You gave yourself up for me. You risked your life for me.
“What?” Emilia shot back, staring me down. “Do I have something in my teeth?”
She didn’t want a thank-you any more than she’d given me one for taking on John Thomas for her.
“I could be wrong about this,” I told Emilia, “but I’m pretty sure they call it a group hug for a reason.”
I saw a flicker of raw surprise cross Emilia’s features before she hid it. Asher latched a hand onto his twin and pulled Emilia to the rest of us. Vivvie wasn’t one to question a hug, so within seconds, she had one arm wrapped around Emilia and one around me. Asher kept hold of his twin and pulled me tight.
A little too tight.
We started to topple. Asher threw his whole body into it and brought all four of us to the floor. Vivvie started giggling.
“The bat is in the belfry!” Asher told her, falling back into code.
Emilia tried to pry herself out from underneath her brother. “We are not related,” she told him.
Asher was unperturbed. “All we need is Henry,” he declared, “and some borderline illegal fireworks, and all will be right with the world.”
This was what it would be like, I realized, as I weathered the sound of Henry’s name. This was what I’d signed up for, when I’d decided to keep Henry’s secret—to make him keep it.
“Have you been to see him yet?” Asher asked me, propping himself up on his elbows. “The nurses didn’t want to let me in, but I can be very persuasive.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“I saw him,” I said, my throat tightening around the words.
Asher sighed. “I still can’t believe Henry got himself shot. Even I can’t one-up that.” He sighed. “Now I will never win the heart of Tess Kendrick through acts of derring-do!” The teasing undertone in his voice—the one that said that he wasn’t interested in my heart, but he thought that Henry was—cut into me with almost physical force.
Emilia rolled her eyes at her brother’s dramatics. “And I,” she added, “will never win the student council election.” She sighed and leaned back on the heels of her hands. “My campaign is dead in the water. Do you know what heroically surviving a terrorist’s bullet does to someone’s approval rating?”
I stared at her.
“Kidding,” Emilia clarified. “Mostly.”
Emilia’s taste in humor wasn’t the reason I was staring at her.
Do you know what heroically surviving a terrorist’s bullet does to someone’s approval rating? My mouth went dry, my heart pounding deafeningly in my chest. Too perfect. Too neat. Too clean.
Suddenly, I was back in my World Issues class. Dr. Clark was at the front, lecturing about flashbulb memories. She was asking what people would remember about the day that President Nolan was shot. She’d asked if they would remember Georgia Nolan’s rousing speech about her husband, the fighter. She’d asked if we would remember the record number of voters who turned out at the polls.
Going into midterm elections, the president’s approval rating had been at an all-time low.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the outcome of the elections. But I knew, in my gut, what I would find when I pulled the information up on my phone.
Before the president had been shot, the outlook for his administration had been dire. His party almost certainly would have lost its majority in Congress. The chances that the president would get a second term in office were next to nothing. That was why Congressman Wilcox had been working with Senza Nome. The revelation that Walker Nolan had impregnated a terrorist had been meant to devastate the Nolan administration at the worst possible time.
And then, the day before midterm elections, the president had been shot—and suddenly, President Nolan wasn’t seen as complicit in Walker’s ordeal. He was a victim, a soldier on the front lines of the war on terror.
Senza Nome had already gotten what they wanted. The thought solidified in my mind. They had no reason to shoot him. None.
I pictured the president in his hospital bed, telling me that the shooter had been connected to the terrorists. I pictured him telling me that he was ready to heal and to lead this country as it did the same.
There were good guys, and there were bad guys, and everything was tied up with a neat little bow.
The shoulder, I thought. He was shot in the shoulder.
I could hear Dr. Clark, tending to Henry: Shoulder wounds are rarely lethal.
I could hear the First Lady: The bullet did less damage than the fall.
If the president hadn’t fallen, if he hadn’t hit his head just right, there wouldn’t have been a coma. He would have been rushed to the hospital, rushed into surgery.
Do you know what heroically surviving a terrorist’s bullet does to someone’s approval rating?
“Tess?” Asher’s voice pulled me back to the present.
As I covered and picked up the conversation with the three of them, all I could think, over and over again, was that if it wasn’t for the head injury, President Nolan would have been fine.