Red, White & Royal Blue

["he keeps going. The interview is quick, cut off mid-sentence: Anderson Cooper\u2019s face looms on the screen overhead like a disgustingly handsome Hunger Games cannon, announcing they\u2019re ready to call Florida. \u201cCome on, you backyard-shooting-range motherfuckers,\u201d Zahra is muttering under her breath beside him when he falls in with his people. \u201cDid she just say backyard shooting range?\u201d Henry asks, leaning into Alex\u2019s ear. \u201cIs that a real thing a person can have?\u201d \u201cYou really have a lot to learn about America, mijo,\u201d Oscar tells him, not unkindly. The screen flashes red\u2014RICHARDS\u2014and a collective groan grinds through the room. \u201cNora, what\u2019s the math?\u201d June says, rounding on her, a slightly frantic look in her eyes. \u201cI majored in nouns.\u201d \u201cOkay,\u201d Nora says, \u201cat this point we just need to get over 270 or make it impossible for Richards to get over 270\u2014\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d June cuts in impatiently, \u201cI am familiar with how the electoral college works\u2014\u201d \u201cYou asked!\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to remediate me!\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re kinda hot when you get all indignant.\u201d \u201cCan we focus?\u201d Alex puts in. \u201cOkay,\u201d Nora says. She shakes out her hands. \u201cSo, right now we can get over 270 with Texas or Nevada and Alaska combined. Richards has to get all three of those. So nobody is out of the game yet.\u201d \u201cSo, we have to get Texas now?\u201d \u201cNot unless they call Nevada,\u201d Nora says, \u201cwhich never happens this early.\u201d She barely has time to finish before Anderson Cooper is back onscreen with breaking news. Alex wonders briefly what it\u2019s going to be like to have future Anderson Cooper stress hallucinations. NEVADA: RICHARDS. \u201cAre you fucking kidding me?\u201d \u201cSo, now it\u2019s essentially\u2014\u201d \u201cWhoever wins Texas,\u201d Alex says, \u201cwins the presidency.\u201d There\u2019s a heavy pause, and June says, \u201cI\u2019m gonna go stress eat the cold pizza the polling people have. Sound good? Cool.\u201d And she\u2019s gone. By 12:30, nobody can believe it\u2019s down to this.","Texas has never in history gone this long without being called. If it were any other state, Richards probably would have called to concede by now. Luna is pacing. Alex\u2019s dad is sweating through his suit. June is going to smell like pizza for a week. Zahra is on the phone, yelling into someone\u2019s voicemail, and when she hangs up, she explains that her sister is having trouble getting into a good daycare and agreed to put Zahra on the job as an outlet for her stress. Ellen, too tense to stay upstairs, is stalking through it all like a hungry lioness. And that\u2019s when June comes charging up to them, her hand on the arm of a girl Alex recognizes\u2014her college roommate, his brain supplies. She\u2019s got on a poll volunteer shirt and a broad smile. \u201cY\u2019all\u2014\u201d June says, breathless. \u201cMolly just\u2014she just came from\u2014 fuck, just, tell them!\u201d And Molly opens her blessed mouth and says, \u201cWe think you have the votes.\u201d Nora drops her phone. Ellen steps over it to grab Molly\u2019s other arm. \u201cYou think or you know?\u201d \u201cI mean, we\u2019re pretty sure\u2014\u201d \u201cHow sure?\u201d \u201cWell, they just counted another 10,000 ballots from Harris County\u2014\u201d \u201cOh my God\u2014\u201d \u201cWait, look\u2014\u201d It\u2019s on the projection screen now. They\u2019re calling it. Anderson Cooper, you handsome bastard. Texas is gray for five more seconds, before flooding beautiful, beautiful, unmistakable Lake LBJ blue. Thirty-eight votes for Claremont, for a grand total of 301. And the presidency. \u201cFour more years!