Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

particular poetry or grace in her face. She knew that, and
she knew that other people probably realized that too,
once they got over her hair.
“Hi, I’m Bridget,” she said to Sherrie, throwing her
stuff down on the bed Sherrie pointed to.
“Welcome,” Sherrie said. “How far did you come?”
“From Washington, D.C.,” Bridget answered.
“That’s a long way.”
It was. Bridget had awoken at four A.M. to catch a six
o’clock flight to Los Angeles, then a two-hour flight from
LAX to the minuscule airport in Loreto, a town on the
Sea of Cortez on the eastern coast of the Baja peninsula.
Then there had been a van ride—just long enough for her
to fall deeply asleep and wake up disoriented.
Sherrie moved on to the next arriving camper. The
cabin contained fourteen simple metal-frame twin beds,
each with one thin mattress. The interior was unfinished,
made of badly joined planks of pine. Bridget moved outside
to the tiny porch at the front of the cabin.
If the inside was standard-issue camp, the outside was
magical. The camp faced a wide cove of white sand and
palm trees. The bay was so perfectly blue, it looked like it
had been retouched for a tourist brochure. Across the
bay stood protective mountains, shoulder to shoulder,
across the Concepción peninsula.
At the back of the camp buildings stood shorter, craggier
hills. Miraculously, somebody had managed to carve
out two beautiful full-sized soccer fields, irrigated to an
even, glowing green, between the beach and the arid hills.
31