Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

  She mixed the precise shade of silver, brown for warmth, green, and blue—those olive tree leaves wanted more blue than you would imagine. Each one seemed to reflect a tiny piece of the sky. The slow hypnosis of deep concentration was passing over her. It was her safest feeling, a state she preferred to stay in far longer than most human beings. She was like one of those strange hibernating frogs whose hearts didn't beat for a whole winter. She liked it that way.

  She heard a splash. She looked up, trying to pull her senses back to alertness. She blinked, forcing her eyes to see three dimensions as three dimensions again. There was another splash. Was someone swimming in the pond?

  There were few sensations Lena hated more than thinking she had perfect privacy and discovering she didn't.

  She took a few steps away from her easel and peered around a tree to give herself a partial glimpse of the pond. She discerned a head. A person's head. From the back. A surge of frustration gripped her jaw. She wanted this to be her place. Why couldn't people just leave it alone?

  She probably should have left at that exact moment. Instead she took two steps forward and gave herself a better view. The better view turned its head and suddenly wore the face of Kostos. At that moment he saw her gaping at him in the shallow pond.

  This time he was naked and she was clothed, but like last time, she was the one shrinking and blushing and he was the one calmly standing there.

  Last time she had been mad at him. This time she was mad at herself. Last time she had thought he was a vain, presumptuous jerk, but this time she knew she was. Last time she had dwelled obsessively on her own exposed body; this time she was thinking about his.

  Last time he hadn't been spying on her. Last time he hadn't followed her. He was probably as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

  Before now she thought he'd barged into her special place. Now she knew she had barged into his.

  Lena,

  I have a feeling this is going to be a big night. I don't know what's going to happen, but I have the Pants, which feels a little like having you and Tib and Carmen, so it can't be bad.

  I'm missing you all so much now. It's been almost seven weeks. Eat a piece of spanakopita for me, okay?

  Bee

  Bridget crawled into her sleeping bag in the Pants and a tank top. It was a part of the magic of the Pants that they felt loose and airy in this heat. She suspected they would feel snug and protective in colder air.

  She couldn't sleep, of course. She couldn't lie there either. Her legs refused to stay still. If she walked around camp, she knew she might get busted before she'd even gotten to do anything truly bad. Instead she walked out onto the headlands. She sat on a rock, pushed the cuffs of the Pants up to her knees, and dangled her feet in the water. Suddenly she wished she had a fishing rod.

  She remembered the place she and her brother used to go on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake when she was little. They went fishing every day. It was the only outdoorsy thing she could remember him doing. Each day, he'd keep his best fish. He learned to clean and gut them. Each day, she'd throw all of hers back. Long after that, with a pang of remorse, she pictured every fish in the Wye River with a hole in its lip.

  She couldn't picture her mother there, although she knew she was. Maybe she was in one of her tired periods, staying in bed all day with the shutters closed to protect her eyes.

  Bridget yawned. The frantic energy was seeping out of her limbs, leaving a deep physical exhaustion. Maybe she should just go to sleep tonight, leave this adventure for tomorrow.

  Or she could go to him right now. Again, the thought was a challenge. She couldn't ignore it. I think, therefore I do. The hum of excitement started again in her feet, cramping her overworked calves.

  All lights were off. It was late enough now. She looked back at her lone sleeping bag on the beach. She tiptoed back along the slippery rocks.

  Was he waiting for her? He would be furious. Or he would succumb. Or some combination of the two.

  She was pushing him, she knew. She was pushing herself. It was hard to stop.

  Like a ghost, she glided silently past his door. He wasn't asleep. He was sitting up. He saw her and got out of bed. She hopped off the small porch and walked through the palm trees to the wooded edge of the beach. He followed her shirtless, in his boxer shorts. He didn't have to follow her.

  Her heart purred. She reached for him. “Did you know I would come?” she asked.

  She could barely make out his features in the darkness. “I didn't want you to come,” he said. He paused for a long time. “I hoped you would.”

