“I ’d like to think that fate had a hand in what happened that summer. That it was the pants’ destiny to find us. Where they came from and why they chose us? Well, that will always be a mystery.”
—“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” by Ann Brashares
“Oh, God, why is this happening?” Lena cried out.
“I don’t know—but, if the pants don’t fit you, or me, or Bridget, or Carmen . . .” Tibby trailed off.
“Then, they don’t fit anyone,” Lena concluded, her voice nothing more than a whisper.
A deep cackling came from somewhere in the back of the vintage shop. Then silence.
“We need to get out of here,” Bridget shouted. “Now!”
Carmen moved cautiously around the package, as if trying not to awaken the pants inside. Could it be? She had believed that the pants were long gone, but here they were . . . taunting her. Purposefully shrinking so that they’d never, ever fit.
She’d thought that she had problems with her perfect step-siblings and emotionally distant father, but now she knew—she had much bigger things to worry about.
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” Bridget whined, sliding the jeans up her calves. As much as she didn’t want to try them on, she couldn’t help herself. She had to. They reached her thighs, but would budge no further.
“Bridget, can we talk?” Eric asked, his beautiful hair flowing in the wind. He rubbed his shoulder nervously. “Listen, what I did was wrong. . . .”
“Eric, get out!” Bridget screamed. “Just get out! Can’t you see these pants won’t fit?!”
Tibby rolled her eyes once again at Bailey, who stood there with her arms crossed. “For the millionth time, Bailey, what you don’t understand is . . .” Tibby’s voice failed her, and suddenly she was choking back tears.
“Tibby, what is it?” Bailey asked, worried.
Tibby pointed at the pair of jeans that had just appeared in the middle of the room. “It’s . . . it’s the pants. But how could they be here? We burned them in the fire.” She began to sob. “We burned them in the fire!”
Lena got off the plane from Greece, feeling cautiously optimistic about what lay ahead. She walked toward baggage claim and looked down at her jeans. Wait—jeans? She wasn’t wearing jeans when she left her aunt’s house. She was wearing that long, flowy dress Kostas got her, wasn’t she? She ran to the bathroom and tried to claw them off, but the jeans clung to her, and those stupid, fake front pockets taunted her. How was this possible? It couldn’t be. She screamed and screamed.
“Cheers to us! And to this moment, and the rest of our lives!” Carmen cried over and over again, rocking back and forth in the insane asylum. The other girls rocked with her, repeating her chant. Somewhere, in the distance, the jeans were on their way to a new group of unsuspecting teen-age girls. . . .
