The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (7 page)

Effie and I rode mopeds to Fira, the biggest village on the island, and drank unbelievably strong coffee at an outdoor café. We were both strung out on caffeine. I got anxious and silent, and Effie flirted outrageously with the waiters and even random passersby (passerbys?).

There's this guy Kostos. He walks past our house about six times a day. He keeps trying to catch my eye and start a conversation, but I won't play. My grandmother's dearest hope is that we'll fall in love. What could be less romantic than that?

Other than that, nothing really big has happened. Nothing big enough for the Pants. They're still waiting here patiently.

I can't wait to get a letter from you. The mail is so slow here. I wish I had a computer. I hope you and Al are having the very best time.

Love you,
Lena

What am I doing here?
Carmen gazed around the noisy room. Not a single noise or face distinguished itself in her ears or eyes. It was just random South Carolina teenagerness.

Krista was chattering with her friends in the backyard. Paul was being important with his babelike girlfriend and jock buddies. Carmen stood alone by the staircase, forgetting to care that she looked like an unforgivable loser.

She felt weirdly numb and invisible. It wasn't just that she missed her friends; she was starting to wonder if she needed them around to feel like she existed at all.

Lydia and her dad had tickets to a chamber-orchestra concert. (For the record, her dad hated classical music.) They thought that Carmen going to a “fun party” with Krista and Paul would make everything good. Even a sullen girl who'd spent the last four days pouting in the guest room couldn't resist a “fun party.” Her father looked so depressingly hopeful at the idea, she'd just gone. What did it matter?

A short guy sideswiped her shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, spilling half his plastic cup of beer on the carpet. He stopped and looked at her. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Carmen mumbled back.

“Who are you?” he asked. He looked at her breasts as though he were asking them.

She crossed her arms. “I'm, uh, Krista and Paul Rodman's, uh . . . Their mom is my . . .”

His eyes were now wandering away from her. She didn't bother to finish her sentence. Who cared?

“See you later,” she said, and walked away.

Suddenly she was standing next to Paul. This was pitiful. He nodded at her. He was holding a Coke. He was probably between beers. “Have you met Kelly?” he asked. Kelly had her arm snaked around Paul's waist. She was so attractive as to actually be ugly. Her cheekbones were too prominent, her eyes too far apart, and her skinny collarbones jutted out.

“Hi, Kelly,” Carmen said wearily.

“And you are?” Kelly asked.

“I'm Carmen,” Carmen said. She could tell Kelly was threatened that Paul knew a girl she didn't know. And considering that Paul said a total of about seven words per day, he most likely hadn't explained to Kelly that there was a girl living in his house. “I live with Paul,” she said just to be devious.

Kelly's narrow eyebrows ascended to her hairline. Carmen then glided away. “I'm going to get a drink,” she murmured, casting flirtatious eyes at Paul.

Poor Paul. This would take him a year's worth of words to explain.

“T
ibby, will you cut up Nicky's chicken?” Tibby's mom asked.

Usually Tibby would have complained, but tonight she just leaned over and did it. Nicky seized her knife. “Me wanna cut! Me wanna!”

Patiently Tibby unwound his fat, sticky fingers from the butter knife. “No knives for babies, Nicky,” Tibby droned, sounding exactly like her mother.

Nicky expressed his feelings by picking up two big handfuls of his noodles and throwing them on the floor.

“Grab it!” her mother instructed.

Tibby did. There was always that moment at dinner when Nicky started throwing his food on the ground. The trick was to pick the moment to grab his plate.

Tibby gazed forlornly at the noodles lying on the synthetic washable blue carpet. It was so resistant to stains, Tibby suspected it was made of Saran Wrap. There used to be a straw rug that itched her feet. There used to be Mexican candlesticks and salt and pepper shakers Tibby herself had made from clay. Now there were ones from Pottery Barn. Tibby couldn't say exactly the day when her salt and pepper shakers disappeared, but she could date it generally. It happened not too long after her mom stopped being a sculptor and took a test to become a real estate agent.

“Eegurt! Me want eegurt!” Nicky demanded.

Tibby's mom sighed. She was feeding a bottle of milk to a very sleepy Katherine. “Tibby, would you mind getting him a yogurt?” she asked wearily.

