Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

didn’t know whether he’d heard and ignored her, or
whether she’d waited too long to speak.
Carmen ran on legs that didn’t feel connected to her
body. She ran all the way to the creek, jumped over the
water, and settled down on the far bank. It occurred to
her that her magical pants were going to get dirty, but the
thought was squeezed out by a million other thoughts,
and she let it float away. She looked up at the sky, lacy
patterns of oak leaves cut out in black. She threw her
arms to the sides as though she’d been crucified.
She lay there for a long time—some number of hours;
she couldn’t guess how many. She wanted to pray, but
then she felt guilty because she only ever seemed to pray
when she needed something. She wasn’t sure she even
wanted to alert God to her presence here: The Girl Who
Only Prayed When She Needed Something. It might irritate
Him. Maybe she should just hold out, and pray when
it was just for the sake of praying so that maybe God
would like her again. But God (sorry, God), who could
ever remember to pray when things were just okeydokey?
Good people, that was who. And she wasn’t one of them.
By the time the moon peaked and had begun to fall,
her anger had fully retreated into its normal place, and
her brain had started working again.
Now that she was thinking, she thought that she had to go
back home to Washington. But her thinking also informed her
that she had left everything—her money, her debit card, her
everything useful—in the house. Why was it that her temper
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