Beauty Queens

  Nicole chewed at a fingernail. “Um, I came out here to have an adventure and find myself.” By myself, she thought.

  “Great. I’ll come with you. I’d like to have an adventure, too,” Shanti said. “You shouldn’t bite your nails.”

  Nicole quickly dropped her hand to her side. She balled her fingers into a fist and released them again.

  “Um, no offense, but I kind of wanted to explore on my own for a bit.”

  “Why?” Shanti said in that suspicious way that always put Nicole on the defensive.

  “I just do, okay?”

  “Well, you don’t have to get mad about it,” Shanti said. “Besides, there’s no law that says I can’t be out here, too.”

  Nicole started to say, “Fine. Go ahead.” But she was tired of bowing to everyone’s needs but her own. “You know what? I’ll go somewhere else, then.” She grabbed her new drum.

  “I knew it. You’re practicing,” Shanti said in triumph. “Trying to get ahead.”

  “What? No! I just made this,” Nicole said, and she wondered why she was even explaining herself. “Why are you following me? You don’t even like me.”

  “That’s not tr —”

  “Please. You have been eyeballing me ever since we met. Don’t lie. It’s just the two of us out here. You can stop with the We’re All One Big Happy World routine.”

  Shanti’s smile faded. “Okay. Since we’re being honest. This is a competition. And I am in it to win.”

  “Okay. I can get with that. But you don’t give the other girls a hard time.”

  “Because they’re not my competition. You are,” Shanti leapt ahead of Nicole on the path. “Come on. You know they’ll never let two brown girls place. And then there are the similarities: You want to be a doctor; I want to be a scientist. You’re doing Nigerian drumming; I’m doing Indian dance. I’ll bet your platform is something nonthreatening like saving animals or teaching kids with cancer to make stuffed animals.”

  “Cleaning up litter,” Nicole admitted.

  “You see?”

  “Hold on. I need this pageant for the scholarship money. So I can go to medical school.”

  “And I don’t need the money?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know anything about you. Because you’re like this big mystery. I’m getting to know everybody else. But you, you’re like a window display for an empty store, if you ask me.”

  Shanti’s eyes burned. “Maybe I like to keep myself to myself.”

  “Fine. Do that. And I’m going for a walk. By myself. Just go on back to camp.”

  “I can’t,” Shanti said, wide-eyed.

  Nicole put a hand on her hip. She sighed. “Why?”

  “I’m stuck.”

  “Stuck being unpleasant?”

  “No. I mean I am literally stuck. I can’t move my feet.” A hint of panic worked its way into Shanti’s voice. “I think this is quicksand!”

  Nicole rolled her eyes. “C’mon. That’s just a desert island trope.”

  “Well, right now, it’s the desert island trope that’s sucking me down. Would you help me out of here?”

  “For real? Quicksand?”

  Shanti screamed as she slipped down another inch. The quicksand was up to her knees. “Ohmigod! I’m, like, totally going under! Would you just freaking help me, please?” Shanti’s careful, vaguely British-inflected Indian accent was gone. In its place was pure California Valley girl.

  Nicole’s astonishment gave way to a smirk.” Freaking. Is that Hindi or Tamil or what? Did your grandmother teach you that? Was it part of your family’s Ohmigod-totally-awesome-popadam recipe handed down through the generations?”

  Shanti stretched her arm out and wiggled her fingers for a vine. She fell short by an inch. “I am so totally going to kill you when I get out of here. Like, for real.”

  Nicole put a hand to her chest in pretend shock. “No way? For real? I’m, like, totally scared!”

  “Help me!”

  “Why? You never help anybody else.”

  “You won’t help a sister out?”

  “Oh, no. You did not just play that.” Nicole squatted till she was face-to-face with Shanti, who was in the quicksand up to her thighs. “You are not my sister. You are a total fake and a liar. Tell me why you did it.”

  “I needed an edge.”

  “Being Indian was your edge?” Nicole scoffed.

