But Tommy, instead of being horrified, just threw back his head and laughed.

I was the one who was horrified. By his reaction.

“Tommy, I don’t think Sidney was kidding around!” I cried. “You need to look out. I think it will be okay, if, like I said, you keep a low profile. But whatever you’re doing at theGazette …seriously, Tommy. Just stop. Especially if it’s going to get them more riled up than they already are.”

“You’re too much,” Tommy said when he’d stopped laughing long enough to speak again. He shook his head, grinning down at me. “You really are.”

“Tommy.” Maybe he didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. I laid my other hand on his arm, too, and stood to face him, so that I could look up into his eyes very sincerely — trying not to notice that they appeared to be the color of the sun — so he’d see I wasn’t kidding. “This is the weekend of the quahog festival…the last weekend before school starts up again. You remember what happens this weekend. Right?”

He looked down at my hands a little quizzically. I was also standing pretty close to him. Close enough that my boobs were kind of level with my hands. So maybe it wasn’t actually my hands he was looking at.

“Uh,” he said.

“This is the weekend when the Quahogs let off steam before Coach Hayes’s practices start for real,” I reminded him. “Last year all that happened was that a bunch of people lost their mailboxes, because the team went after them with baseball bats out of a car window. But this year, Tommy…it could beyou they go after with a baseball bat.”

Tommy’s gaze flicked from my chest to my eyes. I wondered if he’d noticed that I’d taken another step closer to him, so that our faces were now only a very short distance apart. One of my knees was, in fact, rubbing up against one of his.

“Your concern for my welfare,” he said, “is touching.”

“I mean it, Tommy,” I said. “I feel bad about…well, how things went down between us four years ago.”

“You feel bad,” he repeated. And this time, he was the one who licked his lips.

“Uh-huh,” I said. He had a lot of fine, blond hair on his arm. I couldn’t help stroking it a little with my fingers. Even though I hated myself for doing it. Totally. “About how I treated you.”

“Are you sure what you feel bad about is how you treated me?” Tommy wanted to know. His voice still sounded sarcastic. But also a little curious. “Or is what you feel bad about the fact that I caught you cheating on your boyfriend, and you’re afraid I’m going to tell him?”

“You can tell him anything you want,” I said with a shrug. “Eric and I broke up this afternoon.”

A glance upward — through my eyelashes, of course — showed me that Tommy had raised his eyebrows in surprise. I looked down again quickly, keeping my gaze on the silky arm hairs I was stroking.

“You did?” Tommy’s voice wasn’t quite as steady as it had been. Still, he hadn’t lost one bit of the sarcasm. “Gosh, I hope it wasn’t because of me. I’d hate to know I’d come between you and the guy you’re cheating on your boyfriend with.”

Hurt (how could he joke at a time like this, when I was in his arms…well, practically?), I dropped my hands from his arm and said stiffly, “Don’t flatter yourself, Tommy. It had nothing to do with you. And you know what? I’msorry I called you today. Or your grandmother. Whatever. Let’s just pretend I didn’t. I hope Seth and those guysdo throw a blanket over your head and hit you with a baseball bat. Maybe then you’ll finally realize you don’t actually know everything.”

And I whirled around to go.

And, just as I was hoping he would, he reached out and caught my wrist.

Only instead of just keeping me from stalking off to my bike, Tommy kind of held on. Next thing I knew, he’d spun me around so I was the one with my back up against the front of his Jeep…

…and he was the one leaning over me with his hands resting against the hood, an arm on either side of me, and his face just inches above mine.

“I don’t think I know everything,” he said to me, in a low voice, his gaze locked on mine with an intensity that was making my heart race. In a pleasant kind of way.

“You don’t?” I had no idea what I was saying. All I could think was,He’s going to kiss me. I know it. He’s going to kiss me, while a detached part of my brain wondered why, if I really hated him as much as I kept telling myself I did, I should be so excited about that.

“No,” Tommy said. He wasn’t smiling at all now. There wasn’t a hint of humor in his golden eyes. “Because if I knew everything, I’d have figured out what kind of game you think you’re playing right now.”

“I’m not playing,” I protested.

