When Audrey Met Alice Read Online Free Page A

going.” He quickly added, “You know, because you don’t go to a lot of parties.”
    I blushed and muttered thanks. I was glowing inside, knowing that he wanted me to be there.
    Everyone wanted to be around me when I first started at Friends. Some kids still do. It freaks me out, actually. I’d been popular back in St. Paul—a comfortable kind of popular, without social-climbing drama or anything. I’ve known all of my Minnesota friends since preschool and so with them my mother’s political rise wasn’t weird. Politics was simply what my mom did, like how Kim’s dad is chancellor at UM and Tessa’s mom is a Target exec and Paul’s dad runs the newspaper. In D.C., I can tell just by the way people look at me—the way their eyes search my face, like they are trying to see my mom in it—that they are more interested in my family than me.
    A week after starting school, my parents arranged a party at the White House for all fifty kids in my class. (All classes at Friends have exactly fifty students—no more and no less—so I’m the odd-duck fifty-first student in my class.) Everyone came except Quint, who was out of town. We took a tour, swam in the White House pool, and ate incredible food that Debra and the rest of the executive dining team had whipped up. I kept walking up to kids at the party and trying to start a conversation.
    “Hi, I’m Audrey. I don’t think we’ve met,” I said to Alexander Wade.
    “Cool, I’m Alexander. Can I see the Lincoln Bedroom?”
    Or to Naveen: “Hi, Naveen! I’m glad you could make it.”
    “Yeah, me too. So are we going to get to hang out here all the time? Where’s the Situation Room?”
    I understood why everyone was excited about being in 1600, but I got a bit annoyed that they seemed more interested in finding the Oval Office than meeting me.
    So I hadn’t made many friends other than Quint. He was my lab partner in science my first semester at Friends, and he never seemed to care that I was no longer a normal person. Maybe that’s because his parents are big deals too: his dad is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and his mom is an important professor at Howard University. Lately I have developed the teensiest little crush on Quint, but there’s no way I’ll act on it. The logistics of me having a boyfriend are too complicated. For example, when Chelsea Clinton lived here, the Secret Service chaperoned all of her dates; I could expect at least the same. Awkward.
    “Earth to Audrey,” Quint said, waving his hand in front of my face. “Seriously, you look upset.”
    “It’s nothing. Nobody else needs to wallow in misery with me.” I paused. “But I have to admit I like having you for company.”
    “Then I shall call you Misery, because you love my company.”
    I punched his arm. “Dork!”
    “Watch it, Misery!” Quint laughed as he grabbed my hands. His palms were full of calluses from playing the drums, but his fingertips were soft and smooth. I tried to jerk out of his grasp, giggling as he held his grip. We stayed like that for a few minutes, until I heard an ahem behind us. I turned and saw Agent Simpkins tapping his watch. Mozart started playing his final warning, meaning passing time was almost up. Quint dropped my hands like a hot dish.
    “I should go to class. See you in music history?”
    “But of course,” Quint bowed in a sarcastic chivalrous display (probably for Simpkins’s benefit), then turned and ran off down the hall.
    My heart pounded in my chest as I took my seat in science class. Mei, my benchmate, smiled as she pushed her notebooks to the side. She’d been hinting that her older brother wanted a West Wing internship for weeks. I tried to focus on my lab notebook, but I still felt amped up. I replayed the scene in my head: Quint grabbing my hands in his and pulling me toward him. I liked having his hands hold mine. I shivered as I pictured his face smiling down at me. Quint was pretty tall, and he towered over me. That