All-American Girl by Meg Cabot Page A

dinner ?”
    â€œI didn’t take a bullet for him,” I reminded her. “And it’s dinner at the White House. And could we please stick to the subject at hand? What am I going to say to Susan Boone?”
    â€œAnybody can have dinner at the White House if they pay enough money.” Catherine sounded truly disgusted. “I would think you’d get something better than just dinner . You should at least get a medal of valor, or something.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “maybe I will. Maybe they’ll give it to me at dinner. Now, what should I say when I call Susan Boone?”
    â€œSamantha,” Catherine said in a voice that was as close to impatient as I’d ever heard her speak. “They don’t hand out medals at dinner. They have a special ceremony for that. And you saved the president’s life. Your drawing teacher is not going to care that you skipped her stupid class.”
    â€œI don’t know, Cath,” I said. “I mean, Susan Boone is very seriousabout art. She might be calling to kick me out of her class, or something.”
    â€œSo? I would think you’d want to be kicked out. I thought you hated it, right?”
    I thought about that. Had I hated it? Well, not the drawing part. That had been pretty fun. And the part where David had said he liked my boots.
    But the rest of it—the part where Susan Boone had tried to wipe out my right to creative expression and keep me from drawing from my heart, totally humiliating and embarrassing me in front of all those people, including, I knew now, the son of the president of the United States—that had been pretty mortifying.
    On the whole, I decided, getting kicked out of Susan Boone’s art class would not be a bad thing at all.
    So as soon as I hung up with Catherine, I dialed Susan Boone’s number, anxious to get the whole thing over with already.
    â€œUm, hi,” I said, hesitantly, when she picked up. “This is Samantha Madison.”
    â€œOh, hello,” Susan Boone said. I heard a familiar cawing in the background. So Joe the crow didn’t live at the studio, but traveled to and from it with his owner. Some life for a big, ugly, hair-stealing bird. “Thank you for returning my call, Samantha.”
    â€œUm, no problem,” I said. Then, after a deep breath, I took the plunge: “Listen, I’m really sorry about the other day. I don’t know if you heard what happened—”
    Susan Boone surprised me by chuckling. “Samantha, there isn’t a human being south of the North Pole who hasn’t heard what happened to you outside my studio yesterday.”
    â€œOh,” I said. Then I hurried to spill out the lie I’d made up. If I had been Jack, I’d have just told her the truth; you know, that I’dresented her attempt to subjugate my artistic integrity.
    But since I am not Jack, I just blabbed the first thing that came into my head:
    â€œThe thing is, the reason I wasn’t in class was because it was raining really hard, you know, and I got really wet, and I didn’t want to come to class wet, you know, so I stopped into Static to dry off, you know, before class, and then I don’t know what happened, but I guess I just sort of lost track of time, and before I knew it—”
    â€œNever mind that, Samantha.” Susan Boone, to my great surprise, had interrupted me. I will admit it wasn’t the greatest lie, but it had been the best I could come up with. “Let’s talk about your arm.”
    â€œMy arm?” I looked down at my cast. I was already getting so used to it, it was like it had always been there.
    â€œYes. Was the arm you broke the one you draw with?”
    â€œUm. No.”
    â€œGood. Then I’ll see you in class on Tuesday?”
    I had an ungenerous thought, then. I thought that Susan Boone, like Coke and Pepsi, only wanted me to stay in her art school so she could use my celebrity