\u201d Alex\u2019s mom outright screams, louder than he\u2019s heard her scream in years. The cheers come in a hum, in a rumble, and finally, in a storm, pressing from the other side of the partition, from the hills surrounding the arena and the city surrounding the streets, from the country itself. From, maybe, a few sleepy allies in London. From his side, Henry, whose eyes are wet, seizes Alex\u2019s face roughly in both hands and kisses him like the end of the movie, whoops, and shoves him at his family.","The nets are cut loose from the ceiling, and down come the balloons, and Alex staggers into a press of bodies and his father\u2019s chest, a delirious hug, into June, who is a crying disaster, and Leo, who is somehow crying more. Nora is sandwiched between both beaming, proud parents, screaming at the top of her lungs, and Luna is throwing Claremont campaign pamphlets in the air like a mafioso with hundred dollar bills. He sees Cash, severely testing the weight limits of the venue\u2019s chairs by dancing on one, and Amy, waving around her phone so her wife can see it all over FaceTime, and Zahra and Shaan, aggressively making out against a giant stack of CLAREMONT\/HOLLERAN 2020 yard signs. WASPy Hunter hoisting another staffer up on his shoulders, Liam and Spencer raising their beers in a toast, a hundred campaign staffers and volunteers crying and shouting in disbelief and joy. They did it. They did it. The Lometa Longshot and a long-awaited blue Texas. The crowd pushes him back into Henry\u2019s chest, and after absolutely everything, all the emails and texts and months on the road and secret rendezvous and nights of wanting, the whole accidentally-falling-in-love- with-your-sworn-enemy-at-the-absolute-worst-possible-time thing, they made it. Alex said they would\u2014he promised. Henry\u2019s smiling so wide and bright that Alex thinks his heart\u2019s going to break trying to hold the size of this entire moment, the completeness of it, a thousand years of history swelling inside his rib cage. \u201cI need to tell you something,\u201d Henry says, breathless, when Alex pulls back. \u201cI bought a brownstone. In Brooklyn.\u201d Alex\u2019s mouth falls open. \u201cYou didn\u2019t!\u201d \u201cI did.\u201d And for a fraction of a second, a whole crystallized life flashes into view, a next term and no elections left to win, a schedule packed with classes and Henry smiling from the pillow next to him in the gray light of a Brooklyn morning. It drops right into the well of his chest and spreads, like how hope spreads. It\u2019s a good thing everyone else is already crying. \u201cOkay, people,\u201d says Zahra\u2019s voice through the rush of blood and love and adrenaline and noise in his ears. Her mascara is streaming, her lipstick smeared across her chin. Beside her, he can hear his mother on the phone with one finger jammed into her ear, taking Richards\u2019s concession call. \u201cVictory speech in fifteen. Places, let\u2019s go!\u201d","Alex finds himself shuffled sideways, through the crowd and over to a little corral near the stage, behind the curtains, and then his mother\u2019s on stage, and Leo, and Mike and his wife, and Nora and her parents and June and their dad. Alex strides out after them, waving into the white glow of the spotlight, shouting a jumble of languages into the noise. He\u2019s so caught up that he doesn\u2019t realize at first Henry isn\u2019t at his side, and he turns back to see him hovering in the wings, just behind a curtain. Always hesitant to step on anyone\u2019s moment. That\u2019s not going to fly anymore. He\u2019s family. He\u2019s part of it all now, headlines and oil paintings and pages in the Library of Congress, etched right alongside. And he\u2019s part of them. Goddamn forever. \u201cCome on!\u201d Alex yells, waving him over, and Henry spares a second to look panicked before he\u2019s tipping his chin up and buttoning his suit jacket and stepping out onto the stage. He gravitates to Alex\u2019s side, beaming. Alex throws one arm around him and the other around June. Nora presses in at June\u2019s other side. And President Ellen Claremont steps up to the podium. EXCERPT: PRESIDENT ELLEN CLAREMONT\u2019S VICTORY ADDRESS FROM AUSTIN, TEXAS, NOVEMBER 3, 2020 Four years ago, in 2016, we stood at a precipice as a nation. There were those who would have seen us stumble backward into hatred and vitriol and prejudice, who wanted to reignite old embers of division within our country\u2019s very soul. You looked them square in the eye and said, \u201cNo. We won\u2019t.\u201d You voted instead for a woman and a family with Texas dirt under their shoes, who would lead you into four years of progress, of carrying on a legacy of hope and change. And tonight, you did it again. You chose me. And I humbly, humbly thank you. And my family\u2014my family thanks you too. My family, made up of the children of immigrants, of people who love in defiance of expectations or condemnation, of women determined never to back down from what\u2019s right, a braid of histories that stands for the future of America. My family. Your First Family. We intend to do everything we can, for the next four years and the years beyond, to continue making you proud. The second round of confetti is still falling when Alex grabs Henry by the hand and says, \u201cFollow me.