“Is that a no?” her mother asked.
Oh, the President was quick. Very quick. “Yeah,” Meg said. “It’s a no.”
2
SHE SAT IN her Secret Service car the next morning, trying to finish her English homework, typing wildly about conscience and conflict—and just generally being so god-damn thematic and ponderous that she was boring the hell out of herself.
“Try and hit red lights,” she said to her agents.
Chet, who was driving, laughed; Dennis didn’t. Par for the course. She had her regular detail of agents, including two who served as fairly traditional bodyguards, and several others who rode in the lead or follow cars, manned the command centers and holding rooms, and did advance work and logistics—and whatever else happened to come up during a given eight-hour period. They were assigned the same group of agents for six weeks at a time—and then, the agents would usually go off to do two weeks of various training cycles before resuming their assignments. She was on her third detail since her mother had taken office, because every six months or so, the Secret Service would rotate in a new group. Steven and Neal were both actually on their fifth details, because apparently, the Secret Service was convinced that younger pro-tectees were inclined to get too attached to their agents. Since Neal mostly just ambled around pleasantly in his own little world, and Steven hated being guarded so much that he didn’t always cooperate, she didn’t think it was an issue for either of them.
For her part, she was looking forward to her next detail, because while Chet was fun, and most of the others were friendly and tried not to be intrusive, Dennis was too damn intense—so attentive that he made her nervous.
“Sorry, Meg,” Chet said, slowing to make the turn onto the school grounds. They always varied the entrances and exits, and today was apparently a parking garage day. “Did my best.”
Meg saved the document to her flash-drive, and then closed her laptop—which her parents had paid for in full, but had been issued by the NSA or DIA or something, because it was extra-light and secure and high-tech, and very cool. “I can probably finish up during homeroom.” She opened her knapsack to put the computer away. “In the end, we are all alone. Each, our own judge.” She looked at Chet. “What do you think?”
He laughed.
“The most frightening demons may, in fact, be within ourselves,” she said.
He shook his head, pulling in behind the lead car. “Your poor teacher.”
Who had given them the damn essay assignment in the first place and was, therefore, ineligible for sympathy. “Exploring the hidden darkness can be—” Meg unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, not sure what it could be. She swung her knapsack over her shoulder. “Revealing.” She frowned. Illuminating? No, too obvious.
Her agents didn’t like her to stand around when she didn’t have to, so she headed directly into the school—Dennis, as always, a little too close behind her. She walked more slowly, hoping that he would back off, although he almost never did.
Seeing Josh on his way down one of the side halls, she stopped to wait for him. Sometimes, to give him grief, she called him Mr. Shetland, and today was no exception.
“Nice sweater,” she said.
He smiled back. “Thought you’d like it.” Before, he would have put his arm around her, or taken her knapsack for her or something, but now, he just stood there, looking uncomfortable.
Feeling pretty ill-at-ease herself—although it had been her idea to “de-escalate” things in the first place, Meg coughed. “Well,” she said.
“Yeah.” He straightened his glasses. “Anything new?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I talked to Beth last night.” Beth was her best friend back in Massachusetts, where her family really lived. Or had, anyway. Either way, she and Beth talked a lot—and emailed and texted each other constantly, too.
“What’s going on with her?” Josh asked.
That was a perfectly ordinary question, but somehow, it felt stilted. “Not much,” Meg said. “She’s going to the Prom with that Harvard guy.” Beth was nothing, if not a social success.
“Are they getting serious?” he asked.
“No, I don’t get that feeling,” Meg said. In fact, mostly, the guy sounded like a putz. A college putz, but still, a putz.
Behind her, Dennis had moved closer again, and she folded her arms, not wanting to turn around and yell at him.
Josh noticed and put his hand on her waist, steering her ahead more quickly.
“Thanks,” she said.
He hesitated, then dropped his hand, putting it in his jeans pocket. “Why don’t you talk to him about it?”
Which both he and Beth had suggested more than once. Meg sighed. “He’s just doing his job.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, “but he’s not supposed to bother you.”
Having agents at all was bothersome, so it was really just a question of degree. “I’m probably overreacting,” she said, her arms still folded.
Josh glanced over his shoulder. “Tell your father, or Preston. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big deal for you to get someone else.”
Mr. Gabler, who was the Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Detail, would probably be able to come up with a plausible reason to send Dennis off for some form of specialized training, but she didn’t want the guy to suspect that the President’s daughter had been complaining bitterly about him, since it would hurt his feelings. “I guess so.” She sighed again. “I don’t know. This rotation’s almost over, anyway.”
“In other words,” he said.
Yeah. She nodded, and stopped as they got to her locker. “Did you do your English yet?”
“The demons of darkness are potent, but elusive,” he said.
Meg laughed. “Yeah. I did it, too.”
