Long May She Reign (80 page)

Their professor looked at all of them with beady “I thought I was teaching
college
, not kindergarten” eyes, and they subsided.

Before she had made her tardy appearance, their lab reports and midterms must have been handed back, because George, one of their TAs, came tromping up the stairs with hers. He was a wide, fairly untidy guy, and when he tripped right before he got to her, the papers went flying, more people laughed, and Meg had to cough to keep from joining in.

Dr. Wilkins waited, balefully silent, as George scrambled after the papers, and then laboriously continued up the stairs and gave them to her.

“Thanks,” Meg said, very, very quietly.

“She
hates
it when people walk in late,” he muttered.

Meg nodded—since she had gotten snippy every single time it had happened all semester, and most of the class had long since decided that if they weren't on time, it was better to skip it entirely, rather than show up and be castigated.

George tripped again on his way back down to the front—triggering more laughs, but managed to stay on his feet, and make it into his chair without further incident.

“Well,” Dr. Wilkins said, in a clipped voice. “
If
I may continue.”

No one suggested otherwise, and she resumed discussing their exams.

Meg was afraid to check her grades, and peeked at the lab report first, relieved to see an A-. And it turned out that she had gotten a 94 on the test, so that was okay, too. She pretended to follow along as Dr. Wilkins went over the correct answers, but she took some time to use the bottom of her already-sodden sweatshirt to wipe coffee residue from her splint. It was probably going to be hard as hell to get the stains out of the shirt—she would have to call Trudy, in case she knew some special trick—and since it was Opening Day, she was just superstitious enough to wonder whether it was a bad omen for the entire season, and whether she had inadvertently doomed the Red Sox to a year of mediocrity.

She spent most of the class thinking about baseball—
actual
baseball, as opposed to baseball in England—and took almost no notes, even though Dr. Wilkins outlined, in depth, what they were going to be doing for the rest of the semester. With her cane and brace, she was no longer capable of making a quick getaway, so when class was over, she had to make a calculated guess about whether she could make it out the door first, or if she should just keep a very low, slouching profile until Dr. Wilkins had left the amphitheater. But, a small group of students was already gathering down in the front, holding their exams, and it looked as though her professor would be occupied by people complaining about their grades for a while.

“Well, take
you
out to the ballgame,” Jack said, grinning at her.

To celebrate the day, in addition to her now-soaked sweatshirt, she was wearing a Red Sox cap and actual red socks below her sweatpants.

Which probably didn't make today that different from most other days.

But, it was nice that there didn't seem to be any lingering tension from their verbal scuffle the night before. “Think I put the whammy on them?” she asked.

Jack nodded. “Definitely. It's going to be all your fault if they lose this year.”

If they really
did
have a bad season, she would have to make sure that Steven never found out about her moment of carelessness, since he would not find it funny.

“What'd you get?” Jack asked, gesturing towards the cluster of grade complainers.

“Ninety-four,” Meg said. “What about you?”

“Ninety-six,” he said.

Oh
. It would be petty to be jealous, so she would choose to see that as a fluke. One of Susan's statistical anomalies. “What about your lab report?” she asked.

He shrugged. “A.”

That meant a straight A, then, not an A-.

Not that she cared.

At all.

God-damn it.

“You didn't study, Meg,” he said.

The
hell
she didn't. “You sat right there in Goodrich and watched me,” she said defensively. On more than one occasion.

He shook his head.

Oh, for Christ's sakes. She hated revisionist history. “I see. Were you in the midst of a fugue?” she asked.

He held the door for her. “No.
I
studied. You drank a bunch of coffee, and looked around the room, and thought about whatever the hell it is that you think about.”

It still counted as studying. Sort of.

“Did you even do all of the reading?” he asked.

There might have been a few sections she had only skimmed. Hmmm.

“So, maybe it bothers
me
that I studied like hell, and you got an A without even half trying,” he said.

She had no effective counter-argument to that, so she chose not to make one.

Once they were outside, the light was much brighter, and he grinned when he saw the extent of the damage to her sweatshirt.

“I'll swap shirts with you, if you want to put on something dry,” he said.

A very nice offer, since she wouldn't have anywhere close to enough time to go all the way back up to her room for a fresh shirt, and still get to her Shakespeare class. Except that he was wearing a battered yellow t-shirt which read “I Are A Idiot,” and she might be better off presenting mere coffee stains to the outside world. “Thanks,” she said, “but I can't change out here, because I'm not wearing anything underneath.”

It looked almost as though someone had lit a match behind his eyes. “What?” he asked.

They both bloody well knew that he'd heard her correctly the first time.

“Ow, wow,” he said, and watched her chest intently as she limped along. “Oh, what a treat.”

It was a thick, oversized sweatshirt; how could anything possibly show through that?

He stopped her then, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Want to skip out of your English class, and I'll blow off econ?”

Yeah, right. What a one-track mind.

“I mean it,” he said.

Of this, she had no doubt. She grinned at him, and rapped the front of his t-shirt with the handle of her cane. “You
is
a idiot, Jack.”

“But, still smart enough to get a ninety-six,” he said.

When they had been up at Camp David, and she had handily won that game of Battleship, her mother had let a “how
dare
she beat me” expression escape, before smiling and suggesting that they play again. It had been funny, but not particularly attractive.

Although it was not her natural bent, either, around Jack, she should maybe make an effort to be attractive.

“What?” he asked.

“I'm trying to rise above myself,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” He draped his arm over her shoulders. “How's it working?”

“Kind of a strain,” she said. “Since you ask.”

It was a foregone conclusion that he was going to reach up under her sweatshirt to check for himself precisely what she was, or was not, wearing, so it wasn't a shock to feel his hand slide up her back.

