I climbed into the backseat without saying anything because what was there, really, to say?

David got in on the other side and shut the door. The inside of the Secret Service’s car was very clean. It smelled new. I hate new car smell. I thought about rolling down the window, but it was pretty cold out.

Then John slid behind the wheel and said, “We all set?”

David said, “I’m all set.” He looked at me. “You all set?”

“Um,” I said. “Yes.”

“We’re all set,” David said, to which John replied, “All right, then,” and we started to move. I kept my face averted from the window, since I noticed that my parents had come out on to the front porch and were standing there, waving to us. A reporter who hadn’t gotten his camera smashed took a picture of that, since taking pictures of David and me was so obviously verboten. I hoped my mom and dad would enjoy seeing a big colour photograph of themselves in tomorrow morning’s USA Today or whatever.

Inside the car, it was very quiet. Too quiet. There are only three things it’s OK to talk to guys about, Lucy had instructed me, earlier in the day, though I had not, actually, consulted her about this. Those things are:

1) him

2) you and him

3) yourself

Start by talking about him. Then slowly introduce the topic of you and him. Then swing the conversation around to yourself. And keep it there.

But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to say any of the things Lucy had advised me to say. I mean, the first thing, about complimenting his car, hadn’t really gone over all that well. I realized that, in going out with the President’s son, I was crossing into uncharted territory, the kind even Lucy had never before encountered. I was on my own here. It was a little scary, but I figured I could handle it.

I mean, it wasn’t as if he were Jack.

“Um,” I said, as John pulled on to 34th Street. “Sorry about my parents.”

“Oh,” David said, with a laugh. “No problem. So where to? What do you feel like eating?”

Since I only ever feel like eating one thing—hamburgers—I was not certain how to answer this question. Fortunately, David went on, “I made reservations at a couple of places. There’s Vidalia. It’s supposed to be pretty nice. And the Four Seasons. I didn’t know if you’d ever been there. Or there’s Kinkead’s, though I know how you feel about fish.”

I listened to this in growing panic. Reservations? He’d made reservations‘? I hardly ever found anything I liked to eat in restaurants that required reservations.

I don’t know if David was able to read the trepidation in my face, or if it was my silence that was more telling. In any case, he went, “Or we could blow the reservations off and get a pizza, or something. There’s some place I hear a lot of people go to—Luigi’s or something?”

Luigi’s was where Lucy and her crowd would be going before Kris’s party. While I knew we were going to see all of them in a few hours anyway, I didn’t think I could handle sitting at a table in front of all of them with David, knowing the whole time that we were all anyone in the restaurant was talking about. I doubted I’d be able to keep anything down. Besides, Jack would be there. How would I be able to pay attention to a thing David was saying when Jack was anywhere in the nearby vicinity?

“. . . or,” David said, with another glance at my face, “we could just grab a burger somewhere—”

“That sounds good,” I said, hoping I sounded appropriately nonchalant.

He gave one of those little secretive smiles. “Burgers it is, then,” he said. “John, make it Jake’s. And could we have a little music, please?”

John said, “Sure thing,” and hit a button in the dashboard.

And then Gwen Stefani’s voice filled the car.

No Doubt. David was a No Doubt fan.

I should have known, of course. I mean, anybody who likes Reel Big Fish has to like No Doubt. It’s like a law.

Still, it freaked me out when I realized David had Gwen in the car stereo. Because you know if I had a car, that’s who would be in my stereo too. Gwen, I mean.

And the weirdest part was, my heart did that thing again. Really. That flippy thing, as soon as I heard Gwen’s voice. Only not because, you know, of Gwen. No, it was because I realized then that David liked Gwen. Was that what Rebecca had been talking about? Was that frisson?

But how could I feel frisson for one person when my heart belonged to someone else? It didn’t make any sense. I mean, the only reason I had asked David out in the first place was to make Catherine happy. And maybe to make Jack jealous. I mean, I was completely and irrevocably in love with my sister’s boyfriend, who would one day realize that I, and not Lucy, am the girl for him.