  “Yes. No! I mean, I am Indian, but, like, not — look, they want this: They want the Indian girl whose parents sacrificed everything to give her the American dream. They don’t want some Valley girl whose parents, like, shop at Nordstrom and have a housekeeper named Maria. They want Princess Priya33. That’s the story they were looking for. That’s the story that makes them feel good. That’s the story that wins every time. So that’s the story I gave them.”

  “So who are you, then? For real this time.”

  “I don’t know! That’s the freaking problem, okay? I’m not Indian enough for the Indians and I’m not American enough for the white people. I’m always somewhere in between and I can’t seem to make it to either side. It’s like I live in a world of my own. ShantiBetweenLand. I swear, that is the truest thing I can tell you. Now will you please just get me out of here?”

  “Don’t go away,” Nicole said as she jumped up.

  “Funny! Not!” Shanti yelled. “You better be saving me, Beyoncé, or I swear I will come back like one of those too-much-eyeliner ghosts in a Japanese movie and haunt you forever!”

  Nicole searched the area for a branch or a vine, something to hoist Shanti’s sorry ass out of the muck. And as she did, she thought about passing by Shaniqua Payton on the school bus. She could hear Shaniqua behind her, saying, “How come you talk like a white girl? Like your black ass is all that and you too good for us? You with your pageant shit. You can act all high ’n’ mighty, but who you think’s gonna have your back if it comes down to it — me or whitey?”

  All the other kids had stared and Nicole had been too embarrassed to do anything but stare straight ahead. Later, she’d told her friend Megan about it and waited for Megan to say something comforting, something that proved she belonged.

  “Don’t even pay attention to her,” Megan had said. “You know what? She’s just one of those angry black girls, Nicole. You know how they get.”

  Nicole had felt the comment like a crack across her cheek. In that moment, some part of her had known that Shaniqua might have been a jerk, but she had spoken truth. And sometimes the truth did not set you free. Sometimes, it was a hard, lonely prison of a place to be.

  Between people. That’s what she and Shanti were.

  Nicole ripped a vine off a tree and tested its strength between her hands as Shanti screamed her name. “Keep your weave on, Bollywood.”

  “It’s not a weave! It really is an old Indian remedy!” Shanti shouted, and it made Nicole smile. Girl was getting pissed off. Good. Pissed off people stayed alive.

  Nicole held the vine away. “I’m going to pull you out. But first, say you’re sorry for being such a liar.”

  Only Shanti’s head was visible in the bubbling mud. “I’m s-sorry.”

  “Promise you’re going to be yourself from now on and not some lying weasel. Unless who you are is a lying weasel, in which case I am letting the quicksand keep you.”

  “Screw you!” Shanti screamed.

  Nicole snickered. “That’s better.” With a grunt, she tossed the vine toward Shanti’s one free hand and dug in her heels. “Grab on.” But Shanti was panicked. She tugged sharply. “Hey! Don’t pull too hard! You’ll —”

  Nicole lost her balance and toppled into the quicksand. She made a desperate grab for the vine, but it fell in with them. “Nice work, Bollywood.”

  “Oh my God. Why didn’t you secure it to the tree first?”

  “You’re welcome, Miss Grabby Hands. Aren’t you the science whiz? Don’t you know about forces and equal and opposite reaction and all that?”

  “Like, he
llo? I was being swallowed by quicksand, okay?” Shanti shrieked.

  “Well, now we’re both stuck.”

  The girls screamed as loudly as they could, but no one heard or no one came. Shanti gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t you know the other trope?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The brown people die first.”

  The girls struggled in the mud, fighting the pull as it sucked them farther down no matter what they did.

  Despite being unable to move, both Shanti and Nicole managed to free their hands for one last, sisters-in-non-white-dominant-culture-solidarity hand clasp. It was a very cool hand clasp, the kind white kids across America will try to emulate in about six months, just before an avant-garde white pop starlet turns it into a hit single and makes lots of money.

  “You can’t … trust … the man,” Nicole said with her last breath, as she and Shanti sank beneath the quicksand.

  30Ekwe, a traditional Nigerian drum, impressive to throw into your party chatter: “I was going to play the ekwe, but my hair was still damp.”

