They were so big, so bright, so beautiful, so magnificent to Carmen’s eyes that she thought she was imagining them. They were like goddesses, like Titans. She was so proud of them! They were benevolent and they were righteous. Now, these were friends.
Lena, Tibby, and Bee were here, in this theater, and they had come for her. Her big night was their big night. Her joy was their joy; her pain their pain. It was so simple.
They were absolutely lovely, and in their presence, so was she.
In the presence of her friends, Carmen rediscovered the simplicity she had lost. They enabled her to find the voice of Perdita as she had first understood it. It felt good to be able to go back.
But the greater miracle was her understanding of the last scenes in the play: the reunion, the end of estrangement, the end of winter. She had understood from the beginning the feeling of the girl who was lost, and now she also understood the girl who was found.
In front of six hundred and twenty souls, three of them most precious to her, Carmen’s winter ended and she felt the return of her own extravagance.
Lena was singing along to an old Van Morrison tune on the radio, driving along the New Jersey Turnpike. She’d dropped Bee off in Providence and Tibby in New York, and now she was heading back to D.C. to return her mother’s car. It was four o’clock in the morning and she needed to do something to keep herself awake.
Her cell phone began buzzing in the front pocket of her skirt. That worked too.
“Hello?”
There was no connection at first, and then she heard an urgent though distant voice. “Lena?”
“Effie! Is that you?”
“Lena, are you there?”
“Yes, it’s me. Are you okay? Are you in Greece?” She jabbed the radio button off. She was relieved and grateful to get to talk to Effie so much sooner than expected.
“Yes, I’m at Grandma’s,” Effie said, muffled, but crying openly.
“Ef? Effie?” For several seconds Lena heard sobs but no voice, and she agonized. “I am so sorry, Effie. Please talk to me. Are you okay?”
“Lena, I did something really terrible.”
Even over a cell phone connection, Lena suddenly sensed that these were a different kind of tears than the ones Effie had left with. “What? What is it?” Lena tried not to drive off the road.
“I can’t even tell you.”
“Please tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Effie, what could it be? How could it be that bad?”
“It is. It’s worse.”
“You’re making me nervous, you know. Just tell me or I’ll drive into a ditch.”
“Oh, Lena.” More sobs.
“Effie!”
“I—I…your pants.”
“What? I can’t hear you!”
“I took your pants.”
“The Traveling Pants?”
“Yes.” Crying. “I took them.”
“To Greece?”
“Yes.”
“Effie.” Now she knew where they were, at least.
“I was mad and I just—I was mad at Tibby and you and everybody and—”
“Okay, I get it,” Lena said, disoriented by the rapid reallocation of guilt between them.
“It’s worse than that, though.”
Lena felt the bang bang bang of her portending heart. “What?”
“I wore them on the ferry and they got wet.”
“Yes.”
“I hung them on the line on Grandma’s terrace to dry. I never thought—”
Bang bang bang. “You never thought what?”
“It was windy. I wasn’t thinking that it could”—several words were lost in tears—“or that I would lose them.”
“What do you mean, Effie?”
“I went to get them and they were gone. I’ve looked everywhere. For the last three hours I’ve looked.” Another crash of sobs. “Lena, I did not mean to lose them.”
Effie had taken the Pants. Now Effie couldn’t find them. But she had not lost them. They were not lost. “Effie, listen to me. You cannot lose them! Do you hear me? You have to find them. They have to be there somewhere.” Lena’s voice was as hard as she’d ever heard it.
“I’ve tried. I really have.”
“You keep trying!” There was static on the line. “Can you hear me? Effie? Effie?”
She was gone. Lena threw the phone down on the passenger seat and clutched the wheel. She felt like she could crush it in her hands.
The Pants could not be lost. They had magic to protect them. They were not the kind of thing that could be lost. They were there, and Effie would find them. Anything else was not a thing she could think.
It had been hard for Carmen to see it end. The honors, the admirers, the catered parties, the champagne, the little egg rolls. Her singular pride in introducing her friends to the cast. But the evening had eventually come to an end.
It had been hard to say good-bye to her friends as they piled into Lena’s mother’s car to drive through the night and be back by morning in time for their obligations.
Walking back from the parking lot, Carmen had passed the theater again to savor the taste of the night.
Judy and Andrew had still been there, sleeves up and hair down, going over the points of the evening one more time. It had been hard not to cry when they hugged her.
“You did me proud, sweetie,” Judy said in her ear.
“I’m not going to jinx it,” Andrew said. But when Carmen let out a few tears, she saw that he had some too.
Hardest of all had been ending up back in her dorm room.
Thankfully, Julia was asleep when Carmen crept into her bed. Carmen slept a long and virtuous sleep. But as does tend to happen in the morning, Julia woke up.
“How did it go?” Julia asked pointedly.
“Weren’t you there?” Carmen asked.
“No, I had other plans.”
