Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (7 page)

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
V
s. “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.

Carmen trudged downstairs and took her place at the elaborately set table. Multiple forks were fine at a restaurant, but in somebody’s own dining room? There were matching white covered dishes that turned out to contain all kinds of homemade food. Lamb chops, roasted potatoes, sautéed zucchini and red peppers, carrot salad, warm bread. Carmen jumped when she felt Krista’s hand reaching for hers. She yanked it away without thinking.

Krista’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she murmured. “We hold hands for grace.”

She looked at her father. He was happily holding Paul’s hand on one side and reaching for hers on the other.
That’s what they do. What do we do?
she felt like asking her father.
Aren’t we supposed to be a family too?
She submitted to hand-holding and an unfamiliar grace. Her father was the one who’d refused to convert to Catholicism to please Carmen’s maternal grandparents. Now he was Mr. Grace?

Carmen thought forlornly of her mom. She and her mom said grace now, but they hadn’t when her dad still lived with them.

She stared at Lydia. What kind of power did this woman have?

“Lydia, this is fabulous,” her father said.

“It’s great,” Krista chimed in.

Carmen felt her father’s eyes on her. She was supposed to say something. She just sat there and chewed.

Paul was quiet. He looked at Carmen, then looked down.

Rain slapped against the window. Silverware scraped and teeth chewed.

“Well, Carmen,” Krista ventured. “You don’t look at all like I was imagining?”

Carmen swallowed a big bite without chewing. This didn’t help. She cleared her throat. “You mean, I look Puerto Rican?” She leveled Krista with a stare.

Krista tittered and then backtracked. “No, I just meant . . . you know . . . you have, like, dark eyes and dark wavy hair?”

And dark skin and a big butt?
Carmen felt like adding. “Right,” Carmen said. “I look Puerto Rican, like my mother. My mother is Puerto Rican. As in Hispanic. My dad might not have mentioned that.”

Krista’s voice grew so quiet, Carmen wasn’t even sure she was still talking. “I’m not sure if he . . .” Krista trailed off till she was just mouthing words at her plate.

“Carmen has my height and my talent for math,” her dad piped up. It was lame, but Carmen appreciated it anyway.

Lydia nodded earnestly. Paul still didn’t say anything.

“So, Carmen.” Lydia placed her fork on her plate. “Your father tells me you are a wonderful tennis player.”