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Meg Cabot

Pants on Fire

One

“Oh my God, what’s she doing here?” my best friend, Sidney van der Hoff, was asking, as I came up to the corner booth to hand out menus.

Sidney wasn’t talking about me. She was glaring at someone at another table.

But I couldn’t be bothered to look and see who Sidney was talking about, since my boyfriend, Seth, was sitting next to her, smiling up at me…that smile that’s been making girls’ insides melt since about the fifth grade, when we all started noticing Seth’s even white teeth and highly kissable lips.

It still freaks me out that out of all the girls in school, I’m the one he picked to kiss with those lips.

“Hey, babe,” Seth said to me, blinking his long, sexy eyelashes — the ones that I overheard my mom telling Sidney’s mom over the phone are totally wasted on a guy. He snaked an arm around my waist and gave me a squeeze.

“Hi,” I said, a little breathlessly. Not just because of the squeeze, but because I had a twelve-top (Mrs. Hogarth’s ninety-seventh birthday party) that was running me ragged, refilling their iced tea glasses and such, so I was panting a little anyway. “How was the movie?”

“Lame,” Sidney answered for everyone. “You didn’t miss anything. Lindsay should stick with red; blond does nothing for her. Seriously, though. What’s Morgan Castle doing here?” Sidney used the menu I’d just given her to point at a table over in Shaniqua’s section. “I mean, she’s got some nerve.

I started to say Sidney was wrong — no way would Morgan Castle be caught dead at the Gull ’n Gulp. Especially at the height of the summer season, when the place was so packed. Locals — like Morgan — know better than to try to set foot near this place during high season. At least, not without a reservation. If you don’t have a reservation at the Gull ’n Gulp — even on a Tuesday night, like tonight — during high season, you can expect to wait at least an hour for a table…two hours on weekends.

Not that the tourists seem to mind. That’s because Jill, the hostess, gives them each one of those giant beepers you can’t fit into your pocket and mistakenly walk away with, and tells them she’ll beep them when a table opens up.

You’d be surprised at how well people take this information. I guess they’re used to it, from their TGIFs and Cheesecake Factories back home, or whatever. They just take their beeper and spend their hour-long wait strolling up and down the pier. They look over the side rails at the striped bass swimming around in the clear water (“Look, Mommy!” some kid will always yell. “Sharks!”), and maybe wander over to historic Old Towne Eastport, with its cobblestone streets and quaint shops, then wander back and peer into the yachts at the Summer People watching satellite TV and sipping their gin and tonics.

Then their beeper goes off, and they come hurrying over for their table.

Sometimes, while Jill’s leading them to a table in my section, I’ll overhear a tourist go, “Why couldn’t we have just sat THERE?” and see them point to the big booth in the corner.