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.”

“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.

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 comehere?

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 mentionwhy 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.”