Anything Could Happen

For my quarter four research paper I am writing about fate and how love finds its way into people's lives without them even looking for it.  There must be a literature piece involved and I chose to incorporate The Sister of the Traveling Pants into it.  This beautiful story of four best friends has moments of excitement, sadness, and even laughter.  The books main story line begins when these four girls, all of different body types, trying on the same pair of jeans and each fitting perfectly into them.  This phenomenon keeps them together as they venture out in different paths during the approaching summer.  Each girl gets some time with the pants and then has to ship them off to the next friend that gets a turn with them.  These "traveling pants" serve purpose to keep them together but they also believed that the pants would bring them luck.  At first, Bridget believes this idea because she meets a handsome soccer coach at the camp she is at in Mexico.  Also, Lena probably felt lucky in general because she was in the breathtaking country of Greece, so who wouldn't feel lucky being in her shoes?  But for Tibby, stuck in her homeland working at a tacky superstore, luck seems to waver at first.  And Carmen's story is pretty neutral in the beginning because she is excited to see her dad but she also doesn't like the fact that he has a new family of his own.  So, as the stories expand, fate from the pants works itself into the girls' lives.  Lena ends ups pushing down her walls of protection and lets in a boy, Kostos, to love her.  Bridget ends up winning over the soccer coach in addition to other things happening after that, but overall she got what she wanted in the end.  Tibby meets an innocent girl who passes out in the superstore, and coincidentally they end up becoming great friends, but there is a twist.  The young girl is dying of leukemia.  This news upsets Tibby very much, but the defensive girl she was before has disappeared and in that place is a life loving teen.  For Carmen, she gets in a fight with her dad but they reconcile bringing them closer together than ever before.  So overall, whether it was the pants or not, fate works its way through each of the characters lives in touching way.  I love this story so much and I am very excited to be doing part of my research paper on it!