\u201d Everyone\u2019s too busy celebrating or doing interviews to see them slip out the back door. He trades Liam and Spencer the promise of a six-pack for their bikes, and Henry doesn\u2019t ask questions, just kicks the stand out and disappears into the night behind him. Austin feels different somehow, but it hasn\u2019t changed, not really. Austin is dried flowers from a homecoming corsage in a bowl by the cordless","phone, the washed-out bricks of the rec center where he tutored kids after school, a beer bummed off a stranger on the spill of the Barton Creek Greenbelt. The nopales, the hipster cold brews. It\u2019s a weird, singular constant, the hook in his heart that\u2019s kept tugging him back to earth his whole life. Maybe it\u2019s just that he\u2019s different. They cross the bridge into downtown, the gray grids intersecting Lavaca, the bars overflowing with people yelling his mother\u2019s name, wearing his own face on their chests, waving Texas flags, American flags, Mexican flags, pride flags. There\u2019s music echoing through the streets, loudest when they reach the Capitol, where someone has climbed up the front steps and erected a set of loudspeakers blasting Starship\u2019s \u201cNothing\u2019s Gonna Stop Us Now.\u201d Somewhere above, against the thick clouds: fireworks. Alex takes his feet off the pedals and glides past the massive, Italian Renaissance Revival fa\u00e7ade of the Capitol, the building where his mom went to work every day when he was a kid. It\u2019s taller than the one back in DC. Everything\u2019s bigger, after all. It takes twenty minutes to reach Pemberton Heights, and Alex leads the Prince of England up onto the high curb of a neighborhood in Old West Austin and shows him where to throw his bike in the yard, spokes still spinning little shadow lines across the grass. The sounds of expensive leather soles on the cracked front steps of the old house on Westover don\u2019t sound any stranger than his own boots. Like coming home. He steps back and watches Henry take it all in\u2014the butter-yellow siding, the big bay window, the handprints in the sidewalk. Alex hasn\u2019t been inside this house since he was twenty. They pay a family friend to look after it, wrap the pipes, run the water. They can\u2019t bear to let it go. Nothing\u2019s changed inside, just been boxed up. There are no fireworks out here, no music, no confetti. Just sleeping, single-family homes, TVs finally switched off. Just a house where Alex grew up, where he saw Henry\u2019s picture in a magazine and felt a flicker of something, a start. \u201cHey,\u201d Alex says. Henry turns back to him, his eyes silver in the wash of the streetlight. \u201cWe won.\u201d Henry takes his hand, one corner of his mouth tugging gently upward. \u201cYeah. We won.\u201d","Alex reaches down into the front of his dress shirt and finds the chain with his fingers, pulls it out carefully. The ring, the key. Under winter clouds, victorious, he unlocks the door.","ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I came up with the idea for this book on an I-10 off-ramp in early 2016, and I never imagined what it would turn out to be. I mean, at that point I couldn\u2019t imagine what 2016 itself would turn out to be. Yikes. For months after November, I gave up on writing this book. Suddenly what was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe needed to be escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality. Not a perfect world\u2014one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic. I wasn\u2019t sure I was up to the task. I hoped I was. What I hoped to do, and what I hope I have done with this book by the time you\u2019ve finished it, my dear reader, is to be a spark of joy and hope you needed. I couldn\u2019t have done any of this without the help of so many. To my angel of an agent, Sara Megibow, thank you for driving this crazy bus. I went into this whole experience hoping to find one person who felt even half of what I feel for this book, and you matched me from the first moment we spoke. Thank you for being the champion this book needed and the reassurance always at my back. To Vicki Lame, my editor, the Texas girl who fought for this book and always saw in it what it could mean to people. Thank you for giving this your all, for forever being the person in the corner of the ring with the water bottle. You and the team at