the conference room clean-up please? Make sure to spray down the table. The network execs made a mess in there during lunch.”
“Uh, sure,” Evan said, trying to hide her disappointment at being assigned to the one menial task in the bunch.
“Sorry if that’s beneath you now that you’re VIP and all.”
She said it like a joke, but the harsh edge just under her tone let Evan know it wasn’t.
Evan replayed Maura’s snide comment in her head (along with all the possible retorts she wished she would have replied with) when she got home that night. It was ridiculous. Evan had been the opposite of VIP her entire life. As one of the few scholarship students at Georgetown Academy, she’d always been more of an outsider. It irked her that Maura thought she had changed somehow just because she had gotten a little positive attention. It wasn’t her fault she went to school with the children of such powerful people. It wasn’t like Evan herself wasn’t already painfully aware of the differences between herself and the rest of them.
“Hi, sweetie,” her mother said from the cramped kitchen of their townhouse near Capitol Hill as she took a brown rice casserole out of the oven. She was as petite as Evan, which gave Evan no hope that a delayed growth spurt was ever in her future, but with more narrow brown eyes and curly brown hair that often frizzed out in the rainy D.C. weather. “Dinner is ready.”
Her father was already at the small dining room table, setting out one of his famous garden salads. Every Wednesday, there was a farmer’s market on the GW campus where he taught cultural anthropology and he’d buy up a smorgasbord of unusual vegetables for it.
“How was work?” her dad asked, his deep-set blue eyes falling on Evan, once she and her mother had sat down with him and everyone had been served. Though her father was a large man with broad-shoulders and a frame like he could have played football at his liberal arts college back in the day, he was actually a soft-spoken guy, more comfortable on the couch with the latest Pulitzer Prize-winning book than watching any kind of sporting event.
“Fine,” Evan responded. “Nothing exciting.” She didn’t feel like getting into the Maura comment with them. She knew how outraged they’d be on her behalf and didn’t want them to do something ridiculous like try to call Maura and fight Evan’s battle for her.
“I confirmed us for the Human Rights Watch phone bank on Sunday night,” her mother said with an excited smile, a few frizzy pieces of hair escaping from her hair clip.
Evan put down her fork. “This Sunday? I can’t.”
“I thought I told you about it weeks ago,” her mom said, though as perpetually disheveled as she was, she’d probably forgotten to. The difference was that until recently, Evan was usually free at a moment’s notice.
“I’m sorry, Mom, you didn’t…and I made plans with Hunter. He’s taking me to the Dedication Party.” A small smile turned at the edges of her lips in spite of herself. Though the party still got her nerves jumping, she couldn’t help but be excited, too. And at least her earlier dress issue had been resolved. As soon as Luke heard Hunter had invited her, he promised to bring over several amazing designer dresses and shoes from his older sister’s closet. Still, Evan felt bad about ditching out on her mom. These phone banks were one of the activities they usually loved doing together.
“The Dedication Party?” her dad asked with a sniff, the lines around his eyes wrinkling. “Do you really want to go to that?” His tone indicated, if given the choice, he clearly would not.
“Of course,” Evan replied defensively. “Everyone wants to go to it.”
Her parents exchanged a pointed look.
“What?” Evan asked, sensing a larger issue was going to be brought up.
Her mother sighed. “We’re just a bit…concerned. We know you’re excited about Hunter, but it already feels like a whirlwind to us.”
“What are you talking about?” Evan asked, her annoyance flaring.
“You’ve only been dating for a few days and you’re already constantly talking on the phone to him. Constantly with him. You were out last night together—”
“Studying!”
“You’re missing the phone bank with Mom for a socialite event with him,” her father piped in.
“It’s not a socialite event! It’s a dedication of the Eleanor Roosevelt statue to the Capitol. And I already promised him I’d go.”
Her parents were usually so relaxed about what she did, trusting her implicitly. If she felt like swinging by Luke’s house after work or going to catch a movie with Gabe, they never commented. Of course, she’d never seriously dated a guy before, so maybe it was freaking them out, but this was excessive. Couldn’t they just be happy for her?
“Look, Hunter seems like a very nice guy,” her mom said, biting into a big forkful of salad. “And from everything you’ve told us about him, he sounds smart and level-headed. But I just want to make sure you take it slow with him.”
Evan reddened as her mother met her eyes across the table. Were they about to have a sex conversation? Ew.
“What I mean is, I don’t want you to get too caught up in everything with him so quickly,” her mother clarified. “Parties, social events, magazine photos. That might be normal for him, but it’s not for you. I don’t want you to feel pressured to have to keep up with that somehow.”
“I’m not,” Evan insisted, though she heard a little voice in the back of her head telling her otherwise. Wasn’t she the one who’d been trying to figure out how to get a dress at Relish on layaway? She told herself it was just a fleeting thought she’d had, but if Luke hadn’t pulled through with the wardrobe save, would she have been tempted to go through with it?
