by Meg Cabot
I stood on the curb across from the Founding Church of Scientology, squinting into the light drizzle and headlights in the direction from which Theresa was supposed to come. As I stood there, I couldn’t help feeling kind of sorry for myself. I mean, there I was, a fifteen-year-old, left-handed, redheaded, boyfriendless, misunderstood, middle child reject, broke, standing in the rain after skipping her drawing class because she couldn’t take criticism. What was going to happen if I grew up and started my own celebrity portrait painting business or something? Was I just going to quit if it didn’t work out right away? Was I going to go hide in Static? Maybe I could just go ahead and get a job there, to make things easier. It didn’t seem like a very bad place to work, actually. I bet employees get a discount on CDs.
While I was standing there being ashamed of myself for being a quitter, the old guy who was such a big Billy Joel fan came out of Static and stood next to me, even though the crosswalk sign was green. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He was messing around with something under his rain poncho, which was in a camouflage pattern. I wondered if he was a shoplifter. At Static I’d noticed they had a Wall of Shame, where they stuck up Polaroids of people who’d tried to swipe something. This dude looked like as prime a candidate for the Wall of Shame as I’d ever seen.
And when, right after this, I saw all these flashing red lights coming out of the rain and darkness, I was like, Oh, yes, here come the cops. Mr. Uptown Girl is so busted.
Only it turned out the sirens didn’t belong to the cops at all. Instead, they were part of the president’s motorcade. First came the lead car, a black SUV with a rack of flashing red lights on its roof. Then came another black SUV, and behind it, a long black limo. Behind that were some more SUVs with flashing lights.
Instead of being excited that I was going to get to see the president go by—even though you can’t really see him when he’s in his limo because the windows are those weird ones the people inside the car can see out of but the people outside the car can’t see into—I was like, Aw, crud. Because Theresa was probably somewhere behind the motorcade, which was crawling along at a snail’s pace. Not only was she going to be in a really bad mood by the time she finally picked me up, but no way was I going to miss David coming out of Susan Boone’s. He would probably see me standing out here and be like, Man, she’s weird, and never speak to me again. Not that I cared, because I am fully in love with my sister’s boyfriend. But it had been nice of him to notice my boots. Hardly anyone else ever had.
And besides, when you live in D.C., seeing the president go by is really no big deal, since he goes by all the time.
Then the strangest thing happened. The first SUV in the motorcade pulled up right in front of me…and stopped. Just stopped.
And the traffic light wasn’t even red.
Behind the first SUV, the second one stopped, and then the limo, and so on. Traffic was totally stopped behind them, all along Connecticut Avenue. Then these guys with these earpieces climbed out of the cars and all went toward the limo.
And then, to my utter astonishment, the president of the United States got out of his limo and walked, with a bunch of Secret Service guys clustered around him holding up umbrellas and looking around and speaking into their walkie-talkies, into Capitol Cookies!
That’s right, just walked into Capitol Cookies, like he did it every day.
I didn’t know that the president liked Capitol Cookies. Capitol Cookies are good, and all, but they’re not the most famous cookies around, or anything. I mean, there’s just the one store.
And wouldn’t you think that if you were the president you could get the owner to send you a personal supply of cookies, so you wouldn’t have to go ducking out of your limo, in the rain, just to get your hands on some? I mean, if I owned a bakery and I found out that the president of the United States liked my cookies, I would fully make sure he got a steady supply of them.
On the other hand, the people who owned Capitol Cookies would probably prefer to have the president be seen ducking into the store. That is way better publicity than you could ever get by privately shipping him his own supply.
And then, as I stood there in the dark and the rain, with the red lights from the top of the SUV in front of me flashing in my face, I saw Mr. Uptown Girl throw back his rain poncho.
And it turned out what he’d been doing under there had nothing to do with him being a shoplifter. Not at all. It turned out what he’d been doing under there had to do with a great big gun, which he brought out and pointed in the direction of the door to Capitol Cookies…the door through which the president, his cookies having been secured with miraculous swiftness, was just exiting.
I am not what most people would call a particularly brave person. I stick up for the kids at school who get picked on only because I remember what it was like to get picked on back when I lived in Morocco, and during the whole speech and hearing thing.
But that does not mean that I am the sort of girl to throw herself into the path of danger without the slightest concern for her own personal safety. I mean, the closest thing I have been in lately that could qualify as a physical altercation would be the last time Lucy and I wrestled over possession of the remote control.
And obviously I am not much for confrontations. I mean, yeah, I was striking a blow for the creative spirit by boycotting Susan Boone’s and all. But really, I was just too embarrassed to go back in there after my humiliation the last time.
But whatever. What I did next was so atypical of me that it was like someone else took over my body for a minute, or something. All I know is, one second I was standing there, watching Mr. Uptown Girl raise his gun to fire at the president as he exited Capitol Cookies…
…and the next, I had jumped him.
