“Then lay floors,” she said, sketching the bench beneath Terry. Suddenly, he was no longer floating in space.

“You have to build your house from the ground up, starting with all of the boring bits…the plumbing and the wiring. Do you see what I’m getting at here? By going in and drawing all of this detail here”—she indicated the portrait of Terry—“you’re decorating before you even have a house to stand in. You’ve got to stop concentrating so much on the parts,” she added, “and instead, start seeing the image as a whole.”

Susan, I realized, was right. I had been working so hard on getting Terry’s face exactly right, I had neglected the other three quarters of the page. So now it was this huge piece of paper with a tiny head on it.

“I get it,” I said. “Sorry. I guess I just got…you know, carried away.”

Susan sighed. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” she said softly. “Letting you and David take this class, I mean. I thought you were ready.”

I glanced at her kind of sharply.

“We are ready,” I said hastily. “I mean, I am. And David is, too. We both are.”

“I hope so,” Susan said with a faintly worried air. She laid a hand on my shoulder as she straightened and then walked away. “I really do.”

Not ready? Not ready for life drawing? As if! I worked furiously through the last fifteen minutes of class, anchoring Terry to a background, concentrating on showing the whole, and not the parts. I’d show Susan Boone who wasn’t ready. See if I didn’t!

But there wasn’t enough time to really do what I’d wanted, and at the end, when it came time to critique everyone’s drawings, Susan just shook her head at mine as it sat on the windowsill.

“You’ve rendered a highly realistic portrait of Terry,” she said, in a kind but firm voice, “but he’s still hanging in midair.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. What did she mean, I wasn’t ready? Who even cared about the stupid background? Wasn’t the subject of the drawing the most important thing?

Terry sure seemed to think so. He strolled over and was like, “Hey, are you gonna keep that?” and pointed at my drawing of him.

“Um,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to reply. The truth was, I had been about to wad the drawing up and throw it away. But I hesitated to admit it, because that would have been like saying I didn’t think a portrait of Terry was worth framing and hanging over my fireplace—like he wasn’t attractive enough, or something. And even though I thought he had a really weird job, I didn’t want to insult him.

“Why?” I asked. Always a nice, safe answer for just about any occasion.

“’Cause if you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” Terry said.

I was touched. More than touched. I was flattered. He liked my portrait of him! Despite the fact that it wasn’t integrated into any sort of background.

“Oh, sure,” I said, handing it over. “There you go.”

“Cool,” Terry said. Then, noticing that it lacked the artist’s signature, he went, “Could you sign it for me?”

“Of course,” I said, and did so, then handed it back.

“Cool,” Terry said, again, looking at my signature. “Now I have a drawing by the girl who saved the president.”

I realized then that that’s what he wanted—my autograph on a portrait of him, naked. Not that he’d especially liked my portrait.

But hey, I guess it was better than nothing.

“So,” David said, coming up behind me at the slop sink, where I was washing charcoal off my hands. “You ready?”

I have to admit, I kind of jumped. Not because he’d snuck up on me, but because of the question.

“I still haven’t had a chance to ask them,” I blurted out, spinning around to face him. “I’m really sorry, David. Things have just been so crazy at home with Lucy and this tutoring thing—”

David looked down at me as if I had grown horns from my forehead, like Hellboy.

“I meant about the town hall meeting at your school,” he said. “My dad said we’re giving you a lift.”

“Oh!” I laughed nervously. “That! Right! No, why should I be nervous?”

“No reason,” David said, a twinkle in his mossy green eyes. “I mean, it’s just MTV. Millions of people will be watching it. That’s all.”

The thing was, I’d had so much else to worry about, I hadn’t really had time to think about it. What I was going to say at the town hall meeting, and all. I mean, I’d read the stuff the press secretary had given me, and even done a tiny bit of independent reading on my own, but…

The truth was, I was way more nervous about what I was going to do about the whole Camp David situation than I was about going on TV.

“Aw,” I said. “It’ll be fine. It always is.”