As if reading her mind, her mother continued, “And what’s with all the new clothes I keep seeing you in? You can’t keep going on shopping sprees. You don’t have the same clothing budget as Ellie.”
Evan rolled her eyes. As if she needed another reminder of why Ellie made more sense as a girlfriend for Hunter than she did.
“I told you Luke got me those clothes,” Evan said, exasperated. “I don’t know what you guys are getting at. Do you want me to stop dating Hunter?”
“I want you to stay on top of it,” her father said seriously. “School, your internship, your community service…that all has to come befo
re social obligations.”
“I know!” Evan insisted indignantly before spearing an innocent cherry tomato, her frustration growing by the second. “And I’m not getting caught up in the scene. You’ll see.”
“I hope not, sweetie,” her mother said. “We just don’t want to see you get hurt.” There it was. The truth. Even her own mother didn’t think she measured up to Hunter’s level, already anticipating the day he kicked her to the curb and left her broken-hearted.
First, Maura was unfairly targeting her because she was dating Hunter, and now her parents were giving her a hard time about it.
Evan had never imagined there were downsides to dating Hunter McKnight, but after the day she’d had, she might have just found some.
CHAPTER FIVE
Thursday, 7:38 a.m.
Ellie inched forward in the traffic on MacArthur Boulevard, finally reaching the small side street that led to the Georgetown Academy student parking lot. She hung a right and zipped toward the entrance, her front wheels just making their way over the lip of the pavement when, suddenly, the white-bright light of camera flashes blinded her.
She slammed on her brakes and instinctively shielded her face with her hands, the flash assault getting even quicker. As her eyes adjusted, she looked between her fingers and could make out multiple photographers outside the school gates, all rapid-fire clicking at her as they approached the car.
“Ellie, why didn’t your mom drive you to school today?” one of them yelled loud enough for her to hear through her closed window.
“Because she never does!” Ellie screamed back. But only in her head. As much as she was dying to retort, she knew better than to engage these vultures. Especially since they were clearly out for blood. Her mother’s blood, specifically.
Last night, a piece on The Drudge Report openly questioned whether a single parent was the right person for the vice presidential job, casting a shadow of doubt over her mother’s competency just as the president was deciding who to nominate. The article had exploded a debate over the blogosphere by that morning with hundreds of journalists and politicians questioning Marilyn’s “family values” and pronouncing Reyes a better choice. The Google Alert Ellie set on her phone to notify her of news stories about her mother had been beeping so much she finally disabled it. As Ellie grabbed a protein bar from the kitchen before she left for school, she heard her mom in the home office in deep damage control mode, deliberating with her staff whether to ignore the attacks and hope they went away or to fight them, though the added drama might make the president think selecting her wasn’t worth the trouble.
Ellie, herself, had held out hope it would quickly die out. But now these photographers were here, camped outside her school, hoping to catch a shot of Marilyn dropping Ellie off, to fuel the flames and further prove her mom had too much on her plate to be one heartbeat away from the presidency. Clearly, the story was still red-hot.
With her left arm over her head to block the blinding lights, Ellie quickly jammed on the gas and hurtled through the gates into the student parking lot. She pulled into a spot on the far side, a large willow oak tree effectively blocking her from view as she exited her car and dashed to the school’s front doors.
She felt more on display than usual as she walked through the halls and pretended not to hear the comments about her mother from the gossiping G.A. students. Sheer anger bubbled inside her. Hearing attacks on her mother was never easy, but usually, she did better keeping her emotions at bay, maybe because the long slog of Senatorial campaigns typically gave her plenty of time to mentally prepare for whatever came her mom’s way. But this V.P. race had come on so quickly, Ellie hadn’t had time to put on all her armor.
Ellie exhaled as she passed a group of junior girls, hovering over their phones and whispering as they looked in her direction. She quickly put her head down, her chestnut hair falling in front of her face and shielding her from their probing glances.
She approached the doorway to her history classroom, but stopped short when she heard Portia’s voice from inside the room.
“I mean, it is kind of a big deal,” Portia was saying loudly (really, did she have any other way of speaking?). “How our Second Daughter is perceived is super important. That’s what the poll on D.C. Dish is all about.”
Ellie’s stomach dropped. A poll about Second Daughters? Whatever it was, she couldn’t go into the room blind. As she stood in the hallway at the edge of the doorway, just out of sight of everyone in the room, she reached into her bag for her phone, hurriedly tapping on the keypad until she reached the site for the D.C. Dish blog Portia had referred to.
There, on the homepage was the poll…Who do you think would make a hotter Second Daughter, Ellie Walker or Taryn Reyes? Ellie barely contained a gasp, still cognizant of the students on the other side of the wall. It appeared that in the same way the rest of the country was debating whether Marilyn Walker or Alan Reyes would make a better vice president, the entire city, or at least the entire student body, was now debating Ellie and Taryn’s Second Daughter abilities. Though, seriously, what did hotness have to do with it? It was ridiculous.
