All American Girl

by Meg Cabot

  Then Jack started describing the painting to me in great detail. He was still going on about it a few minutes later when David showed up in the doorway.

  I brightened when I saw him. I couldn’t help it. Even though the object of my affections was standing right there beside me, I was glad to see David. I told myself it was only because that story about the salad-serving utensils had been so cute. It had nothing to do with the whole frisson thing. Nothing at all.

  “Hey,” David said, with the grin I now realized was practically his trademark. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

  “David,” I said. “This is my sister Lucy’s boyfriend, Jack. Jack, this is David.”

  David and Jack shook hands. Standing together, I saw that actually they looked a lot alike. I mean they were both over six feet tall, and dark-haired. There I guess the resemblance sort of ended though, since Jack’s hair was shoulder-length, while David’s only just hit his collar. And Jack, of course, had the ankh earring, while both of David’s lobes were unpierced. Of course Jack also had on his party clothes—Army fatigues with a long black coat—while David was dressed pretty conservatively.

  I guess they didn’t look that much alike after all.

  “David’s in my art class,” I said, to break the awkward silence that immediately followed their handshake.

  Jack crumpled up his plastic cup and said, “Oh, you mean your conformity class?”

  David looked confused. And no wonder. Jack is a very intense person, who needs some getting used to.

  I said, hurriedly, “No, Jack, it turns out it’s not like that. I was totally wrong about Susan Boone. She just wants me to learn to draw what I see before I go off, you know, and do my own thing. You have to learn what the rules are, you see, before you can go around breaking them.”

  Jack, staring at me, went, “What?”

  “No, really,” I said, sensing he wasn’t getting what I was saying. “I mean, you know Picasso? He spent years learning to draw, you know, whatever he saw. It wasn’t until he’d totally mastered that that he started experimenting with colour and form.”

  Only Jack, instead of finding this particular fact endlessly interesting, as I had, looked scornful.

  “Sam,” he said. “I can’t believe you, of all people, would fall for that pedagogic bull.”

  “Excuse me?” David sounded kind of mad.

  Jack raised both his eyebrows. “Uh, I don’t think I was talking to you, First Boy.”

  “Jack,” I said, a little shocked. I mean, Jack is an amazingly artistic person, and having that kind of, you know, creative energy bouncing around inside can be exhausting (as I well know). But that’s no reason to call anybody names. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What is wrong with me?” Jack laughed, but not like he actually thought anything was very funny. “That’s not the question. The question is, what is wrong with you? I mean, you used to think for yourself, Sam. But now all of a sudden you’re falling for all this “draw what you see” crap like it’s been handed down from the gods on a freaking stone tablet. What happened to questioning authority? What happened to making up your own mind about the creative process and how it functions?”

  “Jack,” I said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, Jack had always said it was imperative for artists to be open to all new things so that they could soak in knowledge like a sponge. Only Jack certainly wasn’t acting very sponge-like. “I did make up my own mind. I—”

  “Hey, you guys.” Lucy suddenly reappeared, a posse of cheerleaders, each one wearing more body glitter and Lycra than the next, trailing along behind her. “Oh, hey, David, I’ve got some friends who want to meet—”

  But I was still trying to make Jack understand.

  “I looked it up, Jack,” I said. “David’s right. Picasso was a technical virtuoso before he began experimenting with line and—”

  “David,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Oh, yes, I am sure David knows all about art. Because I’m sure he’s had paintings publicly exhibited before.”

  Lucy looked from Jack to David to me, as if trying to figure out what was going on. When she spoke, it was to Jack. “Like you have?” she asked, with one raised eyebrow.

  Lucy really is the most unsupportive girlfriend I have ever seen.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “As a matter of fact I have had my paintings exhibited—”

  “In the mall,” Lucy pointed out.

  Jack didn’t even look at Lucy, though. He was looking at me. I could feel his pale-blue eyes boring into me.

