Bridget’s eyes were huge and shiny in her face.
“Hey, look what I brought for you,” Lena said, pulling the Pants out of her bag.
Bridget clutched them in both arms for a moment before she put them on.
“Tell me what happened, okay?” Lena said, sitting down on the sand, pulling Bridget down next to her. “Tell me everything that happened, and we’ll figure out how to fix it.”
Bridget looked down at the Pants, grateful to have them. They meant support and they meant love, just as they’d all vowed at the beginning of the summer. But with Lena right here, right next to her, she almost didn’t need them.
Bridget looked up at the sky. She looked at Lena. “I think maybe you already did.”
Epilogue
Tradition called for our annual late-night celebration at Gilda’s to fall on the middle day between birthdays—nine days after Lena’s and nine days before mine, two days after Bridget’s and two days before Tibby’s. I always find comfort in numbers. I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny. So today it felt like God Himself practically wrote it into my Day Runner. The celebration this year happened to fall the night before school started again, which was significant too, if not in a happy way.
Like salmon swimming back to the tiny tributary where they were spawned, we returned to Gilda’s as the honorary birthplace of the Septembers and now of the Sisterhood.
As usual, Tibby and Bee collaborated on the birthday cake, and Lena and I created the mood with decorations and music. Bee always got to do the breaking and entering.
Usually by this time in the summer, we were as worn in to one another as pebbles in a riverbed. For three months we’d had complete togetherness and not much outside stimuli. What few stories we had, we’d considered, analyzed, celebrated, cursed, and joked into sand.
Tonight was different. I felt like we were each separate and full to our edges with our own stories, mostly unshared. In a way it scared me, having a summer of experiences and feelings that belonged to me alone. What happened in front of my friends felt real. What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.
The Pants were the only witness to all of our lives. They were the witness and the document too. In the last few days we’d made our inscriptions, telling a little of the story with pictures and words that stood out bright against humble denim.
Tonight I looked around at my friends, sitting on a red blanket, surrounded by candles in the middle of a crummy aerobics studio. Usually the centerpiece was the cake, but tonight it was pushed off to the side in deference to the Pants. Two tan faces and Tibby’s pale one looked back at me. Their eyes were all the same color in this light. Tibby gamely wore the sombrero from Mexico and the T-shirt Lena had painted for her showing the harbor at Ammoudi. Lena wore shoes she’d borrowed from Bridget, and Bridget stuck her bare feet toward the center, displaying toenails bright with my favorite turquoise polish. Tibby’s and Lena’s knees touched. We were settling into one another again, sharing our lives.
But we were quieter tonight. There was more care and less ordinary teasing. In a way, we were still strange to one another, I realized, but there was comfort in the Pants. The Pants had absorbed the summer. Maybe it was better that they couldn’t talk. They would let us remember more how we had felt, and less what had actually happened. They would let us keep it all and share it.
It wasn’t that we hadn’t shared the big outlines of our stories. Of course we had. I told them all about how Al’s wedding was. We knew that Bee had messed herself up over Eric. We all saw Lena talk about Kostos in a way she’d never talked about a boy before. We knew about Bailey, and we knew intuitively to be careful when we asked Tibby questions. But there were a million little lines of shading that we couldn’t convey so easily. They were the subtle things, and understanding them, even knowing when you missed them, was what separated other friends from real friends, like we were.
Still, the Pants promised us there was time. Nothing would be lost. There was all year if we needed it. We had all the way until next summer, when we would take out the Traveling Pants and, together or apart, begin again.
The Second Summer
of the Sisterhood
With a bit of last summer’s sand in their pockets, the Traveling Pants and the sisterhood that wears them embark on their sixteenth summer.
Available everywhere April 2003.
Here’s an early preview . . .
The Pants find Bridget in the Deep South. . . .
Bridget took a lot of extra steps up the front walk of the two-story brick house. There were little anthills along one side. Grass pushed up triumphantly through the concrete in many places. The doormat said “Home Is Where the Heart Is” in large letters decorated with pink and yellow flowers. Bridget remembered that doormat, and she also remembered the brass doorknocker in the shape of a dove. Or a pigeon. Maybe it was a pigeon.
She banged on the door a little harder than she’d meant to. She needed to keep it moving. “Come on, come on,” she mumbled to herself. She heard the footsteps. She shook her hands to keep the blood flowing.
Here we go, Bridget thought as the doorknob turned and the door swung open.
And there she was.
The old woman was the right age to be Greta, though Bridget did not actually recognize her.
“Hello?” the old woman said, squinting into the bright sunlight.
“Hi,” Bridget said. She stuck out her hand. “My name is Gilda, and I just moved to town a couple of days ago. Are you Greta Randolph, by any chance?”
The old woman nodded. Well, that was that.
“Would you like to come in?” the woman asked. She looked a little suspicious.
“Yes, thank you. I would.”
Bridget followed her over white wall-to-wall carpet, amazed by the smell of the house. It was distinctive in some unidentifiable way . . . or maybe it was familiar. It stopped her breath for a moment.
The woman invited her to sit on the plaid couch in the living room. “Can I offer you a glass of iced tea?”
