The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Page 5

  Dear Bee,

  The summer of Carmen and Al didn’t survive past the trip from the airport. My dad is now Albert and is marrying Lydia and lives in a house full of Kleenex boxes and is playing father to two blond people. Forget about all the things I imagined. I’m a guest in the guest room of a family that will never be mine.

  Sorry, Bee. I’m being self-absorbed again. I know I’m a big baby, but my heart is rotting. I hate surprises.

  Love you and miss you,

  Carmen

  “Lena.”

  Lena looked up from her journal as Effie appeared in her doorway. Effie scrambled in and sat on her bed. “People are here, you know. The party’s starting.”

  Lena had heard voices downstairs, but she was prepared to pretend she hadn’t.

  “He’s here,” Effie continued meaningfully.

  “He?”

  “Kostos.”

  “So?”

  Effie got a look on her face. “Lena, I’m not kidding; you’ve got to see him.”

  “Why?”

  Effie leaned forward on her elbows. “I know you’d think he’d be this little . . . Grandma’s boy, but Lena, he is . . . he is . . .” When Effie got excited she didn’t finish her sentences.

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s . . .”

  Lena raised an eyebrow.

  “Stupendous,” Effie declared.

  Lena was naturally a little curious, but she wouldn’t admit it. “Ef, I didn’t come to Greece to find a boyfriend.”

  “Can I have him?”

  Lena smiled for real. “Effie, yes. Does it matter that you already have a boyfriend?”

  “It did until I saw Kostos.”

  “He’s that great, huh?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Lena stood. “So let’s go.” It was handy to have Kostos built up so much. When she saw him he would certainly be disappointing.

  Effie paused. “You told Grandma you were coming up to change.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lena rifled through her bag. It was cool now that the sun had set. She put on a brown turtleneck—her least sexy piece of clothing—and pulled her hair back in a severe ponytail. Still, the Pants were the Pants.

  “You know, those pants do seem kind of magical,” Effie enthused. “They look great on you. Like, even better than usual.”

  “Thanks,” Lena said. “Let’s go.”

  “Wheeee,” Effie said excitedly.

  So Kostos wasn’t disappointing. He was tall. He looked more like a man than a boy; he looked at least eighteen. He was good-looking enough to make Lena suspicious.

  Granted, Lena was suspicious of many things. But she had earned her suspicions about boys. Lena knew boys: They never looked beyond your looks. They pretended to be your friend to get you to trust them, and as soon as you trusted them, they went in for the grope. They pretended to want to work on a history project or volunteer on your blood drive committee to get your attention. But as soon as they got it through their skulls that you didn’t want to go out with them, they suddenly weren’t interested in time lines or dire blood shortages. Worst of all, on occasion they even went out with one of your best friends to get close to you, and broke that same best friend’s heart when the truth came out. Lena preferred plain guys to cute ones, but even the plain ones disappointed her.

  She personally thought that the only reason most girls put up with most boys at all was because they needed reassurance that they were pretty. That was one thing, maybe the only thing, Lena knew about herself without reassurance.

  Lena’s friends called her Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The beauty part was more or less on target, but the love part was a joke. Lena was not a romantic.

  “Lena, this is Kostos,” Grandma said. Lena could tell Grandma was trying to be cool, but she was just about blowing a gasket with excitement.

  “Kostos, this is my granddaughter Lena,” Grandma said with a flourish, as though she were presenting a game show contestant with his new red car.

  Lena stuck her hand out stiffly and shook his, heading off any spontaneous Greek cheek-kissing.

  He studied her face while he shook her hand. She could tell he was trying to hold her eyes for a moment, but she looked down.

  “Kostos is going to university in London in the fall,” Grandma bragged, as though he were hers. “He tried out with the national football team,” she added. “We are all so proud of him.”

  Now Kostos was the one looking down. “Valia brags more than my own grandmother,” he mumbled.

  Lena noted that his English was accented but sure.

