Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

There would be a few dust creatures roaming the floor.
Maybe not right in the middle of the room, but over by
the sofa probably. (There would be a sofa, wouldn’t
there?) She hoped she would be sleeping on cotton
sheets. Knowing her dad, he might have the polyester
blend kind. Carmen had polyester issues. She couldn’t
help it.
Maybe between tennis games and John Woo movies,
and whatever things they found to do on a Saturday
afternoon, she could take him to Bed Bath & Beyond and
get some matching towels and a real teakettle. He would
complain about it, but she would make it fun, and afterward
he would appreciate her for it. She imagined that
maybe he would be sad at the end of the summer and
investigate the local high school and ask her, seriously,
whether she could ever feel at home in South Carolina.
Carmen glanced down at the row of bumps on her
forearm that were making the fine, dark hairs stand up.
She hadn’t seen her dad since Christmas. Christmas
was always their time. Since the year she was seven and
her parents split up, her dad had come every year and
stayed at the Embassy Suites in Friendship Heights for
four days, and they hung out. They’d go to movies, run
on the canal, and return the hilarious Christmas presents
she got from his sisters.
Often there were other nights, maybe three or four
during the year, when he would come up to D.C. on business.
She knew he took almost any excuse to get up to
the Washington area. They always had dinner at a
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