“I'm still eating,” Tibby complained. Particularly on the nights her dad worked late, her mom expected Tibby to step in and be her coparent. Like Tibby had decided to have these kids with her. It was irritating.

“Fine.” Tibby's mom stood up and plunked Katherine in Tibby's lap. Katherine started crying. Tibby stuck the bottle back in her mouth.

When Tibby was little, her dad had worked as a journalist and a public defender and briefly as an organic farmer, and he was always home for dinner. But after her mom started spending her time in people's big, clean houses and seeing all the nice things they had, her dad started practicing law in a private firm, and now he was only home about half the nights. It seemed poor planning to Tibby to have these extra kids and then never be home anymore.

Her parents used to talk about simplicity all the time, but nowadays they seemed to spend all their time getting new stuff and not having very much time to play with it.

Nicky was digging both hands in his yogurt and then licking his fingers. Tibby's mother snatched the yogurt away, and Nicky started howling.

Tibby had thought about mentioning Bailey and her leukemia to her mom, but as usual, it was hard to see where any conversation would fit in.

She went up to her room and recharged the batteries for her camera. She gazed at her sleeping computer, the Power button pulsing under its masking tape like a slow heartbeat.

Usually her computer was flashing and whirring all evening as she IMed her friends. Tonight they were all far away. Somehow the masking tape looked like a gag over the computer's mouth.

“Hey, Mimi,” she said. Mimi was sleeping. Tibby added some food to Mimi's dish and changed her water. Mimi stayed asleep.

Later, as Tibby began to doze off with her lights and clothes still on, her thoughts came unstuck in that way they did, and she thought of geriatric diapers and antiperspirant and sterile wipes and bacteria-free soap and extra-absorbent panty shields and Bailey lying in a mess on the floor.

“There's your boyfriend,” Diana said, watching Eric as he strode onto the deck.

Bridget fixed her eyes on him.
Look up, you.

He did. Then he looked away so fast it was almost gratifying. He noticed her, all right.

He took a seat on the other side of the deck. Bridget dug into her lasagna. She was starving. She loved institutional food served in big quantities. She was weird that way.

“He probably has a girlfriend in New York,” a girl named Rosie said.

“We'll see about that,” Bridget said provocatively.

Diana shoved her elbow. “Bridget, you're insane.”

Emily was shaking her head. “Give it up. You'll get in huge trouble.”

“Who's gonna tell?” Bridget asked.

Diana put on her Sigmund Freud expression. “Anyway, getting in trouble is kind of the point, isn't it?”

“Of course it's not the point,” Bridget said snappishly. “Have you taken one
look
at the guy?”

She stood up and walked to the buffet table to get another helping of lasagna. She took a circuitous route in order to pass Eric. She knew her friends would be watching.

She stopped right behind him. She waited for a pause in the conversation he was having with Marci, his assistant coach. She leaned over. The place was noisy, so it was perfectly understandable that she should lean close to his ear. A curtain of her hair fell forward as she leaned, brushing his shoulder. “What time is the scrimmage?” she asked.

He hardly dared turn his head. “Ten.”

She was making him nervous. “Okay. Thanks.” She stood back up straight. “We'll kill y'all.”

Now he turned to look at her, surprised and almost angry. Immediately he saw from her face that she was teasing him. “We'll see about that.” At least he was smiling.

She drifted to the serving table, allowing herself one quick glance at her friends' impressed faces. “Ha,” she mouthed.

Dear Carmen,

The cabin girls have upped my odds with Eric to 40/60. I'm being very flirtatious and very bad. You would laugh. What's a girl to do, stuck a thousand miles out here in the ocean?

We went sight-seeing in the closest town, Mulegé. That's where Eric's mom is from. We saw this big mission church and a prison called
carcel sin cerraduras
—prison without locks. They let the prisoners work on farms in the daytime and come back to their cells to sleep at night.

Hope you're having fun hanging with Al.

All love,
Bee

Lena had one more day with the Pants, and she had to make them count. So far, she'd been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction. She was, overall, a terrible first escort for the Traveling Pants.

Today, though, she'd have an adventure. She'd do something. She wouldn't let her friends down. Or the Pants. Or herself, come to think of it.

