Oh, I have seen him driving past in motorcades, and of course I have seen him on TV. But except for the day before, at Capitol Cookies, I had never seen the President up close.

So seeing him then, standing in my hospital room with my mom and dad and Lucy and Rebecca and Theresa and the Secret Service agents and all the flowers and the balloons and stuff . . .

Well, it was pretty strange.

Plus, standing there beside him was his wife, the First Lady. I had never seen the First Lady in person before, either. I had seen her on TV and on the cover of Good Housekeeping magazine, touting her prize-winning brownies and all, but never in person. Up close, both the President and the First Lady looked bigger than they do on TV

Well, duh. Of course. But they also looked . . . I don’t know.

Sort of older, and more real. Like you could see wrinkles and stuff.

“So you’re the little lady who saved my life.”

That’s what he said. The President of the United States. Those were the first words the President said to me, in that deep voice I am forced to hear practically every night, when my parents make me change the channel from The Simpsons to the news.

And how did I reply? What did I say in response to the President of the United States?

I went, “Um.”

Behind me, I heard Lucy heave this satisfied sigh. That was because she was relieved she’d finished her beauty makeover on time. A few minutes earlier, and I might still have had bed head.

It apparently did not matter to Lucy that I sounded like an idiot. All she cared about was that I did not look like one.

“Well, I just had to stop by and ask if it was all right for me to shake the hand,” the President went on, in his big voice, “of the bravest girl in the world.”

Then he stuck out his big right hand.

I stared at that hand. Not because it was any different from anybody else’s hand. It wasn’t. Well, it was, of course, because it belonged to the President of the United States. But that wasn’t why I was staring at it. I was staring at it because I was thinking about what the President had said—about how I was the bravest girl in the world.

And interestingly, even though many of the notes my mother had read off the flowers and balloons and teddy bears had mentioned something along the same lines, this was the first time I actually thought about it. Me being brave, and all.

And the thing was, it simply wasn’t true. I hadn’t been brave. Being brave is when you have to do something because you know it is right, but at the same time, you are afraid to do it, because it might hurt or whatever. But you do it anyway. Like me defending Catherine from Kris Parks when she starts in on her about her Laura Ingalls Wilder dresses or whatever, knowing that Kris is just going to start in on me next. Now that’s brave.

What I did—jumping on to Mr. Uptown Girl’s back—hadn’t been brave, because I hadn’t really thought about the consequences. I had just done it. I saw the gun, I saw the President, I jumped. Just like that.

I wasn’t the bravest girl in the world. I was just a girl who’d happened to have the misfortune to be standing next to a guy who meant to assassinate the President. That’s all. I hadn’t done anything anyone else wouldn’t have done. Not at all.

I don’t know how long I would have stood there and stared down at the President’s hand if Lucy hadn’t poked me in the back. It really hurt, too, because Lucy has these really long nails that she files into points practically every night.

But I didn’t let it show that my big sister had just stabbed me in the back with one of her talons. Instead, I went, “Gee, thanks,” and stuck out my own hand to shake the President’s.

Except of course the hand I stuck out to shake was my right hand, the one in the cast. Everyone laughed, like it was this hilarious joke, and then the President shook my left hand, the one not encased in plaster.

Then the First Lady shook my hand, too, and said that she hoped my family and I would join her and the President for dinner at the White House sometime ‘when things have settled down a little’ so that they could really show their appreciation for what I’d done.

Dinner? At the White House? Me?

Thankfully my mother took over then, saying that we would be delighted to join the First Family for dinner sometime.

Then the First Lady turned and kind of noticed someone standing in the doorway to my hospital room. And her face brightened up even more than it already was and she went, “Oh, there’s David. May we introduce our son, David?”

And into the room walked David, the President’s son.

Who also happened to be David from my drawing class with Susan Boone. Save Ferris David. “Nice boots” David.

And now I knew why he looked so familiar.

Well, how was I supposed to know he was the son of the President of the United States?