The Kid Who Became President (7 page)

“President Moon! Mr. President!” shouted Chief Usher Honeywell. He and the White House doctor were leaning over me, holding a cold washcloth against my forehead. All I knew was that I was alive, and I was lying down somewhere. “Wh-what happened?” I asked foggily. “Where am I?”

“On the roof of the White House, sir,” Honeywell explained. “You were unconscious!”

“I'm sorry, Mr. President,” blubbered Secret Service Agent Doe. “It was an accident!”

I looked up and saw that three other Secret Service agents were holding Agent Doe's arms behind his back, the way cops on TV hold criminals. They were snapping handcuffs around Agent Doe's wrists. His gun had been taken away from him.

“You have the right to remain silent,” one of the agents explained to Agent Doe. “Anything you say may be used against you —”

“I wasn't trying to hurt the president!” sobbed Agent Doe. “You've got to believe me! Protecting the president is my whole life! It's the only thing I care about!”

The agents started dragging Agent Doe away.

“Wait!” I said, struggling to my feet. “Take the handcuffs off him. He's telling the truth.”

The agents stopped dragging Agent Doe away, but they didn't let go of him.

“It was all my fault,” I explained. “I forced him to show me some martial arts moves. I didn't tell him to stop in time. Let him go, please.”

In five minutes, the head of the Secret Service arrived at the White House. He wanted to fire Agent Doe immediately. Even though I was okay, he said that if word got out about the incident, it would make the Secret Service look bad.

I insisted that Agent Doe not be fired. He received a harsh reprimand but was allowed to continue in his job. Everyone who witnessed the incident agreed not to tell any reporters about it.

“I'm sorry, Mr. President,” Agent Doe said when it was all over and everyone had gone back to their posts. “It will never happen again, sir.”

“That's right,” I said with a smile. “I know the Secret Ninja Death Touch now. Next time I'm going to kick your butt.”

He didn't laugh, but I thought I might have caught him half smiling.

 

Front page of the
Washington Post,
March 19:

 

SECRET SERVICE AGENT

ALMOST KILLS PRESIDENT!

Shortly after I was sworn in as president, Chief Usher Honeywell came into the Oval Office and announced, “Mr. President, your tutor is here.”

“T-tutor?” I stammered.

“Sir, it's not like I just told you World War III has begun. It's just the White House tutor.”

“Nobody told me I would have a tutor,” I protested.

“Did you think becoming president meant you would get to miss four years of school, sir?”

“No, I just … figured I … would be learning a lot on the job.”

“All children must attend school, sir. Even if the child happens to be president of the United States. A regular school would pose security risks to you. That's why we have a tutor. Don't worry. Mrs. Miller is excellent. She taught President Clinton's daughter. She taught President Ford's children. She has taught all the children who lived in the White House for as far back as I can remember.”

“Oh, all right,” I agreed reluctantly, “send her in.”

Honeywell left and a little old lady walked into the Oval Office alone. She was wearing one of those weird black mesh hats that is sort of like a doily that sits on top of your head. I think they issue them to women on their ninetieth birthday. That's about how old Mrs. Miller had to be. She seemed too weak and fragile to still be teaching at her age.

“So you're the kid who became president, eh?” Mrs. Miller sneered, looking me over carefully. “You must think you're pretty smart.”

“Well, no, I really —”

“Quiet!” she scolded me. “That wasn't a question. Don't you have the manners to raise your hand in class?”

Class? I looked around, just checking to make sure there weren't any other kids.

“Tell me, Mr. Smarty-Pants,” Mrs. Miller continued, “what was the name of the Pilgrims' ship?”

“Uh … the
Mayflower
?” I guessed.

“Hmm, you got lucky on that one,” she smirked, pacing the floor like a tiger circling its prey. “Who was our third president?”

“Uh … John Adams?”

“No!” Mrs. Miller shrieked. “Thomas Jefferson! When I was a child, I could name all the presidents, backward and forward.”

I thought about saying there had probably only been three or four presidents when she was a child, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Now tell me, young man. What's thirteen times thirteen?”

“Uh … I need a calculator,” I said with a shrug.

“Use the one in your
head
!” she yelled. She had her face right up close to mine now. I felt myself starting to sweat. “How do you spell
coincidence
?”

“C-O-I-N-S —”

“Wrong!” she screamed into my ear. “You must know
this
— who was the first person to set foot on the moon?”

“Uh … Armstrong?”

“What is his
first
name?”

His first name. His first name. I knew it. I knew I knew it. It was on the tip of my tongue.

“Louis,” I finally said.

“
Neil
Armstrong!” she shrieked. “Louis Armstrong was a trumpet player. How do you expect to run this country if you think a trumpet player walked on the moon?”

I raised my hand timidly.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Miller barked.

“May I be excused?” I asked. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“You should have thought of that before,” she said disgustedly. “Get in your seat. Today you're going to learn the history of the United States. If you want to be a good president, you have to know your history.”

