Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (17 page)

She didn’t say that. Instead, she gaped at him in silence. Did he have any idea how she was feeling? How miserable she was here?

He wore his game face. So did Lydia. “Smells fantastic,” he commented, keeping the scene on track.

“Roast chicken,” Lydia supplied.

“Mmmmm,” Krista said robotically.

Who were these people? What was the matter with them?

“I had an awful day,” Carmen said, feeling her opportunity sliding away. She was too wretched to be a wiseass.

Her dad was already most of the way up the stairs, going up to change his clothes. Lydia pretended like she hadn’t heard her.

Even in the Pants she was invisible. And mute. She strode dramatically out the front door and pulled it hard behind her. Luckily, the door still was capable of making a racket.

S
ometimes a walk helped cool Carmen’s blood. Other times it didn’t.

She marched all the way to the creek at the edge of the woods. She knew there were cottonmouths lurking in this dense place. She hoped one would bite her.

She pried a wide, heavy rock from the packed soil of the creek bank. She heaved it into the water, gratified by the big, sloppy splash that sent droplets of water onto her pants. The rock settled there in the creek bed, slightly obstructing the smooth way the water flowed. Her eyes stayed fixed on the rushing creek that dimpled around her rock. Within a few moments, the water seemed to adjust itself. It tucked the wide rock a little deeper into its bed and flowed smoothly again.

Dinner was definitely ready by now. Were they waiting for her? Where they wondering where she’d gone? Her father must have heard the door slam. Was he worried? Maybe her father had gone out looking for her. Maybe he’d walked north and sent Paul south to look for her along Radley Lane. Maybe Lydia’s roast chicken was getting cold, but her father couldn’t be bothered with that because Carmen was gone.

She started back toward the house. She didn’t want her father to call the police out to look for her or anything. And Paul had just this morning gotten back from his visit with his dad. Paul had enough to think about.

She quickened her step. She was even a little bit hungry after not eating much of anything for days. “I eat when I’m happy,” she’d mentioned to her father over her untouched plate of casserole the night before. He hadn’t picked up on it.

Her heart was pounding as she made her way up the front steps, anticipating her father’s face. Was he even there? Or out looking for her? She didn’t really want to burst in if it was just Lydia and Krista.

She peered in the front door. The light was on in the kitchen, but the living room was dim. She crept around the side of the house to get a better look. It was dark enough outside that she wasn’t worried about being spotted.

When she made her way to the big picture window that framed the dining room table she froze. She stopped breathing. The anger was growing again. It grew up into her throat, where she could taste it, coppery like blood, in the back of her mouth. It grew down into her stomach, where it knotted her intestines. It made her arms stiffen and her shoulders lock. It pushed against her ribs until she felt they would snap like sticks.

Her father wasn’t looking for her. He wasn’t calling the police. He was sitting at the dining room table, with piles of roast chicken, rice, and carrots on his plate.

Apparently, it was time for grace. He held Paul’s hand on one side and Krista’s on the other. Lydia was directly across from him, her back to the window. The four of them made a tight cluster, their linked arms circling them like a garland, their heads bent, close and grateful.

A father, a mother, and two children. One bitter, mismatched girl standing outside, looking in, invisible. The anger was too big to hold inside.

She raced down the side steps and picked up two rocks, small and easy to grab. Motions were no longer connected to thoughts, but she must have climbed back up those steps and cocked her arm. The first rock bounced off the window frame. The second one must have shot right through the window, because she heard the glass shatter and she saw it sail past the back of Paul’s head and smack the far wall, before it came to sit on the floor at her father’s feet. She stayed long enough for her father to look up and see her through the jagged hole in the window and know that it was her and that he saw her and that she saw him, and that they both knew.

And then she ran.

Tibby,

I love outdoor showers. I love looking at the sky. I’ve even started going to the bathroom outside rather than close myself up in one of the sick outhouses. I’m a feral creature. Is that the word? You would hate all this crunchiness, Tib, but it is perfect for me. The thought of a shower under a ceiling makes me claustrophobic. Do you think anyone would notice if I started going to the bathroom in the backyard? Ha. Just kidding.

I think I wasn’t made for houses.

Love,
Contemplative Bee

Lena got directions to the forge and a bag of pastries from the lady in the bakery. “
Antio,
beautiful Lena,” the lady called. The town was small enough that all the locals now knew her as “shy and beautiful” Lena. “Shy” was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. “Snotty” was the unsympathetic one she got from people her own age.

From the bakery Lena walked herself to the forge, a low, detached brick building with a small yard at the front. Through the open double doors of the dark building she could see the blue-and-orange fire at the back. Was there seriously still a business in making horseshoes and boat fittings? She suddenly felt a kind of deep, twingy sorrow for Kostos and his grandfather. Kostos’s bapi no doubt dreamed that his grandson would take over the family business and run it into the next century. But she also guessed that Kostos hadn’t gotten himself accepted at the London School of Economics to spend his life as a blacksmith in a minuscule Greek village.