She walked up, up, over the crest of the cliff and onto the flat land at the top. It was much emptier up here. In the distance hills rose, probably signaling yet a higher cliff plunging into the sea. But here the land was gentle. Though it was arid, rocky cliff smoothed into wide green vineyards and meadows. The air felt hotter and the sun even stronger.

These are lucky pants,
she thought a half mile or so later when she came upon an exquisite little arbor. It was a perfect grove of olive trees with glinting silver-green leaves. The olives were small and hard—still babies. At one end she discovered a small spring-fed pond. It was so private, so quiet, so lovely, it felt like her place—like she was the first person ever to set eyes on it. Like maybe it had never even existed before she got here with her magic pants. Immediately she set up her easel and began to paint.

By the time the sun had risen to the top of the sky, Lena was bathed head to toe in salty sweat. The sun beat down so hard it made her dizzy. Sweat dripped down from her thick, dark hair onto her neck and temples. She wished she'd brought a hat. She cast a longing glance at the pond. More than that, she wished she'd remembered to bring her bathing suit.

She looked around. There was no one as far as she could see. She couldn't make out a single house or farm. She felt a little creek of sweat flowing down her spine. She had to get into that pond.

Shy even with herself, Lena took off her clothes slowly.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
She stripped down to her bra and underwear, casting her clothing into a pile. She considered wearing her underclothes into the water, but that seemed embarrassingly prudish. She looked at the Pants. They challenged her to get naked fast.

“Ahhhhhhh,” Lena said as she waded in. It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to her surface without a deliberate effort. Even when she saw something genuinely funny on television, she never laughed out loud when she was alone.

She ducked all the way under the water and then came up again. She floated languidly with just her face above the surface. The sun warmed her cheeks and eyelids. She splashed a little, loving the swish of water over every part of her body.

This is the most perfect moment of my life,
she decided. She felt like an ancient Greek goddess alone under the sky.

She let her arms float out to her sides, tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and just levitated, every muscle loose and soft. She would stay this way until the sun set, until it rose again, until August, until maybe forever. . . .

Every muscle in her body snapped to attention at the sound of rustling grass. In a fraction of an instant she found her feet on the pebbly bottom of the pond and stood.

She drew in a sharp breath. Someone was there. She saw the shadow of a figure obscured behind a tree. Was it a man? An animal? Were there vicious, man-eating animals on Santorini?

Her peace was broken, smashed to bits. She felt her heart nearly bouncing out of her chest.

Fear told her to sink her body back underwater, but a bigger fear told her to run away. She pulled herself out of the pond. The figure emerged.

It was Kostos.

She was staring directly at Kostos, and, far worse, Kostos was staring directly at her. She was so stunned, she took a moment to react.

“K-Kostos!” she shouted, her voice a ragged shriek. “What are you—what—”

“I'm sorry,” he said. He should have averted his eyes, but he didn't.

In three steps she'd reached her clothes. She snatched them and covered herself with the bundle. “Did you follow me?” she nearly screamed. “Have you been spying on me? How long were you here?”

“I'm sorry,” he said again, and muttered something in Greek. He turned around and walked away.

Still soaking wet, she yanked on her clothes haphazardly. In a storm of anger she threw her paint supplies into her backpack, probably smearing her painting. She strode across the meadow and toward the cliff, too mad to link her thoughts.

He'd been following her! And if he . . . Her pants were inside out. How dare he stare at her like that! She was going to . . .

She realized, by the time she neared the house, that her shirt was off-kilter by two buttons, and between pond water and sweat it was stuck to her body almost obscenely.

She banged into the house and threw her backpack on the ground. Grandma sped out of the kitchen and gasped at the sight of her.

“Lena, lamb, vhat happened to you?”

Grandma's face was full of worry, and that made Lena want to cry. Her chin quivered the way it used to when she was five.

“Vhat? Tell me?” Grandma asked, gazing at Lena's inside-out pants and misbuttoned shirt with wide, confused eyes.

Lena sputtered for words. She tried to harness one or two of her spinning thoughts. “K-Kostos is
not
a nice boy!” she finally burst out, full of shaky fury. Then she stomped up to her room.