Like right now, for instance. Because when I looked over at Morgan Castle’s table and saw who she was with, I knew EXACTLY what she was doing at the Gull ’n Gulp on a Tuesday night in high season.

And I also knew I didn’t have time for the drama that was about to erupt. I mean, I had Mrs. Hogarth’s birthday twelve-top to deal with.

Sidney didn’t know that, though, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. I’ve been best friends with Sidney van der Hoff, the most popular girl in my class, since second grade when I let her cheat off me during a spelling quiz. Sidney had been a wreck that day, on account of her kitten having gone in to get spayed. Sidney had convinced herself Muffy wasn’t going to survive.

So I took pity on her and let her copy my answers.

Muffy got through her surgery just fine, and grew into a fat cat whom I got to know quite well from the frequent slumber parties I attended at Sidney’s house afterward, Sidney not being the kind of person to forget a kindness.

That’s what I love about Sidney.

It’s all the drama I could live without.

“Oh my God, is thatEric Fluteley?” Sidney was totally staring at Morgan’s table. “That’s even WEIRDER. What’s HE doing here? This is hardly his kind of place. I mean, considering that no Hollywood casting scouts are likely to walk in.”

“Hey, Katie,” Dave said, ignoring his girlfriend’s outburst. This was typical Dave behavior. He is a notorious smoother-over…one of those people who is always calm, no matter what the situation — even Morgan Castle and Eric Fluteley dining together at the Gull ’n Gulp. That’s why he and Sidney make such a good couple. She’s a disrupter, and he’s a smoother-over. Together, they’re almost like one normal person. “How you doing? Busy tonight, huh?”

“Way busy,” I said. He had no idea. This family from, like, Ohio or something had come in earlier, and the parents had let their kids run around all over the place, bothering Jill up at the hostess stand, throwing french fries out into the water (even though the signs on the pier supports say, very clearly,DO NOT FEED THE BIRDS OR FISH), getting in the way of the busboys when they were carrying enormous trays of used plates, shrieking for no reason, that sort of thing.

If my brothers and I had acted that way in a restaurant, my mom would have made us go sit out in the car.

But these parents just smiled like they thought their kids were so cute, even when one of them blew milk at me from a straw.

And then, after all that, they only left a three-dollar tip.

Hello. Do you know what you can buy in Eastport for three dollars? Nothing.

“I’ll make this quick, then,” Dave was saying. “I’ll have a Coke.”

“Make it two,” Jamal said.

“Make it three,” Seth said, with another one of his knee-melting smiles. I could tell by the way he couldn’t take his eyes off me that things were going to get steamy in the cab of his truck later on. I knew the cami I was wearing had been a good idea, even though Peggy has a thing about bra straps showing, and had almost made me go home to change until Jill had pointed out her bra straps show every single night, and if it’s okay for the hostess, why not the wait staff?

“Diet for me, please, Katie,” Martha said.

“Me, too,” Sidney said.

“Two diets, three regulars, and two quahog fritter platters coming up,” I said, gathering the menus. We always throw in free quahogs for the Quahogs. Because it’s good for business to have the most popular guys in town hanging out at your establishment. “Be back in a minute, guys.”

I winked at Seth, who winked back. Then I hurried to turn in their order and get the drinks.

I couldn’t help glancing in Eric’s direction on my way to the soda station — and saw him staring at me over the top of Morgan’s head. He had that look on his face — the same look he got when I was taking his headshots for his college apps, and the stills of him for theQuahog Gazette during that really intense scene fromThe Breakfast Club, which our school put on, where Bender talks about how his dad burned him for spilling paint on the garage floor. Eric played Bender, and you could TOTALLY see how Claire, the school’s prom queen, would go for him.

Eric really is talented. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the movies someday. Or some TV series about sensitive but fearless doctors, or whatever. He’s already got an agent and goes on auditions and everything. He almost got a part in a Daisy sour cream commercial, but was beat out at the last minute when the director decided to go in a different direction and use a five-year-old instead.

Which I could understand. I mean, it’s sour cream. How intense do you want the guy to look about it? Even now, Eric was looking at me so intensely that Morgan, who was trying to talk to him, totally paused and looked around to see what he was staring at.

Quick as a flash, I turned my back on them and leaned down to ask Mrs. Hogarth if there was anything she needed.

