Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (28 page)

“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. . . .

T
he 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.

“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. . . .

L
ena 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.

It was hot. Lena’s father didn’t believe in central air-conditioning because he was Greek, and her mom loathed the window kind of air conditioners because they were loud. Lena stripped down to her push-up bra (handed down from Carmen, who always bought them too small) and a pair of white boxers. She set up the floor fan so it blew directly on her head.

Lena liked to annoy, irritate, and provoke her mother, but she hated actually being in a fight with her. She hated blowing up at Tibby. She hated Kostos and his new girlfriend. She hated Effie for telling her about it. (She liked Grandma for not liking Kostos’s new girlfriend.)

Lena didn’t like fights. She didn’t like yelling and hanging up. She liked the silent treatment okay, but not past the third day.

Lena was a creature of regularity. She had eaten peanut butter on whole wheat bread for the past 507 lunches. She didn’t go in for stimulation.

She heard the doorbell. She refused to get it.
Let Effie get it.

She waited and listened. Of course Effie answered it. Effie loved doorbells and phone rings. Then Lena heard Effie screech excitedly. Lena listened harder. She tried to figure out who it could be. Effie didn’t usually screech at the UPS man, but you never knew. Or maybe it was one of her friends with a new haircut or something. That could elicit a screech from Effie.

Lena concentrated on the sounds. She strained to hear the visitor, but she couldn’t make out a voice. It didn’t help that Effie talked five times louder than normal people.

Now they were coming up the stairs. It didn’t have the rapid-fire artillery sound of Effie and one of her friends. The second set of footsteps was slower and heavier. Was it a boy? Was Effie bringing a boy upstairs in the middle of the afternoon?

She heard a voice. It was a boy! Effie was going to take a boy to her bedroom and very possibly make out with him!

Suddenly Lena realized the two sets of footsteps hadn’t taken the turn for Effie’s bedroom, as expected. They were coming in the direction of Lena’s bedroom. Suddenly Lena realized her door was open. She was mostly naked and a boy was coming toward her room and her door was open! Well, it wasn’t like she could have seen this coming. She could count on one hand the number of times a boy had come up these stairs. Her parents were strict that way.

Lena was frozen on the floor. The footsteps were close. If she leapt up to shut the door, they would see her. If she stayed where she was, they would see her. If she got up and grabbed her bathrobe . . .

“Lena?”

At the sound in her sister’s voice—excitement bordering on hysteria—Lena jumped to her feet.

“Lena!”

There was Effie. There indeed was a boy. A tall, familiar, and excessively good-looking one.

Effie had thrown her hand over her mouth at the sight of what Lena was and wasn’t wearing.

The boy stood there looking captivated and amused. He didn’t avert his eyes as fast as he should have.

Lena’s head was fuzzy. Her heart whizzed like a Matchbox racer. Her throat swelled painfully with emotion. She felt heat rising from every part of her body.

“Kostos,” she said faintly. Then she slammed the door in his face.