Beauty Queens

  MoMo cackled. “Oh, sometimes, General Good Times, I am to make myself so happy with my scheming. It is like I am Elvis Presley in Roustabout and those college boys are in for a surprise karate chop. Oh. But you have not touched your food, my friend.”

  General Good Times, the stuffed lemur, sat in the leather desk chair. He had been dressed in his special ninja pajamas with the words Silent Killah stitched over the breast pocket.

  MoMo flicked on the TV to watch Captains Bodacious. It was a rerun, but he didn’t mind. He liked those rock-star pirates. His favorite was the one called “Casanova of the Sea,” who kept a blog about his romantic conquests. Maybe one day, he would meet them all, tour their ship, see the gangplank and the cannons for himself, wear the white, poufy shirt of the captain, shake hands with Casanova. Maybe he would kill one of them for fun. Maybe not. Mood was everything.

  “I like these pirates, Ladybird. They bring the giggles,” MoMo said to his imaginary fiancée. “When we are married, let the cameras to follow us always, even when we make the pee-pee. Let us never to live in private. Private is for small people, yes?”

  “Yes,” he answered in his high Ladybird voice. “We are not small people. We are stars.”

  “Soon, we will have our weapons. I will release the videotape, and we will be famous on American TV. Sing along, General Good Times.”

  General Good Times did not respond.

  The scientist sneaked from the compound to the abandoned temple where he had secreted tubs of Lady ’Stache Off and an old radio he’d outfitted with some new wiring. It only needed to be assembled to make contact. Benny’s stocks had taken a real header during the last crash. By his calculations, he wouldn’t be able to retire before he turned ninety-eight. Corporate espionage was the answer. Another company would pay highly for his weaponized jars of Lady ’Stache Off. That’s why he had hidden a case of them and the radio in the old temple. Now all he had to do was rewire the radio, send a message, and wait for his contact to arrive.

  Once inside the temple, he was surprised to discover that his weaponized jars of Lady ’Stache Off were no longer there. Nor was the radio or his ration kit. Instead, he was looking at the business end of a gun.

  “Going somewhere, Benny?”

  Benny held up his hands and backed away. “I-I just needed some fresh air.”

  “That’s a good idea. I think we need some fresh air in the department, Benny.” The laugh echoed in the ruins. A flock of birds scurried through the broken roof as if sensing trouble. “That was a good line. You gotta admit.”

  Benny tripped over a gnarled vine and fell hard to the ground, his hands still up in a defensive gesture. “Please …”

  “Who’s your contact, Benny?”

  “I’ll tell you! It’s …”

  The gun, a Corporation Git R Done 447, went off, killing Benny instantly. He lay sprawled against the rocks. The top of his head was missing.

  “Oh, dammit!” Harris said. “Thought they fixed that.” Harris kicked Benny’s inert body and sighed. He hadn’t gotten the information he needed, which was a real bummer. It was going to take a lot of Pong to make him feel better.

  COMMERCIAL BREAK

  (Images of Americana scroll across the screen: Fourth of July picnic. Loving families. A suburban neighborhood. Playground.)

  WARM, REASSURING VOICEOVER

  Dear Valued Customer: We know you want to protect what matters to you most. That’s why we manufactured the Git R Done 447 Personal Safety® handgun with honor and pride, so that you can go to sleep each night with the knowledge that the outside world stays outside, and if it tries to come inside, you can shoot it dead.

  However, it has come to our attention that there is a small safety “glitch” with the Git R Done 447, which might cause it too fire too soon or even randomly, accidentally killing someone you love. Awkward, we know. That’s why we are issuing a voluntary recall of the Git R Done 447 Personal Safety® handgun. Issuing this voluntary recall shows how much we care, and it is hard to dislike or take legal action against those who really care.

  CUT TO: Image of the Git R Done 447 with a red circle and line through it.

