Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [92]
The third call was for Bee. Tibby watched Bee melt into the phone and she knew it was Eric. She could never begrudge Bee—or anyone she loved, for that matter—a voice that could give her so pure a look of happiness.
Tibby sat on the kitchen counter and considered the sheer number of voices that had joined their lives.
Then Brian called on Tibby’s cell phone. He wanted to talk to her, and she wanted to talk to him—just for a few minutes, at least.
As soon as Tibby hung up, two other phones started ringing simultaneously. Lena caught Tibby’s glance. “What’s going on here?” she said. “It’s like a joke.”
Tibby nodded. “Only I can’t figure out if it’s funny or not.”
Dinner was a chaotic affair, what with the phones ringing and Carmen almost burning down the house when she forgot about the rice. There wasn’t much peace. It was sort of wonderful in the sense that it reassured Tibby how rich and funny and interconnected her world was. It was sort of sad in the sense that she’d imagined that world would stop for this one weekend, so that they could just exist together in solitude. But the world hadn’t stopped for them. If anything, it had sped up.
Hours later, midnight had come and gone and Tibby couldn’t sleep. She sat on the floor of the small, sandy bedroom and couldn’t help feeling a little bleak. It wasn’t that their night hadn’t been fun; it had been. After the kitchen fire was brought under control, they decided to abandon the stove altogether and had milkshakes and peanut butter fudge for dinner instead. They ate so much of it they had all lain groaning and exhausted on the living room floor.
There were so many things to talk about, so many new people to process, so much future bearing down on them, they had barely gotten started. They had listened to music and fallen into sugar-induced slumber and crawled off to their various bedrooms.
Tonight, for the first time, the world had felt too big to contain and digest within their small circle of friendship. Was this the way the future was going to go?
They were growing up. It was inevitable, and Tibby had learned enough this summer not to stand in its way. There were boyfriends and families and big plans burning just ahead of them.
But please, God, she couldn’t do it if it was a trade-in. She couldn’t strike the bargain if growing up meant drowning out the friendship that stood at the very center of her life, the thing that gave her strength and balance.
Darkness closed her in the house and the black waves beat against the shore for all to hear. All of a sudden Tibby felt claustrophobic. Perhaps for the first time in memory, she felt more afraid of a small, confining space than the big, infinite one. Without thinking, she tiptoed out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out into the air.
Tibby felt like she was walking into a dream, a happy dream, when she saw the three distant silhouettes sitting on the sand. She laughed at the sight of those three familiar heads. It was like a dream too, in that she knew more than she really could know. She knew what they were feeling; she knew it was the same thing she was feeling, and in that knowledge she felt the strength of their connection.
It seemed as though they were waiting for her, even though they had no practical reason to know she would come. 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