Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online

organized?”
    Lena shook her head stormily.
    “Because…you are ungrateful and uncaring granddaughters of your recently widowed and helpless grandmother?”
    “Because Valia is a nightmare!” Lena practically shouted.
    It was a good thing Valia’s hearing wasn’t so good, Carmen thought.
    “I mean, she’s an amazing and wonderful woman.” Lena backtracked, looking more serious. “She really is. And we love her. But she’s awful right now! And I’m not saying I blame her for it. She’s miserable about Bapi. She’s miserable that she’s in the States living with us. She hates my dad for making her come. She hates everything about this country. She wishes she were in her own home surrounded by her friends. She is furious at everybody, can’t you tell that?”
    Carmen was now feeling stupid and a bit defensive. “Maybe she is. But maybe I can handle it.”
    Lena shook her head. “Trust me. You and Valia are not a good combination right now.”
    Carmen narrowed her eyes. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
     
    Now, and for a long time, the best way Bridget knew to settle her mind was to run. Sometimes she felt that the meditative state of the long, quiet miles helped her think. Sometimes she felt that the pure exhaustion helped her not think.
    Sometimes she believed that she was running toward some sort of resolution, and other times she knew she was just plain running away. Still, it was what she did.
    This late-evening run took her up and down country roads fringed by scrubby, June-green trees. The sinking sun poked an occasional sparkling ray straight into her eyes. When she got bored of the cars honking at her (was she posing a hazard in the fading light, or was it her hair?), she leaped off the road. Another girl might have been scared to run through unfamiliar woods as darkness fell, but Bee wasn’t. She knew she could outrun virtually any human being who might find her. And the bears in these parts weren’t man-eaters, she was pretty sure.
    It was exhilarating, if anything. The forest was young and sparse, cut through every which way by paths. She followed a deep, wide bed where she imagined a river had once lain. She pictured herself striving in this same place when the river flowed. She ran until her thoughts shortened and no longer formed lines. They flashed and blipped. She didn’t follow them around the corner. She simply felt things without any hows or whys. This was how she settled herself.
    Now the sun was entirely gone and Bridget knew the light would soon disappear too. The light that stayed on after the sun always felt to her like an empty promise. Ahead of her, on the dirt bed, something caught her eye. It jostled her breath out of its rhythm and sent her brain spinning. It was less than twenty yards away, and it disturbed her. She slowed her pace to keep the distance from disappearing so fast. She wanted to run wide around it, but she wanted to face it too. She was back in hows and whys.
    It was a bird, she thought. A pigeon, maybe. It was clearly dead and bent into a wrong set of angles. Its head seemed to stick up from the ground in a pitiful pose. She was nearly upon it. She wouldn’t stop. She would keep going. She would avert her eyes. No, she couldn’t avert her eyes.
    It wasn’t until she was literally over the bird that she realized, in a burst, that it wasn’t a bird at all. It was a mitten. It was a lost, grayish mitten with the thumb sticking up and looking very much like the head of a bird.
    She was instantly flooded by relief and reassessment. Her mind and body fell back into calm alignment.
    But as she ran and ran and the sky turned a dark, bruised blue, she felt sad. And, strangely, even though the twisted body in her path had been a mitten, she found herself remembering it as a bird.
     
    If Lena’s mother’s car had not overheated it wouldn’t have happened. The whole summer would have gone differently.
    But her mother’s car did overheat, on Thursday