St. Martin\u2019s Griffin have literally made dreams come true. Thank you to my publicity team, DJ DeSmyter and Meghan Harrington, and to everyone else who threw themselves behind this book. More thanks: Elizabeth Freeburg, who taught me more than I can ever give back to her, without whom I\u2019d be half the writer I am today. Lena Barsky, who doula\u2019d this entire novel, who was the first to love these characters as much as I do. Sasha Smith, my literary sherpa who believed in me most, without whom I would have been drowning before I was even out of the slip. Shanicka Anderson, the beta reader of my dreams, who loved this book even when it was 40,000 words too long. Lauren Heffker, the person who sat with me in a Taco Bell while I untangled this plot, who never didn\u2019t want to hear what I was thinking. Season Vining, who poured my wine and told me that my dream wasn\u2019t so unattainable. Leah Romero, my number-one fan and political inspiration, the reader I was always writing to impress. Tiffany Martinez, who read this book with care and love","and gave it to me straight. Laura Marquez, who helped with translations. CJSR, who knows it all, whose sleepless nights this book happened in spite of. My FoCo fam, my new home. To my family, who have done more for me over the years than any person deserves: You had no idea what you were signing on for when I told you I wrote a book, but y\u2019all still cheered me on. Thank you for loving me as I am. Thank you for letting me be your weirdo baby. To Dad, my original storyteller: I know you always knew I had this in me. Thank you for helping me believe it. Big as the universe, over the clouds, forever. This is my best work to date. To the sources that helped me with the mountains of research I did for this: WhiteHouseMuseum.org, the Royal Collection Online, My Dear Boy by Rictor Norton, the V&A\u2019s extremely helpful website, countless others. To the country of Norway, literally, for the week that broke me out of the slump and made 110,000 words of the first draft happen. To \u201cTexas Reznikoff\u201d by Mitski. To every person in search of somewhere to belong who happened to pick up this book, I hope you found a place in here, even if just for a few pages. You are loved. I wrote this for you. Keep fighting, keep making history, keep looking after one another. Affectionately yrs. Have a Shiner on me.","ABOUT THE AUTHOR CASEY MCQUISTON grew up in the swamps of Southern Louisiana, where she cultivated an abiding love for honey butter biscuits and stories with big, beating hearts. She studied journalism and worked in magazine publishing for years before returning to her first love: joyous, offbeat romantic comedies and escapist fiction. She now lives in the mountains of Fort Collins, Colorado, with a collection of caftans and her poodle mix, Pepper. You can sign up for email updates here.","Thank you for buying this St. Martin\u2019s Press ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters.","Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com\/newslettersignup For email updates on the author, click here.","This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author\u2019s imagination or are used fictitiously. RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE. Copyright \u00a9 2019 by Casey McQuiston. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin\u2019s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. www.stmartins.com","Cover design by Kerri Resnick","Cover illustration by Colleen Reinhart The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows: Names: McQuiston, Casey, author. Title: Red, white & royal blue: a novel \/ Casey McQuiston. Other titles: Red, white and royal blue Description: First edition. | New York: St. Martin\u2019s Griffin, 2019. Identifiers: LCCN 2018055526 | ISBN 9781250316776 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9781250316783 (ebook) Classification: LCC PS3613.C587545 R43 2019 | DDC 813\/.6\u2014dc23 LC record available at https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2018055526 eISBN 9781250316783 Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected]. First Edition: May 2019","CONTENTS 1. Title Page 2. Copyright Notice 3. Dedication 4. Chapter One 5. Chapter Two 6. Chapter Three 7. Chapter Four 8. Chapter Five 9. Chapter Six 10. Chapter Seven 11. Chapter Eight 12. Chapter Nine 13. Chapter Ten 14. Chapter Eleven 15. Chapter Twelve 16. Chapter Thirteen 17. Chapter Fourteen 18. Chapter Fifteen 19. Acknowledgments 20. About the Author 21. Copyright"]