Meg nodded, losing interest in what was left of her toast piece and putting it down. “Did all of you?”
Steven put his hand to his forehead. “I—I was a little restless,” he said, making his voice quaver.
Throw the kid a straight line, and he never missed. “I, too,” Meg said, and drank some orange juice. Sometimes—not too often, of course—she considered letting her sense of humor come back.
Considered it.
“Are you coming home after your Astronomy class, or—?” her father asked, too casually.
Or what? Have lunch with her many new college friends? Run out to Bethesda or Rockville for a few rousing sets of tennis, and maybe a round of golf? Obviously, he was worried, but it was pretty god-damn suffocating. Especially since she didn’t have anywhere to go. Her stomach hurt, and she pushed her plate away. “I should be home at about quarter to twelve,” she said. Through her teeth.
“You don’t need to be on a schedule,” he said, glancing at her mother, who was glaring at him. “I just meant—”
“No problem.” Her stomach was starting to ache so much that it was definitely time to leave. “I’d better get going.”
Her father was already up, handing her the cane and her knapsack.
Meg nodded and took them. “Thanks.” Every time she said good-bye now, it seemed so damned ceremonial.
So ominous.
“Where’s your jacket?” her mother asked, looking away from the papers Frank, her personal aide, had just brought in. “I think it’s pretty chilly out there.”
Her coat, which was unusually heavy, because of the Kevlar—or whatever the hell it was—lining it just happened to have. These days, regardless of the weather, they were all expected to wear terribly heavy outer garments, whenever possible. Presumably, helmets would be next.
Neal went to get her jacket, and then tried, ineptly, to pull it on over her splint, which made forcing her hand through the sleeve that much more painful.
“Do you want it zipped?” he asked politely.
Jesus, how old did they think she was? “No,” she said, and then sighed. “I mean, thanks, anyway.”
“Have a good day,” her mother said.
A good couple of hours was more accurate. Meg nodded. “Yeah. You, too.”
“Yo, wait up.” Steven took his hat back from Neal, then picked up his own knapsack and coat from the floor. “Later,” he said to everyone else.
“You’ll be home after basketball?” their father asked.
Meg limped out to the hall so she wouldn’t have to listen to Steven getting grilled about his itinerary for the day.
“Maybe,” Steven was saying. “Gotta stop on the Mall first, see if I can score some coke.”
When he finally came out, they rode down in the elevator together, leaning against the polished wooden wall on either side of the mirror, Steven significantly more subdued now.
“Maybe you should zip up,” he muttered.
Okay. She looked at Mickey, the elderly operator, and Garth, the head of her Secret Service detail, both of whom were pretending they couldn’t hear their conversation. “If you do, too,” she said.
Steven nodded, zipped his jacket, and then helped her with hers.
Meg looked over at him—as tall as she was now, slouched in his Red Sox cap, bullet-resistant Spyder ski jacket, New England Patriots sweatshirt, jeans, and high-tops. Out of nowhere lately, he’d been growing, and his voice was much deeper. Hard to get used to.
When the elevator stopped, they all waited for her to go first. Meg limped out into the Ground Floor Corridor, where the rest of their Secret Service agents were waiting to meet them. She and her brothers all had full details now, with at least six agents, and sometimes, eight. And God only knew how many unmarked cars and so forth. Their agents were also a lot more overt and aggressive than they had been six months ago. Although two of her three daily shifts had one female agent each, she was mostly surrounded by hulking armed men, which was more than a little unnerving. And not even slightly discreet.
They went through the Diplomatic Reception Room, Meg acutely aware of the degree to which she was slowing everyone else down, and out to the South Grounds, past the ever-alert and expressionless Marine guards. Their respective cars were waiting for them, parked along the driveway, and she could see some press people standing around, too.