Underneath the poll question was an option to click for Ellie or Taryn. If Ellie clicked on a choice, she would be taken to see the results thus far. But as much as part of her was dying to know how she was faring, a bigger part was completely scared at the prospect. Not because these poll results would make a difference to her mother in any way, but because losing in a landslide to Taryn would be more humiliating than the Kerry defeat of 2004. She wasn’t confident she could beat Taryn in a contest of pure hotness. The girl was so genetically gifted when she walked down the hallways of G.A. she looked like she was strutting down a Victoria’s Secret runway. But Taryn was Gabe’s ex-girlfriend, and that made the competition more personal, and she’d rather at least make a decent showing as opposed to getting trounced. Ellie didn’t think Gabe had second thoughts about his break-up with Taryn, but that didn’t mean she needed the whole school explicitly telling him so. Her thumb was still hovering over the button when she heard freckly-faced Nora Emison’s voice pipe through the walls.
“No offense to Ellie, but Taryn just has more…I don’t know…star power. I voted for Taryn all the way.”
Ellie rolled her eyes, and somehow this small movement made enough noise for Liesel to notice her. Liesel leaned forward in her seat, putting Ellie into her line of sight and completely catching her eavesdropping, phone in hand. Ellie sheepishly shuffled her way into the room and the entire class went silent as she sat at an empty desk.
“Don’t listen to Nora,” Liesel whispered, leaning over two desks to reach Ellie. “I voted for you. You totally have it in the bag.”
Ellie had a feeling Nora and Liesel, the school’s biggest power groupies, were just covering their bases to try to ensure an “in” with whoever’s parent won, but it didn’t make Nora’s comment any less insulting. Thank god Gabe wasn’t in the room yet to hear it.
“It doesn’t even matter,” Ellie responded, keeping a bored tone firmly in place.
That would be her official story. That the poll was far too insignificant to even register on her radar. Actually believing it herself would take a lot more convincing, though.
Just then, Brooks appeared in the doorway, leading a slightly limping Taryn into the classroom, her dark waves cascading down her shoulders and only plummeting Ellie’s self-esteem farther. Ellie had noticed Brooks frequently walking Taryn through the hallways the last few days, shooting glares at anyone who came close to jostling her. Though despite the protective-boyfriend behavior and the coziness Ellie had witnessed between the two of them in Stowe, she’d heard nothing about them actually dating. Even now, he merely gave her a quick, almost curt, wave.
Though oddly enough, as soon as Taryn had entered the classroom, Brooks turned back to give Taryn one last long, surreptitious look before he tore his eyes away from her and finally moved on.
Taryn, completely oblivious to this
, made her way to a desk toward the back of the room, looking effortlessly stunning in a colorful maxi skirt and bright tangerine, loose-knit sweater that accentuated her golden bronze skin and made Ellie realize just how pale her own skin was. Why was today the day she’d chosen to wear a black sweater that only made her look pastier? Ellie slouched down, feeling her odds in the D.C. Dish poll dropping by the second.
As the remaining students trickled into the classroom, Ellie acknowledged Evan and Hunter with a quick smile, and gave Brinley a small nod when she bustled in, sliding into her usual seat next to her. But other than that, Ellie kept her head down, mentally willing Portia to keep her mouth shut about the poll so she didn’t have to endure hearing everyone’s opinions about her and Taryn.
Luckily, her mental voodoo seemed to work because Portia had gotten into a discussion with Nora and Liesel about which families had and had not been invited to the Dedication Party that weekend. Portia was still analyzing whether Randi Flanagan, the daughter of the Interior Secretary, had been snubbed when Gabe walked in. Ellie’s eyes instinctively locked onto his, and his lips curled up in a small smile that instantly released some of the tension in her shoulders.
Mr. Walsh entered right behind him and Ellie sat through the class, doodling in her margins and barely listening to a word of his lecture on state’s rights, even when Brandon Day and Fiona Hutchison got into a loud, personal debate about whether corn subsidies were good for America and if not, whether Brandon’s mother, a congresswoman for the state of Iowa, should be forced to return all the federal funding she’d shilled for over the years. Finally, the bell rang and Ellie popped out of her seat.
Unfortunately, Brinley, who usually walked with Ellie to next period, had gotten into a heated argument with Hillary Watson about demolishing the electoral system all together and Ellie really didn’t feel like waiting for her.
Meanwhile, Gabe, who Ellie was secretly hoping she could saunter out with (in a friendly way, of course), was coordinating his schedule with Chad Henry, the lead singer of the perennial favorite Georgetown Academy garage band, Hanging Chad. Their bass player had recently moved back to Minnesota after his father got caught in a voter fraud scandal and resigned, and Chad and Gabe had begun discussing the possibility of Gabe replacing him.
Georgetown Academy, Season One Page 45