Oh, God, what’swrong 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 mouthedGood 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 theGazette. 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 hadhappened 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? Whathappened?”
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. Mydad.”
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. “Butlook 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 isalways 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’shappening 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 formy 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.