  “If I didn’t know better, Sam,” he said, “I’d think it wasn’t your arm you broke that day you saved this guy’s dad, but your brain.”

  “OK,” David said. There was no trace of that secretive little smile on his face now. “Look, dude, I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

  “My problem?” Jack jabbed a finger at himself. “I’m not the one with the problem, dude. You’re the one who seems so perfectly willing to let your individuality be sapped by a—”

  “OK,” Lucy said in a bored voice, slipping between Jack and David and laying both hands on the front of Jack’s long black coat. “That’s it. Outside, Jack.”

  Jack looked down at her as if noticing her for the first time. “But,” he said, “Luce, this guy started it.”

  “Right,” Lucy said, pushing Jack backwards towards a door that seemed to lead into the backyard. “Sure he did. Let’s just step outside and get some air. How many beers have you had, anyway?”

  Then they were gone, leaving David and me alone. With Lucy’s cheerleading squad.

  David looked down at me and went, “What’s with that guy, anyway?”

  Still looking after Jack—whom I could see through the screen door, gesturing wildly to Lucy as he explained his side of the story—I murmured, “He’s not so bad. He just, you know. Has the soul of an artist.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “And the brains of an orangutan.”

  I glanced back at him, sharply. I mean, that was my soulmate he was talking about.

  “Jack Slater,” I said, “happens to be very, very talented. Not only that, but he is a rebel. A radical. Jack’s paintings don’t just reflect the plight of the urban youth of today. They make a powerful statement about our generation’s apathy and lack of moral rectitude.”

  The look David gave me was a strange one. It seemed equal parts disbelief and confusion.

  “What?” he said. “Do you like that guy or something, Sam?”

  Lucy’s friends, who were listening—and watching—closely, tittered. I could feel colour rush into my cheeks. I was hotter now than I’d been back in the restaurant.

  But it was weird. I couldn’t tell whether I was blushing because of David’s question, or the way he was looking at me. Really. Not for the first time that night, I was having trouble meeting those green eyes of his. Something about them ... I don’t know . . . was making me feel really uncomfortable.

  I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. Not with the entire Adams Prep varsity cheerleading team standing there, staring at us. I mean, the last thing I needed was the whole school knowing that I’m in love with my sister’s boyfriend.

  So I went, “Duh. He’s Lucy’s boyfriend, not mine.”

  “I didn’t ask you whose boyfriend he was,” David said, and I realized with a sinking heart he wasn’t going to let me off as easy as all that. “I asked if you like him.”

  I didn’t want to, but it was like I couldn’t help it. Something made me lift my gaze to meet his.

  And for a minute, it was like I was looking at a guy I had never met before. I mean, not like he was the President’s son, but like he was a really cute, funny guy who happened to be in my art class and was into the same kind of music I was and happened to like my boots. It was kind of like I was seeing David—the real David—for the very first time.

  I had opened my mouth to say something—I have no idea what; something lame, I’m sure; I was pretty fre
aked by the whole thing, most especially by how sweaty my palms had got all of a sudden, and how hard my heart was beating—but I never got a chance to. That’s because somebody behind the cheerleaders called out, ‘There you are!“ and Kris Parks came bearing down on us with like sixty people in tow, all of whom, she claimed, were just dying to meet the son of the President of the United States.

  And David, exactly the way a politician’s son should, went to shake their hands, without another single glance at me.

  “It’s not your fault,” Catherine, across the room on my couch, said. “I mean, you can’t help that you’re in love with Jack.”

  I was curled up in my bed, Manet snoring softly at my side.

  “You met Jack first,” Catherine said, through the darkness all around us. “What does David think, anyway? You were just supposed to wait around and not fall in love with anybody else until he rode up on his big white horse? I mean, it’s not like you’re Cinderella, or something.”

  “I think,” I said, to the ceiling, “that David kind of thought if I was asking him to some party that there was a possibility I might like him, and not some other guy.”

