For some reason this was more interesting to people than the fact that I had stopped a bullet from entering the skull of our nation’s leader, or that I was the country’s new teen ambassador to the UN. While I could not help but be thankful that I was no longer constantly being complimented on my bravery—all the more upsetting because I truly did not believe what I had done had been all that brave—it was somewhat disconcerting that everyone was, instead, making jokes about what may or may not have gone on between the President’s son and me in the Lincoln bedroom.

“Look, you’re taking this the wrong way,” Lucy said when I remarked upon this at the kitchen table after school. “The fact that you and this David dude are an item—DO NOT PINCH ME AGAIN—is only going to elevate your already sky-high stock. You, Sam, are the new It Girl of Adams Prep. If you would just give up the whole black-on-black thing, you could be voted prom queen like that.” Lucy snapped her fingers in the air, and Manet hurried over, thinking she might have dropped some of the chocolate-chip cookies Theresa had made and that we were all now chowing down on.

“Well, I don’t want to be prom queen,” I said. “I just want things to be back to normal.”

“I’m going to take a wild guess that that‘s not going to happen real soon,” Jack said. He pointed to the reporters we could see holding their cameras up over the backyard fence, hoping to snap a picture of us through the glass atrium.

“Jesu Cristo,“ Theresa said, and she went to the phone to call the police again.

I sunk my chin down into my hand and went, “I just don’t see why you had to tell everybody that. I mean, it is so far from the truth.” I said this very clearly, so that Jack would hear. I mean, I wanted to make sure he knew that, if ever he changed his mind about Lucy, I was still available.

“How was I supposed to know what the truth is?” Lucy asked, primly. “You won’t tell me where the two of you disappeared to last night.”

I couldn’t believe she would even bring any of that up in front of Jack. Although seeing as how Lucy was unaware of Jack’s status as my soulmate, I guess I couldn’t really blame her.

“Because it isn’t any of your business!” I cried. “I mean, you don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together.”

“Ha!” Lucy stabbed a finger at me, her smile triumphant. “I knew it! You two are going out!”

“No, we aren’t,” I said. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. You just admitted it. You said, ”You don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together,“ which must mean you and David are going out, just like Jack and I are.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t mean that at all—”

My extremely lucid argument was interrupted, however, by Theresa, who, having gotten off the phone with the police, had then gone to intercept a package that had arrived by special delivery.

“For you,” she said, setting the package down in front of me. “From the White House, the man said.”

We all looked down at the package.

“See,” Lucy said. “It’s from David. I told you you two are going out.”

“It isn’t from David,” I said, opening it. “And we aren’t going out.”

The package turned out to be a packet of information about my new role as teen ambassador.

Lucy, seeing this, turned back to her magazine, clearly disappointed. But Jack got quite excited, reading all the little pamphlets and stuff.

“Look at this,” he said. “Hey. There’s going to be an international art show. From My Window, it’s called. ‘The show will feature teen artists from around the world, depicting, in a variety of media, what they see every day from their window’.”

Rebecca, who was going over her spreadsheets down at the other end of the table, went, “What about teens who don’t have windows? Such as the teen aliens who are being held against their will in Area 51? I don’t think they’re going to be represented, are they? Is that very fair?”

As usual, everyone ignored her.

“Hey,” Jack said, getting excited. Anything involving art excited Jack. “Hey, I’m going to enter this. You should too, Sam. They’re going to display each participating country’s winning entry at the UN for the month of May. That’s some great exposure. And it’s New York. I mean, you get something displayed in New York, you’ve got it made.”

I was reading the letter that had come along with the From My Window pamphlet.

“I can’t enter,” I said, with some astonishment. “I’m a judge.”

”A judge?” Jack was delighted to hear it. “That’s great! So I’ll enter, and you pick my painting, and I’ll be breaking into the New York City art scene in no time.”

Rebecca looked up from her spreadsheets and stared at Jack in disbelief. “Sam can’t do that,” she said. “That would be cheating!”

“It’s not cheating,” Jack said, “if my painting is the best.”

