Мэг Кэбот: Pants on Fire

Clearly, all of the Tiffanys and Brittanys I’ve been taking messages for have figured out where Liam spends his free time — when he isn’t at Duckpin Lanes.

“Excuse me, ladies,” I said to them. “But I need to have a word with my brother.”

The Tiffanys and Brittanys tittered like I’d said something funny. I’ve seriously never seen so many tanned bellies in my life. Do these girls’ mothers really let them out of the house dressed that way? I was betting they left wearing real clothes, then whipped them off as soon as Mom wasn’t looking anymore.

“Not now, Katie,” Liam said, his face turning very red. Not because he was embarrassed, but because he was lifting way more weight than he probably should have been, to show off in front of the girls.

“Oh, yes, now,” I said, and pulled on one of his leg hairs.

CRASH!Went the weights behind him.

Liam said a number of very colorful swear words, and the girls scattered, giggling hysterically, but really only retreating as far as the water cooler over by the desk where they hand out the towels.

“You didn’t really see Tommy Sullivan at Duckpin Lanes last night,” I said to my brother. “Did you?”

“I don’t know,” Liam snapped. “Maybe not. Maybe it was some other guy who came up to me and asked if I was Katie Ellison’s little brother, and introduced himself as Tom Sullivan. Why’d you have to do that? Pull my leg hair like that? I hate when you do that. I could have seriously injured myself, you know.”

“TomSullivan?” For the first time since I’d heard the news that Tommy Sullivan was back in town, my heart lifted. Tommy never called himself Tom. He’d always been Tommy, since kindergarten — when I’d first met him.

Maybe whoever Liam had met last night wasn’t Tommy Sullivan — myTommy Sullivan — after all!

“Maybe it was someone else,” I said hopefully. “Some other Thomas Sullivan.”

The look Liam gave me was very sarcastic.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some other Thomas Sullivan who told me he’d been in your class at school and wanted to know how you were doing…and has red hair?”

My heart totally stopped beating. I swear, for a few seconds, I couldn’t even breathe. I could hear the rock music the Y plays over their sound system — they had it on the local pop station.

But it sounded really distant.

Because there’s only one Tommy Sullivan I know of who’s ever been in my class at school.

And only one Tommy Sullivan I know of who has red hair.

That hair! How many times since eighth grade, when Tommy had left town, had I seen a guy — a tourist, usually — with red hair, and done a double take, my heart hammering, certain it was Tommy, and I was going to have to look into those weird hazel eyes of his, which in certain lights were as green as the sound during high tide, and others amber as leaves on an autumn day, sometimes even gold, like honey — only to have the guy turn around and end up not being Tommy at all.

Phew, I always told myself when this happened.

But could Liam possibly be telling me the truth? Could my luck — where Tommy Sullivan is concerned, anyway — finally have run out?

“What did you say?” I asked, sliding onto the bench beside Liam. Which was a mistake, since the cushion was slick with sweat. But I didn’t care that much, since I hadn’t showered yet anyway.

“When he asked how I was doing,” I demanded. “What did you say?”

“I told him you were good,” Liam said. “I told him you were going out with Seth Turner.”

My blood went cold. I couldn’t believe it. Liam had told Tommy Sullivan that I’m going out with aQuahog?

“Youtold him that? Why’d you tell him that?”

“What else was I supposed to say?” Liam, getting up from the bench to reach for his bottle of Gatorade, looked annoyed. “He asked what you were up to. I told him you were running for Quahog Princess.”

I groaned. I could only imagine what Tommy must have thought about my running for Quahog Princess, an honorary title with absolutely no benefits other than that the Quahog Princess gets to ride in a convertible Chevrolet with the mayor during the annual Eastport Towne Fair parade (I fully intend to take a Dramamine beforehand if I win), and open the Quahog Festival, which takes place on the third Sunday of August.

Which happens to be at the end of this week.

And, okay, to qualify you have to have a GPA of at least 3.5 (which, believe me, rules out a LOT of girls at my school), and be willing to show up at a lot of cheesy events during the Eastport Towne Fair, such as the quahog-eating contest (disgusting) and the quahog races (boring. Bivalves aren’t very fast).

But to compensate for all that, the winner also gets fifteen hundred dollars in scholarship money from the Eastport Quahog Festival committee.

Even better, the money comes in the form of a check made out to the recipient, which she can deposit into her personal account and then spend on whatever she wants. I mean, they don’tcheck to make sure she spends it on her education.

Which, I’ll be frank, is the reason I’m running for Quahog Princess.

And, okay, I know I have zero chance, with Sidney running, too (she could care less about the money. She’s in it for the tiara).

But at least I have a better chance than Morgan Castle. I mean, Morgan Castle can barely open her mouth in public, she’s so shy.

Although she has a much better talent than I do. I mean, for competing in a beauty pageant.

And yeah, I realize beauty pageants are sexist, and all of that. But come on. Fifteen hundred bucks? Even second place is a thousand. Third is five hundred.

So even if both Sidney and Morgan beat me (which is likely), I’ll still be five hundred dollars up from where I would have been if I hadn’t entered (the only other entrant is Jenna Hicks, who has multiple nose and eyebrow piercings, only wears black no matter how hot it is outside, and whose mother is making her enter in order to make her socialize more with girls her own age who don’t list “Kafka” as their answer to Interests on their MySpace page. Which, not to be mean or anything, doesn’t exactly make Jenna Quahog Princess material).

Which is good because my parents are making me cut back my hours at the Gull ’n Gulp to one night a week once school starts up again next month, so I will totally need the scratch.

“What did he say?” I asked. “When you told Tommy about Quahog Princess?”

Liam shrugged. “He laughed.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

“Helaughed?” I did not like the sound of that. Atall. “Laughed like how?”

“What do you mean, laughed like how?” Liam wanted to know.

“Like did he laugh like he thought it was funny,” I asked, “or like an evil genius? Was itha ha ha? OrMWA ha ha?”

“What iswrong with you?” Liam asked me, loudly enough to cause the Tiffanys and Brittanys to burst into a fresh batch of giggles, over by the towel desk.

Whatever. Let them laugh. What do fourteen-year-olds in belly-baring tanks and yoga pants know about pain? (Not just the kind you get when your belly-button piercing you got illegally in the city gets infected and you have to tell your mom so she can take you to the doctor, and then she grounds you.)

I mean real pain, like trying to figure out what Tommy Sullivan could be doing back in town. He and his parents had moved away — to Westchester, outside of New York City, in a whole other state — the summer before our freshman year…the same summer I’d first played spin the bottle and kissed Seth. They never said they were moving because of what had happened the year before. In fact, my mom, who was their realtor and sold their house for them, said Mrs. Sullivan had told her they were moving so Mr. Sullivan could have a shorter commute to his job in Manhattan.