Free All-American Girl by Meg Cabot Page A

with a sunny smile, “A few things arrived for you. I hope you don’t mind if we bring them in now.”
    And then, without waiting for a response from us, she held the door open. A stream of candy stripers holding floral arrangements—each one bigger than the last—came pouring into my room, until every last available flat surface, including the floor, was covered with roses and daisies and sunflowers and orchids andcarnations and flowers I could not identify, all overflowing from these vases and making the room smell sickly sweet.
    And there weren’t just flowers, either. There were balloon bouquets, too, dozens of them, red balloons, blue ones, white ones, pink ones, heart-shaped and metallic ones with “Thanks” and “Get Well Soon” written on them. Then came the teddy bears, twenty at least, of all different sizes and shapes, with bows at their throats and signs in their paws, signs that said things like JUST GRIN AND BEAR IT and THANK YOU BEARY MUCH !
    Seriously. I watched them come in and pile this stuff up, and all I could think was, Wait. Wait. There’s been a mistake. I don’t know anyone who would send me a Thank-you-beary-much! bear. Really. Not even as a joke.
    But they just kept coming, more and more of them. The nurses, you could tell, thought it was pretty funny. Even the Secret Service guys, standing in the doorway, seemed to be smirking behind the reflective lenses of their sunglasses.
    Only my mom seemed as stunned as I was. She kept running to each new bouquet and tearing open the card and reading the writing on it out loud in tones of wonder:
    â€œThank you for your daring act of bravery. Sincerely, the U.S. Attorney General.”
    â€œWe need more Americans like you. The mayor of the District of Columbia.”
    â€œFor an angel on Earth, with many thanks. The people of Cleveland, Ohio.”
    â€œWith much appreciation for your bravery under fire. The prime minister of Canada.”
    â€œYou are an example for us all…the Dalai Lama.”
    This was way upsetting. I mean, the Dalai Lama thinks I’m an example? Um, not very likely. Not considering all the beef I haveconsumed in my lifetime.
    â€œThere’s a lot more downstairs,” one of the candy stripers informed us.
    My mom looked up from a card written by the emperor of Japan. “Oh?”
    â€œWe’re still irradiating most of the cards and running the fruit and candy through the X-ray machines,” the Secret Service guys informed us.
    â€œX-ray machines?” my mom echoed. “Whatever for?”
    One of the agents shrugged. “Razor blades. Tacks. Whatever. Just in case.”
    â€œCan’t be too careful,” the other agreed. “Lot of whackos out there.”
    My mom looked as if she didn’t feel too good after that. All her daisy freshness drained right out of her. “Oh,” she said faintly.
    It was right after this that my dad showed up with Lucy and Rebecca and Theresa in tow. Theresa gave me a knock on the back of the head for the scare I’d given her the day before.
    â€œImagine how I felt,” she said, “when the policeman told me I could not get through to pick you up because there’d been a shooting. I thought you were dead!”
    Rebecca was more philosophical about the whole thing. “Sam’s not a member of the group with the highest risk of death from gun violence—males ages fifteen to thirty-four—so I wasn’t particularly worried.”
    Lucy, however, was the one with the most urgent need to see me…and alone.
    â€œC’mere,” she said, and pulled me into the room’s private bathroom, where she immediately locked the door behind her.
    â€œBad news,” she said, speaking low but fast—the same way she spoke to her fellow squad members when she felt they hadn’t beenshowing enough spirit during the human pyramid. “I overheard the chief hospital