PROLOGUE
Once upon a time there were four girls. Young women, you might even say. And though their lives traveled in different directions, they loved each other very much.
Once upon a time before that, these same girls found a pair of pants, wise and magical, and named them the Traveling Pants.
The Pants had the magic of teaching these girls how to be apart. They taught them how to be four people instead of one person. How to be together no matter where they were. How to love themselves as much as they loved each other. And on a practical level, the Pants had the magic of fitting all four of them, which is hard to believe but true, especially considering only one of them (the blonde) was built like a supermodel.
Okay. Full disclosure. I am one of these girls. I wear these Pants. I have these friends. I know this magic.
I am in fact the blonde, though I was kidding about the supermodel part.
But anyway, as it happens with most kinds of magic, these Pants did their job a little too well. And the girls, being extraordinary girls (if you don’t mind my saying so), learned their lesson a little too well.
And so when the girls’ lives changed that final summer, the Pants, being wise, had to change too.

And that is how this tale of sisterhood began, but did not end.

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Gilda’s was the same. It always was. And what a relief too, Lena found herself thinking. Good thing you could count on human vanity and the onward march of fitness crazes requiring mats and mirrors.

Not much else was the same. Things were different, things were missing.
Carmen, for instance, was missing.

“I can’t really see how we can ...