Confessions of a First Daughter (18 page)

“I hope Konner won’t be mad that I’m super late for the dance,” I said.

“Guess he’ll have to learn to deal. Now hold still.” Hannah carefully settled a line of false eyelashes on my lid and blew the glue dry. “When I’m done, no one will ever suspect that a half hour ago, you were the president of the United States.”

“Thank gawd.” I waited until Hannah finished gluing the other eye with false lashes. “I couldn’t have pulled it off without you, Hans. I know it’s hard to be my friend sometimes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, all the paparazzi issues, and, uh, me impersonating the president, and hanging with someone continually on academic probation—”

“Hang on, who hooked me up with Prince Richard—helloooo? And who makes me laugh basically every day I’m with her? And is the nicest person I know? Yeah, real punishment, Morgan.”

We grinned at each other.

“Thanks for being there for me,” I said.

“That’s what BFFs are for,” she replied. “Now back to important business.”

Hannah’s mad skills with makeup transformed me into a vixen with smoky eyes. She made herself look super killer in a scarlet jersey number she’d pulled out of her Louis Vuitton travel bag—wrinkle-free fabric, she explained. She twisted bandeaus through her hair and dusted us both with a hint of body glitter.

I regarded us in the scratched mirror. We looked awesome.

“Let’s go get our dance on,” I said to her, excitement bubbling up. I was soooo ready to cut loose on the dance floor. Freedom!

Max’s jaw loosened when we emerged from the shelter’s bathroom. This time I could feel myself blushing.

“You look…” He cleared his throat. “Beautiful.”

We stared at each other for a couple of heartbeats.

Max seemed to mentally shake himself. He got back on track and the detail swept us out of the shelter.

“Not bad, sistah,” Hannah whispered to me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked innocently.

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re making Max’s job hard.”

I guess I didn’t think of it that way.

Out front, journalists and camera crews surrounded Mom and peppered her with questions.

“—when did the breakthrough between the Mfuso and Welak juntas occur—”

“—will there be a formal announcement of the cease-fire soon—”

“—what sort of aid will the U.S. render to the war-torn area—”

Mom held up her hand and the journalists quieted. “A formal announcement will be made tomorrow, but yes, a cease-fire between General Mfuso and the Democratic People’s Army has been agreed upon. The secretary of state will provide details on the negotiations. It’s not a solution, but it’s progress.”

What Dad calls journo-flurry erupted again, with more questions being thrown at Mom.

Mom had called an end to the questions and was beginning to ease away from the bank of microphones. Brittany Whittaker stepped out of the shadows of the shelter, a big bouquet of those horrible lilies in her arms. With a plastered smile, she asked Parker, my mom’s Secret Service agent, if she could give them to my mother.

“Sure,” Mom said when Parker started to shake his head. “You’re one of Morgan’s classmates, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” Brittany said. Then her sugary voice changed. “But YOU are not the president, you’re—
Morgan Abbott
.”

Her manicured talons reached out and yanked my mom’s hair.

Max says that Secret Service agents are trained to tackle first, ask questions later. I couldn’t really get a good look at Brittany under a dog pile of agents and the blinding flash of a thousand cameras capturing this particular Kodak moment.

“Did I just dream that?” I asked Hannah as we entered the Baby Beast.

She was laughing so hard, I thought we were going to have to hospitalize her. “If that was a dream, don’t wake me up.”

I regarded the swarm of camera crews jostling to get a photo of Brittany down on the ground. “I guess
she’ll
find out tomorrow that not all publicity is good publicity.”

“Karma, baby. Karma.”

Chapter twenty-five

We cut through the traffic knotted around
Dupont Circle and the never-ending gridlock on K Street with the presidential motorcade in full-on siren mode. Konner wasn’t answering his cell, but that didn’t surprise me. He’d be in his element at the homecoming dance, hanging with his buds, basking in his popularity. I sent him a text message and hoped he’d check it before I got there.

We arrived at the front doors of the Academy of the Potomac’s gym an hour late.

Max professionally cleared a zone around the car door, shooing away the people who were trying to gawk at the interior of the Baby Beast (no, we don’t have a microwave oven or a rocket launcher inside presidential limos) before he helped Hannah and me out of the car.

Konner was nowhere to be seen.

But surprisingly I wasn’t disappointed at all. Only slightly ticked off. I mean, Konner had made such a big deal about taking me to the dance. The least he could do was meet me at the door.

Inside the gym, Brittany’s decorating committee had gone a bit over the top. It looked like the colors pink and purple had thrown up in there. Petals from wilted flowers dribbled over the gym floor, where they were stomped to pitiful brown bits. Colored gels over the lights turned everyone’s skin an insane shade of green and yellow.

“Whoa. I think Alice got lost on her way down the rabbit hole,” Hannah said over the music pumping through the gym’s loudspeakers. “Too bad Brits isn’t here. She’d really enjoy how she’s made the whole school look like they have impetigo.” She pointed to a group of classmates gathered around a cell phone replaying a downloaded video of the president’s press conference at the point when Brittany got tackled to the ground. “I’m not sure she’d like that very much, though.”

“Max says they took her down to the Central Detention Facility,” I said.

“The D.C. jail? Wow,” Hannah said.

“The Secret Service doesn’t mess around if you attack the president. But I’m sure Congressman Whittaker will spring her pretty quickly.”

The music switched to a slow song. Couples jostled and rearranged into clusters.

Leaving me a clear view of Konner draped all over Mya, the head cheerleader.

He held her hips and the two of them slowly swayed. She didn’t seem to mind the way his eyes were locked on her boobs, which mounded over the edge of her low neckline.