6
It turns out if you jump onto the back of a would-be assassin, and he isn’t expecting you to or anything, you can really throw off his aim. So the bullet Mr. Uptown Girl had meant to send speeding into the president’s head went speeding harmlessly off into the stratosphere instead.
Something else happens when you jump onto the back of a guy with a gun, though. He tends to be very surprised, and loses his balance, and falls over backward on top of you, so that you get all the wind knocked out of you and your Gore-Tex parka rides up and rainwater soaks through the seat of your pants and you get all wet.
Plus, the guy lands on your right arm, and you hear a crunching sound, and it really, really hurts, and you can’t help wondering, Was that what I think it was?
But you don’t really get a chance to mull it over for very long because you are too busy trying to keep the guy from getting off another shot, which you do by yelling, “Gun! Gun! He’s got a gun!”
And even though by now everyone already knows this—that the guy has a gun, since they heard the stupid thing go off the first time—this seems to do the trick, since all of a sudden about twenty Secret Service agents crowd around you with their guns pulled out and pointed right into your face, all of them yelling, “Freeze!”
Believe me, I froze.
And then the next thing I knew, Mr. Uptown Girl was lifted off me—much to my relief; that dude was heavy—and then people started pulling on me, too. Somebody pulled on the arm that the guy with the gun had landed on, and I yelled “Ow!” really loud, but nobody seemed to hear me. They were all busy speaking into their walkie-talkies, saying things like “Eagle is secure. Repeat, Eagle is secure.”
Meanwhile, sirens started to wail. People came running out from the wrap places and burrito bars to watch.
And suddenly, all these cop cars and ambulances showed up from out of nowhere, practically, brakes squealing and rainwater getting sprayed all over the place.
It was just like something out of a Bruce Willis movie, only without the sound track.
And then one of the Secret Service agents started going through my backpack, while another stooped to pat down my ankles—like I might have a bowie knife or something strapped down there�
��while a third was digging around the pockets of my Gore-Tex parka without even asking my permission (and ended up getting a handful of Capitol Cookie crumbs for his efforts).
He also jostled my right arm some more. I yelled “Ow” again, only even louder than before.
Then the agent who was going through my pockets went, “This one seems to be unarmed.”
“Of course I’m unarmed,” I yelled. “I’m only in the tenth grade!”
Which is a totally lame thing to have said, because of course there are tenth graders who have guns. They just don’t happen to go to Adams Prep. Only I wasn’t really thinking straight. In fact, I was almost crying. Well, you would have almost been crying, too, if
a) you were wet all over.
b) your arm was most likely broken—which actually wasn’t so bad, really, because it wasn’t my drawing arm or anything, and now I had a built-in excuse not to take part in volleyball, which Coach Donnelly is making everyone do in PE next week—but it still really, really hurt.
c) people were yelling but you couldn’t hear so well on account of Mr. Uptown Girl’s gun having gone off very close to your ear, probably causing hearing damage that for all you know might be permanent.
d) you had found yourself looking down the mouths of twenty or so guns. Or even one gun, for that matter. And
e) it was starting to seem pretty likely that your parents were totally going to find out about your skipping your drawing lesson.
I mean, any one of those things would have been upsetting. But I had all five.
Then this older agent came up to me. He looked a little less scary than the other agents, maybe because he stooped down until his face was level with mine, which was thoughtful of him.
He went, very seriously, “You’re going to have to come with us, miss. We need to ask you some questions about your friend over there.”
That was when it really hit me:
They thought Mr. Uptown Girl and I were buddies! They thought we’d been trying to kill the president together!
“He’s not my friend!” I wailed. I wasn’t almost crying anymore. I was bawling my head off, and I didn’t even care. It was raining, I was wet all over, my arm was killing me, my ears were ringing, and the United States Secret Service thought I was some kind of international terrorist assassin, or something.
Heck, yeah, I was crying.
“I’ve never even seen him before today!” I hiccupped. “He pulled out that gun, and he was going to shoot the president, and so I jumped on him, and he fell on my arm, and now it really hurts, and I just want to go ho-o-ome!”
It was really embarrassing. I was crying like a baby. Worse than a baby. I was crying the way Lucy cried the day her orthodontist told her she was going to have to keep her braces on for another six weeks.
Then a very surprising thing happened. The older Secret Service agent put his arm around me. He said something to the other Secret Service agents, then walked me away from them, toward one of the ambulances. Some paramedic types were standing there, waiting. They opened the doors to the back of the ambulance, and the Secret Service agent and I climbed in.
It was nice inside the ambulance. I got to sit on a little gurney, out of the rain and cold. You could barely hear the sirens and stuff inside there. The paramedics were very nice, too. They gave me a dry blanket to wrap around me in place of my Gore-Tex parka. They were so jokey and nice, I stopped crying.
Really, I told myself. This wasn’t so bad. Everything was going to be okay.
Well, except when my parents found out about how I’d skipped drawing class. That part was not going to be okay.