  VO, CONT’D

  If you purchased a Git R Done 447, please do not fire the weapon. Do not exhale or laugh within a five-foot radius of the 447. Instead, go to our online fulfillment center at www.thecorporation.com/gitrdone. Type in code OHCRAP447 and you will receive a discount on the purchase of The Corporation’s Home Weapon Containment Robot. Once the Robot has successfully disassembled the Git R Done 447, simply mail it to The Corporation and you will receive Corporation credit coupons, which you may use for ordering any of our many fine products.

  CUT TO: Shot of Corporation employees waving

  VO, CONT’D

  As always, we at The Corporation are committed to making your lives better, safer, and happier. You’re welcome, and have a nice day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “All right, Teen Dreamers. Let’s take stock of everything we have.” Taylor marched before the line of sleepy beauty queens, inspecting them drill sergeant–style. “Miss Nebraska, what are the island’s natural resources, please? Report.”

  Mary Lou scratched at a bite on her leg with the toes of her other foot, holding on to Adina for balance. “Um, trees. Plants. Grubs. Fish. Coconuts. Water. Mud. That’s all I can think of right now.”

  “Very good. Miss New Mexico, what salvaged materials do we have from the plane?”

  Miss New Mexico listed things off, using her fingers to keep count. “Some teeth-bleaching trays, padded bras, three safety razors, bobby pins, thongs, the jars of Lady ’Stache Off and the radio Jennifer and Sosie found, the hot roller sets, two straightening irons, bathing suits, assorted shoes, some makeup, and a few evening gowns, including that unholy beaded green thing over there.”

  “That was Miss Massachusetts’s, I think,” Brittani said.

  Petra smirked. “Maybe it wasn’t the plane crash that killed her. Maybe she actually saw herself in that dress.”

  “Let’s not speak ill of the dead, no matter how hideous their fashion sense,” Taylor instructed. “All right, Teen Dreamers. These are our tools. Starting today, we are adding a new survival skills portion to our pageant. I want you to treat this with the seriousness you would your other duties, like tanning and exfoliation. You need to wow the judges. Think about what you can make with what we’ve got.”

  “It’s like an episode of Design This!21 All we need is Roger Piston to come in and say, ‘Do your magic!’” Miss Montana said.

  “I’m turning our program over to Miss California and Miss Colorado. Please give them the same attention you would the makeup artist showing you how to contour your nose and make your lips look bigger under the lights, which I never have to do as my lips are in perfect proportion to my face.”

  Shanti and Nicole stood side by side, but they’d left plenty of space between them. Nicole’s arms were crossed.

  Shanti cleared her throat. “The first thing —”

  “Who said you were first?” Nicole interrupted.

  “Do you want to go first?”

  “No. But it’s nice to be asked. Go ahead.”

  “The first thing we really need to do is make sure we have drinking water.”

  “I forgot — why can’t we just drink the ocean water?” Tiara asked.

  “Because people pee in there all the time,” Brittani explained with assurance.

  “Also, the bloat,” Miss Ohio chimed in. “I retain like crazy.”

  “No,” Shanti said. “It’s because if you drink salt water, you’ll get sick. Drink enough and you’ll die.”

  Tiara raised her hand. “But will you still be bloated?”

  Shanti ignored her. “It’s a tropical climate, so we get some rain every day. We can make a tarp out of Miss Massachusetts’s ugly evening gown to collect that rainwater to drink.”

  Miss Montana made a face. “Ew. That is so hurl.”

  “Actually,
so hurl is the way you look when you die of dehydration.”

  Shanti explained the mechanics of the plan and the girls set to work. It was an intricate system of weights and counterweights. But the engineering was best-case scenario, and their meager resources were worst-case. Nothing was working and the girls soon grew frustrated.

  “It’s too complicated,” Nicole said. “We need to simplify.”

  “It’s not too complicated. You’re just not getting it!”

  “Whatever!” Miss New Mexico said. Her face dripped with sweat. “Do you want drinking water or not?”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “Then we need to try it another way.”

  Shanti crossed her arms. “Like what?”