Someone nudged him and whispered in his ear. He sprang away from Mya so fast she stumbled. “Pig!” she yelled as he sauntered toward me.

“Hey, babe.” Konner raised his arms all gangsta, then lowered them around my shoulders. “I’ve been waiting forever for you to show up. I missed you.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Ugh. I feel my dinner coming up. I’ll catch you later, Morgan.”

“Okay, Hannah.” I pushed Konner away. “So you’ve been missing me?”

“Yeah. Hey, I hope you’re not getting the wrong idea about Mya. She felt bad for me because you were late.”

“So she was just being nice.”

Konner gave me one of his lopsided grins. “Yeah. Being nice.” He lowered his mouth to mine, but I jerked away.

Puzzlement glimmered on his brow. “Don’t get mad, babe. Look, I got you a corsage and everything because you’re so special to me.”

He opened his suit jacket and pulled out a crushed corsage.

Lilies.

My abused nose began tickling immediately. “Get those things away from me.”

“Why? I thought all girls liked flowers.”

“Because I’m allergic to lilies, Konner! Ahhhhh—” I let loose a huge sneeze. I took the corsage and threw it at his chest.

“Man, Morgan, why are you getting so worked up?”

I gave a disbelieving laugh. “You don’t know me at all. You’ve never even tried to get to know me. The only thing I am to you is the president’s daughter. A trophy, not a girlfriend. I see that now.”

“Hey. Don’t go mental just because I forgot you have an allergy. I can’t be expected to remember everything about you.”

“We’re finished, Konner. And this time it’s for good.” I spun around and began walking away.

“Oh yeah?” Konner called after me. “Well, I’ve had enough of you and your mind games, Morgan Abbott. It’s over.”

“Whatever.”

I reached Max, who had stationed himself by the doorway as usual. I didn’t have to say anything to him. I realized now that I never had to say anything to Max. He always understood.

“Ready, Morgan?” Max held his elbow out and I took it.

“Yes. Take me home, Max.”

“You got it.”

I sent Hannah a text message from the limo:

i’m outtie text when u want limo to p/u up

ok wat about Konner?

it’s over

u ok?

i’m better than ok—talk tomorrow, ya?

ya. g’nite

nite

Max said nothing as the sparkly Washington skyline slipped past. I knew we had to talk, but right now, I just needed to think. So much had happened in the past few weeks, I felt like a different Morgan Abbott. Maybe I grew up a little. Maybe I learned that I could handle whatever life as the nation’s First Daughter could dish out.

Back at the White House, quiet hushed along the corridors. Most of the staff was still detailed at the media event at Trisha Jackson’s homeless shelter, while Mom was putting in some overtime with the secretary of state to implement the peace accords she’d hammered out with the African military juntas.

I was sitting in my room when my cell phone chirped. A text message appeared:

Meet me in the East Room

Max. It had to be.

Feeling breathless and tingly all at the same time, I ran barefoot down the Cross Hall’s red-and-gold carpet, still wearing the violet silk mini. Portraits of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford gazed down at me, and I wondered if my mother’s portrait would eventually hang between one of the neoclassical pillars. The first female president in two and a half centuries of male presidents.

That was gonna be awesome.

At the entrance to the East Room, I patted the marble head of President Lincoln sitting atop an obsidian pillar. “What do you think, Abe? Did Mom and I pull it off today?”

“I think
you
pulled it off.”

I jumped clean out of my skin. “Max!”

He was leaning against the doorway to the East Room. He’d taken off his tie and unbuttoned his collar, and his hair stood up in a way that made my heart stutter just a teensy bit. Okay, a lot.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

My heart switched into overdrive.

Next to the Red Room, the East Room was my favorite. The room was huge. Mom hosted major events here: concerts, balls, banquets. Gold wallpaper coated the walls, and matching gold drapes swagged over the tall windows overlooking the South Lawn. I used to Rollerblade across the parquet floors until the White House usher put a stop to it after I crashed into the priceless Steinway piano and left a
barely noticeable
dent on one of the legs.

Tables from the aborted ABLC banquet had been pushed against the wall, leaving the floor in the middle of the room cleared. The crystal chandeliers had been dimmed to a romantic glow.

“What’s that music?” I asked when I heard the sounds of a slow pop song drift through the room.

“I’m sorry you had to leave your homecoming dance early,” Max said.

“Don’t be. I’m not sorry.”

“So you and Konner…?”

“Finished.”

Max smiled his rare smile. And it was even more devastating than one of Konner’s. It lit his whole face up, and I knew this smile was genuine.

“Dance with me?”

I hesitated. “Won’t you get in trouble? I thought Secret Service agents weren’t supposed to ‘fraternize with their protectees.’”

“I’m not your Secret Service agent anymore.”

My heart, which had been pounding against my chest, stalled. “Did you say you’re not my agent anymore?” Crap! What had I done?

“Yep.” He drew me in his arms, and began to circle with me in a slow step.

Good lord. I’d forgotten how great Max slow-danced.

I tried to stay cool. “I’m really sorry if I got you in trouble again, Max.”

“Morgan—”

“I’ll get your job back, I promise.”

“Morgan—”

“I’ll talk to my mom….”

“I wasn’t fired.” Max’s head came a little closer to mine. “I asked to be reassigned.”

I swallowed hard. “Why?”

“Because—” He tilted my head up. “I’d rather be your boyfriend than your bodyguard.”

Let me just state for the record, right here, right now. Max Jackson kissed better than he danced.

And you can quote me.

About the Author

Cassidy Calloway
lives in New Jersey with her fat cat called Kennedy, but she loves visiting Washington, D.C. She wanted to be president of the United States when she grew up but decided to write about it instead. She has a passion for designer shoes and white-chocolate gingersnaps.