  “But this summer, Kostos is helping his bapi,” Grandma announced, and literally brushed a tear from the corner of her eye. “Bapi Dounas had a problem with his . . .” Grandma patted her hand over her heart. “Kostos changed his summer plans to stay home and help.”

  Now Kostos looked genuinely uncomfortable. Lena felt sudden sympathy for him. “Valia, Bapi is strong as ever. I always like to work at the forge.”

  Lena knew he was lying, and she liked him for it. Then she had a better idea.

  “Kostos, have you met my sister, Effie, yet?” Effie had been bobbing around nearby the whole time, so it wasn’t hard to find her elbow and pull her over.

  Kostos smiled. “You look like sisters,” he said, and Lena wanted to hug him for it. For some reason, people always paid more attention to their differences than their similarities. Maybe it took a Greek to see it. “Who’s older?” he asked.

  “I’m older, but Effie’s nicer,” Lena said.

  “Oh, please,” Grandma said, practically snorting.

  “Just a year older,” Effie chimed in. “Fifteen months, actually.”

  “I see,” Kostos answered.

  “She’s only fourteen,” Grandma felt the need to point out. “Lena will be sixteen at the end of the summer.”

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?” Effie, the eager subject-changer, asked.

  Kostos’s face became subtly guarded. “No . . . just me.”

  “Oh,” both girls said. Judging from Kostos’s expression, Lena could tell there was more to the story than that, and she silently prayed Effie wouldn’t ask any more about it. She didn’t want to get into intimacies here.

  “Kostos . . . uh . . . plays soccer,” Lena tossed in, just to be sure.

  “Plays soccer?” Grandma practically shouted as though scandalized. “He is a champion! He’s a hero in Oia!”

  Kostos laughed, so Lena and Effie did too.

  “You young people. You talk,” Grandma ordered, and she vanished.

  Lena decided this could be a good opportunity to give Kostos and Effie a moment. “I’m going to get more food,” she said.

  Later, she sat on the single chair outside the front door eating delicious stuffed grape leaves called dolmades, and olives. As many thousands of times as she’d eaten Greek food back in Maryland, it had never tasted precisely like this.

  Kostos peered out the door. “There you are,” he said. “You like to sit alone?”

  She nodded. She’d chosen this spot mostly for its one chair.

  “I see.” He was very, very handsome. His hair was dark and wavy, and his eyes were yellow-green. There was a slight bump on the bridge of his nose.

  That means you should go away, she urged him silently.

  Kostos walked into the passageway that led past her grandparents’ home and wound up the cliff. He pointed downhill. “That’s my house,” he said, pointing to a similar structure about five doors down. It had a wrought-iron balcony on the second floor painted a vibrant green and holding back an avalanche of flowers.

  “Oh. Long walk,” she said.

  He smiled.

  She was about to ask whether he lived with his grandparents, but then she realized that would be inviting a conversation.

  He leaned against the whitewashed wall of the passageway. So much for the notion that Greek men were short.

  “Would you like to take a walk with me
?” he asked. “I want to show you Ammoudi, the little village at the bottom of the cliff.”

  “No thanks,” she said. She didn’t even make an excuse. She had learned long ago that boys took excuses as further reasons to ask you out.

  He studied her face a moment, openly disappointed. “Maybe another time,” he said.

  She wanted him to go back inside and ask Effie to see Ammoudi, but instead he walked slowly down the hill and into his house.

  I’m sorry you asked me out, she told him silently. Otherwise maybe I could have liked you.

  There were guys at soccer camp, as it turned out. There was one guy. No, there was more than one guy, but for Bridget, at that moment, there was one guy.

  He was a coach, it appeared. He was on the other side of the field, consulting with Connie. He had dark straight hair and skin several shades darker than hers. He looked Hispanic, maybe. He had the graceful build of a midfielder. Even from here, his face looked complicated for a soccer coach. He was beautiful.

  “It’s not polite to stare.”

  Bridget turned and smiled at Ollie. “I can’t help myself.”

  Ollie nodded. “He is every kind of hot.”

  “Do you know him?” Bridget asked.

