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.When Tibby got close enough, Bee reached up for her hand and pulled her down into their little cluster.“Hi.” Tibby’s voice was quiet, but almost giddy.“This is where the cool kids go,” Bee said, laughing.Lena shrugged.“I guess nobody could sleep.”“We have too much stuff to talk about,” Carmen mused.A wave washed close to their feet.This didn’t give anybody the idea to move.They tightened their circle, and Carmen set the Pants in the middle, making a circle of their summer as well.Tibby breathed out, finding inexpressible comfort in her friends’ faces.Before her eyes, this night had transformed into a gift of reassurance.This was the future.Life would get busier and more varied, populated both by beautiful things and unfortunate circumstances.If their friendship demanded exclusivity or solitude, it couldn’t work.If it required that everything go as planned, it would turn brittle, and ultimately it would break.On the other hand, she knew that if they could be flexible and big, if they could encompass change, then they would make it.Tibby remembered her dream about taxidermy and understood in a new way the beauty of the Pants.The Pants could move along with them.“Whatever happens,” Bridget said, “we will find each other.We always will.”Published by Delacorte Pressan imprint of Random House Children’s Booksa division of Random House, Inc.New YorkThis is a work of fiction.Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.Copyright © 2005 by Alloy Entertainment and Ann BrasharesAll rights reserved.Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.www.randomhouse.com/teenswww.sisterhoodcentral.comEducators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us atwww.randomhouse.com/teachersThe Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:Brashares, Ann.Girls in pants : the third summer of the sisterhood / Ann Brashares.p.cm.Summary: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants graduates from high school and spends their last summer before college learning about life and themselves.eISBN: 978-0-375-84319-8[1.Best friends—Fiction.2.Friendship—Fiction.3.Jeans (Clothing)—Fiction.4.Conduct of life—Fiction.] I.Title.PZ7.B73759Gi 2005[Fic]—dc222004015296v1.0For Jacob,my own worthy boyWe, the Sisterhood, hereby instate the following rules to govern the use of the Traveling Pants:1.You must never wash the Pants.2.You must never double-cuff the Pants.It’s tacky.There will never be a time when this will not be tacky.3.You must never say the word “phat” while wearing the Pants.You must also never think “I am fat” while wearing the Pants.4.You must never let a boy take off the Pants (although you may take them off yourself in his presence).5.You must not pick your nose while wearing the Pants.You may, however, scratch casually at your nostril while really kind of picking.6.Upon our reunion, you must follow the proper procedures for documenting your time in the Pants.7.You must write to your Sisters throughout the summer, no matter how much fun you are having without them.8.You must pass the Pants along to your Sisters according to the specifications set down by the Sisterhood.Failure to comply will result in a severe spanking upon our reunion.9.You must not wear the Pants with a tucked-in shirt and belt.See rule #2.10.Remember: Pants = love.Love your pals.Love yourself.In summer, the song sings itself.—William Carlos WilliamsPROLOGUEIf you are reading this, you may know about us.Or about our Pants, anyway.If you do, you can skip ahead a few pages.If you don’t, hang here with me for a minute.I’ll try to make it painless.You may say, I don’t want to read a book about pants.And I can understand how you feel.(In England, when they say pants, they mean underwear.Did you know that?) But trust me, these are epic Pants.These Pants have the stunning power to transform four ordinary teenage girls into raving beauties living lives of astonishing adventure, not to mention causing delicious young men to fall constantly at their feet.Okay, I exaggerate.They don’t actually do that.But they do hold us together when we’re apart.They make us feel secure and loved.They walk us to places we wouldn’t otherwise dare to go.They help us know which boys are worthy and which ones are not.They make us better people and better friends.All this, I swear, is true.And they look good along the way.Who are we? We are we.We have always been we.Sometimes we are us.(Grammatically, it’s just a fact.) It’s all thanks to Gilda’s gym in Bethesda, Maryland, for offering a prenatal aerobics class roughly eighteen years ago.My mom, Carmen’s mom, Lena’s mom, and Bee’s mom bounded and sweated through a long, pregnant summer and then they each gave birth to a baby girl (plus a baby boy, in Bee’s mom’s case) in September.As far as I can tell, in those first few years our mothers raised us more like a litter of puppies than as actual individual children.It was later that our mothers started to grow apart.How can I describe the four of us? Let’s use the metaphor of cars.Carmen would be a torqued-up cherry red gas-guzzler with a V-8 engine and four-wheel drive.She can make a mess of things, but she’s a lot of fun, she sticks to the road, and she’s got mad acceleration.Lena would get good gas mileage.Like one of those hybrid cars.She would be easy on the environment and, of course, easy on the eyes.She would have state-of-the-art GPS, but it would be wrong sometimes.She would have air bags.Bee would have no air bags.She might not have bumpers.She might not even have brakes.She would go a million miles an hour.She would be an ocean blue Ferrari minus the brakes.And I, Tibby, would be a…bike.No, just kidding.(Iam old enough to drive, damn it!) Hmmm.What would I be? I would be a muscular Plymouth Duster, dark green, with a picky transmission.Okay, maybe that’s just what I’dwant to be.But I’m the one writing this, so I get to decide.The Pants first came to us at the perfect moment.That is, when we were splitting up for the first time.It was two summers ago when they first worked their magic, and last summer when they shook up our lives once again.You see, we don’t wear the Pants year-round.We let them rest during the year, so they are extra powerful when summer comes.(There was the time this winter when Carmen wore them to her mom’s wedding, but that was a special case [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]