  31Sweet Sixteen Gone Wrong (Wednesdays, 10 P.M. EST): Will Special let her manicurist inject her with yak’s urine? Heidi flips out when Heather schedules her dress-fitting party on the same day as Heidi’s pre-party modeling lessons. Z’anay has a tanning mishap. Dazzle chooses a small dog to match her dress.

  32Vampire Prom: The Corporation’s Monday night supernatural drama about a pack of high school vampires and their dating dilemmas. Based on the novels, which were based on the graphic novels based on the comics, which in turn were based on the Swedish art-house movie. “Some vampires are born to kill. Some, to dance.” (Catch the Vampire Prom dance tour coming to an arena near you!)

  33Princess Priya, an Academy Award-winning movie about an orphan girl from India’s slums who is rescued from a life of poverty and exploitation by a well-meaning white woman (Best Actress Oscar for Victoria Bollocks).

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The surface of the quicksand bubbled. Nicole’s face pushed through. She spit out the oatmeal-like sludge and took a deep breath. “Shanti!” she gasped. “Shanti, I’ve got hold of a root! We’re saved.”

  Two seconds later, Shanti’s head emerged. “Nicole! Nicole, I found a root! I can pull us out!”

  “Shanti? Where are you?”

  “Over here! Sorry, I can’t see yet. Can’t wipe my eyes.”

  “Me either. Can you pull yourself out?” Nicole asked.

  “Totally.”

  “Go!”

  With a grunt, they heaved their way up the vine and onto solid land. They were covered in muck, but they were alive. This narrow escape made them giddy. They hugged and held on tightly to each other.

  “Ohmigosh, that is going to be, like, the best story ever for the judges!” Shanti shook the clingy mud from her hands.

  Nicole did the same. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t have let you drown before.”

  “I know,” Shanti said, and they hugged again.

  They found a steaming hot spring, and once they had tested it to be sure it wasn’t more quicksand, they eased themselves in. The banks of the hot spring were made of thick, red clay. Shanti scooped up a handful and put it on her face. “This stuff is, like, genius for your complexion. Want some?”

  Nicole smeared the mud on her face. “Too bad there’s nothing for my hair.”

  “What do you mean?” Shanti could feel the clay hardening, closing her pores.

  “I am a black woman without her products. All this new growth? I will never get a brush through this again,” Nicole said with a sigh.

  “It looks so awesome! Like a kinky waterfall.”

  “Did you just say kinky waterfall like it was a compliment?”

  “You should keep it natural.”

  “Yeah?” Nicole patted her hair. It was coarse but full. “Need some kind of grease, though.”

  “Try using fresh coconut milk. It’s a crazy-awesome moisturizer.”

  “Cool. Still trying to get used to that Valley accent, Bollywood. It’s, like, so Galleria!”

  “Whatever.”

  The two of them lay back and let the warmth of the water work on their tense muscles. They were relaxed from the water and giggly with their shared adventure. Talk came easily now.

  “Can I ask you something, Nicole?’

  “Sure. Wait — is this gonna be a sex talk? ’Cause I’m still a virgin.”

  “Me, too. It’s not a sex conversation. So why are you doing Miss Teen Dream? No offense, but it doesn’t seem like you’re really into it.”

  “I want the scholarship money for medical school.” Nicole usually stopped there. Everybody understood that answer. But she decided to be honest with Shanti. “But mostly, it’s to make my mom happy. She really wants me to be a star. I think she’s the one who wants to be a star.”

  “So what if you stood up to her, told her how you feel?”

  Nicole slowly bicycled her legs out in front of her. “You try standing up to my mom. She’s a force of nature.”

  “Are you going to let her run your life forever?”

  Nicole sank down, letting the water rise to her chin. She thought about one time, after a local pageant, her second, when she didn’t place. Afterward, she stood with her mother in the busy Doubletree Hotel hallway, girls posing and pirouetting all around, while her mother talked to the coach. “What can she do to improve her chances? What are the judges looking for?” her mother had asked. The coach had hemmed and hawed and looked uncomfortable. “Don’t be too ethnic,” she’d finally said. And Nicole felt her mother’s hand tighten on her shoulder for a second, saw the pull at her jaw. “Thank you,” her mother had said. They’d walked in silence to the car.

