Pants on Fire (16 page)

That’s when I went for him.

I managed to grab a nice handful of leg hair, and was tugging mercilessly—Liam screaming shrilly in pain—when suddenly I was seized by the waist from behind, and lifted straight up into the air by my father.

“The updo,” I shrieked. “Watch the updo!”

“That is
enough
!” my father roared, setting me down again on the opposite side of the bar separating the kitchen from the family room, so that Liam and I were in different rooms. “I have had it with the both of you! I am trying to watch GOLF!”

“She started it,” Liam said sulkily, rubbing his leg.

“
You
started it!” I yelled at him. “You’re the one who told Tommy Sullivan where I work! If you had just kept your big fat mouth shut about my private business—”

“That’s it.” Mom had on her One More Word and You’re Grounded face. “Liam. Katie. Go to your rooms.”

“I can’t go to my room,” I declared. “I have my Quahog Princess pageant in—” I threw a glance at the clock. “Oh, great. Half an hour. Now I’m going to be late.” I glared at Liam. “Thanks a lot, nimrod.”

“Why bother going?” Liam shot back. “You’re not going to win. Not when everybody finds out who you were hanging out with last night—”

“SHUT UP!” I shrieked.

And stormed from the house.

I don’t know how my parents can be so casual about this whole thing. I mean, this thing with my brother, becoming one of
them.

Although, now that I think about it, that’s exactly what Tommy accused me of being. Right? I mean, didn’t he express wonder at how I’d assimilated?

And I’d told him he was wrong, that there is no
us
versus
them
.

But according to what Liam says, Coach Hayes obviously thinks there is. And if Coach Hayes thinks that—

Oh, God, what’s
wrong
with me? I’ve let Tommy Sullivan into my head! It’s bad enough he seems to be setting up permanent occupancy in my heart (if that is the correct place for someone you can’t stop thinking about kissing, and not somewhere a little more
southerly). Now I’ve got him in my subconscious, too!

It was with dark thoughts such as these that I arrived at the pageant tent. It wasn’t as easy to get there today as it had been yesterday, because the park was open to the public now, and the place was packed with locals and tourists alike, enjoying the Taste of Eastport. Every restaurant in town (except the chains) had booths set up. I had to get off my bike and walk it at the park’s entrance, because there were too many people milling around for me to bike through.

I spied Shaniqua and Jill working at the Gull ’n Gulp booth, and gave them a wave as I pushed my bike past. They waved back and each mouthed
Good luck!
, but didn’t have time to chat. The line for quahog fritters was about a mile long, and Peggy was keeping an eagle eye on the staff, to make sure they didn’t give the customers more than the single fritter (and dollop of sauce) their food ticket allotted.

I walked my bike toward the pageant stage and saw that a few people had already taken seats in the folding chairs in front of it. One of those people was Mr. Gatch from the
Gazette
. He was smoking a cigar and playing solitaire on one of those electronic games you can get at Kmart. So I knew better than to go over and ask him, again, what Tommy Sullivan had been doing in his office.

Instead, I wheeled my bike around to the back of the changing tent behind the stage and locked it to a small sapling. I knew the workers from the parks department
wouldn’t like that, but there were no bike racks, and all the park benches were taken by tourists digging into their quahog fritters. My bike secured, I grabbed my garment bag and lifted one of the flaps of the changing tent.

Behind it, I found bedlam. Ms. Hayes was screaming at the sound guys, because apparently the hand mikes weren’t working, and we were going to have to use clipons, which wouldn’t work because there was no place near enough to Sidney’s mouth to clip a mike, thanks to her gown’s plunging neckline. Sidney was screaming at Dave, who’d apparently ordered the wrong color tux from Eastport Formal Wear, and the powder blue of his jacket was going to clash with the red of Sidney’s dress. Morgan was freaking out because she’d forgotten her rosin and was going to break her neck on the stage if her toe shoes didn’t stick to it well enough.

And Jenna. Well, something had
happened
to Jenna. I didn’t even recognize her at first. Her piercings were gone, as were the purple streaks in her black hair…which was now a pretty auburn color and was sitting on top of her head in a gorgeous updo, with baby’s breath tucked into it. She’d been stuffed into an empire-waisted lacy dress from Bebe (Sidney had the exact same one, but for day, not pageant, wear) that accentuated her long, pale limbs, and on her feet were a pair of stilettos so shockingly high, they were sinking into the dirt and grass beneath the chair she was sitting on. On her face, she wore an expression not unlike the one hostages tend to wear after being liberated
from days of captivity—she looked dazed.