“Oh, no, Katie, dear,” she said, beaming at me. “Everything is just lovely. Larry, honey, you remember Katie Ellison, don’t you? Her mother and father own Ellison Properties, the real estate firm in town.”

Mrs. Hogarth’s son, who was in Eastport with his wife (and some of his kids and some of their kids and a few oftheir kids) to take his mom and her best friends from her assisted-living community out for her birthday, smiled. “Is that so?”

“And Katie takes pictures for her school paper,” Mrs. Hogarth went on. “And for our community newsletter. She took that nice picture of the quilting club. Remember, Anne Marie?”

“I thought I looked fat in it,” said Mrs. O’Callahan, who, by the way,is fat. Although I’d tried to Photoshop out some of the excess, knowing she’d complain later.

“Well,” I said, super chipperly. “Is everyone ready for dessert?”

“Oh, I think so,” Mrs. Hogarth’s son said with a wink. He’d stopped by earlier with a cake from Strong’s Bakery, which we’d stashed in the back and which I was supposed to bring out while singing “Happy Birthday.” The Hogarths had forgotten to get candles, though, so I’d run over to the card shop and picked up two shaped like the numbers nine and seven. They were kids’ candles, with clowns on them, but I knew Mrs. Hogarth wouldn’t mind.

“Oh, nothing for me, thanks,” Mrs. Hogarth said. “I’m stuffed. That grouper was delicious!”

“I’ll be right back to see if anyone wants coffee, then,” I said, and hurried around the corner to the soda station, still careful not to look back in Eric’s direction.

Ducking into the kitchen, I grabbed Mrs. Hogarth’s cake, threw on the two candles, and started out again — and almost crashed right into Eric Fluteley, who, looking at me intensely the whole time, took the cake from my hands, set it next to the coffeemaker, grabbed me by both shoulders, and kissed me on the lips.

Two

“The Gull ’n Gulp just so isn’t Morgan Castle’s kind of place,” Sidney was going on, into my cell phone.

I grunted in response. I was trying to work some leave-in conditioner through my wet hair with a comb. I’d had to wash it three times after my shift in order to get the smell of fried quahog out of it.

Seriously, I don’t know how Seth can stand to make out with me when I stink so much of clams.

But the stink is pretty much the only downside of waitressing at one of the most popular restaurants in town. Especially when you pocket forty-eight bucks in tips, like I did tonight.

Not to mention the added bonus of getting kissed by Eric Fluteley at the soda station.

“I mean, shouldn’t she have been over at the Oaken Bucket?” Sidney asked.

“Totally.” I don’t know what’s going on with my hair. I have been trying to grow it out ever since an unfortunate bob incident midway through sophomore year. It’s almost shoulder-length now, with a lot of layers (because the stick-straight thing that works so well for Sidney doesn’t work atall for me) and gold highlights to make it less aggressivelybrown. According to Marty over at Supercuts, I’m supposed to let it dry naturally, then scrunch it with curl enhancer to make it fuller and give it bounce.

But that only seems to work when it’s humid outside, or I’m in the vicinity of the Gull ’n Gulp’s kitchen.

Sidney was right, of course. The Oaken Bucket, the vegan café across town, is much more Morgan’s scene than the Gull ’n Gulp. I mean, the Bucket serves stuff like falafel in a pita with hummus and avocado, and tofu stirfry over brown rice. You won’t find a single item on the menu made with quahogs over at the Bucket, that’s for sure.

“There’s only one reason she’d go there,” Sidney went on, in her most malevolent tone. “And we all know what it is.”

I nearly dropped my phone. Right into the toilet, which is where the comb ended up. Fortunately, I’d remembered to flush earlier. I caught the phone at the last minute and pressed it to my ear.

“W-wait,” I stammered. “What? We do?”

How could she know? She couldn’t know! No one had seen me with Eric — had they?

Iknew I should have slapped him. Oh,why had I kissed him back? I wouldn’t have, if I’d thought there was any chance that Seth — or Sidney — might have seen us.

But the soda station is totally hidden from view from the corner booth. And from where Morgan Castle was sitting.

So instead of slapping Eric Fluteley when he started kissing me, I melted, exactly as if I’d been one of Mrs. Hogarth’s birthday candles left to burn too long.

Well, what else was I going to do? I mean, Eric’s just…hot.