Summary: Chapter 1
“Luck never gives: it only lends.”
—Ancient Chinese Proverb
The girls hang out in Carmen’s bedroom, discussing their
imminent departures. None of them has finished packing. Tibby yells
at everyone for talking about packing and trying to make her feel
better. She spots the Pants on Carmen’s dresser and asks if she
can have them. Tibby tries them on, and they fit perfectly. The
Pants also fit Lena, who is stunningly beautiful; Bridget, who is
athletic and tall; and Carmen, who has fuller thighs and a rounder
butt than her friends. The girls decide the Pants are magic.
In honor of the Pants and their upcoming separation, they
go to Gilda’s, the gymnasium where their mothers met years ago.
Once they get in, they light candles and sit in a circle with the
Pants in the middle. Carmen gives a speech, claiming that they all
own the Pants and that they will send them to one another during
the summer. They take a “vow of the Traveling Pants” and call themselves
“Sisters of the Pants.” They write down rules for the Pants and
decide each person should keep the Pants for two weeks. They all
feel giddy.
Summary: Chapter 2
“Today is the tomorrow we worried about
yesterday.”
—Anonymous
When Tibby was twelve, she felt sorry for her guinea pig,
Mimi, for having to stay in her cage all day. Other times, she envied
Mimi, who didn’t have to face the world. Heading to her summer job
at Wallman’s, a superstore, Tibby envies Mimi. As she rides her
bike to work, her crush, Tucker Rowe, sees her in her hideous Wallman’s smock.
She sends a letter to Bridget in which she includes a small piece
cut from the smock.
At soccer camp, Bridget finds her cabin and asks her new
cabin mates if they want to swim. When they decline, she goes alone,
feeling happy. At dinner, she meets a few other girls. Later, she
sleeps on the beach with two girls named Diana and Jo.
On the plane to South Carolina, Carmen admires the orderliness of
the plane snacks and puts an apple in her bag. She imagines her father’s
apartment, which she’s never seen, and decides that it’ll be messy
and undecorated. She fantasizes about him asking her to move to
South Carolina permanently. Her parents divorced when she was seven,
and Carmen sees her dad only at Christmastime and a few other times
during the year. Carmen writes a letter to Tibby, telling her she
misses her.
Analysis
Before the girls separate for the summer, they stage an
elaborate ritual with the Pants, which also serves as a kind of
formal goodbye ceremony. The girls have never been apart for the
summer, and the prospect of so much time on their own makes them
uneasy. By gathering at Gilda’s, they are acknowledging the strength
of their friendship, which has a lot of history behind it. Their
ceremony reaffirms their friendship, and they vow to keep in touch
regularly throughout the summer, despite the large distances between
them. By agreeing to send the Pants to one another, they guarantee
that the bonds between them will not be broken. The Pants ceremony
also gives them a secret to take with them to their far-flung destinations.
They will be surrounded by new people in new places this summer,
but the fact that they share the secret of the Pants strengthens
their friendship. No one else will know about the Pants. It is a
funny, magical thing that only the four of them will understand.