  In most of Bridget's romantic fantasies, her imagination toyed elaborately with the setup, fast-forwarding and rewinding, rewinding, rewinding. In her imagination, Bridget had gotten herself to that wrenching first kiss again and again, in ever more perfect ways. But she hadn't gotten beyond that.

  Long after she'd left Eric, she lay in her sleeping bag. She shivered. Her eyes were full. They dripped. From sadness, or strangeness, or love. They were the kind of tears that came when she was just too full. She needed to make a little room. She stared at the sky. It was bigger tonight. Tonight her thoughts roamed out into it, and like Diana had said, they didn't find anything to bounce off. They just went and went until nothing felt real. Not even the thoughts. Not even thinking itself.

  She had clung to him, wanting him, unsure, brazen, and afraid. There was a storm in her body, and when the storm got too strong, she got out. She floated up to the palm fronds. She'd done it before. She'd let the ship go down without its captain.

  The intimacy between them had been unfathomable. It now stayed there with her, wobbly, waiting to be taken care of. She didn't know how to do that.

  Bridget pulled her thoughts back in, coiling them like a kite string.

  Carefully she rolled her sleeping bag under her arm and crept back into the cabin. She lay down, her back flat on the bed. Tonight she would let her thoughts stray no farther than the weathered planks.

  Tibby,

  I feel like such an idiot. I was vain enough to think Kostos was so in love with me he couldn't resist following me and spying on me at the pond. Then I went back to the same place and saw him swimming there. Yes, naked. He probably swims there every summer afternoon, and here I thought he was following me.

  One other thing, which was easy to miss what with him being naked (Oh. My. God.) and all the screaming (me) and acting like an idiot (also me). But guess what? Kostos looked right into my eyes. Finally, after all these days, he looked at me.

  If you were here, you would make me laugh about this. I wish you were.

  Love,

  Lena

  P.S. Have you heard from Bee recently?

  The phone rang. Carmen checked the caller ID panel, knowing it wasn't for her. Who was going to call her? Tibby? Lydia? Krista maybe? It was her mom's boss. It was always her mom's boss. Carmen's mother was a legal secretary, and her boss seemed to think Carmen's mom was his baby-sitter.

  “Is Christina there?” Mr. Brattle asked in his usual hurried way.

  Carmen checked the wall clock over the refrigerator. It was ten fourteen. Why should he be calling at ten fourteen? Once again he'd lost a memo, or hit the wrong button on his computer or forgotten how to tie his shoes. “She's visiting Grandma in the hospital. She's very ill,” Carmen said pitifully, even though her mother was upstairs watching television and her grandma would probably outlive her grandchildren. Carmen liked to make Mr. Brattle feel either embarrassed or guilty for calling. “She should be back by midnight. I'll ask her to call you then.”

  “No, no,” Mr. Brattle blustered. “I'll speak with her tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” Carmen went back to her food. The only good thing about Mr. Brattle was that he paid her mother a ton of money and never dared refuse her a raise. It was fear, not generosity, Carmen suspected, but who was she to question it?

  She'd laid out four possible snacks on the kitchen table. A tangerine, a bag of Goldfish
crackers, a hunk of cheddar cheese, a bag of dried apricots. The theme tonight was orange.

  Not one thing she'd put in her mouth had tasted good in the almost two weeks since she'd been home from South Carolina. She had hardly eaten a bite of dinner, and now she was hungry. Hmm. She went for the dried apricots and chose one from the bag. The skin was soft, but the apricot was tough when she put it in her mouth. Suddenly she had the acute sensation that she was chewing on somebody's ear. She spit it into the garbage and put everything else away.

  She went upstairs and peered into her mother's room. An old Friends episode was on the TV. “Hi, sweet. You want to watch with me? Ross fooled around on Rachel.”

  Carmen slouched down the hall. Mothers were not supposed to care about Ross or Rachel. Carmen had liked the show before her mom started watching it in reruns. She flopped onto her bed. She had to cover her head with a pillow when her mother's loud laugh tore a hole in the wall.

