“Yes,” I said primly. Where was he going with this, anyway?

“He must be an acquired taste, too,” Tommy observed.

“You don’t know him,” I said, reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind my ear. Because Sidney and I had read inGlamour that guys like girls who play with their hair.

Although what I was doing, trying to make Tommy Sullivan like me — you know,that way — I don’t think I could have explained in a million years.

“Well, well, well,” Tommy said. He didn’t seem to notice my hair-tucking thing.

Which — I know! I was totally flirting with Tommy Sullivan!Tommy Sullivan, the most hated person in all of Eastport.

But I couldn’t help it.

“Thingshave changed since I’ve been gone,” Tommy went on. “Especially you.”

“Oh,” I said, uncomfortably aware of just how wrong he was. “I’m not so different than I used to be.”

“Maybe not on the inside,” Tommy said. “But on the outside? You’ve done the whole clichéd caterpillar-to-butterfly thing.”

Which, you know, was kind of funny, seeing as how he was one to talk.

“I just got my braces off,” I said. “And got highlights, and learned how to scrunch my hair.”

“Don’t be modest,” Tommy said, almost like he was impatient with me. “It’s not just how you look, either. You seem to have miraculously avoided all stigma from having associated with me all those years ago. In fact, from what I’ve observed, you’re one of the best-liked, most popular girls in town.”

“Besides Sidney,” I pointed out, observing that his eyes, in the moonlight, looked neither green nor amber, but almost silver. Also that his lips were very manly and strong-looking.

Who would have thought skinny Tommy Sullivan would grow up to have such nice-looking lips? Not me. That’s for sure.

“Sidney’s always been popular,” Tommy agreed. “But not as universally liked as you seem to be. You’ve got the whole package — pretty, friendly, hard-working, kind to the elderly”—I wondered how he could possibly know that, then remembered my tour bus—“talented, top of the class…now that I’m not around anymore to give you some competition — daughter of two well-liked locals, sister to a future Quahog. In fact, except for your apparent inability to stick to just one guy at a time, you’ve turned out to be perfect Quahog Princess material.”

I’d gotten so carried away, hearing all the good things he was saying about me, that I’d sort of leaned toward him and made myself available to be snatched up and made out with…assuming that any second he was going to put his arms around me and start kissing me.

But when he got to the part about my inability to stick to just one guy at a time, I glared at him and cried, “Hey! That’s not fair! I can’t help it if guys are attracted to me.”

“You could probably help making out with them behind emergency generators,” Tommy pointed out dryly.

I scowled.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Tommy,” I snapped. “But I’m not sticking around a second longer if you’re just going to insult me.”

And I whirled around to go.

And just as I’d hoped he would, he reached out and grabbed one of my arms, right above the elbow, and dragged me back toward him.

“Not so fast,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not through talking to you.”

“Oh, you’re through, all right,” I assured him, peeking up at him from beneath my eyelashes (anotherGlamour tip). “You’ve done nothing since you got back to town but spy on me, and then insult me to my face. You’d better not have come back here to write some horrible exposé about Eastport, or something, Tommy, or I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll do what?” he asked, still sounding amused. “Drop me like a hot potato and pretend you never knew me, let alone come over to my house after school to do our Scholastic Reading Counts quizzes together and eat my mom’s homemade peanut butter cookies? Oh, wait. You already did that.”

I didn’t care what he was saying, though. Because he still had hold of my arm. His hand was so big, his fingers and thumb almost met around it.

And, now that I was standing so close to him, I could smell the faint scent of his aftershave.

It’s hard to stay mad at any guy who smells good.

“Well,” I said in a slightly warmer voice, “if you’re not writing some horrible exposé about Eastport, whatdo you want with me, then?”

“I just wanted to tell you something,” Tommy said, looking down into my eyes.

But instead of kissing me, as I was beginning to think he might, he said, “I’ve enrolled at Eastport High. I’ll be going there this fall.”

Seven

“WHAT?”

I yanked my arm from his grasp.

“Wait a minute…when you saidformer editor in chief did you mean…Tommy, are you back in Eastportpermanently?”

“Yes,” he said calmly.

“That’s what Jill meant,” I said, starting to pace the length of my dad’s boat (thirty feet, bow to stern), “when she said you told her you went to Eastport High. Because youdo go to Eastport!”

“I enrolled last week,” Tommy said matter-of-factly.

“Tommy!” This was horrible. This was terrible. This was the worst thing I had ever heard in my life. “You — you can’t do this.”

“Uh, I beg your pardon, Katie, but yes, I can. It’s a free country.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said. My chest felt tight.

“If you’re upset my attendance is going to cause you to lose your ranking at the top of the class,” Tommy said mildly, “I guess I can see your chagrin. But I never knew you werethat competitive—”

“That’s not it!” I cried. Because I hadn’t even thought of that. It was true that Tommy and I had always competed for first in our class — especially for points in Scholastic Reading Counts — and that since he’d left, I’d held the position with ease, not so much because I’m smarter than my peers (the way I always suspected Tommy was), but because I’m one of the few people in our grade who ever actually studies. Because I sort of like it…a fact my friends accept, though it seems to puzzle them.

“What I mean,” I went on, “is thatthey’re going to kill you.”

“I thought there was nous andthem,” Tommy pointed out. “I thought we were all just humans. Or is that not what you told me earlier this evening?”