I couldn’t help going up to her and being all, “Jenna? What
happened
?”

Jenna blinked up at me. “Oh,” she said. “Hi, Katie. Yeah. Ambush makeover.”

Shocked, I sank down onto a nearby folding chair. “Your mom?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “My friends. They think if I win, I’ll be in a position to promote their social platform.”

“Running through the streets naked covered in green Jell-O?”

“No,” Jenna said. “Liberating the quahog. They want all quahogs to be able to live free, without fear of being dug up and eaten.”

I said, “Jenna. Quahogs are bivalves. They aren’t capable of feeling fear.”

Jenna shrugged. “I know. But I didn’t want to upset them. And whatever. I want my car back. So maybe this way, I’ll place after all.”

I thought this was still pretty unlikely, given her talent. (Her speech includes the line,
I’ve SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It’s a forty-seven-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing, “I’m an Oscar Mayer Wiener.”
Pageant judges don’t like it when you mention the V word in your speech.)

“Wow,” I said instead. “Does this mean you found an escort?”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “Yeah. My
dad
.”

Still, I stood back up and laid a hand on her bare shoulder to show my solidarity with her plight. “Fight the power, Jenna,” I said. “Fight the power.”

Then I walked over to where Sidney was fighting with Dave just as he yanked off his powder blue tux jacket and threw it to the ground.

“You want me to escort you shirtless?” he demanded, caught up in a rare (for him) fit of pique. “Fine! I’ll escort you shirtless!”

Then he stomped off.

I picked up the jacket and brushed bits of grass from it.

“He can’t escort you shirtless,” I said. “It’s against the rules. Escorts have to be in formal wear.”

“I know,” Sidney said. “But
look
at that thing. It’s hideous!”

“Maybe he could wear it, you know, ironically,” I said. “With a quahog fritter as a boutonniere.”

“Thanks,” Sidney said sarcastically. “Not helping.”

I felt a pair of hands on my waist. I spun around to find Seth, looking gorgeous in a tux of his own—his was black, thank God—grinning down at me.

“Hey, babe,” he said, leaning over to kiss me. “You look—”

“No,” I said quickly, reaching up to grab his face before his lips could touch mine. “You’ll mess up my makeup.”

Except that I was disturbingly aware of the fact that
it wasn’t my makeup I was worried about. I didn’t want Seth to kiss me because…

…I just didn’t want Seth to kiss me.

I know. It was insane. But at that moment, the thought of my boyfriend kissing me actually made me feel a little bit, well…

Queasy.

Really! I know that’s a terrible thing to think about a boy. Especially a boy you’ve been seeing exclusively. Well, semi-exclusively.

“Sorry,” Seth said, about messing up my makeup. “You just look so hot.”

My heart lurched. He was just so…sweet. How could I have treated him the way I’d been treating him lately? How?

Even though the truth is that, though Seth is
always
going on about how hot I look, he never compliments me on stuff that actually matters. Like, he’s never looked at my photos and gone, “You understand people…just not yourself.” He’s never looked at my photos and said anything but, “Nice. Let’s make out.”

Not, you know, that I ever minded. Until fairly recently.

Oh, God. What’s
happening
to me?

“See, this is the tux Dave was supposed to get,” Sidney cried, grabbing Seth’s jacket sleeve. “Oh my God, your boyfriend looks so good! What is wrong with my boyfriend, that he has the worst taste in all of the Eastern Seaboard? Seth, you guys went to the shop
together. Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

Seth looked confused…kind of like a puppy someone was berating for having peed on the floor. “He thought black would be too hot,” he said. “And he was right. I’m boiling right now.”

“So what?” Sidney shouted, loudly enough for Dave, who was over at the cooler Ms. Hayes had brought along, stocked with Diet Cokes and bottled water, to overhear. “Sometimes you have to suffer for beauty! How do you think I feel when I have my legs waxed? Do you think it feels good? Well, it doesn’t. But I do it anyway, to look good for
my boyfriend
. Because I love him.”

I had no comment to make about that. I never get my legs waxed, because of the potential for bacterial infection, even at a seemingly clean salon. I used my trusty safety razor instead.

Dave had a comment, though. He went, throwing down the water bottle he’d just chugged, “You know what, Sidney? If you have something to say to me, why don’t you come over here and say it to my face instead of shouting it out for everyone in town to hear?”

Which caused Sidney to go, “Fine, I will,” and stomp over to him.

Seth, having watched this exchange with a quizzical expression on his face, looked down at me and went, “Wow. I guess she’s really nervous about the pageant, huh?”