  “Excuse me?” Tiara raised her hand. “One summer when I was about nine, my dad went off to rehab for his dryer sheet addiction. He used to huff ’em down in the basement, box after box. Then he’d come upstairs and start making these dioramas out of old cake mix boxes right on the kitchen floor and tell us that we should leave him alone because he was a serious artist and needed space for his work but that it was okay because the Fluffy Soft™ Laundry Puppy22 would look after us. I always wondered why he smelled like Spring Freesia.”

  Adina dropped down into the sand. “Does this story have a point?”

  “Anyway, after my mom flipped out, my dad went off to rehab to heal his wounded chi and he got this spirit guide named Astral, who was kind of annoying because my dad would be all, ‘Let’s ask Astral about that,’ even if it was just about whether or not to have Hamburger Helper for dinner, and my mom said she would personally kick his Astral to the curb if he didn’t shut up, and so he went to Jesus rehab instead, and my mom sent me to sleepaway camp for the rest of the summer. I loved it in the woods. But there were no toilets or anything, so we had to build a latrine.”

  “’Kay. I’m now officially scared of where this story’s going,” Adina said.

  Tiara’s cheeks reddened. “I let you talk.”

  “Sorry, Tiara,” Adina said.

  “Anyway, it was probably a dumb idea.”

  “No. Tell it. I want to hear it. Go on.” Petra silenced the others with a glare.

  “Well, I was just thinking that if we dig out the sand like a latrine and stretch the dress across it and hold it down with some rocks or something, maybe the water would catch in there?”

  “How’s that going to help?” Miss Ohio asked.

  “Hold on.” Shanti pulled the dress taut. She surveyed the sand around it. “That could work.”

  “Yeah?” Nicole asked.

  “Yes.”

  Tiara brightened. “I said a smarty?”

  “You definitely said a smarty.”

  The girls used coconut shells to dig a deep trench. They packed sand around the edge into a high wall, stretched the evening gown, which they had ripped open to make it bigger, across the hole, and weighted the dress’s edges with rocks. Beneath the dress, they placed anything that could collect whatever rainwater fell through the fabric’s pores: empty coconut shells, high heels, and a jewelry cleaning unit they’d rinsed four times with seawater.

  “Not bad,” Shanti said, inspecting it. “Not bad at all. Now we just have to wait for the afternoon rain shower.”

  “I can’t believe we’re gonna drink out of a ground toilet!” Tiara trilled.

  Adina put a hand on her arm. “Please never say that again.”

  Right on cue, the skies opened up. Normally, the girls cursed the rain that soaked them and brought the bugs out after. But now, they cheered it. They do-si-doed around the dress like an offering dance and cheered as it filled up with water and tipped down to pour into the waiting coconuts.

  “Bottoms up!” Petra said, and guzzled from the half shell of fresh rainwater. Her eyes grew large. She grabbed at her throat. The girls backed away. Petra grinned. “Needs a slice of lemon, but otherwise, it’s really good,” she said, and drained the shell of the last few drops.

  By the end of the week, the girls had managed to erect eight huts, and Taylor announced that there would be a Miss Teen Dream cutest hut contest. The girls went about the business of survival, collecting rainwater, identifying and gathering edible plant life, catching small fish with their straightening irons. Miss Montana, who turned out to be from a family of fishermen and women, showed them how to plait seaweed and vines to construct loose fishing lines, which had netted them a decent catch in addition to the straightening iron haul. The whole thing had come to resemble a giant science fair, with teams of girls proudly showing off their various projects.

  “Hey, you guys, over here, please!” Miss Ohio called. The girls lined up to see what Miss Ohio had put together. She’d shoved two sticks into the sand and rigged a piece of metal plane wreckage between them so that it caught the sun’s light.

  “Careful,” she warned Nicole, who’d gotten close. “It’s really hot.”

  “Now watch.” With a flourish, Miss Ohio dropped a fish on the metal’s steaming hot surface. It sizzled and popped.

  “It’s a solar hibachi,” Miss Ohio explained, serving up a perfectly done fillet. “I used a safety razor to descale the fish, rinsed it in a little of the freshwater, and now …” Using the handle of a hairbrush, she scooped up the fish and dropped it onto a mound of clean rocks. “Miss New Mexico?”

