But then I was on the six o’clock news a couple of times, and Kris decided I was her new best friend. I guess the fact that I’m dating the president’s son outweighs the fact that I don’t own a stitch of Lilly Pulitzer. Which, in Kris’s book, makes you one of those Untouchables Rebecca and I learned about on National Geographic Explorer.

“Listen, I was wondering if we could count on you to help us set up the gym next week,” Kris said with a simper (SAT word meaning “to smile in a silly, affected, or conceited manner”). “You know, for the town hall meeting….”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, to make her go away.

“Swell,” Kris said. Trust Kris to say something like “swell.” It was almost as bad as me saying something like “I’m peachy” upon seeing my first you-know-what. “We can really use the help. So far the only people who’ve volunteered are, you know, the student council members. And Right Way, of course. It’s really embarrassing. I mean, that the president is going to be announcing this important new program from right here in our own school, and most of the kids in this school are so apathetic about it. I really hope he doesn’t think we’re all like that. The president, I mean. I really want to make us look good in front of him. And Random Alvarez. I mean, he’s just so hot—” Then she got a good look at my head. “What happened to your—” She broke off and bit her lip. “Never mind.”

“My hair?” I reached up to finger it. “I dyed it. Why? Don’tcha like it?”

I knew Kris didn’t like my hair. Preps like Kris aren’t into Midnight Ebony. I was just torturing her for the fun of it.

“Oh, no, it’s really nice.” Kris seemed to recover herself. “It’s permanent?”

“Semi,” I said. “Why?”

“No reason,” Kris said with a bright smile. “Looks great!”

I knew Kris was lying, and not just because her lips were moving. I had given myself a fully objective examination in the bathroom mirror just that morning, and I knew for a fact that Lucy was right: My new black hair looked stupid. Maybe if I had dyed my eyebrows to match, it might not have looked so bad.

But I hadn’t done it as a fashion statement so much as a statement statement…that statement being, “Say so long to red-haired, goody-two-shoes, president-saving Samantha Madison, and say hello to life-drawing, possibly-soon-not-to-be-a-virgin Sam.”

Of course, the fact that I’d dyed my hair before my first life drawing lesson, and then decided to rid myself of my virginity (possibly), was just symbolic of how far I’d come from the pre-dye, red-headed me.

“This Return to Family initiative of the president’s,” Kris went on, studiously ignoring my hair. “I hope you’ll tell him how excited we all are about it here at Adams Prep, and that we’re behind him one hundred and ten percent. I mean, family is the most important thing.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, who isn’t pro-family?” That’s what I said. But inside my head, I was going, Why won’t you die, Kris Parks? Why?

“Maybe you’d be interested in coming to a Right Way meeting sometime?” Kris glanced at Catherine, as if aware for the first time that I wasn’t standing there alone. “You and your, uh, friend.”

Kris knows perfectly well what Catherine’s name is. She was just being what she is, a preppy uber-snob.

Which she illustrated a second later by going, as a girl in an Adams Prep dance team uniform walked by in her flippy purple skirt, “Oh my God, did you hear about Debra Mullins? She supposedly hooked up with Jeff Rothberg under the bleachers after the Trinity game last week. She’s such a slut.” Then she added, cheerfully, to me, “Well, see you in the gym Monday!”

“Oh, we’ll be there,” I said, just to get Kris to leave.

It worked. She left us to order our double cheeseburgers in peace.

“God, I hate her,” Catherine said.

“Tell me about it.”

“No, I mean, I really hate her.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“Yeah, but at least she sucks up to you. On account of David. She’d never call you a slut. I mean, if you and David ever, you know, hooked up. And she found out.” Then, Catherine added, with a laugh, “Like that’s ever going to happen.”

I didn’t know which Catherine found more unlikely—the prospect of David and me ever having sex, or Kris finding out about it. I wasn’t about to let her know that the former was more imminent (SAT word meaning “threatening to occur immediately; near at hand; impending”) than she might expect. Not because I didn’t trust her to keep it a secret. I’d trust Catherine with my life.

It was just that I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do. About Thanksgiving, I mean. I hadn’t had a chance to tell David yet that my mom and dad had actually said yes to my spending the weekend with him at Camp David.