“Yeah, but what if it’s not?” Lucy wanted to know. She is the worst girlfriend. I never saw anyone so unsupportive of the man she supposedly loves!

“It will be,” Jack said with a shrug of his big shoulders, like that settled that.

Jack was right, of course: his painting would be best. Jack’s paintings were always the best. They had been good enough to get him into every single art show he’d ever applied to. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that next fall, in spite of his bad grades, lack of extracurriculars and poor attendance record, Jack would get into one of the top art schools in the country—Rhode Island School of Design or Parsons or even Yale. He was just that good.

And my opinion had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to be madly in love with him.

I pretty much managed to forget the whole David thing until Catherine called later that evening while I was trying to do my German homework.

“So,” she said. “Are you going to Kris’s party?”

“No way.”

“Why not?”

“Um, because Kris Parks is the spawn of Satan,” I said, in some surprise. “You know that better than anybody.”

There was this pause. Then Catherine said, slowly, “Yeah. I do know that. But I’ve always wanted to go to one of her parties.”

I couldn’t believe it. I actually took the phone away from my face and stared at it for a few seconds before putting it back up to my ear and going, “Cath, what are you talking about? After the way she’s always treated you?”

“I know,” Catherine said, sounding miserable. “But everyone always talks about Kris’s parties afterwards, like about how fun they were. I don’t know. She gave me an invitation too. And I was kind of thinking of going. If you were going, that is.”

“Well, I am not going,” I said. “Even Larry Wayne Rogers could not force me to go there, if he threatened to make me listen to ‘Uptown Girl’ fifty million times and break BOTH my arms.”

There was a pause. Then Catherine said the most surprising thing. She went, “Well, I kind of want to go.”

I was speechless. If Catherine had said she was thinking of shaving her head and joining the Hari Krishnas, I would not have been more surprised.

“You want to go to Kris Parks’s party?” I said it so loudly that Manet, who’d been sleeping on my bed with his head in my lap, woke up and looked around, startled. “Catherine, have you been using those fruit-scented markers again? Because I thought I told you that they make you all—”

“Sam, I’m serious,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded very small. “We never do stuff normal kids do.”

“That is so totally untrue,” I said. “Just last month we went to the Drama Club’s production of The Seagull, didn’t we?”

“Sam, we were like the only people in the audience who weren’t actually related to someone who was in the play. I just really want, for once in my life, to see what it feels like. To be, you know, part of the In Crowd. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

“Cath, I already know. I live with one of them, remember? And it isn’t pretty. There is a lot of hair gel involved.”

Catherine’s voice sounded small. “It’s just that I may never get another chance, you know?”

“Cath,” I said. “Kris Parks has been nothing but mean to you the whole time you’ve known her, and now you want to go to her house! I’m sorry, but that is just—”

“Sam,” Catherine said, still in that same small voice. “I met a boy.”

I nearly dropped the phone. “You what? You met a what?”

“A boy,” Catherine said, really fast, like if she didn’t get it all out at once, she’d never say it. “You don’t know him. He doesn’t go to Adams. He goes to Phillips Academy. His name is Paul. My parents know his parents from church. He’s always at Beltway Billiards when my brothers and I are there. He’s really nice. He has high score on Death Storm.”

I guess I was in shock or something, since all I could think of to say was, “But . . . what about Heath?”

“Sam, I have to face reality about Heath,” Catherine said, sounding braver than I’d ever heard her. “Even if I ever did get to meet him, no way is he going to go out with a high school girl. Besides, most of the time he lives in Australia. When am I ever going to be in Australia? My mom and dad barely even let me go to the mall by myself.”

I was still in shock. “But they’re going to let you go out with this Paul guy?”

“Well,” Catherine said. “Paul hasn’t exactly asked me out yet. I think he’s shy. That’s why I was thinking I’d ask him out. You know. To Kris’s party.”

I completely failed to see the logic behind this. “Cath, why don’t you ask him to go see a movie with you, or something? Why do you have to take him to Kris’s party?”

“Because Paul only knows me from church,” Catherine said. “And from Beltway Billiards. He doesn’t know I don’t hang with the In Crowd. He thinks I’m cool.”