Мэг Кэбот - Pants on Fire

“‘—Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth—’”

The truth. God, the truth. I didn’t even know what the truth was anymore. Except that every time I laid eyes on Tommy Sullivan, all I wanted to do was jump his bones.

It was true! Now that Tommy Sullivan had come to town, he was the only person I wanted to mack with!

“‘—Love always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.’”

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Isthat what love is? Is love not wanting to mack with anybody but just one person?

And wasTommy Sullivan that person? Wasthat why I couldn’t stand the thought of kissing Seth anymore? Wasthat why I’d told Eric I just wanted to be friends?

Because I love Tommy Sullivan?

No. No, that simply isn’t possible. I mean, Tommy Sullivan had only walked back into my life three days ago. How could I be in love with him when I hadn’t even seen him in four years? How could I be in love with a guy who accused me of not understanding myself?

But what if Tommy’s right? I mean, obviously he’s right. Because LOOK AT ME. I am standing here on stage with my hand through the arm of one guy, and all I can think about is another guy.

Is that a sign of a girl who understands herself?

Oh my God. It’s true.True love is when you can’t think about any guy except just one.

Which means…

I’m in love withTommy Sullivan.

“MISS ELLISON!”

I jerked my heard toward Ms. Hayes. What was she yelling atme for?

“Miss Ellison, I asked you a question,” Ms. Hayes said, giving me the evil eye from over the index card she held.You are in so much trouble when this pageant is over, young lady, her look clearly said.

“Sorry,” I said, aware that my heart was thrumming so hard inside my chest, I could barely breathe.In love. With Tom-my Sullivan. My heart seemed to be saying, over and over again. “Could you repeat it, please? The question?”

Ms. Hayes cleared her throat. Then she read, “Why do you, Miss Ellison, love quahogs?”

“I love quahogs for their tender succulence,” I replied automatically, while Ms. Hayes, happy to see I’d recovered myself, beamed with encouragement. “And they’re especially tender…and…succulent…at the Gull ’n Gulp….”

My voice trailed off.

Because suddenly, it hit me. Right there on the pageant stage.

What I had to do. What I had to do to get Old Man Trouble away from my door. What I had to do in order to quit lying all the time, and put out the fire in my pants for good.

And so I just did it.

Because that’s the other thing love is. Sidney had said it herself:

Love is truth.

“You know what?” I said, dropping Seth’s arm. “I’m lying.”

A ripple of surprise went across the audience. I saw Ms. Hayes look down at the judges with an expression of befuddlement. The judges looked back at her in shock.

I knew, deep down inside, that I had just lost the Quahog Princess pageant. But I also knew, deep down inside, that I didn’t care.

Because you know what? I was tired of lying. I was tired of getting caught up in my lies. I was tired of keeping flow charts and secrets. I was tired of sneaking around.

I was just tired.

“The truth is,” I said into the clip-on microphone, “I hate quahogs.”

There was a gasp from the audience. But I didn’t care.

“I do,” I went on. “I’vealways hated them, since I was a little kid. They taste like rubber. You can do whatever you want to them. Fry them. Put them in chowder. Even make ice cream out of them. And they’ll always taste the same to me. Bad.”

I was laughing. I was theonly person present who was laughing.

But I didn’t care. Because I was telling the truth.

And it felt really, really good.

“Um,” Ms. Hayes said. “Thank you, Miss Ellison. If you would just step back now—”

“But that’s not the only thing I’ve been lying about,” I said into the microphone. “Because I hate the other kind of Quahogs, too. Not the mollusk. The football team.”

What went through the audience then wasn’t a ripple. It was a wave. A wave of shock and resentment. All aimed at me.

But I didn’t care. I really didn’t.

Because I was finally telling the truth.

And it feltgood.

“I hate football,” I said. It was cool to hear my voice — telling the truth, for once — reverberating through Eastport Park. And even if people didn’t particularly like what it was saying, it still sounded like something I wasn’t used to hearing — me, telling the truth. “And I hate the way this town is about football. I hate the way we worship the Quahogs, and for what? They don’t save lives. They don’t teach us anything. They just chase after a stupid ball. And for that, we treat them like gods.”

Now the wave wasn’t just resentful. It was downright angry. Except, I noted, in the last row, where Mr. Gatch had actually stopped playing solitaire, and was staring at me. Beside him, Tommy’s jaw was slack as he stared at me too.

“Well,” I went on, “it’s true. Don’t even try to deny it, you all know what I’m talking about. We let the Quahogs get away with just about anything they want to, and if any one person tries to stand up to them — the way Tommy Sullivan did, four years ago — what do we do? We run him out of town. Don’t we?”

“Miss Ellison!” Ms. Hayes strode forward and tried to grab the microphone from me.

But I yanked it from her reach.

“What?” I demanded. Now my voice didn’t sound so cool, I noticed. In fact, it sounded kind of shrill. Even screechy. Probably on account of the fact that I was holding back tears.

But I wasn’t holding back anything else. Not by a long shot.

“We can’t even SAY anything bad about the Quahogs?” I asked the audience. “Why? They’renot gods. They’re just guys. Guys who play football. Guys who make mistakes.”

I spun around to face Seth, who was staring at me with an expression of total and complete incredulity.

“Seth,” I said, a little unsteadily, on account of the tears. “Tommy Sullivan did not ruin Jake’s life.Jake ruined Jake’s life. Jake cheated, Seth. He cheated, and he got caught, and got the punishment he deserved — the same punishment any one of us would have gotten if we’d been caught cheating. You have got to stop blaming Tommy for what your brother did. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But that’s how I really feel about it. I never told you before because…well, I guess I never even admitted it to myself before. But it’s the truth. The truth about how I feel.”

Seth had been shaking his head slowly the whole time I’d been speaking. And when I finished, he gave one last final head shake, and then said — with what, if I’m not mistaken, was absolute contempt in those puppy-dog brown eyes—“If that’s true…if that’s how you really feel, then…we’reover, babe.”

There was a gasp. It was so loud that at first I thought it had been a collective gasp from the audience.

But then I realized it had only come from Sidney.

“I know,” I said to Seth, my voice throbbing a little. “And I’m really, really sorry.”

I meant it, too. Iwas sorry. Sorry I had strung him along for so long, sorry I was hurting him, justsorry. That wasn’t a lie, either.

Seth didn’t seem like he accepted my apology, though. He stomped to the opposite end of the stage and stood there with one hand over his face, like he was trying to get control over himself. After a second or two, Jenna let go of her dad’s arm, and went over to pat Seth comfortingly on the back. Which I thought was nice of her. If anybody could talk to Seth about living in a black well of despair, and all of that, it was Jenna, who claimed to have lived in one for years.