  “Well, that was very old-fashioned of him,” Catherine said firmly. Now that Catherine had been on her first date, and it had turned out to be a successful one—Paul had kissed her goodnight on my very front porch. On the lips, she’d informed me proudly afterwards—she seemed to think she was some kind of expert on love. In between worrying that her parents were going to find out. Not so much about Paul, I think, as about the black jeans and the party.

  “I mean, you are an attractive and vital girl,” Catherine went on. “You can’t be expected to just stick with one man. You have to play the field. It’s absurd that at the age of fifteen you should settle down with just one guy.”

  “Yeah,” I said, with a short laugh. “Especially one who is in love with my sister.”

  “Jack only thinks he is in love with Lucy,” Catherine said firmly. “We both know that. What happened tonight was just evidence that he is finally becoming aware of his deep and abiding affection for you. I mean, why else would he have been so mean to David if it wasn’t for the fact that the sight of you with another man drove him into a jealous rage?”

  I said, “I think he just had one too many beers.”

  “Not true,” Catherine said. “I mean, that might have been part of it, but he was definitely threatened. Threatened by what he perceived as your happiness with another.”

  I rolled over—disturbing Manet, who went on snoring, not at all—and stared at Catherine’s dim form in the darkness of my bedroom.

  “Have you been reading Lucy’s Cosmo again?” I asked.

  Catherine sounded guilty. “Well. Yes. She left one in the bathroom.”

  I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling. It was kind of hard to tell what I should be thinking about everything that had happened that night when the only person with whom I could safely discuss it was spouting advice she’d garnered from the Bedside Astrologer.

  “So did he kiss you goodnight?” Catherine asked shyly. “David, I mean?”

  I snorted. Yeah, David had really felt like kissing me after that whole thing with Jack and the Adams Prep cheerleading squad. In fact, he had barely spoken to me for the rest of the night. Instead, he’d gone around making the acquaintance of half the student population of my school. Evidently not by nature a shy sort of person, David hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being the centre of attention. In fact, he’d looked like he was having a pretty good time as Kris Parks and her cronies hung on his every word, laughing like hyenas every time he made a joke.

  It wasn’t until around eleven-thirty—Theresa, who was babysitting while my parents were at a dinner party they hadn’t left for until after David picked me up, had given us a twelve o’clock curfew—that he finally looked around for me. I was sitting by myself in a corner, looking through Kris’s mom’s copies of Good Housekeeping (who said I don’t know how to have a good time?) and trying to ignore the people who kept coming up to me and asking if they could have my autograph (or, conversely, if they could sign my cast).

  “Ready?” David asked. I said I was. I went and told Catherine that we were leaving, then found Kris—I noticed I didn’t have to look very far; she was practically tracking David’s every move—and said thanks and goodbye. Then David and John and I headed back out to the car.

  Cleveland Park isn’t really all that far from Chevy Chase, where Kris lives, but I swear that ride home was one of the longest in my life. Nobody said anything. Anything! Thank God for Gwen, singing her heart out over the stereo.

  Still, I noticed that for the first time ever, the sound of Gwen Stefani’s voice didn’t exactly make me feel better. The worst part was, I didn’t even know what I had to feel so badly about. I mean, OK, so David knew I liked Jack. Big deal. I mean, is there some kind of federal law that prohibits girls from liking their sister’s boyfriend? I don’t think so.

  By the time we pulled up to my house, however, the silence in the car (aside from Gwen) was oppressive. I turned to David—God knew I didn’t expect him to walk me to the door or anything—and went, “Well, thanks for coming with me.”

  To my very great surprise, he opened his car door and went, “I’ll walk you up.”

  Which I can’t say exactly thrilled me, or anything. Because I had a feeling he was going to let me have it.

  And, halfway up the steps to the porch, he did.

  “You know,” he said. “You really had me fooled, Sam.”