She hadn’t been surprised when they had followed her the first few times she left the White House, but it had taken her a while to figure out why at least a couple of reporters and camera people were almost always close by—more often than not these days, she had a death watch. Journalists who wanted to be sure they were on the scene to record the event when and if something bad happened. Her mother, of course, had one, the Queen of England had one, the Pope had one, and for the time being, ridiculous as it was, she seemed to have one. It went without saying that it was expensive to send reporters out to do nothing—with luck—so, to be cost-effective, press organizations only set up body watches on people who had a very good chance of making news—or getting knocked off. Comforting to know that she now fell into that category.
Although, so far, their efforts had only been rewarded by one morning when a man threw an egg at her—which was, bizarrely enough, hard-boiled, and another day when some lunatic ran across H Street screaming weird accusations about a massive cover-up and black helicopters, plus the time she fell on the stairs going into Corcoran Hall, and the days when protestors and demonstrators of various kinds were all over the campus, armed with signs and taunts, and the afternoon when some paparazzo guy on a motorcycle had tried to—actually, considering how rarely she went out, arguably, the press was getting its money’s worth.
“Well.” Steven looked around, and then zipped his jacket a little higher. “Okay, then.”
Christ, the poor kid was only fourteen. “No one’s going to shoot us, Steven,” she said.
“Hell, no,” he said. “Later.”
She watched until he was safely inside his car—because, yeah, some god-damn maniac with a rifle might be perched somewhere with a good view of the South Lawn, then put on a pair of very dark sunglasses and turned to go to her own car. Her left foot flopped unexpectedly—it happened pretty frequently, because of the nerve damage in her knee—and she lost her balance to the degree that even one of the stolid, unmoving Marine guards jumped towards her. But, she caught herself with her cane and a quick crouch on her good leg, waving everyone off with her splinted hand, although Garth and one of her other agents, Kyle, stayed significantly closer to her than they had been before.
And, damn it, she could hear cameras clicking. Christ, she couldn’t even trip without having it documented.
There was no question in her mind that she would have been much better off if she had just stayed in bed today.
2
GW WAS PRACTICALLY next door to the White House, so it wasn’t much of a drive. Meg sat in the back, with Garth up front in the passenger’s seat, and another agent, Paula, driving. These days, she had so many conflicting feelings about the Secret Service, that there was never much conversation when she was with them, although she did, at least, always try to be courteous.
“Do you have plans today, or just your two classes?” Garth asked. Although he was wearing a tie and a grey suit, he mostly looked like a burly Irish former offensive tackle from Boston College—and, in fact, he had gone to BC, but he had been a defensive lineman.
He already knew the answer; why ask the question? “Just my classes,” Meg said stiffly.
He nodded, and Paula—who was tall and lithe, and had been headed for the WNBA before the Secret Service snagged her—nodded, too, glancing at her for a second in the rearview mirror, Meg quickly looking away.
The two primary agents who had been guarding her the day she was kidnapped had both been killed—a guy named Chet whom she’d really liked and felt very guilty about, and Dennis, who had sold the crucial information that had enabled the terrorists to get her i
n the first place. So now, she didn’t trust her agent, but she also couldn’t help worrying that they would get hurt, and it would be her fault.
She spent so much time in the family quarters of the White House, anyway, that she didn’t see these new agents much, or know them very well. At this stage, she kind of wanted to keep it that way. They took her to class three times a week, they brought her home, and other than the occasional doctor’s appointment or medical procedure which needed to be done in a hospital setting, that was about it. Once, in October, she had gone to the movies with Steven and Neal, and her father’s chief of staff, Preston—who was easily one of her favorite people in the world—but that had pretty much been the extent of her social life.
They were at the university now, near the side entrance of the building where she had Astronomy. Classes were changing, so it was crowded, and she took a deep breath, hoping that no one would be able to tell that she was afraid to get out of the car.
