I was curled up in my bed, Manet snoring softly at my side.

“You met Jack first,” Catherine said, through the darkness all around us. “What does David think, anyway? You were just supposed to wait around and not fall in love with anybody else until he rode up on his big white horse? I mean, it’s not like you’re Cinderella, or something.”

“I think,” I said, to the ceiling, “that David kind of thought if I was asking him to some party that there was a possibility I might like him, and not some other guy.”

“Well, that was very old-fashioned of him,” Catherine said firmly. Now that Catherine had been on her first date, and it had turned out to be a successful one—Paul had kissed her goodnight on my very front porch. On the lips, she’d informed me proudly afterwards—she seemed to think she was some kind of expert on love. In between worrying that her parents were going to find out. Not so much about Paul, I think, as about the black jeans and the party.

“I mean, you are an attractive and vital girl,” Catherine went on. “You can’t be expected to just stick with one man. You have to play the field. It’s absurd that at the age of fifteen you should settle down with just one guy.”

“Yeah,” I said, with a short laugh. “Especially one who is in love with my sister.”

“Jack only thinks he is in love with Lucy,” Catherine said firmly. “We both know that. What happened tonight was just evidence that he is finally becoming aware of his deep and abiding affection for you. I mean, why else would he have been so mean to David if it wasn’t for the fact that the sight of you with another man drove him into a jealous rage?”

I said, “I think he just had one too many beers.”

“Not true,” Catherine said. “I mean, that might have been part of it, but he was definitely threatened. Threatened by what he perceived as your happiness with another.”

I rolled over—disturbing Manet, who went on snoring, not at all—and stared at Catherine’s dim form in the darkness of my bedroom.

“Have you been reading Lucy’s Cosmo again?” I asked.

Catherine sounded guilty. “Well. Yes. She left one in the bathroom.”

I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling. It was kind of hard to tell what I should be thinking about everything that had happened that night when the only person with whom I could safely discuss it was spouting advice she’d garnered from the Bedside Astrologer.

“So did he kiss you goodnight?” Catherine asked shyly. “David, I mean?”

I snorted. Yeah, David had really felt like kissing me after that whole thing with Jack and the Adams Prep cheerleading squad. In fact, he had barely spoken to me for the rest of the night. Instead, he’d gone around making the acquaintance of half the student population of my school. Evidently not by nature a shy sort of person, David hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being the centre of attention. In fact, he’d looked like he was having a pretty good time as Kris Parks and her cronies hung on his every word, laughing like hyenas every time he made a joke.

It wasn’t until around eleven-thirty—Theresa, who was babysitting while my parents were at a dinner party they hadn’t left for until after David picked me up, had given us a twelve o’clock curfew—that he finally looked around for me. I was sitting by myself in a corner, looking through Kris’s mom’s copies of Good Housekeeping (who said I don’t know how to have a good time?) and trying to ignore the people who kept coming up to me and asking if they could have my autograph (or, conversely, if they could sign my cast).

“Ready?” David asked. I said I was. I went and told Catherine that we were leaving, then found Kris—I noticed I didn’t have to look very far; she was practically tracking David’s every move—and said thanks and goodbye. Then David and John and I headed back out to the car.

Cleveland Park isn’t really all that far from Chevy Chase, where Kris lives, but I swear that ride home was one of the longest in my life. Nobody said anything. Anything! Thank God for Gwen, singing her heart out over the stereo.

Still, I noticed that for the first time ever, the sound of Gwen Stefani’s voice didn’t exactly make me feel better. The worst part was, I didn’t even know what I had to feel so badly about. I mean, OK, so David knew I liked Jack. Big deal. I mean, is there some kind of federal law that prohibits girls from liking their sister’s boyfriend? I don’t think so.

By the time we pulled up to my house, however, the silence in the car (aside from Gwen) was oppressive. I turned to David—God knew I didn’t expect him to walk me to the door or anything—and went, “Well, thanks for coming with me.”

To my very great surprise, he opened his car door and went, “I’ll walk you up.”

Which I can’t say exactly thrilled me, or anything. Because I had a feeling he was going to let me have it.

And, halfway up the steps to the porch, he did.

“You know,” he said. “You really had me fooled, Sam.”

I glanced at him, wondering what was coming next, and knowing I probably wasn’t going to like it. “I did? How?”

“I thought you were different,” he said. “You know, with the boots and the black and all of that. I thought you were really ... I don’t know. The genuine article. I didn’t know you were doing it all to get a guy.”

I stopped in the middle of the steps and stared up at him, which was kind of hard, since the porch light was on, and it was burning in my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, isn’t that it?” David asked. “I mean, wasn’t that why you asked me to the party too? It had nothing to do with wanting to help your friend to feel like she fits in. You were using me to try to make that Jack guy jealous.”