  “From last year,” Ollie explained. “He was assistant coach of my team. We drooled all summer.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Eric Richman. He’s from L.A. He plays at Columbia. I guess he’ll probably be a sophomore this year.”

  So he was older, but not that much older.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Ollie said, reading her mind. “The camp has a big antifraternizing policy, obviously. He follows it, though a lot of people have tried to get him not to.”

  “Let’s gather!” Connie was shouting across the milling clumps of girls.

  Bridget pulled her hair out of the elastic. It fell around her shoulders, seeming to capture far more than its fair share of sunlight. She wandered over to where Connie had gathered with the other coaches.

  “I’m going to read out the teams,” Connie told the assembled group. Like many other longtime coaches, she had a voice loud as a bullhorn when it was necessary. “This is a big deal, okay? You stick with your team for two months, from the first scrimmages to the Coyote Cup at the end of the summer, okay? Know your team. Love your team.” She looked around at the collection of faces. “You all know great soccer isn’t about great players. It’s about great teams.”

  The crowd let out a little cheer. Bridget loved these pep talks. She knew they were corny, but they always worked on her. She imagined Tibby rolling her eyes.

  “Before I read out the teams, let me introduce the rest of the staff—coaches, assistant coaches, and trainers.” Connie went through all of them, giving their names and a little bit about their backgrounds, and finishing with Eric. Did Eric get an extraloud cheer, or did Bridget imagine it?

  Connie explained there were six teams, distinct from the cabin assignments. Each team had its own color, and they would each be given team shirts when their names were called. For the moment they’d be called one through six, and then the teams could have the honor of naming themselves. Blah blah. Connie assigned each of the six teams a head coach, an assistant, and a trainer. Eric was with team four.

  Please let me be on his team, Bridget silently begged.

  Connie consulted the ubiquitous clipboard.

  “Aaron, Susanna, team five.”

  Time to calm down; the list was alphabetical. Bridget found herself hating every girl chosen for team four.

  At last, the Vs. “Vreeland, Bridget, team three.”

  She was disappointed. But when she strode forward to collect her three identical green T-shirts, she was gratified to see that Eric, whatever else he was, was not immune to her hair.

  Carma,

  Leave it to me to fall in love at an all-girls’ camp. I haven’t even spoken to him. His name is Eric. He is beyooootiful. I want him.

  I wish you could see him. You would love him. But you can’t have him. He’s mine! Mine!

  I’m insane. I’m going swimming. This is a very romantic place.

  —Bee

  I’m dying a slow death at Wallman’s, Tibby decided the next afternoon under the whirring fluorescent lights. This job probably wouldn’t cause death any sooner than the normal time. But it would be very painful.

  Why don’t stores like this ever have any windows? she wondered. Did they imagine one glimpse of sunshine might cause their caged, pasty employees to bolt?

  Today she was back in aisle two, this time restocking geriatric diapers. What was it about her and personal hygiene? Last night her mother had asked her to use her special discount to get diapers for her brother and sister. She didn’t confess that she’d already lost her discount.

  As she stacked packages of Depends, her body and brain functions seemed to slow to their lowest setting. She could imagine her brainwaves flat-lining on one of those hospital machines. Just dying here at Wallman’s.

  Suddenly she heard a crash, and she snapped her head around. In fascination she watched her entire pyramid of roll-on antiperspirants collapse under the weight of a falling girl. The falling girl didn’t catch herself, as Tibby expected, but dropped right to the ground, her head making a hollow thwonk on the linoleum.

  Oh, God, Tibby thought, running over to the girl. Tibby had the sensation that she was watching it happen on TV rather than actually experiencing it. Antiperspirant rolled in all directions. The girl was maybe ten or so. Her eyes were closed. Her blond hair fanned out over the floor. Was she dead? Tibby wondered in a panic. She remembered her headset. “Hello! Hello!” she shouted into it, pressing various buttons, wishing she knew how to work it.