  Carmen had sworn to herself she was not going to be bothered by her mom. She was not going to be irritable and complaining. No sighing, no eye-rolling. She had to be loved by at least one of her parents. It was an easy promise to make when Carmen was alone. But when she was faced with her actual mother, it became impossible to keep. Her mom was always doing something unforgivable like laughing too loud at Friends or calling her computer her “Vaio.”

  Carmen sat up in bed and eyed the wall calendar. Even though she hadn't marked the day of her father's wedding, it seemed to jump out at her. Only three more weeks. Did her dad even care that she wouldn't be there?

  Her dad had called her mother briefly the day Carmen left South Carolina to confirm that she was safely home. He'd called again a week ago to talk to Christina about some money thing having to do with Carmen's dental insurance. She couldn't believe how many things the two of them found to say about “deductibles.” He hadn't asked to talk to Carmen.

  Carmen could have called him, of course. She could have apologized or at least offered some explanation. She hadn't.

  Guilt, like the cat she'd never had, wove around her legs and hopped up onto the bed to insinuate itself at close range. “Go away,” she said to the guilt. She imagined it brushing alongside her, swiping its tail against her cheek. Guilt wanted her most when she least wanted it. Cats always loved people who were allergic to them.

  She wouldn't hold it. No way. She'd put it outside and let it screech all it wanted.

  Unbidden, the picture of her father's face through the broken window barged into her mind. He was more than surprised. He simply couldn't process what he saw. He thought Carmen was better than that.

  “All right, come on up.” The guilt made muffins on her stomach and curled in for a long stay.

  “So guess what?” Effie's cheeks were deeply flushed, and her feet were working a miniature Riverdance on the tile floor.

  “What?” Lena asked, looking up from her book.

  “I kissed him.”

  “Who?”

  “The waiter!” Effie practically screamed.

  “The waiter?”

  “The waiter! Oh my God! Greek boys make out better than American boys!” Effie declared.

  Lena could not believe her sister. She could not believe she and Effie came from the same parents. Obviously they hadn't. One of them was adopted. Seeing that Effie looked identical to their parents, that left Lena. Maybe she was Bapi's illegitimate love child. Maybe she really had been born on Santorini.

  “Effie, you made out with him? What about Gavin? You know, your boyfriend?”

  Effie shrugged blithely. Her happiness made her impervious to guilt. “You're the one who said Gavin smelled like pork rinds.”

  It was true. “But Effie, you don't even know this guy's name! Did you call him ‘the waiter' to his face? Isn't that kind of tacky?”

  “I know his name,” Effie said, undisturbed. “It's Andreas. He's seventeen.”

  “Seventeen! Effie, you're fourteen,” Lena pointed out. She sounded, even to herself, like the principal of a very strict school.

  “So? Kostos is eighteen.”

  Now Lena's cheeks were just as red. “Well, I didn't make out with Kostos,” she sputtered.

  “That was your fault,” Effie said, and she walked out the door.

  Lena threw her book on the floor. She wasn't actually reading it anyway. She was too miserable, too preoccupied.

  Effie was fourteen, and she'd kissed many more boys than Lena had. Lena was supposed to be the pretty one, but Effie was always the one with the boyfriend. Effie would grow up to be the happy old woman with the big family, surrounded by people who loved her, and Lena would be the weird, scrawny maiden aunt who was invited over only because they felt sorry for her.

  She took out her drawing stuff and set it up, looking at the view out her window. But when she put her nubby piece of charcoal to her paper, her fingers didn't make a horizon line. Instead they drew the contour of a cheek. Then a neck. Then an eyebrow. Then a jaw. Then a hint of shadow on that jaw.

  Her hand was flying. She was drawing much more loosely than usual. A hairline like . . . that. A nostril like . . . that. An earlobe like . . . She closed her eyes, remembering the exact shape of his earlobe. She seemed to stop breathing. Her heart stopped beating. Rough lines of his shoulders fell off at the bottom of the paper. Now his mouth. The mouth was always the hardest. She closed her eyes. His mouth . . .