This was strange, because during one of the many curtain calls, Carmen had actually seen Julia in the audience. She knew she had, because she had been struck at that moment by the contrast between the three beacons of friendship burning like suns in her eyes and Julia, the cheapest, scrawniest, chintziest ten-watt bulb of a counterfeit friend.
“That’s weird, because I saw you there.”
Julia was again looking couched and furtive. “No, you didn’t.”
Carmen could have summoned her towering anger at this moment. She thought of it. Her power was restored enough that she could have taken on Julia as the rock-hurling Carmen of old, and Julia would have suffered for it.
Carmen could have, but she didn’t. Julia had once seemed too valuable to cross. Now she didn’t seem valuable enough.
She began getting dressed as Julia looked on sourly.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Julia snapped before Carmen could get out of the room. “I thought we were friends.”
Carmen turned. She towered a little in spite of herself. “We weren’t.”
“We weren’t?” Julia echoed, surprise and sarcasm mixing.
“No. You know how I know?”
Julia looked heavenward, the same kind of petulant expression Carmen herself used to make. “How do you know?”
“Because you wanted me to fail. But I didn’t. Too bad for you. That means we were not friends.”
Before Carmen left, she thought of one more thing.
“You know what the sad thing is?”
Julia’s jaw was locked now. She wasn’t saying anything back.
“The way you are going, you will never have one.”
As Carmen walked away, she felt sorry that she’d been taken in by a snake like Julia. But in some strange way she felt appreciative that it had happened. In friendship terms, she’d lived her life in the Garden of Eden. Her bond with her friends was so powerful, so supportive, so uncompetitive, she’d thought that was how friendship worked. She’d been spoiled and she’d been innocent. She hadn’t recognized how good she had it, o
r how bad other alleged friendships could be.
Now she knew.
If she could go back, would she do anything differently? She thought about that.
No, she probably wouldn’t. It was that old idea—better to put your heart out there and have it abused once in a while than to keep it hidden away.
But jeez, a little judgment wouldn’t hurt.
From the moment Bee learned the state of the Pants, time had ceased flowing in its normal way and instead proceeded in nervous jolts.
“Should I call Lena again?”
“You talked to her ten minutes ago,” Eric said from the back of Bee’s neck, where he’d been kissing her.
“I know, but what if she heard something? What if she talked to Carmen?”
She and Tibby and Lena had done almost nothing but call each other since Lena had set off the alarms.
Bee’s phone rang before she could decide. It was Carmen.
“Oh, my God.”
“Lena told you.” Bridget’s agitation was big and her dorm room felt tiny.
“Yeah.” They had deliberated waiting until after Carmen’s last performance on Wednesday.
“What are we gonna do?”
“What can we do? Hope Effie isn’t blinded by anger and jealousy.”
Bridget paused. “I kind of wish we had someone else looking.”
“Yeah. But who else have we got?”
“Grandma.”
“Ugh.”
Lena called Effie every hour for twenty straight. Grandma was getting annoyed, but what could she do? She let Effie take the blame.
“I’m trying. I’m trying everything.” That was all Effie would say.
Lena even wished she could call Kostos to see if he was there and could help. But unfortunately, that was a bridge she had burned.
“I think I know what the problem is,” Tibby said to Lena on the phone from her room in New York.
They called each other so often, they hardly bothered hanging up anymore. “What?”
“The Pants don’t want Effie to find them.”
“Oh, my gosh. You could be right.”
“They’re scared of her.” Tibby suspected that she was possibly overidentifying with the Pants, but still.
“Maybe that’s it.”
“So what should we do?”
Lena waited for twenty-two more hours and made another uncharacteristically rash decision.
“I’m going to go,” she said to Carmen on the phone.
“What?”
“I’m going to Greece. I’m online as we speak. I’m buying a ticket.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She had made up her mind. It was her fault, really. The Pants had been in her possession. It was her lunatic sister who had taken them. She was the one with the crabby grandma in Oia. Who could find them but her?
“When?”
“Thursday is the soonest I could get.”
“Whoa.”
“I just pressed the button, Carma. I bought it.”
“You are fearsome. With what?”
“A credit card.”
“Whose?”
“My mother’s.”
“Does she know?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh, Lenny.”
“You can’t put a price on the Traveling Pants.”
“Yeah, but maybe your mom can.”
Lena started to get suspicious when Bee called on Tuesday and asked her for her flight number for the third time. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Bee said.
When Lena arrived at the gate at Kennedy Airport in New York for her flight to Athens on Thursday, she was surprised to see Bee standing there with her duffel bag over her shoulder, but she was not stunned. She was stunned to see Tibby and Carmen standing beside Bee.
She laughed out loud. The first time in days. It was cathartic. “Did you come to say good-bye?” she asked, full of happy suspicions.
“No, baby, we came to say hello,” Carmen said.
