I felt myself blush all the way to my horse-conditioned roots.

Still, I tried. I tried to pretend like I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Napkin?” I asked, thinking that, with my red hair and scarlet face, I probably resembled a big bowl of strawberry ice cream. “What napkin?”

“The one you hid your entire meal in,” David said, looking amused. His eyes seemed greener than ever. “I hope you didn’t try to flush it. The pipes in this building are pretty old. You could cause a massive flood, you know.”

It would be just my luck to cause a flood in the White House.

“I didn’t flush the napkin,” I said quickly, with a nervous glance at the Secret Service agent standing not far away. “I put it in the basket with the dirty hand towels. I just flushed the food.” Then I had a panicky thought. “But there was a lot of it. Do you really think it could clog the pipes?”

“I don’t know,” he said, looking serious. “That was one big piece of flounder.”

Something about his expression—maybe the way one of his dark eyebrows was up, while the other was down, kind of the way Manet’s ears look when he’s ready to play—made me realize that David was kidding around.

I didn’t think it was so funny, though. I’d really been scared that I’d maybe broken the White House.

“That,” I said, in a whisper, so the Secret Service agent down the hall wouldn’t hear me, “isn’t very nice.”

I didn’t even think about the fact that he was, you know, the First Son or anything. I mean, I was just mad. They say all this stuff about redheads being hot-tempered. If you are a redhead and you get mad, you can just bet that someone is going to say something like, “Oooh, look out for the redhead. You know they’ve all got tempers.”

Which usually just makes me madder than ever.

Of course, I had flushed most of the dinner David’s mom had served to me down the toilet. In fact, maybe that was why I was so mad . . . because David had caught me doing something so wasteful. Yeah, I was mad, but I was pretty embarrassed too.

But I was more mad. So I turned around and started back towards the dining room.

“Aw, come on,” David said with a laugh, turning around and falling into step with me. “You have to admit, it was kind of funny. I mean, I really had you going there. You totally thought the pipes were going to explode.”

“I did not,” I said, even though that was exactly what I had been thinking. Also about the headlines in the paper the next day: Girl Who Saved President’s Life Causes White House Plumbing to Blow By Stuffing Entire Dinner Down Toilet.

“Yeah, you did,” David said. He was so much taller than I was, he only had to take one step for every two of mine. “But I ought to have known you can’t take a joke.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and whirled around to look up at him. He was pretty tall—taller than Jack, even—so I had to tilt my chin way up to look into those green eyes that Lucy admired so much. I didn’t even want to look at that other part of him she’d commented on.

“What do you mean, I can’t take a joke?” I demanded. “How would you even know whether or not I can take a joke? You barely know me!”

“I know you’re the sensitive artist type,” David said, with that same know-it-all grin he’d given his mom (“I did change for dinner”).

“I am not,” I said hotly, even though of course I totally am. In fact, I don’t even know why I bothered denying it. It was just that the way he said it made it sound like something bad.

Except of course that there’s nothing wrong with being a sensitive artist. Jack Slater is a living testament to that.

“Oh, yeah?” David said. “Then how come you didn’t come back to the studio after the Pineapple Incident?”

That was exactly how he said it too. Like it was capitalized. The Pineapple Incident.

I could feel myself turning red all over again. I couldn’t believe he was bringing up what had happened my first day at Susan Boone’s. I mean, talk about insensitive.

“I’m not disputing that you’re a really good artist,” David went on. “Just that, you know, you’re kind of a hothead.” He cocked his head back towards the direction of the dining room. “And a bit of a picky eater. You hungry?”

I looked at him like he was crazy. In fact, I was pretty sure he was crazy. I mean, his taste in music and footwear not withstanding, it seemed to me that the First, Son had some screws loose.

Although he had admitted that I am a really good artist, so maybe he wasn’t that nuts.

Before I had a chance to deny that I was feeling hungry, my stomach did my talking for me, letting out, at just that moment, the most embarrassing rumbling sound, indicating that all it had in it was tomato garnish and a bit of lettuce and that this was unacceptable.