“No, not just now. Thank you.”
The woman nodded and sat in the wing chair across from Bridget.
Bridget wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but this wasn’t it. The woman was overweight, and the fat was distributed clumsily around her upper body. Her hair was gray and short and permed looking. Her teeth were yellow. Her clothes looked straight from Wal-Mart.
“What can I do for you?” the woman asked, looking at Bridget carefully, probably to make sure she didn’t swipe any of the crystal doodads on the bookcase.
“I heard from your neighbors you might need a little help around the house—you know, odd jobs. I’m looking for work,” Bridget explained. The lie came effortlessly.
The woman looked confused. “Which neighbor?”
Bridget arbitrarily pointed to the right. Lying was easier than most people thought, she decided. This was key, because liars preyed on the general truthfulness of everybody else. If everybody lied, then it wouldn’t be easy.
“The Armstrongs?”
Bridget nodded.
The woman shook her head, looking puzzled. “Well, we all need a little help, I guess, don’t we?”
“Definitely,” Bridget said.
The woman thought a moment. “I do have a project I’ve been thinking of.”
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to clean out the attic, then maybe turn it into an efficiency and rent it out in the fall. I could use the extra money.”
Bridget nodded. “I could help you with that.”
“I warn you, there’s a lotta junk up there. Boxes and boxes of old things. My kids left all their stuff in this house.”
Bridget shrank back. She hadn’t imagined that would come up quite so fast, even indirectly. In fact, as she sat there she’d so
rt of forgotten the connection she had to this woman.
“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
The woman nodded. “Fine. I’ll pay you five dollars an hour. How would that be?”
Bridget tried not to grimace. Maybe that was the pay scale in Burgess, Alabama, but in Washington you wouldn’t flip a burger for that. “Uh, okay.”
“When can you start?” The enthusiasm seemed to have changed hands.
“Day after tomorrow?”
“Good.”
The woman got up and Bridget followed her to the front door. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Randolph.”
“Call me Greta.”
“Okay, Greta.”
“I’ll see you day after tomorrow at . . . how’s eight?”
“That’s . . . fine. See you then.” Bridget groaned inwardly. She had gotten very bad at waking up in the morning.
“What did you say your last name was?”
“Oh. It’s . . . Tomko.” There was a stray name that could use a new owner, even temporarily. Besides, Bridget liked thinking of Tibby.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Just about to turn seventeen,” Bridget said.
Greta nodded. “I have a granddaughter your age. She’ll be seventeen in September.”
Bridget flinched. “Really?” her voice warbled.
“She lives up in Washington, D.C. You ever been there?”
Bridget shook her head. It was easy to lie to a stranger. It was harder when they knew your birthday.
“Where are you from, anyway?”
“Norfolk.” Bridget had no idea why she said that.
“You’ve come a long way.”
Bridget nodded.
“Well, nice to meet you, Gilda,” the woman who was her grandmother called after her.
The Pants join Tibby at a summer film program. . . .
Brian was dressed and sitting patiently at Tibby’s dorm room desk when she woke up the next morning. Tibby was conscious of how her hair stood up when she first got out of bed. She flattened it with both hands.
“Are you hungry?” he asked her companionably.
She remembered about breakfast. She remembered the IHOP and walking down the highway. She meant to tell Brian about the plan and have him come along. She meant to, but she didn’t.
“I have an early class,” she said.
“Oh.” Brian didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. He didn’t play any of those games where you try to act like you care less than you care.
“Could you meet me for lunch?” she asked. “I’ll steal sandwiches from the cafeteria and we can eat ‘em by the pond.”
He liked that idea. He did his thing in the bathroom while she dressed. They walked down together. She plotted her getaway. Not that it was so tricky. Brian would never suspect her of being the nasty kid she was.
She pointed across the way to the student union building. “They have Dragon Slayer in the basement.”
“They do?” Brian looked more interested in college than he ever had before.
“Yeah. I’ll meet you there at noon.” She knew Brian could play for hours on a dollar.
She scuttled toward Masters Hall. Alex’s room was on the first floor. That was where they usually met up. He was sitting at his computer with his headphones on. Maura was reading one of his hip-hop magazines on the bed. Neither of them looked up or said anything.
Tibby loitered by the door, knowing they would come when they were ready. She was pleased with the ways she had learned their code.
Alex was mixing his soundtrack, she guessed. There were piles of CDs on his desk. Mostly homemade things and obscure labels she only pretended she’d ever heard of. He unplugged the earphones so she and Maura could hear the end of it. There was high-pitched, disturbing reverb and a sort of low, grinding sound underneath. She wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be music or not. Alex looked satisfied. Tibby nodded, wanting it to make sense to her.
“Yo, Tomko. Must have caffeine,” he said, getting up and leading them out the door. Tibby wondered if he had stayed up all night.
They were supposed to sign out when they left campus, but Tibby never brought that up anymore.
They walked for a little less than a mile on the shoulder of the road as cars and trucks whizzed by.
She felt a little sad when the waitress, the gray-haired one with the visor, brought her a huge stack of pancakes. Brian loved pancakes as much as anyone.