But the wordplaying barely got past my lips before Tommy’s mouth came down over mine.

And then Tommy Sullivan was kissing me, like I had never been kissed before in my life. Which was ridiculous, because of course I had been kissed hundreds of times before.

But somehow never quite like this, by someone who seemed to feel that he had all the time in the world to get his point across…the point being that Tommy Sullivan was kissing me, more thoroughly than I had ever been kissed before in my life, so that I felt his kiss from the top of my head all the way down to the bottoms of my feet, and everywhere in between. He wasn’t even touching me — except for his lips, and where his body was leaning up against mine, so that I could feel the Jeep’s front grille at my back.

But it was like he didn’thave to touch me. Every single one of my nerve endings seemed to be on fire. It was like kissing an electrical outlet, or something. I felt like I was going to explode.

And I guess Tommy must have felt something along the same lines, because after a minute of carefully not touching me, suddenly his arms went around me, and instead of feeling the front grille of the Jeep behind my back, he’d lifted me so I was sitting on the hood, and he was kind of between my legs. I’d already flung my arms around his neck. It was all I could do not to wrap my legs around his waist as well.

And all I could think was,Now thisis a kiss. Seth had never kissed me like this before. Eric either. It was almost like Tommy hadpracticed this kiss, or something, that’s how good it was.

And as he went on kissing me, and I went on kissing him back, it occurred to me that it was really true…Tommy Sullivan reallywas a freak.

But, like, in the best possible way a guy could be.

And then, just as suddenly as he’d started kissing me, Tommy stopped, tearing his mouth away from mine — but not dropping his arms from around me — and looked at me. Because I was perched on the hood of his Jeep, we were at exactly the same eye level, for once. I looked right back at him, my lips feeling delightfully bruised and tingly, my breath coming out a little raggedly.

But not as ragged as his.

“Don’t even try to tell me that you learned how to do that in military school,” I said accusingly, when I could speak again.

Tommy laughed. But his voice was as unsteady as mine when he replied, “I told you. It was co-ed.”

“Oh, yeah.” But this information was hardly comforting. Seriously, Tommy had to have kissed a lot of girls to have gotten his makeout technique down to such perfection. My head was spinning around so much, I couldn’t stop myself from stammering, “So do you — do you have a girlfriend?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Used to. Why? Would you be more interested in me if I did have a girlfriend, so you could have the fun of trying to steal me away?”

“I’m not like that,” I said hotly, wanting to pull away from him. But then, a stronger part of me wanted to stay right where I was. Forever. “I don’t steal other people’s boyfriends.”

“Right,” Tommy said with a laugh. “You just cheat on your own.”

“I can’t help it,” I protested. Although I knew if Seth had ever once kissed me the way Tommy just had, I’d never have looked twice at Eric. Or Tommy.

And then I admitted a terrible thing…something I’d never admitted to anyone before. Anyone but myself: “I just…I guess I just don’t like him enough not to.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with how much you like or dislike Seth,” Tommy said, absently letting one of the curls of my hair wrap around a finger as he played with it. “I think it has to do with the fact that you wanted him for so long, and then you got him, and you realized he wasn’t so great after all. But you couldn’t break up with him, because you’re Katie Ellison, smartest girl in the class. Breaking up with Seth means you’d be admitting you made a mistake. And brainiac Katie Ellison doesn’t make mistakes.”

“Th-that—” I stammered. “That’s ridiculous!”

“Is it? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just that you’ve never been able to stand disappointing people, and if you broke up with Seth, that would disappoint a lot of people…especially Seth. So you’re doing everything you can to get him to break up with you. Only it’s not working.”

“Ha!” I cried. “That’s funny! No, really, that’s rich. You think Iwant Seth to find out about me and Eric?”

“Exactly,” Tommy said. “Only he’s not bright enough. Really, Katie, the whole thing boils down to how much you dislike yourself.”

I jerked my head away, so the curl fell away from his finger and bobbed back against my face.

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “I like myself. I totally like myself.Too much, maybe,” I added after a second, thinking about Quahog Princess, and how sure Sidney and I were that we were going to win.

“I don’t think so,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen your photos, remember?”