“Tommy!”I couldn’t believe he was throwing my own words back at me. Also that he was making a joke out of it. “This is serious! Don’t you understand? This is…this is…” I couldn’t think of a word strong enough to project my feelings on the matter. He’s the writer, after all, not me. I finally settled for: “Tommy, this issuicide!”

“Your faith,” Tommy said, getting down off the bow and straightening to his full height, “in my ability to protect myself from your friends is really flattering, Katie.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t believe he could be so…so…hot.

And so stupid.

What had happened to him? Tommy Sullivan had never been stupid.

Then again, I suppose peopledo change. Tommy Sullivan had never been hot, either. And now look at him.

Which was actually one of the problems. I couldn’tstop looking at him.

Well, enough is enough, I decided. And I stalked up to him, tilting up my chin so I could look him full in the face.

“I am not joking, Tommy,” I said. “If you think anybody’s forgotten what you did, you are sorely mistaken.”

“No,” Tommy said tensely. “I can see they haven’t even bothered to scrape my name off the gymnasium wall yet—”

Oh my God. Waseveryone going to bring that up today? “Because sandblasting isn’t in the budget—”

“No,” Tommy interrupted me tersely. “Because theywant people to remember. It’s a warning to anyone else who might want to interfere with the almighty Quahogs—”

“Shh!” I shushed him, looking around to make sure the fishermen beneath the overpass hadn’t heard him.

“Look at you,” Tommy said with a laugh. “You’re afraid even to say anything negative about them out loud.”

“No, I’m not,” I insisted. “It’s just that you know how people here are about the Quahogs.” I couldn’t help letting out a frustrated groan. “Tommy, why do you always have to go aroundantagonizing everyone? Don’t you know you get a lot further in life by being friendly?”

“That’s a funny way to put it,” Tommy said with a laugh.

I eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“Well, what you call being friendly, I call lying. Like how you’re still pretending to love your boyfriend, even though you’re clearly so bored by him, you’ve taken up with another guy.”

I inhaled to deny this, but he went on, “But I suppose you think it wouldantagonize too many people if you did the right thing and just broke up with him.”

“That—” I started to cry, but he cut me off.

“The thing is, telling thetruth can antagonize people. But I’m willing to take the heat. Unlike some people.”

“But there are some things people don’t NEED to know,” I cried. I couldn’t believe that after all this time, he still hadn’t realized this.

“Like that their two-time All-State first team defensive end and a number of his teammates cheated on their SATs?” Tommy asked pointedly.

And there it was.

He’dsaid it. Not me.

It was amazing. All the pain and anxiety from that day four years ago came rushing back, as if absolutely no time at all had passed since then. Suddenly, I was thirteen years old again, in braces and with a wicked case of the frizzies (I hadn’t met Marty yet, or learned about product and scrunching), begging Tommy not to do what he was so bound and determined to, no matter what the consequences.

And the consequences turned out to be far more severe than even I could have foreseen — for both of us.

“I told you not to run that story,” I reminded him, four years after the fact.

“Yes,” Tommy said, leaning back against the door to the cabin and folding his arms across his chest — an act that caused his impressively rounded biceps to bulge a little…a sight from which I resolutely turned my gaze, since it made me feel just a tiny bit breathless. “You did.”

“It wasn’t that I thought it was wrong for those guys to get busted for what they did,” I went on, trying to make him understand something that, four years ago, I hadn’t quite understood myself. “But I still don’t see why YOU had to be the person to bust them for it. You could have gone straight to the editor in chief over at theGazette. He’d have run it. Mr. Gatch has never been in Coach Hayes’s pocket, like the sports editor.”

Tommy’s expression, in the moonlight, could only be described as incredulous.

“It wasmy story, Katie,” he said. “Iwanted to be the one to write it.”

“Butwhy?” I demanded. “When you had to know how people were going to react?”

“You know why,” he said. “You know how I felt about sports…and the Quahogs in particular.”

“Right,” I said. “Which is why I don’t get why—”

“Because what they did was wrong, Katie,” Tommy explained patiently, like I was still thirteen years old. “They were tarnishing the team. I mean, who were those guys hurting with what they did? Other students, that’s who. Students who were taking the SATs that day and weren’t cheating, students who actually studied. And okay, I wasn’t one of those students, since I wasn’t exactly applying to colleges in the eighth grade. But still. What they did was wrong. And it wasn’t like I didn’t give them the chance to come forward before I ran it.”

“Oh, right,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Like they were going to do that. Scholarships were at stake, Tommy! Besides, they didn’t think you’d have the guts to really do it.”

“Scholarships?”Tommy laughed sarcastically. “Yeah, that was what everyone was so upset about. That they lost their chance at getting decent scholarships. Come on, Katie. No one cared about those guys’ futures. The only thing that mattered to everyone in this stupid town was one thing, and one thing only: the state championship.”

“Which they had to forfeit,” I reminded him.

“As well they should,” Tommy said firmly. “They were a bunch of cheaters. They didn’t deserve to play.”

“Tommy.” I shook my head. I couldn’t believe, after all this time, he still couldn’t see the magnitude of what he’d done. “They wereQuahogs. Itold you not to run that article. Itold you people weren’t going to like—”

He held up a single hand to stop the flow of my words. “Don’t worry, I heard you the first time. And I don’t blame you, Katie, for choosing to dissociate yourself from me back then. You did what you had to do, in order to survive. This is Quahog Country. I understand that.”