“Do you have on underpants?” he asked.

She nodded.

“
Damn
,” he said.

He was a putz and a half.

“I think I should maybe double-check,” he said.

Where was a hefty dose of saltpeter, when she needed one?

Paula moved into her line of vision, which was unusual enough to be scary. Meg stopped, on instant full alert, but all Paula did was make a point of holding her gaze before stepping away and being unobtrusive again.

“Jack, there's a camera somewhere,” she said.

He shrugged. “Yeah. So?”

“So, please don't put your hand anyplace controversial,” she said.

“Oh.” He removed his hand from the top of her waistband, and held it up in the air uncertainly.

She glanced at him sideways, trying not to turn her head, or make it obvious that she was examining the general vicinity of his fly. “Untuck your shirt, too, okay?”

He looked down, then flushed, and quickly yanked his t-shirt out.

She did a slow scan of the area, from behind her sunglasses, and didn't see anything other than a cell phone camera which a harmless-looking older woman was pointing at them from the corner of Spring Street—except, wait,
there
he was. An unshaven, shifty-eyed paparazzo in his late twenties whom she had seen quite a few times before, crouched down behind a car, his camera resting on the trunk.

“Meg, I really don't want anyone printing a picture of me with a massive erection,” Jack said, very grim.

An entirely legitimate concern on his part. “Would you please carry my knapsack?” she asked.

He seemed to be on the verge of saying something churlish, but then he nodded, took the knapsack, and held it in front of his waist.

Almost every time they started to have fun together, something stupid happened to derail them. “I'm sorry. I wish they would just leave me alone, but they won't,” she said. The fringe and tabloid press, anyway.

He nodded, not looking happy about it.

Maybe if she had a long talk with Maureen, there might be some way to—except, all the White House could really do was assign someone like Ginette to run constant interference for her, which would end up creating a whole different set of problems.

Possibly, it
wouldn't
be such a bad solution for her agents to start shooting them, at will.

They crossed Main Street, the jerk photographer snapping away, even though Brian and Jose were on their way over there—presumably to block his view, if not find a way to knock the camera out of his hands and try to make it seem like an accident.

And if she looked as vexed as she felt, the guy was going to be able to market them as shots of the President's daughter having an ugly breakup quarrel with her new blond male companion.

“Did they do this to you in high school, too?” Jack asked.

Meg shook her head. “Sometimes, but not that often.” Partially because, before she turned eighteen, most of the press felt uncomfortable about invading the privacy of a minor—especially when it was against her parents' express wishes, partially because Preston had had a gift for keeping the media in line, and partially, of course, because at that point, she hadn't been considered nearly as newsworthy.

One exception having been when a very famous, and handsome, movie star showed up at one of her tennis matches a few days after she was introduced to him at a White House screening, and judging from the size of the media presence, his publicist had made dozens of calls to alert them about the “date” before it took place. The guy—for whom she felt sorry, because he was almost certainly very gay, and trying to use her as a way to stay in the closet—had sat in a chair on the sidelines, cheering her on with such a complete lack of discrimination that he actually clapped when she doubled-faulted at one point. It had gotten so chaotic that she had had to call Preston during one of the changeovers, and have him come over to bring things under control.

Even though it made her feel ill, she offered to forfeit the match to her opponent—a very tall serve-and-volleyer from Madeira, who was classy enough not to accept. A move she may have regretted when she ended up losing in straight sets.

“Well,” Jack said, once they were in front of the building where her next class was. He hefted the knapsack. “You, uh, want me to carry this up for you?”

Meg shook her head. “Thanks, but I'm fine. And you're going to be late, as it is.”

He glanced at his watch, and nodded, then shrugged.

Okay. It was going to be another awkward parting.

She needed to change the tone here, somehow. “So,” she said, slinging the knapsack over her shoulder, balancing cautiously on her good leg. “Was it really
massive
?”

He grinned. “
Extremely
massive,” he said.

45

SHE GOT AN
A- on her Shakespeare midterm, and sat there staring at the marked blue book, wondering why in the hell she kept falling short of full-fledged A's—although maybe it was worth reminding herself that she had—well—only
skimmed
a couple of the less engaging plays.

And it helped, somewhat, when she was one of the people Dr. Heidler singled out for having written unusually good essay answers—in her case, a comparative analysis of
King Lear
and
Julius Caesar
.

Because the surgery had been only two weeks earlier, there wasn't much she could do at physical therapy, although an orthopedist and a hand surgeon both examined her, asking questions and jotting down lengthy observations, and it seemed that an acupuncturist was now going to join the local team, too. Dr. Brooks was up and getting alternative on her.

Vicky worked with her good leg for a while, helping her do some strengthening exercises, and she and Cheryl talked—without making any significant progress—about whether there were any new adaptive strategies she could use to cut her own food, if she was caught someplace without assistive utensils.

She and her father had packed a small supply of White House Easter souvenirs into her duffel bag, which she gave out to all of the patients on the Pediatrics floor, even though it was a week early. There were painted wooden eggs with her parents' facsimile signatures, pins, aprons, illustrated books, specially-designed M&M's and marshmallow peeps, and a few small posters which had gotten pretty badly bent inside the bag. The gifts seemed to be a big hit, and even though the Red Sox game had already started—it was on in a couple of the rooms—she concentrated on giving each child her undivided attention, and not allowing herself even to
wonder
what the score might be.

Much.

When she got back to her room and flipped on the television, it turned out that they were losing, 4–0 in the bottom of the fifth, but—no matter. It was only a game. She did
not
worship the very ground they regularly spat on.