I slunk back around my desk and sat down. I wasn't feeling very presidential.

For the next hour and a half, Mrs. Miller taught me the history of the United States. From the
beginning.
She told me how the earth used to be a big molten rock spinning through space. Over millions of years, it gradually cooled and the continents formed. They all floated around until North America ended up where it was.

I was tempted to ask her if she knew all this stuff from memory, but I didn't dare. I snuck a peek at my watch. She had been talking for an hour, and she was only up to the Ice Age. By the time she got to World War I, I figured, I'd be
her
age. My bladder felt like it was about to explode.

Finally, Mrs. Miller finished the lesson. She stopped at the point where human beings had arrived in North America, but they hadn't learned how to use tools yet. Mrs. Miller said tomorrow she would pick up where we left off. She gave me a huge pile of homework. Then she marched out of the Oval Office.

 

Not a second too soon! I ran to the bathroom just before the dam burst. When I got back to the Oval Office, Chief of Staff Lane Brainard was waiting for me.

“So, how did it go with Mrs. Miller?” Lane asked.

“Miller the Killer,” I moaned. I told Lane what Mrs. Miller had taught me and he just laughed.

“The president doesn't need to know any of that prehistoric junk,” he snorted. “That's why it's called
pre
historic. It's before history began. I can tell you everything you need to know about American history in ten minutes.”

“On your mark … get set … go,” I said, looking at my watch.

“Okay, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492,” Lane began, “but Indians were already here so he really didn't discover anything. And besides, Columbus only went to the Bahamas on his first trip over.”

“My folks went there on vacation once,” I added.

“Great, Moon,” Lane said, unimpressed. “So tell me what happened after Columbus arrived?”

“Uh, he returned to England?”

“
Spain
, Moon. You really
don't
know anything, do you? The next important thing that happened was that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom in 1620. You know, the
Mayflower,
Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving, all that stuff.”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Didn't anything important happen during the hundred years or so between Columbus and the Pilgrims?”

“Nothing that you need to concern yourself with, Moon.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what happened next?”

“The British established the thirteen colonies.”

“Thirteen is bad luck.”

“It was for
them,
” Lane agreed. “They taxed the colonies heavily, so the colonists revolted in 1775. Paul Revere rode. Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death!' Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. And George Washington led the colonies to victory in the Revolutionary War.”

“And he was elected the first president,” I said.

“Right. And the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution in 1787. Everything was cool going into the 1800s.”

“Wow,” I marveled. “You just covered two hundred years in five minutes.”

“But in the next two hundred years a lot more stuff happened,” Lane informed me. “The United States grew and spread across North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

“That was good, right?”

“Well, to do it we had to fight another war with England, go to war with Mexico, and just about wipe out the Indians.”

“And that was bad, right?” I asked.

“Right. But then Abraham Lincoln was elected our sixteenth president in 1860.”

“That was good, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, but the Southern states left the Union to form their own country, the Confederacy.”

“Why'd they do that?” I asked.

“Mostly because they wanted slavery to continue and Lincoln wanted to abolish it. The North and South fought the Civil War. Six hundred thousand Americans were killed … by other Americans.”

“Very bad.”

“Yeah,” Lane said, “but in the end the nation was preserved and slavery was abolished.”

“That was good.”

“Yeah, but five days after the war was over, Lincoln was assassinated.”

“Very bad.”

“Yeah, but after the Civil War the United States slowly recovered. Great new machines like the telegraph, telephone, automobile, light-bulb, and airplane made the United States strong and prosperous.”

“And that was good.”

“Yeah, but then we got drawn into World War I.”

“Bad, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, but our side won, so it turned out okay. The Roaring Twenties came. The nation was prosperous. Women got the vote. Everybody was happy.”

“That's good.”

“It was, until the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression started.”

“Bad?” I asked.

“Awful,” Lane said. “Millions of people were out of work. Banks failed. People starved. Tough times. But then Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and he led us out of the Depression.”

“Which was good.”

“Yeah, until Hitler came to power in Germany and started World War II.”

“Bad.”

“Yeah, but we won the war.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, but we developed the atomic bomb to win the war.”

“Bad?” I asked. “Or good?”

“Both. The bomb ended World War II, which was good. But it killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. And it prompted the Soviet Union and other countries to start building nuclear weapons, too.”

“Bad.”

“Yeah,” Lane said. “The Cold War began, which led to wars in Korea and Vietnam.”

“Bad.”

“Yeah, but eventually the Soviet Union broke up and the Cold War was over. But then, of course, came September 11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Lane got up, like he was finished and ready to go.

“And then?” I asked.

“And then, Moon, you got elected president.”

I sat back in my chair and looked at my watch. It had been ten minutes, almost to the second. Four hundred years of American history summed up in ten minutes.

“So that's it?” I asked.

“Pretty much,” Lane said. “I left a lot of stuff out, but you've got the basics.”

“So what happens next, Lane?”

“Who knows, Moon?” Lane said. “Maybe that's up to
you.
”