The Traveling Pants

The four main characters of the story purchased a pair of jeans two summers prior to when this novel begins. They have designed a small sect around the Pants. There is a set of rules to which the girls must adhere when they wear the Pants, and there is a poem that they recite as the Pants are brought out at the beginning of the summer and retired at the end.

The girls take turns wearing the Pants, and they believe that certain magical things can happen to the one who wears them. The group uses the pants as a symbol of hope and achievement, and as a bond to hold them together spiritually when they are apart.

Gilda's

Gilda's is a gym where the four girls' mothers went for exercise while they were pregnant at the same time. In the late 1980s, Gilda's was...