Pants on Fire

by Meg Cabot

  Where it broke into three pieces.

  As it was falling, I could hear Sidney going, “Wait, I didn’t hear him, what did he—”

  Then—smash.

  Then…silence.

  Liam looked at the pieces of my cell phone and laughed.

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” he said. “Tommy Sullivan’s back in town.”

  Three

  Okay, why?

  That’s all I want to know.

  Why did Tommy Sullivan have to come back now, just when everything was going perfectly, to mess it all up?

  The summer before your senior year is the last summer when you can actually have a good time. No stresses yet about college apps and transcripts. No freaking out about extracurriculars or chemistry.

  And this has been the most outstanding summer of my life so far: People have finally started to realize that even though I’m the class brain, I can still be fun to party with. I’ve got a job I love, where I make good enough money to have (almost) fully paid for the camera I really want to buy. I’ve got a fantastic boyfriend, and an even hotter guy to mack with behind the emergency generator when that boyfriend isn’t around….

  So why does Tommy Sullivan have to come back to town NOW, and ruin it all?

  Liam wouldn’t give me any details last night after he dropped his little bombshell, because he was mad I wouldn’t get off the phone with Sidney to listen to him. Liam’s fourteen and starting his freshman year at Eastport High, and his new height totally attracted the attention of Coach Hayes, who spied Liam towering over everyone at freshman orientation, and asked him if he was trying out for the Quahogs.

  Since Liam—like every other guy in Eastport—practically lives for Quahog football, this totally went to his head. He’s been impossible to live with ever since. And tryouts aren’t even until Friday.

  But I knew from experience that I’d wear him down eventually, and get him to spill the details of his Tommy Sullivan stunner. Liam can’t keep a secret to save his life.

  Which is why, when I saw what time it was when I woke up the next morning, I said my best swear word, rolled out of bed and, without even showering first, threw on my clothes (and, okay, a tiny bit of makeup, because a girl running for Quahog Princess really shouldn’t be seen in public without her mascara on), hopped on my bike, and pedaled over to the Y, where Liam’s been going every day to lift weights in the hope of bulking up for Quahog tryouts on Friday.

  Oh, yeah. I’m, like, the only seventeen-year-old in Eastport who doesn’t have a car. I’m not one of those vegan environmentalist types who hang out with Morgan Castle over at the Oaken Bucket or anything. I totally love meat. I just think if you live in a small town—and Eastport’s only got 25,000 full-time residents (though May through August, the population rises to 35,000, on account of the Summer People)—you should ride a bike around, and not drive. It’s better for the environment, and better for you physically as well.

  Sidney thinks it’s weird I’m saving my money for a camera and not a car, like everyone else we know (although, to be truthful, everyone else we know got a car for their sixteenth birthday. I asked for—and received—a Power Mac G5, along with a full-color printer so I could print my own photos—although I still take my film in to Eastport Old Towne Photo if I want something really professional-looking), but there’s nowhere I need to go that isn’t within biking distance (except the city, but I can take public transportation there), so why waste fossil fuels when I can just use pedal power?

  And, unlike Sidney, I don’t have to spend hours in the gym every week, since I get all my exercise from biking around.

  Oh, fine. Okay, true confession time: I get carsick. In fact, I get everything sick—carsick, seasick, air sick, train sick, even raft sick (from floating on a raft in a pool) and swing sick (from swinging on a swing set).

  The only time I don’t feel sick? When I’m walking. Or riding a bike.

  My mom blames it on all the inner ear infections I had as a kid. My dad—who has never been sick a day in his life, and won’t let any of us forget it—thinks it’s all psychosomatic, and that as soon as I fall for a cute enough guy, I won’t get sick at all when he’s driving me around, and I’ll even want to get a license. For instance, so I can drive with the guy in a Ferrari through the Alps. Because, Dad says, no one can function as an adult without a driver’s license.

  But as I’ve informed Dad numerous times, there is no guy in the world cute enough for this to happen.

  And besides, there’s a place where it’s totally possible to function as an adult without a driver’s license: It’s called New York City, where all the great photographers in America live and work.

  And guess what? They have bike paths there, too.

  Anyway, I locked up my bike outside the Y, and went inside to find my brother lying on a padded bench, pulling on these cords that caused some weights behind him to raise up a few inches. Not unusually, there was a cluster of fourteen-year-old girls gathered around him, giggling excitedly. Since word got out that Coach Hayes himself had approached Liam about trying out for the Quahogs, every fourteen-year-old girl in town has been calling the house at all hours of the day, asking if Liam’s there.

  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.”

  “Tom Sullivan?” 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—my Tommy 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 a Quahog?

