In history class Carmen absently grabs the loose, pinchy skin at my elbow. Usually I don't even notice until the bruise blooms the next day. When Tibby sits next to me in the movies, she bangs her heel against my shin during the funny or scary parts. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops. The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. Or maybe they just didn't have the courage. A giant hole was left, and none of them knew how to bridge it. Gradually, as we grew, our mothers' friendship disintegrated. We four, the daughters, reminisce about it sometimes - we look back on that period as a golden age. Honestly, I remember my friends' mothers almost as well as my own from that time. We would play and play and play and occasionally fight. Our mothers would gab in whoever's yard it was, drinking iced tea and eating cherry tomatoes. We had a group play date running at least three days a week until we started kindergarten. We draw great significance from the fact that I'm the oldest-the most mature, the most maternal-and Carmen is the baby. You know how people make a big deal about which twin was born three minutes before the other one? Like it matters? Well, we're like that. We were all born within seventeen days of each other. We all have in common that we got bounced on our fetal heads too much. Our mothers were all in the same pregnancy aerobics class. We've known each other since before we were born. We, the members of the Sisterhood, were friends before the Traveling Pants. The Traveling Pants are not only the most beautiful pair of jeans that ever existed, they are kind, comforting, and wise. But after the first summer of the Traveling Pants, I do. My sister, Effie, claims I don't believe in magic, and maybe I didn't then. They don't belong completely to the world of things you can see and touch.
If the same pants fit - and I mean really fit - the four of us, they aren't ordinary. First Tibby tried them then me, Lena then Bridget then Carmen.īy the time Carmen pulled them on, we knew something extraordinary was happening. She was going to throw them away, but by chance, Tibby spotted them. Carmen had gotten them from a secondhand place without even bothering to try them on. The four of us were splitting up for the first time in our lives. We discovered their magic last summer, purely by accident. But I know it's true, because I am one of them - one of the sisters of the Traveling Pants.
The girls were all different sizes and shapes, and yet the pants fit each of them.
Once there were four girls who shared a pair of pants.
0 kommentar(er)
