Read Online Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares - Free Book Online

for a second while we get her into the ambulance. The hospital will take care of contacting her parents.”
    Tibby clutched the wallet and followed the men and the stretcher outside. In seconds they’d loaded the girl up. Tibby saw by the stain on the girl’s jeans and the wetness left behind that she’d peed on herself. Tibby quickly turned her head, as she always did when she saw a stranger crying. Fainting and whacking your head seemed okay to witness, but this felt like too much information.
    “Can I come along?” Tibby didn’t know why she’d asked. Except that she was worried the girl would wake up and only see scary EMS guys. They made room so that Tibby could sit close to the girl. She reached out and held the girl’s hand. Again, she wasn’t sure why, except that she had a feeling that if she were zooming down Old Georgetown Road in an ambulance, she would want somebody to be holding her hand.
    At the intersection of Wisconsin and Bradley, the girl came to. She looked around blinking, confused. She squeezed Tibby’s hand, then looked to see whose hand it was. When she saw Tibby, she looked bewildered and then skeptical. Wide-eyed, the girl took in Tibby’s “Hi, I’m Tibby!” name tag and her green smock. Then she turned to the EMS guy sitting on her other side.
    “Why is the girl from Wallman’s holding my hand?” she asked.
     
    There was a knock. Carmen glanced at the door and sat up on the rug. Her suitcase was open, but she hadn’t put anything away. “Yes?”
    “Could I come in?”
    She was pretty sure it was Krista.
    No, you can’t. “Uh, yeah.”
    The door opened tentatively. “Carmen? It’s, um, dinnertime? Are you ready to come down?”
    Only Krista’s head came through the doorway. Carmen could smell her lip gloss. She suspected Krista was an uptalker. Even declarative statements came out as questions.
    “I’ll be down in a minute,” Carmen said.
    Krista retreated and closed the door.
    Carmen stretched back out on her floor for a minute. How did she get here? How had this happened? She pictured the alternate-universe Carmen, who was polishing off a burger with her dad at a downtown restaurant, before challenging him to a game of pool. She was jealous of that Carmen.
    Carmen trudged downstairs and took her place at the elaborately set table. Multiple forks were fine at a restaurant, but in somebody’s own dining room? There were matching white covered dishes that turned out to contain all kinds of homemade food. Lamb chops, roasted potatoes, sautéed zucchini and red peppers, carrot salad, warm bread. Carmen jumped when she felt Krista’s hand reaching for hers. She yanked it away without thinking.
    Krista’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she murmured. “We hold hands for grace.”
    She looked at her father. He was happily holding Paul’s hand on one side and reaching for hers on the other. That’s what they do. What do we do? she felt like asking her father. Aren’t we supposed to be a family too? She submitted to hand-holding and an unfamiliar grace. Her father was the one who’d refused to convert to Catholicism to please Carmen’s maternal grandparents. Now he was Mr. Grace?
    Carmen thought forlornly of her mom. She and her mom said grace now, but they hadn’t when her dad still lived with them.
    She stared at Lydia. What kind of power did this woman have?
    “Lydia, this is fabulous,” her father said.
    “It’s great,” Krista chimed in.
    Carmen felt her father’s eyes on her. She was supposed to say something. She just sat there and chewed.
    Paul was quiet. He looked at Carmen, then looked down.
    Rain slapped against the window. Silverware scraped and teeth chewed.
    “Well, Carmen,” Krista ventured. “You don’t look at all like I was imagining?”
    Carmen swallowed a big bite without chewing. This didn’t help. She cleared her throat. “You mean, I look Puerto Rican?” She leveled Krista with a stare.
    Krista tittered and then backtracked. “No, I