  When she opened them she imagined she saw the real Kostos standing beneath her window. Then she realized it was the real Kostos standing beneath her window. He looked up. She looked down. Could he see her? Could he see her drawing? Oh no.

  Her heart started up again with a jolt. It took off in a flat-out sprint. She vaguely wondered whether hibernating frogs' hearts beat twice as fast in the summertime.

  Girls who were friends last night were vultures this morning.

  “So what happened?” Ollie wanted to know, landing on Bridget's bed before her eyes were fully open.

  Diana was getting dressed. She came over when she saw Bridget was at least partly awake.

  Even Emily and Rosie migrated over. Girls who wouldn't take risks both loved and hated girls who did.

  Bridget sat up. Last night was slow coming back. In sleep she'd gone back to being the yesterday Bridget.

  She looked at them, their eyes curious—even hungry.

  Bridget had seen too many movies. She hadn't imagined her encounter with Eric would be . . . personal. She thought it would be a jaunt. An adventure to brag to her friends about. She expected to feel powerful. In the end she didn't. She felt like she'd scrubbed her heart with SOS pads.

  “Come on,” Ollie pressed. “Tell us.”

  “Bridget?” It was Diana.

  Bridget's voice was buried deep this morning rather than sharp on her tongue. “N-Nothing,” she managed. “Nothing happened.”

  Bridget could see Ollie reappraising the ghosty look in her eyes. So it wasn't sex; it was disappointment.

  Diana's eyes said she was unsure. Her intuition was telling her something else. But she wasn't distrustful. She waited until the others were drifting away. She touched Bridget's shoulder. “You okay, Bee?”

  Her kindness made Bridget want to cry. She couldn't talk about this. Nor could she look at Diana if she wanted to keep it to herself. “I'm tired today,” she told her sleeping bag.

  “Do you want me to bring you something from breakfast?”

  “No, I'll come in a few minutes,” she answered.

  She was glad when they were all gone. She curled back up and fell asleep.

  Later, Sherrie, one of the camp staffers, came to check on her. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked Bridget.

  Bridget nodded, but she didn't emerge from her sleeping bag.

  “The Cocos and the Boneheads are playing in the semis in a couple of minutes. Do you want to watch?”

  “I'd rather sleep,” Bridget said. “I'm tired today.”

  “Okay.” Sherrie turned to go. “I wondered when tha
t energy was going to run out.”

  Diana, who returned a couple of hours later, told Bridget that the Cocos had crushed the Boneheads. It would be a Taco/Coco final.

  “Are you coming to lunch?” Diana asked. She kept her tone light, but her eyes showed her concern.

  “Maybe in a little while,” Bridget answered.

  Diana cocked her head. “Come on, Bee, get out of bed. What's with you?”

  Bridget couldn't begin to explain what was with her. She needed somebody to explain it to her. “I'm tired,” she said. “Sometimes I just need to catch up on sleep. Sometimes I crash for a whole day.”

  Diana nodded, as though reassured that this was just another part of the peculiar Bridget canon.

  “Can I bring you something? You must be starving.”

  Bridget had earned her reputation as a rapacious eater. But she wasn't hungry. She shook her head.

  Diana considered all this. “It's weird. In almost seven weeks I've never seen you under a roof for more than three minutes. I've never seen you stay still except when you were asleep. I've never seen you miss a meal.”

  Bridget shrugged. “I contain multitudes,” she said. She thought it was from a poem, but she wasn't sure. Her father loved poetry. He used to read it to her when she was little. She could sit still better back then.

  Dad,

  Please accept this money to fix the broken window. I'm sure it's already fixed, considering Lydia's house pride and her phobia about un-air-conditioned air, but

  Dear Al,

  I can't begin to explain my actions at Lydia's-I mean yours and Lydia's house. When I got to Charleston, I never imagined that you would have

  Dear Dad and Lydia,

  I apologize to both of you for my irrational behavior. I know it's all my fault, but if you would have listened to ONE THING I had to say, I might not have

  Dear Dad's new family,