  “You told 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’t check 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.

  “He laughed?” I did not like the sound of that. At all. “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 it ha ha ha? Or MWA ha ha?”

  “What is wrong 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.

  But everyone had always sort of just assumed that what had happened with Tommy—and the outside of the new Eastport Middle School gymnasium wall—was a large part of why they left.

  So why had he come back? It’s true his grandparents still live here—we see them sometimes when Mom and Dad make us eat at the yacht club, which they belong to not because we own a yacht (Dad’s boat is strictly for fishing; it doesn’t even have a bathroom on it. Which isn’t the only reason I won’t get on it, but it’s one of them) but because it’s good for schmoozing if you’re in the real estate business, like they are.

  And okay, I suppose Tommy must come visit his grandparents sometimes…although, truthfully, it never occurred to me before. Why wouldn’t they just go to see him in Westchester? I mean, Eastport could hardly have good memories for him. Why would he want to come here?

  But even if he just happened to be here because he was visiting his grandparents, why would he go to Duckpin Lanes, which is where every guy in town hangs out? That would be the LAST place you’d think someone as universally despised as Tommy Sullivan would go.

  “Katie?”

  I looked up and saw Seth grinning down at me, all melting brown eyes and sleek biceps, clearly fresh from a workout.

  “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know. “You never come to the Y.”

  Which isn’t strictly true. The Y is where I took my first photography class, the one that got me into cameras in the first place, even though the instructor—crabby Mr. Bird, proprietor of Eastport Old Towne Photo—had hardly been encouraging.

  But I let that slide, because, hello, hot guy. Who happens to be my boyfriend. Well, one of them, anyway.

  “Oh, I just came by to see how Liam’s doing,” I said as Seth slipped an arm around my waist and gave me a kiss. Which made me glad I’d put my mascara on. It was bad enough I still had bedhead.

  Naturally, I didn’t mention why I’d come to see Liam. In my long and varied career as a liar—which began at approximately the same time that Tommy Sullivan left town—I’ve learned that sometimes it’s kinder to lie to people than to tell them the truth. Especially when the truth could hurt them. Seth can’t even stand to hear Tommy’s name uttered. He gets all quiet and moody whenever the subject comes up…even though his brother seems perfectly happy to be working for their dad.

  Although probably not as happy as he would have been playing college ball.

  So I’ve found it better, over the years, simply to keep mum on the Tommy front where Seth is concerned.

  “I’ve been trying to call you all morning,” Seth said. “Don’t you have your cell on?”

  Oops. I’d managed to snap all the pieces of my cell phone back together, and had plugged it in to charge. But I’d forgotten to turn it on. I pulled it out of the pocket of my shorts and pressed POWER. A second later, I saw my screensaver—a picture of Seth looking dreamily at me over an order of quahog fritters.

  “My brainiac,” Seth said fondly. Because, even though I consistently rank
top of our class, I am always doing things like forgetting to turn my cell phone on.

  A second later, it rang.

  “What happened to you last night?” Sidney asked. “We got disconnected. I tried to call you back a million times and just got your voice mail.”

  “Right,” I said. “Dropped my phone and it exploded. I had to recharge it.”

  “Oh. So. Who was it?”

  “Who was what?”

  “Who’d your brother see at Duckpin Lanes?” Sidney wanted to know.

  “Oh,” I said, thinking fast, watching as Seth started to show Liam how to use another nearby machine, while the Tiffanys and Brittanys gathered round, looking more worshipful than ever. Because, hello, Jake Turner’s little brother. I couldn’t blame them. I’d felt the same way about him, back when I started ninth grade. Still do. Well, sort of. “That…it was nobody. Just this guy Liam knew from football camp.”

  “Why would he think you’d care about that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Because he’s let this Quahog thing go completely to his head, maybe?”

  “Oh, right. Well, where are you?”

  “The Y,” I said. “With Seth.” I didn’t mention the whole part about having come to the Y to see my brother, not Seth, let alone the thing about Tommy Sullivan being back in town. I mean, it’s not like I can tell anybody that. Any of my friends, I mean. They’ve all managed to forget that I ever even used to consort with Tommy Sullivan. I don’t want to do anything to remind them of that fact.

  “Oh, good,” Sidney said. “Grab Seth and go home and get your swimsuit. The wind’s up, so Dave wants to kitesurf. We’re going to The Point.”

  The Point is the private beach that belongs to the Eastport Yacht Club. Nobody in Eastport goes to the public beaches, because of not wanting to hang around with a bunch of tourists. Also, in the paper they’re always reporting finding traces of e. coli in the water down at the public beach (caused by tourists with RVs, illegally emptying their toilets into the water).