“I was not!” I cried, hoping he, too, was being blinded by the porch light. That way he wouldn’t be able to see that my cheeks were on fire, I was blushing so hard. “David, that’s ... I mean, that’s just ridiculous.”

“Is it? I don’t think so.”

We’d reached my front door. David stood looking down at me, his expression unreadable . . . and not because I was being blinded by the porch light any more, but because he really had no expression—no expression at all on his face.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “I really thought you weren’t like any of the other girls I know.”

And with a polite goodnight—that’s it, just a ‘Goodnight’—he turned around and went back down to the car. He didn’t even look back. Not once.

Not that I could blame him, I guess. Despite Catherine’s assertion that boys ought to know girls our age are ‘playing the field’ (which sounds pretty funny coming from her, Miss-I-Just-Went-Out-With-A-Boy-For-The-First-Time-Ever-Tonight), I imagine it might kind of suck to find out the person who’d asked you out really liked someone else—would even rather have been out with that person, instead.

I don’t know. I guess I could see why David was kind of peeved with me.

But come on. I’d asked him to a party, not to marry me, or anything. It was just a party. What was the big deal?

And what was all that junk about being wrong about me being different from all the other girls he knew? How many other girls did he know who’d saved his dad’s life lately? Uh, not that many, I was willing to bet.

Still, the evening wasn’t a total washout. Some of my celebrity must have rubbed off on Catherine, because other people at the party finally started talking to her. She had stood there, beaming, Paul at her side, and had all of her popular-girl fantasies realized. Someone even invited her to another party, the following weekend.

“You know,” Catherine, the new It Girl of Adams Prep said, from the couch. “I really think Jack was jealous.”

I blinked up at the ceiling at this piece of information. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. I heard him tell Lucy that he thinks David is pompous and that you could do better.”

Pompous? David was the least pompous person I had ever met. What was Jack talking about?

When I mentioned this out loud, though, all Catherine said was, “But, Sam, I thought that was what you wanted. To make Jack realize that you are a vital, attractive woman, desired by many.”

I admitted that this was true. At the same time, however, I didn’t like the idea of anybody—even my soulmate—calling David names. Because David was a very nice person.

Only I didn’t want to think about that. You know, about David being so nice, and me treating him the way I had. I mean, that kind of behaviour is all very well for readers of Cosmo, but I’m really more of an Art in America kind of girl.

Knowing that sleep was a long way off, but aware that Catherine, by the sound of her steady breathing, was no longer available, I got out my flashlight and opened the book the White House press secretary had given me, on the lives of the First Ladies.

Top ten Little Known Facts about Dolley Ptyne Todd Madison, Wife of the Fourth President of the United States of America:

10.  She spelled her name Dolley, not Dolly.

9.  Born in 1768, she was raised as a Quaker, eschewing colourful bonnets and clothes, as Quaker tradition dictated.

8.  She was married once before to a Quaker lawyer who died in a yellow-fever epidemic.

7.  After marrying James Madison in 1794, Dolley acted as “unofficial first lady” during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who was a widower.

6.  It was apparently around this time that Dolley decided God didn’t care if she wore bright colours, because she is described as having worn a gold turban with an ostrich feather tucked into it at her husband’s inaugural ball.

5.  The fact that Dolley abandoned her Quaker ways is further illustrated by the fact that during her husband’s presidency, she became the belle of Washington society. She was best known for her Wednesday evening receptions, where politicians, diplomats and the general public gathered. These gatherings helped to soothe some of the tensions between Federalists, who were like today’s Republicans, and Republicans, who were like today’s Democrats, in a time of intense party rivalries.

4.  During the War of 1812, Dolley saved not only George Washington’s portrait, but she also saved tons of important government documents by pressing them against the sides of trunks. The day before the British attacked, she filled a wagon with silver and other valuables and sent them off to the Bank of Maryland for safekeeping, which just goes to show she was not only brave, but also proactive.

3.  But the majority of US citizens in 1814, when this all happened, were not very appreciative of Dolley’s actions, since they all hated her husband for starting the war in the first place. In fact, as the White House was burning down, Dolley went to the neighbours and knocked on the door, looking for sanctuary, and they told her to get lost. She didn’t find a place to stay until she lied about who she was.

2.  As if this was not enough, one of her sons turned out to be a profligate, which means loser, whose out-of-control spending nearly bankrupt the family.

And the number one little known fact about Dolley Madison:

1.  She wasn’t really very attractive.

The next week was Thanksgiving. Susan Boone had class on Tuesday, but it was cancelled on Thursday, on account of the holiday.