JOSH CAME OVER after dinner that night—romance or not, he was still her closest friend in Washington—and they ended up in the West Sitting Hall, which was considered the First Family Living Room, and had furniture from their house in Chestnut Hill and everything. Having a familiar non-museum quality couch around, as well as two easy chairs from their old den, was very comforting.
He was wearing another Shetland crewneck, this one sort of deep-sea blue, and she touched his sleeve. “Gosh, this is so nice,” she said.
Josh looked sheepish. “It’s kind of cold out tonight.”
In Washington, in May. Right. Jorge, who was one of the butlers, had brought out Cokes and some homemade, still-hot potato chips for them, and she leaned forward to take a sip from her glass. “How was practice?”
Josh shrugged. “Okay. Nathan hit so damn many home-runs that the rest of us got stuck chasing them around half the time.”
Meg grinned. Their friend Nathan, who was about as big as the average NFL linebacker, left nothing to understatement when it came to sports. He played first base and hit clean-up on their school’s team, Josh played second, and another good friend of theirs, Zachary, was the center fielder. Because of this, Steven approved of all of them.
“Did you find anyone to hit with?” Josh asked.
Meg nodded. “Mr. Carlton, from CBS.” A cameraman, who was a pretty damn good player. One great thing about the White House was that she never had any trouble finding singles partners.
“Did you beat him?” Josh asked.
She allowed herself a small grin. It was important to be a good sport. “Yeah.”
He grinned, too. “Badly?”
“No. Two out of three,” she said.
Which didn’t mean that the guy hadn’t been upset about it. Threw his racquet, even, when he thought—mistakenly—that he was safely out of view.
“Hey,” she said. “Want to go look at dresses?”
“Mmm, boy,” he said, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
“I meant, my mother’s dresses. You know, for the Prom. You can help me figure out what to wear—I’m sure she’ll let me borrow one.” Well, sort of sure. Meg stood up. “Come on.”
&
nbsp; He hesitated. “I don’t know. I kind of don’t think I should go into your parents’ room.”
“They won’t mind,” she said. “Besides, they’re not going to be home until pretty late.”
He looked worried, but followed her into the Presidential Bedroom Suite.
Actually, her parents had very strict rules about the two of them hanging out in bedrooms together. Not that she and Josh had ever done—much—that was particularly controversial. Even by nervous parents’ standards. Since her social life outside the White House was completely in the public domain, and the odds of really being alone in the Residence were pretty slim, neither of them had ever really been able to relax enough to get too carried away. As time wore on, Josh had gotten more and more frustrated about this, while she—in many ways—had been kind of relieved. It had made life significantly less complicated.
“What,” Josh said, smiling at her.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I was just—”
“Thinking,” he said.
Yeah.
Her mother had so many clothes that they were kept all over the place, including the storage area right between her room and Steven’s, as well as up on the third floor, but the closets opening off the master bedroom and dressing room were a good place to start. When he saw the neat rows of suits and dresses, and skirts and blouses and gowns—and shoes, his mouth literally fell open.
“Jesus,” he said.
“Want me to do my Daisy Buchanan impression?” Meg asked.
He laughed.
“Is that a no?” she asked.
“Big no,” he said, then pointed at the large tags on all of the hangers. “What are those?”
Visible evidence of White House OCD. Meg shrugged. “They always write down when and where she’s worn the outfit so, I don’t know, she doesn’t repeat.”
“Hunh.” He leaned forward to study one of the tags. “Who are ‘they’?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “The Cast of Thousands.” Although, in this case, it was probably the social secretaries. She and Steven always called the White House staff the Cast of Thousands—for obvious reasons. She held out one of her favorite gowns, a dark sapphire-blue, very simply cut. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “When was it worn last?”
She grinned. Josh was pretty cute, when he wanted to be. Sometimes even when he didn’t want to be. “Well, hell, I don’t know, either,” she said, and checked the tag. “Right after Labor Day. At a thing for NASA.”
“It’s nice,” he said.
An extreme understatement.
He pulled out a strapless black dress. “This one’s pretty.”
“No way would she let me borrow that,” Meg said.
“Why?” He looked at it again. What there was of it. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Meg put the black dress back—which had only been worn at her mother’s birthday party up at Camp David almost a year earlier, with just a few of her parents’ very closest friends in attendance—and took down a white one, with a scoop neck and three-quarter sleeves. “This, she’d let me wear.”
“Kind of bridal,” he said.
“Yeah.” She hung it up, taking out a shimmery golden dress. “How about this?”
He shook his head.
“She looks—monarchial—in it,” Meg said.
“Is that a word?” he asked doubtfully.
She frowned. “I think so.”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
She made a mental note to look the word up later, although she almost never remembered to do things like that. “She looks—queenly.”
He laughed. “Got it.”
“In fact, she—” Meg stopped, suddenly hearing her parents out in the bedroom.
“I thought they weren’t home,” Josh whispered.