So what was with the frisson already?

Figuring if I ignored it, maybe it would go away, I commenced doing so. And you know what? For a while, I thought it did. I mean, not that we didn’t have a good time, or anything. Jake’s, the place we went for dinner, was totally my kind of joint ... a dive in Foggy Bottom, with sticky tabletops and dim lighting. Nobody there paid the slightest bit of attention to the fact that I was the girl who saved the President, and that David was his son. In fact, I don’t think anybody looked at us at all, except the waitress, and of course John and the other Secret Service agents, who sat at a table a little ways from ours.

And even though I’d been worried about what to talk about, it turned out I didn’t have to fall back on Lucy’s rules at all. David started telling me these funny stories about the crazy things that people who come to tour the White House have left behind—like retainers, and one time a pair of corduroy pants—and after that, the conversation just flowed.

And when the burgers came, they were a little burnt on the outside, just the way I like them, and no one had put fresh vegetables, like tomatoes or onions or lettuce, on or anywhere near them. The fries were the skinny crispy kind too, not the fat soggy kind, which taste all gross and potato-y.

Then David told me this story about how when he was a little kid, and his mom and dad would ask him to set the table, as a joke he would set one place with the giant oversized fork and spoon that were supposed to be used to serve salad.

And every single time, he said, his parents would laugh, even though he did it practically every night.

Inspired by this, I told him about the time in Morocco I tried to flush my dad’s credit cards down the toilet. Which is actually something I’ve never told anybody before, except for Catherine. It wasn’t as cute as the giant serving spoon and fork story, but it was all I had.

Then David told me about how much he resented having to leave his old friends and move to DC, and how much he hates Horizon where everyone is super competitive and all the emphasis is on science and not the arts, and people who like to draw, like him, are looked down on. I so knew where he was coming from with that one, only of course at Adams Prep it’s all about athletics.

So then I told him how I had to go to Speech and Hearing, and how everyone thought I was in Special Ed. And then, for some reason, I told him about the celebrity drawings too, and how because of them I’d ended up with a C-minus in German and a mandatory trip to Susan Boone’s.

It was at some point during this part of the conversation that David’s knees accidentally touched mine underneath the table. He apologized and moved them out of the way. Then, about five minutes later, it happened again.

Only this time, he didn’t move them. Or apologize. I didn’t know what to do. Lucy had not mentioned this on her list of things that could possibly happen.

But I noticed the frisson starting to come back. Like, all of a sudden, I was conscious of the fact that David was a boy. I mean, of course I’d always known he was a boy, and a good-looking one, too. But somehow when his knees touched mine like that beneath the table—and stayed there—I became really, really aware that David was a boy.

And suddenly I felt shy and couldn’t think of anything to say—which was weird because like two minutes before, I’d been having no trouble in that department. I couldn’t meet his eyes, either. I don’t know why, but it was like they were too green or something. Plus all of a sudden I felt hot, even though it was perfectly comfortable inside the restaurant.

I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me. But I knew none of it had been going before his knees touched mine. So I moved around a little in my seat, thinking maybe if I broke, you know, the contact, things would be better.

And they sort of were, but I guess not really, since David looked at me—no secret smile on his face at all now—and went, “Are you OK?”

“Sure,” I said, in a voice that was way more high-pitched than my usual one.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said, those two green eyes searching my face in a manner I found infinitely alarming. “You look kind of ... flushed.”

That’s when I had the brilliant idea of looking at my mermaid Swatch and going, “Oh, my God, would you look at the time? We better go, if we want to get to the party.”

I kind of got the feeling that David would have been happy to skip the party entirely. But not me. I wanted to get there, and get there fast. Because at the party I’d be safe from frisson.

Because at the party would be Jack.

“Oh my God, you came!”