Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood

　　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 so they are extra powerful when summer comes. (There was the time this spring when Carmen wore them to her mom's wedding, but that was a special case.)

　　Now we're facing our last summer together. In September we go to college. And it's not like one of those TV shows where all of us magically turn up at the same college. We're going to four different colleges in four different cities (but all within four hours of one another—that was our one rule). We're headed off to start our real lives.

　　Tomorrow night at Gilda's we'll launch the Pants on their third summer voyage. Tomorrow begins the time of our lives. It's when we'll need our Pants the most.

　　經過了十六、十七歲的夏天，今年是女孩們上大學前的最後一個暑假了，魔法牛仔褲將會如何影響四個女孩的十八歲呢？

Chapter One

Granted, Tibby was in a mood. All she could see was change. All anybody talked about was change. She didn’t like Bee’s wearing heels for the second day in a row. She felt peevish about Lena’s getting three inches trimmed off her hair. Couldn’t everybody just leave everything alone for a few minutes?

Tibby was a slow adjuster. In preschool, her teachers had said she had trouble with transitions. Tibby preferred looking backward for information rather than forward. As far as she was concerned, she’d take a nursery school report card over a fortune-teller any day of the week. It was the cheapest and best self-analysis around.

Tibby saw Gilda’s through these same eyes. It was changing. Its glory days of the late nineteen eighties were far behind it. It was showing its age. The once-shiny wood floor was scratched and dull. One of the mirror panels was cracked. The mats looked as old as Tibby, and they’d been cleaned much less. Gilda’s was trying to get with the times, offering kickboxing and yoga, according to the big chalkboard, but it didn’t look to Tibby like that was helping much. What if it went out of business? What a horrible thought. Maybe Tibby should buy a subscription of classes here? No, that would be weird, wouldn’t it?

“Tibby, you ready?” Lena was looking at her with concerned eyebrows.

“What if Gilda’s closes?” Tibby opened her mouth, and that was what came out.

Carmen, holding the Traveling Pants, Lena, lighting the candles, Bee, fussing with the dimmer switches near the door, all turned to her.

“Look at this place.” Tibby gestured around. “I mean, who comes here?”

Lena was puzzled. “I don’t know. Somebody. Women. Yoga people.”

“Yoga people?” Carmen asked.

“I don’t know,” Lena said again, laughing.

Tibby was the one most capable of emotional detachment, but tonight it all lay right on the surface. Her irrational thoughts about Gilda’s made her feel desperate, like its demise could swallow up their whole existence—like a change in the present could wipe out the past. The past felt fragile to her. But the past was set, right? It couldn’t be changed. Why did she feel such a need to protect it?