“I guess,” I said. I was kind of upset about the puppy thing. I mean, that I’d look at my boyfriend’s face and
been reminded of a puppy. Who had just peed. That isn’t the kind of thing you’re supposed to think about when you look at your boyfriend. What was wrong with me? I mean, obviously Seth and I hadn’t been the most perfect couple, considering I kept making out with other people (well, okay, one other person…at a time) behind his back.

But I had never thought of him as
puppyish
before. You know, cute and sweet and ultimately…well, kind of dim.

“Katie,” Seth said. “Is everything okay? I mean, between you and me?”

Oh my God! It was like he’d read my mind! How’d he done that? Puppies aren’t supposed to be able to do that….

“Between us?” I asked, turning away from Sidney and Dave, who were now arguing in the opposite corner of the tent, while Morgan blubbered away about her rosin and Jenna sat there looking as empty-headed as Katie Holmes. “What do you mean?”

Except of course I knew exactly what he meant. I just hadn’t suspected that he’d noticed.

“Well, it’s like, these past few days, I’ve hardly seen you,” Seth said. “I know you were sick, and all, but—”

“Sick?” I blinked up at him confusedly.

“You know,” Seth said. “Your
e. coli
?”

Holy quahog! I can’t believe I forgot about that. I seriously have to start keeping better track of my lies. Maybe I need to make a flow chart. PowerPoint might help.

“Right,” I said. “Well, yeah, there was that…and, you know, the pageant, and I’ve been trying to work as much as I can before school starts up again—”

“Yeah,” Seth said. “I get all that. It’s just…this is gonna sound kinda weird, but it’s almost like…I don’t know. Like you’re not that into me anymore, or something.”

“Oh, Seth,” I cried, guilt twisting my heart in two. How could I? How
could
I have been so awful to him? He’s such a great guy. Everybody says so.

Everybody except Tommy. For whom Seth wants to have a blanket party.

I pushed this thought resolutely from my head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. “Of course I’m still into you!”

Seriously. I so need a flow chart. Because the lies are just mounting, and higher and higher every minute.

“Oh,” Seth said, looking relieved. “Okay. Cool.”

Then he bent down to kiss me again.

And I said, ducking, “Oops, you know what? I just need…I just need to step outside for a minute. I think I left something in my bike basket. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Seth looked confused again…and more like a puppy than ever.

“Um,” he said. “Okay.”

I gave him a smile, and hurried toward the tent flap…just as Eric Fluteley was lifting it to come in, looking handsomer than I’d ever seen him in a black tux with gold studs. I braced myself, thinking he’d notice I was
leaving and try to follow me out for some quick pre-pageant frenching.

But he barely even seemed to notice me. Instead, he called to Morgan, “Is this what you were looking for?” and held up a chunk of amber-colored rock.

Morgan, who’d been crying (although fortunately she appeared to have applied waterproof mascara), looked up. When she saw what Eric was holding, she broke out into a radiant smile.

“Oh,
Eric
,” she cried. “Thank you!”

And Eric blushed.

Oh, yes. Eric Fluteley blushed.

“Excuse me, Katie,” he said, when he saw me standing there by the tent flap. He stepped out of the way, courteously holding the flap up to let me by…though his gaze, I couldn’t help but notice, was still glued to Morgan’s.

Which was good. I mean, this is what I’d wanted. For Eric and Morgan to get together, because they made such a nice couple.

So I just smiled and said, “Thanks, Eric,” and ducked outside.

Man. Nice to know how easily I can be replaced.

Well, whatever. Seth had been right about one thing: It was
boiling
inside that tent. Out in the fresh air, I felt like I could breathe again. Funny how I hadn’t noticed how hot it was in there until Seth had started in with his “Like you’re not that into me anymore” thing.

Which couldn’t have been more out of left field. I
mean, of
course
I’m into Seth.

And, all right, I’ll admit it, he’s not the best conversationalist. But he’s still a great guy. Like Sidney pointed out, he hadn’t dumped me, even though I wouldn’t sleep with him. That was something, right? And sure, maybe he didn’t follow me home to make sure I got there safely on my bike.

And maybe he didn’t exactly offer any kind of artistic criticism about my photographs.

But he’s
Seth Turner
! And he’s
mine
!

And what kind of idiot would ever break up with
Seth Turner
?

It was as I was thinking this I noticed a guy who kind of looked like Tommy Sullivan coming toward me along the park path. Which had to have been my imagination playing tricks on me, because no way would Tommy Sullivan show himself behind the Quahog Princess pageant tent after I’d made it explicitly clear that I never wanted to see him again.