Which is true. Going on TV with David’s dad always had been fine, in the past. Not that we’ve done it that many times—I mean, it’s not like we’ve ever paired up for Crossfire, or whatever. But I mean, like, at UN addresses, or the occasional fund-raiser that ended up being on C-Span.

And it had always worked out fine. I didn’t see how tonight would be any different.

Until David and I pulled up to Adams Prep, and I saw the protesters. `

That’s when I knew the town hall meeting was going to be very, very different than talking to a bunch of rich oil tycoons in a hotel ballroom. Because rich oil tycoons don’t generally have to be held back by dozens of police officers as they attempt to storm the car you and your boyfriend show up in.

Or wave big signs in your face that say KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF MY PANTYHOSE.

Or accuse you of betraying your generation when you try to get out of the car, shielded by Secret Service agents and police officers in riot gear.

Or try to hit you with an old turkey sandwich as you’re rushing into your school, which, for the evening, has been turned into a battle zone—them versus you.

But since that’s how it’s always been at Adams Prep—them versus me—I wasn’t all that fazed.

Except for the fact that I’m pretty sure that within that horde of screaming protesters I spotted a girl with Midnight Ebony and Pink Flamingo hair.


 

Top ten things that suck about going on television:

10. If you are a guest on a talk show or newscast, the person interviewing you will have cue cards or a TelePrompTer telling him or her what to say. You will not. You are just out there on your own. And if they ask you a question you don’t know the answer to, too bad for you.

9. Seeing yourself on the monitor. Yes, that really is how big your head looks to everyone else.

8. The five minutes before you actually go live. You’re sitting there, so nervous you want to puke, while everyone else runs around, having a good time. Because they aren’t the ones going on TV. So what do they care?

7. The makeup and hair person. No matter what you say, he/she will come up with a look for you that in no way resembles how you actually look in real life, and that will cause your grandmother to call you afterward and ask if you meant to look like Paris Hilton.

6. The host and/or reporter will ignore you, except when the camera is on, and then he/she will try to make it look as if you are best friends. That is just the way it is. Move on.

5. No matter what you might have heard to the contrary, the food from Craft Services in the green room will mostly be composed of whatever you hate most…in my case, this always means tomatoes.

4. You will never get your own dressing room, but will instead have to share the ladies’ room with two quilting bee finalists from Pennsylvania who will keep going on about how nervous they are until you want to scream.

3. Inevitably, someone at the studio will call his or her niece or nephew on his or her cell phone and make you say hello to him or her, because you are the girl who saved the president, and the niece or nephew is a big fan of yours.

2. Then, when you get on the phone, the niece or nephew won’t have the slightest idea who you are.

And the number-one worst thing about going on television:

1. Right after the camera turns off, and you remember everything that just came out of your mouth.

And you want to die.


11

“I’m so excited,” Kris kept saying.

She didn’t have to keep telling me. I could tell she was excited by the way she kept jumping up and down and squeezing my arm.

I guess I should have been excited, too. I mean, the president of the United States was going to be addressing the youth of America from my very own school.

But since I pretty much hate my school, it was hard to summon up any kind of enthusiasm over the fact that Adams Prep was about to get its fifteen minutes of fame…well, forty minutes, actually, if you factored in commercials.

Plus there was the small fact that outside the school were about a thousand people who really weren’t all that jazzed about what we were going to say.

But Kris’s conviction that her beloved alma mater was about to get its well-deserved due wasn’t what had Kris so excited. And the protesters weren’t even within her radar. No, she was practically delirious with joy over the fact that she was going to get to meet the president…

…not to mention Random Alvarez, the hottest VJ around.

“There he is,” she kept saying, bouncing around beside me. “Look at him! He’s so smart!”

Occasionally, she would say, “He’s so hot.” That was the only way I could tell who she was talking about. Smart meant the president. Hot meant Random Alvarez. Both men were in hair and makeup, getting ready for the show.

“It’s too big,” Random kept saying to the stylist who was trying to get him ready to go on. “It’s sticking up too much!”