But maybe they wouldn’t have to find out. Maybe the Secret Service agents would check me out and realize that I am not a member of any terrorist group determined to draw attention to its cause, and let me go. Theresa was probably still stuck in all that traffic. By the time she pulled up, the whole thing might be over and I could just get into the car, and when she asked “What did you do today in class?” I could be like, “Oh, nothing.” Which would not even be a lie.
The paramedics asked me where I was injured. And even though I felt dumb being such a baby about my arm, considering how serious everything was with, you know, an attempt on the life of the president and all, I showed them my wrist. I was somewhat gratified to see that it had already swelled to about twice its usual size. I was glad I hadn’t been crying over nothing.
While the paramedics were examining my arm, I looked over at the Secret Service agent, who was busy filling out a report of some kind that included my name, which he had got off my school ID, which had been inside my wallet in my backpack. I didn’t want to disturb him or anything, but I really needed to know how long this was all going to take. So I went, “Um, excuse me, sir?”
The Secret Service guy looked up. “Yes, sweetheart?” he asked. He obviously didn’t know that no one calls me sweetheart, not even my mother. Not since Morocco, when she caught me trying to flush my dad’s credit cards down the toilet (as revenge for him making us move to a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language).
The sweetheart thing threw me. I didn’t want to come out and just ask him how long this was all going to take, since it might seem ungracious. He was only doing his job, after all. So instead, after a few seconds during which I desperately tried to think up something else to ask, I went, “Um, is the president okay?”
The Secret Service agent smiled at me some more. “The president is just fine, honey,” he said. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh,” I said. “Great. So, um, do you think it would be okay for me to go soon?”
The paramedics exchanged glances. They looked amused.
“Not with that arm,” one of them said. “Your wrist is broken, kiddo. We’ll need an X-ray to see how badly, but ten to one, you’re going to have a nice big cast for all your new fans to sign.”
Fans? What was he talking about?
And I couldn’t get a cast! If I got a cast, my parents would want to know how I’d broken my wrist, and then I’d have to admit that I’d skipped class.
Unless…unless I lied and told them I tripped. Yeah, I tripped and fell down the stairs to Susan Boone’s studio. Except what if they asked her?
Oh, God. I was such dead meat.
“Couldn’t I—” I was really grasping at straws, but I was desperate. “Couldn’t I just go to my own doctor tomorrow, or something? I mean, my arm really feels much better.”
Both the paramedics and the Secret Service agent looked at me like I was insane. Okay, yeah, my arm had swollen up to the size of my thigh and was throbbing the way hearts do during open-heart surgeries on the Learning Channel. But it actually didn’t hurt that much. Except when I moved.
“It’s just that our housekeeper is coming to pick me up,” I explained lamely. “And if you guys take me to the hospital, and I’m not where I said I’d be, she’ll freak out.”
The Secret Service guy said, “Why don’t you give me a phone number where I can reach your parents? Because for you to receive the medical attention you need, we’re going to need to contact them.”
Oh, God! Then they’ll know for sure I skipped class!
But, really. What choice did I have? That’d be none.
“Listen,” I said, low and fast. “You don’t have to tell my parents about this. I mean, of course you have to tell them about this, but not about how I skipped my drawing class and was hanging out in Static. I mean, you don’t have to tell them that part, do you? Because I don’t want to get in any more trouble than I’m already in.”
The Secret Service dude blinked at me like he didn’t really know what I was talking about. Which of course he didn’t. How could he? Drawing class? Static?
But he apparently thought he’d better just go along with me—as if maybe I’d hit my head, too, when I’d fallen down—since he went, “Why don’t we wait and see.”
Well, it was better than nothing, I guess. I gave him my mom’s and dad’s work numbers, th
en closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the side of the ambulance.
Oh, well, I thought. Things could have been worse.
For instance, I could have a chicken bone where my nose should be.
Top ten pieces of incontrovertible proof that stopping a bullet from entering the skull of the president of the United States of America changes your life:
10. The ambulance you are riding in gets a police escort all the way to the hospital. George Washington University Hospital, to be exact. The same hospital they took President Reagan to when he got shot.
9. Instead of having to visit the triage nurse upon arrival at the emergency room, like everyone else, you are wheeled in right away, ahead of all the gang-bangers bleeding from knife wounds, women in labor, people with pencils wedged into their eye sockets, etc.
8. Everywhere you are sent inside George Washington University Hospital, men in black suits with ear thingies follow you.
7. When they give you a hospital gown to wear because your clothes are all wet, and you refuse to put it on because the back is all cut out, they give you another one, so you can wear one that opens in the front and one that opens in the back, thus covering all of you. No one else in the entire hospital gets two gowns but you.
6. You get your own private room with armed guards at the door, even though all that is wrong with you is your broken wrist.
5. When the doctor comes in to examine you, he goes, “So you’re the girl who saved the president!”
4. When you say in abject mortification, “Well, not really,” the doctor goes, “That’s not what I hear. You’re a national hero!”
3. When he tells you that your wrist is broken in two places and that you will have to wear a cast from the elbow down for six weeks, instead of giving you a lollipop or whatever, he asks for your autograph.