“I guess they’re back,” Meg said, and raised her voice, since she could hear her mother approaching the closet. “Hi, Mom.”
“Oh, hi.” Her mother paused in the act of taking her hair down when she saw Josh. “Hello, Josh.”
“Um, hello, ma’am,” he said, looking embarrassed. “We were just—”
“He wanted to try on some of your clothes,” Meg said, helpfully.
“Oh.” Her mother smiled. “Are there any you’d like to take along with you?”
Josh blinked a few times, now looking mortified. “Uh—they’re all very nice.”
“Well, just help yourself,” she said.
They followed her out to the bedroom, where Meg’s father had just turned on the Red Sox game.
And, damn it, Detroit was winning 6 to 3 in the top of the seventh. “So, that’s why you’re home early,” Meg said.
Her mother nodded. “It was, perhaps, a factor.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll ask what you all were doing in the closet,” her father said, concentrating on the television.
“The key question is, what were we all doing coming out,” Meg said, quite amused—as was generally the case—by herself. A serious character flaw, no doubt.
“Actually,” Josh said, “we were just about to go upstairs and watch a movie.”
Meg nodded. “That’s right, we sure were. Do you guys want to, too?”
“No, thanks,” her father said, hanging his dinner jacket over the back of a chair and sitting down to watch the game.
Her mother shook her head, too, indicating her desk, and the piles of papers and reports and briefing books. “No, thank you. If your brothers are up there, though, please tell them we’re home.”
Predictably, her brothers were in the solarium, and Steven was in a foul mood, because during the time it had taken them to walk upstairs, Detroit had scored two more runs. Meg kind of wanted to watch the rest of the game, but when—in short order—Boston fell behind 11-3, she and Josh went down to the Washington Sitting Room, instead. It was part of a third-floor bedroom suite, but not an actual bedroom, so she was still technically adhering to the letter of her parents’ law.
Which didn’t change the fact that they were having trouble making eye contact. The fact that they had fooled around pretty intensely, more than once, in the adjoining bedroom made everything seem just that much more awkward.
Meg broke the silence. “Want me to sing, ‘I’m Coming Out’?”
Josh laughed. “Not really.”
“I do it really nicely,” she said. “Dulcet tones, people say.”
He laughed again.
“No one takes me seriously,” she said.
“Gee, wonder why,” he said, and sat down on the red-and-white upholstered couch.
After a minute, she sat next to—but, not right next to—him, and they didn’t speak for a while.
“This is pretty hard, Meg,” he said.
She nodded. “Would you, um,” she didn’t look at him, “feel better not seeing me at all?”
“No,” he said. Instantly.
Good. “I don’t want that, either,” she said.
It was quiet again.
“Why can’t we just wait until September?” he asked. “And then, you know, go away to school.”
They had already had this conversation about thirty times, without making much progress. Maybe she should have allowed it to happen that way—just let them drift apart, never initiating any sort of discussion about it, taking advantage of the fact that he was going all the way out to Stanford, and that they wouldn’t have to worry about running into each other. But, she’d felt him getting more and more involved, while she—it hadn’t seemed fair. She still wondered whether breaking up had been such a great idea, but it wouldn’t have been right to pretend that—she sighed.
“I need you as a friend,” she said. “I need you more as a friend.”
He nodded. Unhappily.
And now, they had reached the usual impasse.
“I need you as a friend, too,” he said. “I’m just—it’s hard.”
Yeah. She wanted to touch his hair, or hold his hand, or so
mething, but wasn’t sure if she should.
“Is it okay if I put my arm around you?” he asked.
“I’d like that,” she said. “I’d like that a lot.”
3
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON, she played tennis with the Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior, Mr. Kirkland. His reputation had preceded him—he had won a couple of government employee tournaments, and he was only thirty-four—and apparently, her reputation had, too, because when he won service, he smashed the first ball in for a very intimidating ace. And the second one.
By the third serve, she had adjusted to the speed, and managed to chip it back, but he won the game in four straight points.
“Do you want to switch sides on odd games?” he asked, at the net. She looked at him, seeing a not-very-well masked patronizing smile. If there was anything in life that she hated, it was being patronized.
“Sure,” she said, and switched sides.
The work on her serve for the past several weeks had made a difference, and she won her game, too, although he passed her once at the net. They stayed on serve right up until the ninth game, which she lost, and he took the set, 6-40.
“You’re quite a fine player,” he said. Smiling.
What she wasn’t—although she was careful never to advertise it in public—was a good loser. “Thank you,” she said, and got ready to serve the first game of the second set, noticing that there were quite a few people—including Preston—watching from the sidelines, mostly over by the two round tables and the little changing house in the corner, or through the fences.
An audience to her probable defeat. Swell.
She bounced the ball three times, pulled in a deep breath, and then pounded it into the service court. Ace. Only her second one of the match. She spun the next one in to his backhand, and he was caught off-guard, Meg easily putting away the return.