Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [0]
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
The Second Summer of the Sisterhood
Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood
The Last Summer (of You and Me)
3 Willows
My Name Is Memory
Sisterhood Everlasting is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents
are the products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, or persons, living
or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Ann Brashares
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House,
an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Liveright Publishing Corporation for permission to reprint three lines from “I like my body when it is with your” by E. E. Cummings from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage, copyright © 1923, 1925, 1951, 1953, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, copyright © 1976 by George James Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brashares, Ann.
Sisterhood everlasting : a novel / Ann Brashares.
p. cm.—(Sisterhood of the traveling pants ; 6)
eISBN: 978-0-679-60509-6
1. Female friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R385S57 2011
813′.6—dc22 2010043106
www.atrandom.com
Jacket photograph: © Junichi Kusaka/Getty Images
v3.1
For my three amazing brothers,
Beau Brashares, Justin Brashares, and Ben Brashares, with love.
The closest thing I have to a sisterhood is a brotherhood.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
If you are not too long,
I will wait here for you
all my life.
—Oscar Wilde
Prologue
Once upon a time there were four pregnant women who met in an aerobics gym. I’m not joking; that’s how this story begins. These large, fit, sweatband-sporting women bore four daughters, all born in and around the month of September. These girls started out as babies together and grew to be girls and then women. A sisterhood, if you will.
As I look back on them—on us—I realize that though we aren’t related by blood, we are like four siblings. The Septembers, as we called ourselves, are governed by the laws of birth order, even though we are all basically the same age.
Lena is the oldest. She is responsible, rule-abiding, selfless whenever required, steady as a metronome, and not always a thrill a minute, to tell you the truth. She knows how to take care of you. She knows how to be an adult, and she knows how to be serious. She doesn’t always know how not to be serious.
I admit that I, Carmen, am a classic youngest child—compounded by the fact that I grew up as an only child. There’s no end to my self-centeredness when I get going. I can be bratty and tempestuous, but I am loyal above all. I am loyal to who we are and what we have. I am worshipful of my sisters and worshipful of our sisterhood. I am not cool: you heard it here first. I feel like a mascot sometimes—the guy in the giant-headed fuzzy animal getup at football games, melting away inside his suit. When it comes to us, I’ll throw anything in.
Bee is our true middle child—free as a butterfly. She loves you, but she doesn’t care what you think. She’s not afraid; she’s got the rest of us holding that down. She’s free to compete, free to kick ass, free to fail and laugh about it. She can be reckless. She’s got less to lose; it’s been a long time