Summary

The prologue introduces the central symbol: the jeans. It is told in past tense, first person, and is the only portion of the book that is told this way. One of the main protagonists, Carmen, reminisces about finding the jeans and what it came to mean to the girls over the span of one summer. Carmen describes what they looked like and says that they were just the right color of blue, just stiff enough, just soft enough. In fact, she knew when she saw them that they would be perfect and she didn’t even bother to try them on. Carmen goes on to share that her three best friends, Tibby, Lena, and Bridget, were going to be spending the summer apart from her, that year. Tibby would be the only one staying in Bethesda, Maryland, while Lena was going to Greece to...