Bee said she’d borrowed the money for her ticket from her dad. According to Carmen, David had about a billion frequent flyer miles, so he gave her some when she pleaded. Tibby’s parents had given her an open ticket voucher for her graduation present last June. They’d also loaned her a hundred bucks to get an expedited passport, which was going to be hard to repay since she’d given notice of exactly one hour at her job.
“Call us Beg, Borrow, Steal and…?” Bee looked at Tibby.
“Use,” Tibby said.
“I wish I was Steal,” Carmen said.
“I wish I was Borrow,” Lena said.
“Nobody wants to be Beg,” Bee pointed out.
They had to argue at the ticket desk to get their seats together, but when the plane took off for Greece, all four of them were sitting side by side.
Lena looked right and looked left and laughed again. How much it sucked to be traveling under these circumstances. But how exquisitely great it was to be doing it together.
“Are you worried they’re going to kick you off the team?” Tibby asked.
As the plane soared through space, as their reckless energy dissipated and the hours stretched, they began to calculate the number of things they had blown off and people they had upset by doing this.
“Not unless they can do without a center forward.” Bee explained that the coach would be furious and threaten her a lot, but then he would forgive her in time to start her in the first league game.
Tibby realized they could not talk about the length of this trip. They couldn’t cast their minds forward to an outcome other than finding the Pants and bringing them home, and who could say how long that would take? But they were heading into the third week in August. It was hard not to recognize the fact that most schools started in a week and a half.
“I’m going to take an incomplete in my screenwriting class,” Tibby said. In the three days she’d spent in New York since her reunion with Brian, she’d made gigantic strides on her love story, but she hadn’t quite gotten to the end of it.
“I was supposed to pack up my room this week. My mom and David are moving into the new house the day after Labor Day. I’ll just have to do it later.”
“Eric said he’d forgive me for leaving if I wore a burka and promised not to flirt with any Greek boys,” Bee said.
“Greeks do like blondes,” Lena said.
“Brian offered to come and help us search,” Tibby said.
“How about Leo?” Carmen asked.
“He called last night,” Lena said. “I think he’s going to Rome for most of next semester.”
“That’s sad,” Carmen said.
Lena shrugged. “It’s not, really. It’s all right. I kind of knew it wasn’t going to turn into a long-term thing.”
Tibby noticed how different Lena looked from the old days of Kostos, when every time she proclaimed equanimity, she looked as if she had stolen a car.
“It’s for the best,” Carmen consoled her. “Lena. Leo. Your names don’t sound good together anyway.”
Tibby laughed and hugged Carmen’s arm. “Well, thanks, Carma. That about settles it.”
Lena laughed too.
“Have a thorny relationship problem? Just ask Carma,” Bee said.
“You should get a column.”
“Start a blog.”
“I think I should,” Carmen agreed. “Hey, did I tell you who came to the final performance last night?”
“Who?”
“Well, my mom and David…”
“Right,” Lena said.
“And my dad and Lydia.”
“Really?” Bee said. “All four of ’em.”
“Yep. They were surprised to see each other at first, but they all had such a great time together I told them they should get a room.”
Tibby laughed and listened to her friends laugh and then just sat back and listened to the flow of their familiar voices. As unhappy as she was about the Pants, she was joyful that the four of them
were finally together. She felt a little guilty about it, like she was laughing at a funeral. And then she realized that the Pants wouldn’t want her to feel that way.
“Do you guys realize this is the first time we’ve really been together since the beach at the end of last summer?” Tibby said, unable to keep her appreciation to herself.
“Yes, I thought of that too,” Lena said a little sadly.
“How could we go so long?” Carmen asked.
“You’re one to ask,” Tibby said, but even as she said it she was filled with gratitude to have their regular Carmen restored to them.
“You know what?” Bee said.
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s just that the Pants are scared of Effie.”
“Then what?” Lena asked.
Bridget looked at each of her friends in turn. “Look at us. I think the Pants are smarter than we even know.”
It was late when they got to Valia’s house, and the four of them were so tired and punchy, so confused as to their whereabouts in time and space, they felt like they’d been inhaling from a whipped cream can.
Lena was earnestly happy to see her grandmother and surprised not to see Effie. She had been girding herself for an uneasy reunion.
“Effie left for Athens today,” Valia told them impassively, but a few minutes later she pulled Lena aside. “She tried her hardest, you know. She tried to find those pants all day and night.”
“I know, Grandma,” Lena said.
Tired as they were, they knew their purpose. Lena found two flashlights and they set out with them on the narrow cobblestone roads and paths beneath the perch of Valia’s terrace.
“It’s all up and down here,” Tibby pointed out, waving her hand down the cliff to the dark water below. “No flat.”
That made it harder to find things, Lena acknowledged to herself. Gravity always played its advantage here.
Valia shook her head at them, making no secret of her doubts, and after a while even Lena realized the futility of their method. Why struggle to light up tiny patches of the world when the sun would do the job so effectively in a few hours?