  Miss New Mexico took a bite and rolled her eyes in bliss. “OMG, this is so good, I’m not even going to make myself barf it back up.”

  “Tiara and I caught the fish with these!” Brittani said, brandishing a pair of straightening irons.

  “Awesome!” Mary Lou high-fived them.

  “This is so cool. How did you come up with this?” Adina asked. “Hello!” Miss Ohio rolled her eyes. “I’m from the Buckeye State. We are serious about our tailgating parties. I can turn anything into a grill.”

  Petra sat surrounded by fabric strips. That morning, she’d ripped apart swimsuits and dance costumes. She’d fashioned a needle from a fish bone and stripped plant roots down to a stiff, thin thread. From a dead girl’s evening gown, she’d harvested sequins; from another girl’s jewelry pouch, she’d taken rhinestone earrings. These elements she sewed into a colorful banner with sparkles to catch the sun. When she was finished, they would stretch the banner between two trees in the hope that it would draw the attention of a passing plane or ship. Petra had been hunched over in the same position for hours. Her fingers ached. At last she finished, smiling at the message she’d sewn into the center. If that didn’t get somebody’s attention, they were lost for sure.

  Mary Lou and Sosie gathered rocks and pebbles from the beach and spelled out the word HELP along the shore so that it might be seen from a passing plane. At the end of the word, Sosie made an exclamation mark with a smiley face at the bottom.

  “That way, they’ll know we’re friendly,” she reasoned.

  Jennifer took off the back cover of the radio and examined the tangled inner workings. It was a mess and more complicated than anything she’d worked on before. Why had she been so quick to volunteer? To promise the girls that she could get it up and running? What if she couldn’t? They were counting on her. That in and of itself was an odd feeling. Nobody counted on her. Back home, she’d been written off so many times and by so many people, she’d begun to feel like a comic book character who’d died but wouldn’t stay down. She knew what they thought when they saw her: Trash. Wrong side of the tracks. Dyke. Juvenile delinquent. Rehabilitation project.

  When Jennifer had stepped in to take over for Miss Michigan after the first girl broke her leg skiing and the second had to go to anorexia camp, she knew no one expected much from her. “Just do your best,” her social worker had said, giving her a lame thumbs-up. Nobody expected anything from girls like Jennifer, except for them to drop out, get pregnant, fuck up. She stared hopelessly at the tangle of red, blue, green, and white wires. If she were like her comic book alter ego, the Flint Avenger, she’d have this up in a nanosecond. But she
wasn’t. She was Jennifer, and she was utterly baffled.

  “Can you fix it?” Sosie asked. She made the sign for fix and Jennifer repeated it. Sosie bit her lip, waiting for an answer.

  Jennifer gave her a thumbs-up. Sosie hugged her and Jennifer closed her eyes, inhaling the slightly salty smell of her hair. She watched her go, then turned her attentions back to the radio and the strange, beautiful mystery of wires.

  Adina and Mary Lou stood thigh-deep in the cool, clear lagoon where Adina tried her luck and her new, pumice-sharpened spear on the fish. So far, the fish had proved wilier than they’d imagined. Each time, Adina missed and the spear struck the muddy bottom, sending little tornadoes of sand swirling.

  “I see one!” Mary Lou shouted.

  Adina turned left and right. “Where?”

  Mary Lou pointed. “There — by that rock. Oh. Not anymore. Boy, they’re fast.”

  “Why didn’t you just spear it instead of telling me?” Adina said with some annoyance.

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “They have vegetarians in Nebraska?”

  “Well.” Mary Lou thought for a moment. “There’s me.”

  “If you’re a vegetarian, why did you volunteer to come fishing with me?”

  Mary Lou shrugged. “So you’d have a friend with you.”

  “Oh.” Adina hadn’t had a close friend since Roxie Black in fourth grade, who let Adina borrow her headband. Adina and Roxie both got lice and Roxie’s mom didn’t let her come over much anymore. “Well, thanks.”