Which I was still sort of mad about. Their saying yes, I mean. It was so obvious that they’d only said yes because they’d been distracted by Lucy and her SAT score situation. I mean, God forbid Mom and Dad should pay attention to me for a change. As usual, the middle child was getting the short end of the stick, attention-wise, in the Madison household.

Although I guess I couldn’t totally blame Lucy for their saying yes. The fact is, my parents have this perception that I’m the Good Kid. You know, the one who, yeah, might try to dye her hair black, but who ultimately is going to throw herself on an assassin to save the president. Nobody worries too much about a kid like that. A kid like that would never do something as reprehensible as sleep with her boyfriend over Thanksgiving weekend.

It would so serve my parents right if I became an unwed teen mother.

Still, I wasn’t about to mention any of this to Catherine. She has enough to deal with, what with her mom not letting her wear pants to school—seriously, she has to wear below-the-knee skirts, even in P.E.—and the mockery this brings with it. I’m not about to add to Catherine’s troubles the fact that her best friend is considering losing the big V.

Besides, it isn’t anybody’s business, really. Anybody’s but my own.

“Whoa,” Dauntra said, when I burst through the door to Potomac Video with just a minute to spare before my after-school shift started. “You did it!”

I didn’t know what she was talking about at first. I thought she meant that I’d decided to have sex with my boyfriend, and wondered how she’d known. Especially since I hadn’t decided any such thing. Yet.

Then I remembered my hair.

“Yeah,” I said. I have to admit, her reaction—which was actually admiring—made all the What did you do to your hair?’s I’d gotten in school today totally worth it. Around Potomac Video—just like around my own home—I am perceived as somewhat of a goody-goody. I mean, I’m the girl who saved the president, the girl who doesn’t need that $6.75 an hour to pay for childcare or whatever. I’m considered something of a freak around there.

Until, of course, I dyed my hair. Now, I was cool.

I hoped.

Because the clerks at Potomac Video? They’re way cool.

Especially Dauntra, with whom, along with Stan, the night manager, I work on Friday nights. Her motto (taped to her employee locker): Question authority. Her favorite movie :A Clockwork Orange. Her political party: not the same as David’s dad. In fact, one of the first things she ever asked me was, “Has it ever occurred to you that if you had just let him get shot, you might have spared us all a lot of grief?”

And while this might be true, I don’t think even Dauntra could have stood there and just watched someone point a gun at someone else, no matter how different her political views were from that person’s. Especially, as I’d pointed out to her, considering the fact that, much as people might dislike the president—and judging from the latest polls, people disliked him very, very much—I knew someone who loved him a lot. Namely his son, my boyfriend, David. No matter how much he might disagree with some of the things his dad has done during his administration, David’s affection for his father never wavered.

And for that reason—not to mention the fact that, really, I’d had no choice in the matter. I hadn’t so much acted that day as reacted—I was glad I’d done what I had.

“Now that,” Dauntra said with approval, nodding at my hair, “is what I’m talking about.”

“You like it?” I threw my backpack into my employee locker. Later, before I leave, Stan will go through it, to make sure I haven’t ripped off any DVDs. My backpack, I mean. Even though I was the store’s token goody-goody, everyone’s bag gets searched before they leave. Even mine. It’s the Potomac Video way.

Although certain of its employees are trying to change that.

“I love the black,” Dauntra said. “It makes your face look thinner.”

“I don’t know if thin-faced was the look I was going for,” I said. “But thanks.”

“You know what I mean.” Dauntra, whose hair is two-toned, Midnight Ebony and Pink Flamingo, fiddled with her eyebrow ring. “What did your parents say? Did they lose it?”

“Not really,” I said, ducking back behind the counter. “They barely noticed, actually.”

Dauntra made a disgusted noise.

“God, what are you going to have to do to get their attention, anyway?” she wanted to know. “Have a baby at the prom?”

“Um,” I said, choking a little on the diet Dr Pepper I’d bought at the convenience mart next door before my shift. Because, you know, considering recent events, my having a baby at the prom isn’t totally out of the realm of the possible. “Yeah. Ha. That would probably do it, all right. But, you know, there’s something to be said for maintaining a low profile. Right now they’re all over Lucy, on account of her SAT scores.”

Dauntra’s look of disgust deepened. “When are people going to get that that stupid test doesn’t mean anything? I mean, what does it measure? How well you paid attention in class the past decade of your life? Please. Like that can tell a college admissions office anything about how well you’re going to do for the next four years while you’re at their school.”