Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

There was a library card. A handy horoscope card cut out
from a magazine. Some girl’s toothy school picture with the
name Maddie and a lot of Xs and Os on the back. Four onedollar
bills. How completely useless. It was just the kind of
stuff Tibby had carried in her wallet when she was that age.
At that moment three EMS guys carrying a stretcher
stormed the aisle. Two of them started poking at the girl, and
the other studied a silver medical bracelet encircling her left
wrist. Tibby hadn’t thought about checking the girl’s wrist.
The third guy had questions for Tibby. “So what happened?”
he asked. “Did you see?”
“Not exactly,” Tibby said. “I heard a noise, and I
turned around and I saw her crashing into the display
there. She hit her head on the floor. I guess she fainted.”
The EMS guy was no longer focused on Tibby’s face, but
on the wallet she held in her hands. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, uh, her wallet.”
“You took her wallet?”
Tibby’s eyes opened wide. She suddenly realized how
it looked. “I mean, I was just—”
“Why don’t you go ahead and give that back to me,”
the man said slowly. Was he treating her like a criminal,
or was she being paranoid?
Tibby didn’t feel like ridiculing him with her famous
mouth. She felt like crying. “I wanted to find her phone
number,” she explained, shoving the wallet at him. “I
wanted to tell her parents what was going on.”
The man’s eyes softened. “Why don’t you just sit
tight for a second while we get her into the ambulance.
75