Another agent, Martin, was holding her door open, and she slid out, awkward with the cane, keeping her head down. Okay. Fifty feet. She had to walk maybe fifty feet to get to the entrance. People were looking at her—they always did—and she felt very exposed, especially when a couple of them aimed cell phone cameras in her direction. She didn’t really worry about being kidnapped again—how likely was that?—but it was too easy to imagine some nameless psycho lunging towards her, or one of those cell phones actually being a gun, or someone waiting avidly by a window in one of the other nearby buildings, like the man who had shot her mother early in her term, or—Jesus, no wonder her family was paranoid. They’d earned the right.
And no wonder the press sat around waiting to see who was going to be next.
Once she had made it up the steps and they were inside the building, she relaxed a little. At least now, if anything bad happened, it would be off-camera, and not replayed on television endlessly. Sometimes, she felt as though every single time she turned on the news, there was a story about gun control or crime rates or something, and they would show the same relentless clip of her mother crumpling to the sidewalk. She’d seen it so many times by now that it had—almost—lost its horror. Which was horrifying in and of itself.
Her agents all looked uneasy, and she realized that she’d stopped walking. They hated that, because she was never supposed to stop in transit, if at all possible. So, she continued down the crowded hallway towards the little amphitheater where her Astronomy class met, limped up a few more damn stairs, and sat, as always, off to the left, in the last row, where she had a good view of the entire auditorium—and both exits. A lot of people skipped on a regular basis—the class was considered a complete gut—and she never had to worry about having to sit next to anyone. Except during the midterm, and there had been a seat between every person. She had gotten an eighty-two—and was, privately, very ashamed of having done so badly.
People were still filing in aimlessly, but the professor started his lecture, anyway, and she reached for her notebook and pen. He seemed like a nice enough man, but he was very boring. If she were an ordinary student, she would blow off the class, too. He was talking about Kepler’s Laws, and she took notes, her good hand shaking just enough to make it difficult.
Maybe thirty people had shown up, and she looked around for anyone who seemed out-of-place, or too old, or—during the first class session in September, she had noticed two students who didn’t appear to be the right age, but she found out later that they were undercover security. Knowing that had yet to make her any less vigilant, since—theoretically—she was the one who had the strongest motivation to keep herself from getting killed.
Some days, more so than others.
There was one guy, earlier in the semester, who she had caught glancing at her one time too many, and she asked the Secret Service to run a check on him, in case he was some kind of plant from an angry militia group or whatever. He’d turned out to be a sophomore sociology major from Delaware. “I think he likes you,” one of her agents had said. “Oh,” she’d said. With near-total disinterest.
Once she’d finished her scan of the room—she recognized everyone, for whatever that was worth—she went back to taking shaky notes and waiting for class to be over. Then, her agents hustled her out to the car, and drove her to the building where her English class met. Not that it was much of a walk.
This class was much smaller, and it was a lot harder to hide. A couple of times, she’d even had to make comments about whatever book they were reading. The professor, Dr. Raleigh, almost always wore peasant blouses, long gathered skirts, and brown leather sandals. Very Bennington. She appeared to be good-natured, if overly fond of literary symbolism. Dr. T. J. Eckleberg as God, and all of that.
There were windows in this classroom, so she always sat in the middle of the back row, so that she could keep an eye on them and the door, without really having to turn her head.
Jesus, her hand hurt today. She should have taken some damned ibuprofen but she had left the Residence in such a hurry, that she had forgotten. But there might be some inside her knapsack, or one of her jacket pockets, and she could just swallow them dry, without—
“What do you think, Meg?” Dr. Raleigh asked.
Meg straightened up. “What?” Oh, Christ, they were all staring at her. She looked at her notes, trying to remember what they had been discussing. “I guess—I don’t know, I—” Were they still staring at her? Yes. Great. They probably thought she was really dumb. Like her parents had paid off the school to have her admitted part-time. Winesburg, Ohio. Okay. Odds were, they were talking about small-town America. Her notes said something about “grotesques,” but she had absolutely no memory of anything else her professor had said.
They were all still looking at her.