  “So why did you sign up for Miss Teen Dream?” Nicole asked, changing the subject.

  Shanti thought for a minute. She’d answered the question a million times for an audience. All those half truths and outright fabrications, giving people what they wanted without stopping to think about what she really wanted. “I think I was bored.”

  Nicole burst out laughing. “Bored? What, was the mall closed?”

  “Shut up!” Shanti laughed. “Okay, that’s not one hundred percent true, but sort of. I mean, I’d won everything else. It was the one thing I couldn’t seem to conquer. I just felt like … I don’t know.”

  “You had something to prove?”

  “Yes!”

  “I know that.”

  Shanti bobbed up and down in the water, enjoying her buoyancy. “The thing is, I don’t really want it anymore. Not really.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Everything!” Shanti laughed.

  “Me, too.”

  Shanti rested her head against the bank and let her body float out in front of her. “Okay, secret want? Like, pinkie-swear-you-can’t-tell secret?”

  Nicole rolled her eyes. “Who am I going to tell?”

  “I kind of want to be a DJ.”

  Nicole laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “DJ? Really?”

  “Everything in my life has always been about the goal, about being perfect and not letting the seams show. But, like, with DJing? It’s about finding that groove. It’s like you have to play around. It’s, like, process.”

  “Like, that’s deep.”

  “Shut up!” Shanti laughed. “If we were up onstage right now in front of the judges, you know what I would say when they asked me my life goals? I would say, ‘You know what? Let me get back to you. I’m still figuring it out.’ We should wash this stuff off now. I can barely move my lips.”

  The girls splashed their faces with warm water, rubbing off all the clay. Nicole ran a finger over her cheeks.

  “Wow. That really works. My skin is silky smooth34.”

  “Yeah. I might have to make this part of my skincare line. Shanticeuticals. I could do a whole cosmetics line for ethnic skin. The packaging would be killer! Sort of a henna tattoo thing?” Sh
anti said.

  Nicole laughed. “Good. You’re back. For a second there, I was starting to worry.”

  “I still like to win,” Shanti said, grinning. “I’m not saying I’m not, like, totally Type A. I just need a B side, too.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. Just promise me that Shanticeuticals will not have a bleaching cream.”

  Shanti held up three fingers in a scout’s-honor pose. “No bleaching cream.”

  Nicole put up her fist. “Bump me, Bollywood.”

  “Namaste, sassy black sidekick,” Shanti said, and gave Nicole’s fist a thump with hers. She pulled herself out of the water, squeezed the water from her hair, and loosely plaited it. “What do you want for dinner — grubs or bulrush?”

  “A cheeseburger,” Nicole said. “And fries.”

  “When we get back, I’m eating everything. Twice.”

  “That sounds like the best plan ever.”

  Arm in arm, Shanti and Nicole walked back toward the beach camp. Behind them, the wind swooped down from the painted mouths on the hill over the ruined land as if it could reach out fingers to tap them on their shoulder, turn them around. To warn them.

  Jennifer stared at the radio. “Work with me,” she pleaded. With a sigh, she took off the cover again. How she wished she had a sonic screwdriver or a superhero’s radio-fixing powers. Jennifer tried to remember all she’d learned both at her mother’s plant and from comic books. She touched two wires and got a small shock.

  “Ow!” she said, shaking her finger. The radio blurbled to life. “Oh my God. I did it,” she said. “I fixed the radio. Hey, you guys! I got a signal!”

  The girls ran to Jen, crowding around the radio. Taylor pushed her way through to the front.

  “Listen,” Jen said. Beneath the static, the girls could hear a whisper of sound.

  “It’s too soft. See if you can get a stronger signal, Miss Michigan,” Taylor said.

  Jennifer made a few gestures to Sosie up in the tree to adjust the makeshift antenna. Jen twisted the knobs, listening for some heartbeat of sound. The radio answered in static and loud hisses, like a radiator coming to life on the first cold day of fall. A blurp of an old country and western song thrilled everyone for a moment.