Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Carmen watched Krista struggling with her homework
at the kitchen table. She was taking summer
school geometry to lighten her load for junior year.
Carmen had the impression Krista wasn’t going to be
joining Mensa or anything.
“You ’bout ready?” her dad called to her from his bedroom,
where he was putting on his tennis clothes.
“Just about,” Carmen called back. She’d been ready
for the last twenty minutes.
Krista was doing a lot of erasing. She kept blowing
red eraser bits over her scarred paper. She was like a
third grader. Carmen felt a pang of sympathy for her and
then beat it back. Carmen couldn’t help glancing at the
problems on Krista’s paper. She’d taken geometry in
ninth grade, math geek that she was, and it was possibly
her favorite class ever. Krista was stuck on a proof.
Carmen could tell by just squinting across the table
exactly how to do it in a minimum of steps. It was weird,