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Taylor chose the Clover charm to reflect her phenomenal Irish dancing. She started competing at the world championships in Ireland when she was 11 years old. Now ranked 19th in the world, she placed 4th in the U.S. at the National Championships in July. Earlier this year, talent scouts from America’s Got Talent asked her to audition for the show.
Taylor practices at a dance studio in St. Paul. When she first moved into that space, Rachel and Katie helped her paint the studio. They also painted Taylor’s bedroom and surprised another friend with a room makeover. “We’re all sort of OCD, and I’m the worst,” says Rachel. “So we’re very precise, good painters. No drips.”
“Masterful painters and interior designers,” says Katie.
Instead of the arts, however, all the girls are leaning toward the sciences. Rachel is studying math and biology at Washington University in St. Louis, and plans to be an anesthesiologist. Taylor is going to the University of Iowa, intending to be a civil engineer. Katie is staying in town, going to the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, College of Biological Sciences. At the moment, she plans to be a plastic surgeon, because her OCD translates into “wanting things absolutely perfect, to make people happy with themselves.”
Katie refers to her own recent experience, getting hit in the head playing hockey. This was at a public park in Minnesota that’s a baseball field in the summer. In the winter it’s flooded to make a pond. One of the players passed a puck that bounced off someone else and hit Katie in the forehead above her left eye. She kept saying, “No, I’m fine,” even though blood was gushing out of her head. Rachel insisted on driving her home. Katie’s dad, a pediatric ear, nose & throat surgeon, sewed her up in his office, but she can still see a slight scar.
The girls now go to colleges in different states.
The girls completed the key fob using a Friends bead, a 2011 Heart snap charm and Glam spacers in the colors of their birthstones. Then, reminiscent of the scene in Traveling Pants where the girls sit surrounded by candles, they had dinner August 4th to decide how they would share the journal/key fob. They agreed that on the 4th of every month, the person who has the journal/key fob ships it to the next person. Since she left for college first, Taylor starts the cycle and will pass the journal/key fob to Rachel on Oct 4.
Counter to the image of texting teenagers, the girls want to handwrite and send the journal physically. “Online is boring,” says Katie. “Everybody does it.”
The charms remind them that best friends stay spiritually together, even though they move physically apart. And the knowledge of that bond empowers them to have faith and courage as they boldly pursue their dreams. “We’re all alpha females in our own light,” Taylor says. “It’s important to be individuals and follow our own paths while still being best friends.” They’re hoping the charms work for them as the pants worked for the girls in the book.
One of the rules is that they each have to make regular journal entries, no matter how busy they are. Taylor plans to write every Sunday to tell her friends what happened that week. “It’s the idea that your close friends are always there for you, no matter what,” says Taylor. “My friends supported me though really hard times.”
When will they all get together next? Taylor thinks back to English class, when the three of them sat on the window sill in the back of the room, reading the roles of the prophetic Three Witches in MacBeth.
“When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
“When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.”
Right. Well, either that, or Thanksgiving break. 
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