David didn’t even pretend, like a normal person, that he hadn’t heard it. Instead, he went, “I thought so. Listen, I was going to go see if I could round up some real food. Want to come?”

Now I was sure he was crazy. Not just because he had gotten up and left the table in the middle of dinner to go look for alternative food, but also because he was asking me to look for alternative food with him. Me. The girl he’d just caught throwing away a napkin-full of perfectly good dinner.

“I,” I said, completely confused, “I mean, we ... we can’t just leave. In the middle of dinner. At the White House.”

“Why not?” he asked, with a shrug.

I thought about it. I mean, there were a lot of reasons why not. Because it was rude, for one thing. I mean, think how it would look. And because . . . because you just don’t do things like that.

I mentioned this, but David looked unimpressed.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he asked. Then, backing down the long, Persian-carpeted hallway, he went, “Come on. You know you want it.”

I didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, that dinner in there was for me and as the guest of honour, I knew I couldn’t just dine and ditch. Also, the First Son was clearly a crazy person. Did I want to go wandering around a strange house with a crazy person?

On the other hand, I was starving. And he had said I was a good artist . . .

I looked at the Secret Service agent to see what she thought. She smiled at me and made a motion like she was locking the side of her mouth and throwing away the key. Well, I decided. If she didn’t think it was such a bad thing to do, and she was an adult and all—one responsible enough to carry a side arm—maybe it was all right. . .

I turned around and hurried after David, who was halfway down the hall by that time.

He didn’t seem very surprised to see me there beside him. Instead, he said, like he was continuing some conversation we’d been having in a parallel universe, “So what happened to the boots?”

“Boots?” I echoed. “What boots?”

“The ones you were wearing the first time I met you. With the White-Out daisies on them.”

The boots he’d said were nice. Duh.

“My mom wouldn’t let me wear those boots,” I said. “She didn’t think they were appropriate for dinner at the White House.” I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes. “None of my own clothes are appropriate for dinner at the White House. I had to get all new clothes.” I tugged uncomfortably at my navy-blue suit. “Like this thing.”

“How do you think I feel?” David asked. “I have to eat dinner at the White House every single night.”

I looked sourly at his shirt. “Yeah, but they obviously don’t make you dress up.”

“Not for dinner. But I have to dress up all the rest of the time.”

I knew this wasn’t true, though. “You weren’t dressed up in drawing class.”

“Occasionally I get a reprieve,” he said, with another one of those grins. There was something kind of mysterious about those grins of David’s. Most of the time they seemed to be over some private joke he was having with himself. They made me kind of want to be let in on it. The joke, I mean. Whenever Jack thought of something funny, he just blurted it right out. Sometimes three or four times, just to be sure everyone heard it.

David seemed perfectly content to keep his witticisms to himself.

Which was kind of irritating. Because how was I supposed to know whether or not it was me he was laughing at?

Then David hit a button in a door, and an elevator slid open. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised there was an elevator in the White House, but I was. I guess because for a minute I forgot where I was, and thought I was just in a regular house. Also, they never showed the elevator on the school tours.

We got into the elevator, and David hit the down button. The door closed and we went down.

“So,” he said, as we rode. “Why’d you skip?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Though of course I should have. “Skip what?”

“You know. Drawing class, after the Pineapple Incident.”

I swallowed hard.

“I thought you already had that all figured out,” I said. “You said it was on account of my being a sensitive artist, and all.”

The elevator door slid open, and David gestured for me to get out before following me. “Yeah, but I want to hear your version of why.”

Yeah, I bet he did.

But I was fully not going to give him the pleasure. He would only, I knew, make fun of me. Which would, in essence, be making fun of Jack. And that I would not stand for.

Instead I just went, lighly, “I don’t think Susan Boone and I exactly see eye-to-eye on the issue of creative licence.”

David looked at me, one eyebrow up and one down again. Only this time, I was pretty sure he wasn’t being playful.

“Really?” he said. “Are you sure? Because I think Susan’s pretty cool about that kind of thing.”