“Well, I—” Oh, hell, she might as well go for it. “I was thinking about what a human comedy it was,” she said. Oh, yeah, right. All she thought about was comedy. Joy. Excitement. Laughter. Fun. “I mean, of course, their emotional shortcomings are tragic, but—” Yes, they were staring even harder now—“It’s very—Balzacian, really.”
Damn, the room was quiet.
“I don’t suppose that’s what you were looking for,” Meg said, pleasantly, “but that’s what I was thinking.”
“Well, no,” Dr. Raleigh said, after a pause, “but it’s an interesting idea. You’ve obviously given this a great deal of thought.” She turned towards the guy with the goatee, who always slouched, half-asleep, by the windows. “Terence? How about you?”
Everyone’s attention now focused on Terence—poor sucker—and Meg let out her breath.
There was some more discussion—a very pretentious girl from Chattanooga even started drawing parallels to Père Goriot, like the Balzac thing had been her idea in the first place—and then, class was over. Amid the zipping of jackets and knapsacks—and the ringing of suddenly liberated cell phones, their professor asked them to have the first twelve chapters of Main Street read by Wednesday, and to remember that their final papers were due a week from Friday.
Once she was back in the car, she felt very—sadly enough—tired. Drained, even. Other than a couple of “pretty warm for December” remarks, they rode home in silence. Her agents saw her inside to the First Family elevator; she thanked them and rode up to the second floor.
Quite an eventful day. Morning.
It was quiet in the family quarters, although she thought she could hear a vacumn cleaner off in the distance. Generally, the White House staff seemed like a bunch of little magic fairies, who cleaned like crazy, but were rarely visible to the human eye.
A butler—Felix—came out of the kitchen. He was a very sweet older man, with nine grandchildren, whose latest pictures he always carried, and enjoyed showing, given even the slightest bit of encouragement.
He smiled at her. “May I get you some lunch, Miss Powers?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Although he probably didn’t want to look d
eeply concerned, he did, anyway. “We’ll fix anything you want.”
Amazing how damned nice everyone was to her. “I know, I just had a really big breakfast,” she said. “But, thank you.” She smiled back at him, and turned to go down the hall.
“Would you like me to bring you a Coke?” he asked. “Or maybe—”
Usually, it was easier just to agree. “Sure,” Meg said. “Thank you.”
She had barely made it to her room, when he appeared with a large, well-iced crystal glass and a small plate of assorted cookies on a silver tray, a linen napkin draped over his arm. She thanked him again, and then, as soon as he left, sank onto her bed. Now that she was home safely, she was completely worn out.
She had only been lying there for a few minutes, staring at CNN—just long enough for their dog, Kirby, to come galloping in to greet her, and Vanessa to hiss and flounce out of the room—when her phone rang. Ten to one, it would be her father. Make that, a thousand to one.
She picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi,” her father said. “I thought I’d check in.”
Right. She knew he was just being thoughtful, but Christ, it was oppressive. Meg closed her eyes. “I just got back.”
“Classes any good?” he asked.
Engrossing. Unforgettable. Glorious. She shrugged. “They were all right, I guess.”
“Good,” he said, rather heartily. “Would you like to come to a luncheon?”
Her father, being the First Gentleman, got stuck going to a hell of a lot of luncheons. “Who’ve you got today?” she asked.
“It’s an NAACP thing,” he said. “It should be nice.”
Since she couldn’t even face the prospect of having lunch in the privacy of her bedroom, the odds of her going out again were pretty slim. “Thanks,” she said, “but I think I’ll take it easy this afternoon.”
For a change.
“Okay,” he said, almost without pausing first. “Well, I should be back around two, two-thirty. We could play some chess, or—whatever you want.”
She was tired of chess. Tired of books. Tired of television. Tired of movies. Tired of the Internet. Just plain god-damned tired. “Yeah, maybe,” she said. “I’m pretty—tired.”