Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [19]
“She’s—”
Suddenly a beeping sound overwhelmed the connection. “Tibby?”
Beep beep. Beeeeeep.
“Hello?”
“Sounds like a modem.” Tibby had to shout over the noise. “It must be from your end.”
Carmen hung up the phone and went into the den. Sure enough, Valia had moved from the TV to the desk and was steering the computer’s mouse like a race car. Carmen watched in surprise as Valia expertly negotiated her way through a series of menus into a rapid instant messaging conversation. Presumably with somebody in Greece, considering that Carmen couldn’t read a single letter. She was used to the look of the Greek letters from all her years in the Kaligaris household, but she couldn’t tell you what sounds any of them made.
Carmen was supposed to help Valia with her correspondence? And here she had been picturing crumply airmail paper and blue envelopes.
“Vhat?” Valia turned around somewhat belligerently, obviously feeling Carmen’s eyes on the back of her uncoiffed head.
“Nothing. Wow. You really know what you’re doing.” Carmen decided to be mature and not mention how Valia was hogging up the phone line when she really wanted to talk to Tibby.
Instead, she sat down in one of the comfortable TV chairs, mindlessly picked up the remote, and started flipping channels. Brawn and Beauty would be starting in seven minutes. She settled back into the chair, resting her heavy head. How bad could it be, spending the summer watching her favorite soap and getting paid while Valia burned up the lines IMing her Greek friends?
“Not that channel.” Valia had turned from the computer, her hands still poised over the keyboard.
“What do you mean?”
“I like channel seven. The Vorld Apart.”
“But you’re not even watching. You’re on the computer.” Carmen could hear her own voice rising.
“I like to listen,” Valia proclaimed.
“But I like to watch,” Carmen said tartly.
“Who’s the vun getting paid?”
Ouch. Carmen felt as though Valia had bit her. She felt the flush rising in her cheeks. “Well, could you get off the computer, then? You’re hogging up the phone line,” Carmen snapped in a manner that was not very mature.
Tibberon: How’s it going with the ancient Greek?
Carmabelle: Ahem. Not bad. Not not bad. Not good. If you see what I mean.
“Just tell me every, every single thing. After that you can drink your smoothie.”
Tibby felt her heart rising again. Carmen’s enthusiasm was everything she could wish for. She shook her clear plastic cup of frothy pink smoothie so it wouldn’t separate.
“Well, first we danced to that—”
Carmen was waving her hands around. “No, no. Back up. I want the beginning. I want to hear the whole thing, soup to nuts.”
Tibby smiled in spite of herself. She liked sitting outside under the umbrella at the smoothie place on Old Georgetown Road, feeling the sun bake her calves. She crossed her legs and let her green plastic flip-flop drop onto the hot sidewalk. Truth was, she wanted to tell the whole thing, soup to nuts. It made it real again. “Okay. So back up to my house. Doorbell rings. Katherine opens the door. He’s wearing the suit jacket and tie—kind of short in the arms and obviously cheap, but so, so, so, so cute. And he has—” Tibby wished her face weren’t turning pink, but she couldn’t help it. “A bunch of flowers. Dyed pink carnations, fairly hideous. You know, like flowers only a boy would buy, but totally perfect.” Tibby needed to stop and breathe or she was going to pass out.
At that moment her cell phone rang faintly from the lower reaches of her straw bag. She pulled it out and squinted to see the number. It was her mother’s cell phone.
“Hello?”
Nobody was there at first. She heard background noise. And then she heard her mother saying something to someone else. She sounded strange.
“Hello?”
“Tibby?” Her voice was ragged.
“Are you okay?”
Her mother was crying.
“Mom, are you okay? What’s going on?” Tibby felt a frigid load of adrenaline hit her bloodstream.
“Honey, Dad and I—” Alice broke off. Her crying was too thick to make