It was like how her father had become a respected lawyer in Washington, but her grandparents remained confounded that their son hadn’t opened a restaurant. They were still sure he’d do it as soon as the moment was right. “He can always fall back on his cooking,” Grandma said confidently whenever the subject of her son’s profession came up. There was a mysterious chasm between this island and the greater world, just like there was between old and young, ancient and new.

Lena stood nervously at the opening to the yard. Kostos would be taking his lunch break anytime now. She crumpled the top of the paper bag in her sweaty hands. She felt oddly self-conscious about her appearance. She hadn’t washed her hair this morning, so it probably looked kind of greasy at the top. Her nose was pink from sunburn.

Her pulse began to throb as soon as he appeared in the doorway. He looked sooty and old-fashioned in his dark clothes. His hair was disheveled from the protective gear he wore and his face was flushed and shining with perspiration. She trained her eyes on his.
Please look at me.
He didn’t. He was too polite not to nod a little in acknowledgment of her when he walked by. But now it was his turn to ignore her and not give her any chance to communicate.

“Kostos!” she finally called out. He didn’t answer. She didn’t know whether he’d heard and ignored her, or whether she’d waited too long to speak.

Carmen ran on legs that didn’t feel connected to her body. She ran all the way to the creek, jumped over the water, and settled down on the far bank. It occurred to her that her magical pants were going to get dirty, but the thought was squeezed out by a million other thoughts, and she let it float away. She looked up at the sky, lacy patterns of oak leaves cut out in black. She threw her arms to the sides as though she’d been crucified.

She lay there for a long time—some number of hours; she couldn’t guess how many. She wanted to pray, but then she felt guilty because she only ever seemed to pray when she needed something. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to alert God to her presence here: The Girl Who Only Prayed When She Needed Something. It might irritate Him. Maybe she should just hold out, and pray when it was just for the sake of praying so that maybe God would like her again. But God (sorry, God), who could ever remember to pray when things were just okeydokey? Good people, that was who. And she wasn’t one of them.

By the time the moon peaked and had begun to fall, her anger had fully retreated into its normal place, and her brain had started working again.

Now that she was thinking, she thought that she had to go back home to Washington. But her thinking also informed her that she had left everything—her money, her debit card, her everything useful—in the house. Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes.

“You will not be invited back,” she muttered to her temper, her evil twin, the bad Carmen.

Maybe she should just cede her body to her temper all the time. Let it deal with the consequences, instead of her rational, conscientious self, which ruled her body most of the time. Okay, some of the time.

The rational Carmen, poor sucker that she was, had to creep back into the sleeping house at three in the morning (The back door was open. Had somebody left it that way on purpose?) and collect her stuff in complete silence. Though the bad Carmen wished someone would hear her and confront her, the rational Carmen prevented her from making that wish come true.

Rational Carmen walked to the bus stop and slept on a bench until five o’clock, when the local buses started running again. She took a bus all the way downtown to the Greyhound station, where she used cash to buy a ticket for a bus to D.C. making no more than fifteen stops.

The rational Carmen had arrived in South Carolina, and the rational Carmen was leaving it. But she had made very few appearances in between.

She stared out the window as the bus ground through downtown Charleston, the sleeping apartment buildings, shops, and restaurants, hoping the alternate-universe Carmen with her fun, single dad was having a better time.

Bumble Bee,

I’m a mess. I can’t even write about it yet. I just want to get this package off to you by the fastest, most expensive mail possible. But let me just say that the Pants have not caused me to behave like a decent and lovable person. I hope you do better with them. What do I hope? Hmmm . . . I hope these Pants bring you . . .

Courage? No, you have too much of that.

Energy? No, you have way too much of that.

Not love. You get and give loads as it is.

Okay, how ’bout this? I hope they bring you good sense.

That’s boring, you’re screaming at me, and I know it is. But let me tell you from recent experience, a little common sense is a good thing. And besides, you have every other charm in the universe, Bee.

Wear them well. XXXOOO
Carma

A
t breakfast, Bridget was thinking about sex. She was a virgin, as were her best friends. She’d gone out with a lot of different guys, usually within a larger pack of kids. She’d gone further than kissing with a couple of them but not very much further. She’d been driven more by curiosity than by physical yearning.

But for Eric, her body felt something else. Something bigger and craggier and stormier than she had glimpsed before. Her body wanted his in a painful, distinct, demanding way, but she wasn’t even exactly sure what or how much it was asking for.

“What are you thinking about?” Diana asked, clinking her spoon against the bottom of her bowl.

“Sex,” Bridget answered honestly.

“I could sort of guess that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Does it have anything to do with where you were last night?” Diana asked, curious but not pushy.