"So," I started, "what's new with you?"
She pulled a neatly typed piece of paper from her pocket. "Six a.m.: appear on national morning shows. Nine a.m.: get fitted for navy suits." Macey leaned closer and added in a whisper, "Evidently, red makes me look trampy." She resumed her usual posture and walked faster, the sloping ramp leading us closer and closer to a pair of metal doors at the end of the tunnel. "Eleven a.m.," she continued, "fun, family bonding with Mom and Dad."
Macey stopped. She rested her hands on the metal handles.
"So, you know," she said as she pushed open the doors of the single largest room I've ever seen, "the usual."
Chairs—thousands of empty chairs—spread across the arena floor. Signs bearing the names of all the states hung above them. We started out in Oregon, then walked through Delaware and past Kentucky. Stands rose high before us. I craned my head upward, scanning the skyboxes that circled the arena, boasting the logos of every news outlet known to man.
Macey and I stood there for a long moment, alone for the first time. Maybe that's why she felt safe to whisper, "Thanks for coming, Cam."
Her father's face was on the cover of every magazine in America. She was about to be the belle of the country's biggest ball. Probably every girl in the country would have traded places with her, but I saw the misery in her eyes as she stood lost inside that massive space, and I knew why I was there. I remembered that a Gallagher Girl is only as good as her backup.
"Let's get this over with and get back to school, okay?" I said.
"Okay," she replied. I could have sworn she almost smiled.
And she might have if we hadn't been interrupted by the sound of footsteps from behind us and a voice saying, "Hello, ladies."
I don't know about you, but there are certain assumptions I tend to make about a teenage boy who insists on calling teenage girls "ladies." You expect him to be handsome. You expect him to be slick. The kind of guy who owns more hair styling products than you do.
But Preston Winters was…not.
He was about Macey's height, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I'm pretty sure Liz could have taken him in a fistfight. His tailored suit hung from his thin frame like he was a kid playing dress-up, which wasn't much of a stretch considering the fact that he was wearing a Spider-Man wristwatch.
"Quick question," Macey whispered. "When your mom said that we weren't supposed to use any Protection and Enforcement moves this summer, that didn't apply to presidential candidates' sons, did it?"
"I think it might apply especially to them."
I'm not sure if it was the presence of the Secret Service or the classified nature of our sisterhood, but something made Macey take a deep breath and smile (and whisper a really bad word in Portuguese).
"You're looking very…patriotic…, today, Ms. McHenry," Preston said, looking Macey up and down.
I glanced at Macey's red, white, and blue sweater set (I know…Macey was wearing a sweater set!) and bit back a laugh.
"I don't believe we've met," the boy said, turning to me and holding out his hand. "I'm Preston. You must be—"
"Busy," Macey said, trying to pull me away.
"Cammie," I finished, resisting my roommate's pull long enough to shake Preston's hand. "The roommate," I offered.
He bowed slightly forward at the waist and said, "It's nice to meet you, Cammie the roommate—"
Before he could finish I heard a shrill voice cry, "McHenry family, stage left!" A trim woman was walking onto the stage, Macey's mom and dad following closely behind her. She had a clipboard. And little horn-rimmed glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. And not one but two pencils stuck in the massive pile of hair on the top of her head.
"Winters family, stage right!"
As the governor of Vermont and his wife took their places, I couldn't help but notice that one of the most powerful men in the country looked absolutely terrified of the woman with the clipboard.
"McHenry family!" the woman called again. "We're missing—"
"Here I am," Macey said, dashing toward the stage.
Her mother rolled her eyes. Her father checked his watch. But Clipboard Lady just said, "Excellent! We can't have a new Camelot without our young people. Just look at those bright shiny faces."
"Actually, I owe my complexion to your company, Mrs. McHenry." The entire group seemed surprised to hear Preston speaking—especially Preston. But instead of shutting up, he rambled on. "That new blemish reduction cream is…wow. Good job," he added with a self-conscious nod. Clipboard Lady glared at him, and it was pretty obvious that the shining faces were supposed to be seen and not heard. "I'll be standing over here now," Preston said, taking his place beside his parents.
The candidates took turns behind a podium draped with what looked like every red, white, and blue piece of fabric east of the Mississippi. Macey stayed in the center of it all, never shrinking from the spotlight, while I eased to the back of the arena and took my place among the shadows.
Number of times Clipboard Lady made Governor Winters and Macey's dad practice shaking hands and then turn to wave at the imaginary crowd: 14
Number of times Macey glared at her mother: 26
Number of times Preston tried to catch Macey's attention and she totally ignored him: 27
Number of times Macey had to practice a "spontaneous" dip while dancing with her father: 5
Number of minutes I had to sit alone in that enormous arena, wondering if freedom and democracy were always this well rehearsed: 55