Alex was talking about his roommate, one of his favorite targets for ridicule.
Tibby thought about Brian with his Dragon Slayer T-shirt and his thick, smudgy glasses with their heavy gold-plated frames.
She laughed at something Alex said. Her laugh sounded fake to her own ears.
She wondered. Had she not brought Brian because she was worried about how Brian would seem to Alex and Maura? Or was it because she worried about how she, Tibby, would seem to Brian?
The Pants elude Carmen. . . .
The kitchen clock had literally stopped. It was broken. That must be it. The hands hadn’t budged since 12:42. Or . . . oh. 12:43.
It was way too late to call anybody. Carmen didn’t want to e-mail Paul. She didn’t want to read the bile that would slip from her fingers. If she put it in words and actually typed them out, Paul could take all the time he liked to judge her in that silent way of his. He would probably save it to his hard drive. Maybe he would forward it to his whole address book by mistake.
She had an idea. She would pack up the Pants for Tibby. That was a perfectly wholesome thing to do. She’d been meaning to all day. She would put in the letter and address the package and everything.
She walked, as if in a trance, to her bedroom. She moved piles around aimlessly. She forgot what she was looking for until she remembered. She looked harder. With a certain effort she pulled her mind into the task. The Traveling Pants. The Pants. Sacred. Not okay to lose.
Robotically she dug through her drawers. The Pants were not in her drawers. Nor were they in the very large pile of clothes at the foot of her bed.
Suddenly she pictured them in the kitchen. Yes, she’d carried them into the kitchen earlier that evening. She lumbered back into the kitchen and scanned the small room.
They were not on the counter.
Worry about her mother began to vie with worry about the Pants. She checked the laundry, in case some terrible accident had brought the Pants into forbidden contact with the washing machine. Her bones and muscles seemed to rev up. She checked the bathroom hamper. Pants-worry was officially beginning to edge out mother-worry.
Carmen was dashing hopelessly toward the linen closet when the front door swung open and both worries appeared in its frame.
At the sight of her mother there, Carmen stopped with a skid like a cartoon character’s. Her mouth wagged open.
“Hi, sweetheart. What are you doing still up?” Her mother looked shy, not quite up to meeting Carmen just now.
Carmen gasped and sucked at air, fishlike. Her lungs were very shallow. She pointed.
“What?” Christina wore her perma-flush. It served both giddiness and shame. At this moment it was shifting from the former to the latter.
Carmen poked her finger in the air, unable to summon words that could possibly carry out her indignation. “Y-you . . . ! Those . . . !”
Christina looked uncertain. She still trailed wisps of happiness. Some of her was still in the car with David. She hadn’t yet fully entered the domestic nightmare that was Carmen.
“My pants!” Carmen howled like a beast. “You stole them!”
Christina looked down at the Pants in confusion. “I didn’t steal them. You left them out on the kitchen counter. I thought—”
“You thought what?” Carmen thundered.
Her mom seemed to shrink. She looked timid now. She gestured at the Pants. She gave Carmen a beseeching look. “I thought maybe you meant them as a . . .”
Carmen glared at her stonily.
&n
bsp; “As a . . .” Christina looked pained. “As a peace offering, I guess,” she finished quietly.
If Carmen had been kind at all, she would have backed off. This was a tender sort of mistake, potentially sore all around.
“You thought I wanted you to wear the Traveling Pants? You seriously thought that?” Carmen’s temper was growing so big, she herself was afraid of it. “Are you kidding? I put them out to send to Tibby. I would never, never, never—”
“Carmen, enough.” Christina held up her hands. “I understand that. I made a mistake.”
“Take them off now! Now. Now, now, now!”
Christina turned away. Her cheeks were deep red and her eyes were shiny.
Carmen’s shame deepened.
The sick thing was, Christina looked beautiful in the Pants, slender and young. They fit Christina. They loved her and believed in her just as they’d loved Carmen last summer, when Carmen had been worthy of them. This summer they had eluded Carmen. Instead they had chosen her mother.
Christina had appeared in the door moments before, looking free and happy and optimistic, as Carmen had never seen her mother. She seemed to glide on a kind of magic that Carmen couldn’t find. And at that moment, Carmen hated her for it.
Christina stretched out her hand, but Carmen refused to take it. Christina held her own hand instead. “Darling, I know you’re upset. But . . . but . . .” Tears were jiggling in her eyes as she clasped her hands together. “This . . . relationship with David. It won’t change anything.”
Carmen clenched her jaw. She’d been through the drill. When your parents were about to ruin your life, they used that line.
Her mother might have meant what she said. She might even have believed it was true. But it wasn’t. It would change everything. It already had.
The Pants return home to Lena. . . .
Lena lay on the wood floor of her room feeling sorry for herself and generally hating everything and everyone she knew.
If she could have made herself paint, she would have. Painting and drawing always made her feel anchored. But there were times when you felt miserable when you wanted to feel better, and other times when you felt miserable and you figured you’d just keep on feeling miserable. Anyway, there was nothing beautiful in the world.
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Page 20
