In Love With the President's Daughter

I won't recount everything that went on when I got back. How it took us ten minutes to convince security that I was really Krista, how my mother kindly thanked Tyler, how as soon as he'd stepped outside the doorframe she slammed it and lectured me for twenty minutes about the importance of getting a ride with Phil. And on and on.

By the time I escaped up to my room, it was after four o'clock and I had seven new text messages. Three were from Alex and four were from Jack. They all basically said the same thing. Apparently my mom had informed both of them about my 'little stunt' as she called it, and everyone had been out looking for me.

I got a ride to school the next morning with Phil as usual. Everyone turned to watch Jack and I get out of the car as usual, like we were going to make some important official White House announcement or something. As if.

Phil eyed us as we crossed the school grounds and went into the building, then pulled away. The halls were just starting the fill up, and I made my way down the right side of the hallway. Jack took the stairs to his locker, and I continued down the hall to mine. I reached it, dialed in the combination, and swung the door open.

Something banged against the locker next to mine. I looked up to see Ben Cabana leaning on the locker to my right with his elbow. Ben. Varsity lacrosse captain, class president, hot as hell, and just like those guys you read about in books, if anyone even reads those anymore. Almost every girl in school swooned over him and he flirted with just about all of them. In other words, one of those popular friggin' idiots.

“Hey, Krista.”

“Um... hi?” I raised an eyebrow at him and shut my locker. What did he want?

“So I wanted to talk to you,” he said. Duh.

“You kind of are,” I pointed out. Ben could be as cute as he wanted, but I had zero tollerance for ass holes like him.

“Yeah, well... you want to hang out sometime?” He gave me one of those dazzling smiles that pretty much every girl in the school besides me would fall for.

“I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that my dad's about to become president, right?” He assured me it had nothing to do with that, and I was really tempted to call him on the complete BS he'd just laid out in front of me, but by some miracle (which seemed to be happening to me quite a lot recently), Alex came racing down the hall and almost plowed into me.

“Krista, we so have to hurry up, we're going to be late, and oh, hi Ben.” She looked at me and I rolled my eyes. She tugged my sleeve. “Come on!” I gave Ben one last look and turned the opposite direction with Alex.

“You were talking to Ben Cabana? What's going on?” she asked as soon as we were out of earshot.

“I don't even know... he wanted to hang out or something... I don't care...”

“Krista, he's such a babe! You didn't say no, did you?”

“You wouldn't be talking about me, would you?” Jack appeared to my right and I just looked at him.

“You wish,” I said. “And so what if I said no?”

“You didn't!” Alex gasped. “Krissy, you can't just say no to someone like... like that!”

“What's going on? I'm so confused!” Jack whined. I rolled my eyes.

“Whatever, guys, I'm going to class.” And I hurried off in the other direction. I knew that as the inauguration grew nearer and nearer, things would start getting weirder and weirder. Whatever. At least I'd get to miss school that week.

When I walked into science class, Tyler was already there, as usual. He was writing information down on a piece of paper, and as I walked by, I stopped at his lab table. I stood there for a good thirty seconds without him even glancing at me. Finally, I decided to say something.

“Um... hi... thanks for picking me up yesterday.” Nothing. “Tyler?”

He looked up sharply. “Yeah, no problem. I told your mom it was fine.” He turned back to his work, and I turned away to go back to my table. What was going on? He'd been so nice to me yesterday, not just in picking me up, but he'd genuinely talked to me. So what was I doing wrong?

I went through the rest of the day in a minorly depressed mood. By the time Phil picked Jack and I up, I was exhausted for some reason. Phil dropped me off first before going over to Jack's house. No one was home except for security out front and back and Layla, so I quickly moved up the stairs to my room and plopped down on my bed. My head was spinning and I fell asleep almost instantly. Screw the homework. Who needed it anyways.

I was woken up at God-knows-what-time by someone yelling, “Huzzah!” and flinging my door open. I bolted up right to see Jack standing in my doorway and groaned. “What are you doing?”

“Um, coming to visit you, duh,” he said, jumping onto the bed next to me. “What's up?”

“Jaaack this is a bad time, you know,” I said, smashing my face into my pillow.

“Oh no it's not. Guys are jerks. Get over it.” I looked up at him and he shrugged.

“You realize that you are one, right?” I asked.

“Well, that's debatable at times, but you know...”

“You've been talking to Alex, haven't you?” I asked. Obviously.

“Maybe. But seriously, Krista, guys aren't really actually worth it, okay?” And something about the way he said it made me almost believe him. Almost.

“How did they put up with you in Washington?” I turned around and laid down on my back.

“Look I had friends there, okay, but really, there are only a couple I actually miss.”

“You seem like the kind of person who would have tons of friends. What, was your school like super small or something?” It didn't really make sense to me, but then I saw his face change a little bit. It didn't quite harden, but he winced a little bit. I ammended my question. “You don't have to answer that.”

“No, I should. Back in Washington, I had a girlfriend. She was pretty and everything, but I guess it took me a little time to realize that I just liked her because she liked me. I realized after three or four months that it wasn't fair. But everyone thought we were so perfect together, and so I waited. And after about five months, I broke up with her. That was over the summer kind of. She thought that I thought I was too good for her, with my dad being famous and everything.”

“That's not true,” I whispered, sitting up. That wasn't fair.

“Yeah, well, she was kind of in my group of friends even before we started going out, so I guess a lot of them were convinced I was too good for all of them. But we moved two months later, so it's okay.”

I shook my head. “Life sucks.”

“Not really. I thought that for awhile, but I have new friends now.”

“AKA me,” I said.

“True. But you're better than any of them will ever be,” he said.

That was when he totally melted me. I may have had it bad for Tyler, but all of that sort of went out the window. Why waste time on him?

Jack leaned into me, and his lips met mine. The room was dimly lit because of the dying lightbulb in my table side lamp, and as we broke apart, the lighting speckled his face with brown dots.

“This could get awkward,” he said standing up. “I've got to go.”

“Jack... it's not going to work,” I hated to say it, but we were going to be living in the same house in a months time.

“I know. See you tomorrow.” I looked down at my hands and when I looked back up he was gone.