Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [0]
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
We, the Sisterhood, hereby instate the following rules to govern the use of the Traveling Pants:
Prologue
Begin Reading
Epilogue
A Readers Guide
Questions for Discussion
A Conversation with Ann Brashares
Related Titles
Readers Circle Books
Preview for Forever in Blue
Also by Ann Brashares
Copyright
For Jacob,
my own worthy boy
Acknowledgments
First and always, I would like to acknowledge and thank Jodi Anderson. I also thank, with great warmth, my editorial sisterhood, Wendy Loggia and Beverly Horowitz, and gratefully acknowledge the entire Random House Children’s Books group, with special thanks to Marci Senders, Kathy Dunn, Judith Haut, Daisy Kline, and Chip Gibson. I wish to thank Leslie Morgenstein, who’s been in it from the beginning. And I thank my friend and agent, the incomparable Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.
I lovingly acknowledge my parents, Jane Easton Brashares and William Brashares, and my brothers, Beau, Justin, and Ben Brashares. And last and most, my small tribe, Sam, Nathaniel, and Susannah.
We, 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 Williams
PROLOGUE
If 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.