  She sprinted toward the front checkout. “Emergency! There’s an emergency in aisle two! Call 911!” she ordered. It was rare she spoke so many words in a row without a hint of sarcasm. “A girl is lying unconscious in aisle two!”

  Satisfied that Brianna was making the call, Tibby ran back to the girl. She was still lying there, not moving. Tibby took her hand. She searched for a pulse, feeling like she’d suddenly landed on an emergency room show. A pulse was pulsing away. She reached for the girl’s wallet in her purse, then she stopped herself. Weren’t you not supposed to touch anything until the police got there? Or, no, that was if it was a murder. She was mixing up her cop shows and her doctor shows. She went ahead and got the wallet. Whoever this girl’s parents were would certainly want to know that she was lying unconscious in the middle of Wallman’s.

  There was a library card. A handy horoscope card cut out from a magazine. Some girl’s toothy school picture with the name Maddie and a lot of Xs and Os on the back. Four one-dollar bills. How completely useless. It was just the kind of stuff Tibby had carried in her wallet when she was that age.

  At that moment three EMS guys carrying a stretcher stormed the aisle. Two of them started poking at the girl, and the other studied a silver medical bracelet encircling her left wrist. Tibby hadn’t thought about checking the girl’s wrist.

  The third guy had questions for Tibby. “So what happened?” he asked. “Did you see?”

  “Not exactly,” Tibby said. “I heard a noise, and I turned around and I saw her crashing into the display there. She hit her head on the floor. I guess she fainted.”

  The EMS guy was no longer focused on Tibby’s face, but on the wallet she held in her hands. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Oh, uh, her wallet.”

  “You took her wallet?”

  Tibby’s eyes opened wide. She suddenly realized how it looked. “I mean, I was just—”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and give that back to me,” the man said slowly. Was he treating her like a criminal, or was she being paranoid?

  Tibby didn’t feel like ridiculing him with her famous mouth. She felt like crying. “I wanted to find her phone number,” she explained, shoving the wallet at him. “I wanted to tell her parents what was going on
.”

  The man’s eyes softened. “Why don’t you just sit tight for a second while we get her into the ambulance. The hospital will take care of contacting her parents.”

  Tibby clutched the wallet and followed the men and the stretcher outside. In seconds they’d loaded the girl up. Tibby saw by the stain on the girl’s jeans and the wetness left behind that she’d peed on herself. Tibby quickly turned her head, as she always did when she saw a stranger crying. Fainting and whacking your head seemed okay to witness, but this felt like too much information.

  “Can I come along?” Tibby didn’t know why she’d asked. Except that she was worried the girl would wake up and only see scary EMS guys. They made room so that Tibby could sit close to the girl. She reached out and held the girl’s hand. Again, she wasn’t sure why, except that she had a feeling that if she were zooming down Old Georgetown Road in an ambulance, she would want somebody to be holding her hand.

  At the intersection of Wisconsin and Bradley, the girl came to. She looked around blinking, confused. She squeezed Tibby’s hand, then looked to see whose hand it was. When she saw Tibby, she looked bewildered and then skeptical. Wide-eyed, the girl took in Tibby’s “Hi, I’m Tibby!” name tag and her green smock. Then she turned to the EMS guy sitting on her other side.

  “Why is the girl from Wallman’s holding my hand?” she asked.

  There was a knock. Carmen glanced at the door and sat up on the rug. Her suitcase was open, but she hadn’t put anything away. “Yes?”

  “Could I come in?”

  She was pretty sure it was Krista.

  No, you can’t. “Uh, yeah.”

  The door opened tentatively. “Carmen? It’s, um, dinnertime? Are you ready to come down?”

  Only Krista’s head came through the doorway. Carmen could smell her lip gloss. She suspected Krista was an uptalker. Even declarative statements came out as questions.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Carmen said.

  Krista retreated and closed the door.

  Carmen stretched back out on her floor for a minute. How did she get here? How had this happened? She pictured the alternate-universe Carmen, who was polishing off a burger with her dad at a downtown restaurant, before challenging him to a game of pool. She was jealous of that Carmen.