  I glanced at him, wondering what was coming next, and knowing I probably wasn’t going to like it. “I did? How?”

  “I thought you were different,” he said. “You know, with the boots and the black and all of that. I thought you were really ... I don’t know. The genuine article. I didn’t know you were doing it all to get a guy.”

  I stopped in the middle of the steps and stared up at him, which was kind of hard, since the porch light was on, and it was burning in my eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, isn’t that it?” David asked. “I mean, wasn’t that why you asked me to the party too? It had nothing to do with wanting to help your friend to feel like she fits in. You were using me to try to make that Jack guy jealous.”

  “I was not!” I cried, hoping he, too, was being blinded by the porch light. That way he wouldn’t be able to see that my cheeks were on fire, I was blushing so hard. “David, that’s ... I mean, that’s just ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I don’t think so.”

  We’d reached my front door. David stood looking down at me, his expression unreadable . . . and not because I was being blinded by the porch light any more, but because he really had no expression—no expression at all on his face.

  “It’s too bad,” he said. “I really thought you weren’t like any of the other girls I know.”

  And with a polite goodnight—that’s it, just a ‘Goodnight’—he turned around and went back down to the car. He didn’t even look back. Not once.

  Not that I could blame him, I guess. Despite Catherine’s assertion that boys ought to know girls our age are ‘playing the field’ (which sounds pretty funny coming from her, Miss-I-Just-Went-Out-With-A-Boy-For-The-First-Time-Ever-Tonight), I imagine it might kind of suck to find out the person who’d asked you out really liked someone else—would even rather have been out with that person, instead.

  I don’t know. I guess I could see why David was kind of peeved with me.

  But come on. I’d asked him to a party, not to marry me, or anything. It was just a party. What was the big deal?

  And what was all that junk about being wrong about me being different from all the other girls he knew? How many other girls did he know who’d saved his dad’s life lately? Uh, not that many, I was willing to bet.

  Still, the evening wasn’t a total washout. Some of my celebrity must have rubbed off on Catherine, because other people at the party finally started talking to her. She had stood
there, beaming, Paul at her side, and had all of her popular-girl fantasies realized. Someone even invited her to another party, the following weekend.

  “You know,” Catherine, the new It Girl of Adams Prep said, from the couch. “I really think Jack was jealous.”

  I blinked up at the ceiling at this piece of information. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. I heard him tell Lucy that he thinks David is pompous and that you could do better.”

  Pompous? David was the least pompous person I had ever met. What was Jack talking about?

  When I mentioned this out loud, though, all Catherine said was, “But, Sam, I thought that was what you wanted. To make Jack realize that you are a vital, attractive woman, desired by many.”

  I admitted that this was true. At the same time, however, I didn’t like the idea of anybody—even my soulmate—calling David names. Because David was a very nice person.

  Only I didn’t want to think about that. You know, about David being so nice, and me treating him the way I had. I mean, that kind of behaviour is all very well for readers of Cosmo, but I’m really more of an Art in America kind of girl.

  Knowing that sleep was a long way off, but aware that Catherine, by the sound of her steady breathing, was no longer available, I got out my flashlight and opened the book the White House press secretary had given me, on the lives of the First Ladies.

  Top ten Little Known Facts about Dolley Ptyne Todd Madison, Wife of the Fourth President of the United States of America:

  10. She spelled her name Dolley, not Dolly.

  9. Born in 1768, she was raised as a Quaker, eschewing colourful bonnets and clothes, as Quaker tradition dictated.

  8. She was married once before to a Quaker lawyer who died in a yellow-fever epidemic.

  7. After marrying James Madison in 1794, Dolley acted as “unofficial first lady” during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who was a widower.

  6. It was apparently around this time that Dolley decided God didn’t care if she wore bright colours, because she is described as having worn a gold turban with an ostrich feather tucked into it at her husband’s inaugural ball.