Beauty Queens

  Taylor took a pink gloss from a hidden pocket and slicked the glittery wand over her lips. “You remember that The Corporation almost canceled the Miss Teen Dream Pageant last year due to low ratings, and they were gonna replace it with that show about Amish girls who share a house with strippers, Girls Gone Rumspringa? And then, just like a shining angel, Ladybird Hope stepped in and said she would personally secure the advertisers for the pageant. I have lived my whole life according to Ladybird and her platform — Being Perfect in Every Way — and I’m not about to let her down now. If I have to, I will go into that jungle by myself. I’ll bet those Corporation camera crews will be real happy to see me.”

  “I’ll go!” Shanti’s hand shot up.

  “Me, too!” Petra yelled.

  Mary Lou nudged Adina. “I guess it wouldn’t be very congenial of me not to go. Will you come, too? I want to have one friend.”

  Adina didn’t know what they’d find in the jungle, but journalists always went where the story was, and Adina was the best journalist at New Castle High School. It was what had gotten her into this mess. She raised her hand to volunteer.

  Two teams were organized and, after much debate, names were chosen: The Sparkle Ponies would stay on the beach, tend to the wounded, and try to salvage whatever they could from the wreckage. The Lost Girls would soldier into the jungle in the hopes of finding survivors.

  Shanti gave instructions to the girls heading into the surf toward the mangled half plane, which was taking on water quickly. “We need to remember to bring out anything we can — first-aid kits, blankets, pillows, seat cushions, clothes, and especially food and water.”

  “But why?” Tiara asked. “They’ll be coming to rescue us real soon.”

  “We don’t know how long that will be. We’ve got to survive till then.”

  “Ohmigosh. No food at all.” Tiara sank down on the sand as if the full weight of their predicament had finally hit her. She blinked back tears. And then that megawatt smile that belonged on cereal boxes across the nation reappeared. “I am going to be so superskinny by pageant time!”

  2Roland Me’sognie, the notoriously fat-phobic French designer whose tourniquet-tight fashions adorn the paper cut-thin bodies of models, starlets, socialites, and reality TV stars. In fact, when the svelte pinup Bananas Foster, famous for starring in a series of medical side-effect commercials, was arrested in a Vegas club for snorting cholesterol-lowering drugs while wearing a Roland jumpsuit, he pronounced her “too fat to steal my oxygen. I die to see her misuse my genius. The earth weeps with me.” Sales rose 88% that week. The House of Roland was the first to introduce sizing lower than 0 - the -1. “We make the woman disappear and the fashion appear!”

  3J. T. Woodland, known as “the cute one” in The Corporations seventh-grade boy band, Boyz Will B Boyz. Due to the success of their triple-platinum hit, “Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl,” Boyz Will B Boyz ruled the charts for a solid eleven months before hitting puberty and losing ground to Hot Vampire Boyz. Five years later, Boyz Will B Boyz is nothing more than a trivia question.

  4Ladybird Hope, the most famous Miss Teen Dream who ever lived, making her name as a bikini-clad meteorologist, small-town talk show host, lobbyist, mayor, and Corporation businesswoman with her own clothing line. Rumored to be running for president.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Lost Girls set off down the beach. Taylor led the way. Adina, Shanti, Petra, Mary Lou, and Tiara followed. Above them, the sun was a jaundiced eye. To the right, the vast turquoise ocean bit at the shoreline, gobbling small mouthfuls of sand. The sand itself, white as desert-bleached animal bones, stretched for miles, in one direction yielding to jungle growth and, farther on, green mountains and lava-formed cliffs, which created an almost turretlike wall running the length of the island. Just behind those cliffs a volcano rose, vanishing into heavy cloud cover. Its rumble could be heard on the beach, like a giant groaning in its sleep.

  Shanti pointed to the volcano. “I hope that’s not active,” she said in a slightly British Indian–inflected voice.

  The girls walked in the direction of the smoke and possible survivors, chaperones or handlers who might take charge and make everything better. They trekked through the inhospitable growth, breathing in gelatin-thick humidity mixed with soot and smoke. The jungle sounds were what they noticed first: Thick. Percussive. A thrumming heartbeat of danger wrapped in a muscular green. Sweat beaded across their upper lips and matted their sashes to their bodies. A bird shrieked from a nearby tree, making all the girls except Taylor jump.

  “The smoke’s comin’ from over there, Miss Teen Dreamers,” Taylor said. She veered to the right, and the girls followed.

  The jungle gave way to a small clearing.

  “Holy moly …” Mary Lou said.

  Enormous totems rose next to the trees. With their angry mouths, jagged teeth, and bloodred, pupilless eyes, they were clearly meant to frighten. But who had built them and what were they supposed to frighten away? The girls huddled closer together, alert and terrified.

  “You think there might be cannibals here?” Mary Lou whispered.

  “Maybe these have been here for centuries and the people who built them are long gone,” Adina said without conviction.

  Shanti put up a hand. “Wait. Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Petra said.

  “It came from over there!” Shanti pointed to a copse just beyond the ring of totems. The sound came again: a grunting. Something was moving through the bushes.

  “Grab whatever you can,” Taylor instructed. She yanked a heavy switch from a tree. “Follow my lead.”

  Shanti, Mary Lou, Tiara, and Petra picked up handfuls of rocks. Adina could find nothing but a measly stick. Taylor held up three fingers, counting down to one. “Now!”

  The girls launched the rocks and sticks at the jungle. From behind a bush came a hiss of pain.

  “Lost Girls, hold your fire,” Taylor instructed.

  A willowy girl wrapped in a singed navy blanket stepped out into the open, moaning. Her skin was the same deep brown as the carved figures.

  “I’ll try to communicate,” Taylor said. She spoke slowly and deliberately. “Hello! We need help. Is your village close?”

  “My village is Denver. And I think it’s a long way from here. I’m Nicole Ade. Miss Colorado.”

  “We have a Colorado where we’re from, too!” Tiara said. She swiveled her hips, spread her arms wide, then brought her hands together prayer-style and bowed. “Kipa aloha.”

  Nicole stared. “I speak English. I’m American. Also, did you learn those moves from Barbie’s Hawaiian Vacation DVD?”

  “Ohmigosh, yes! Do your people have that, too?”

  Petra stepped forward. “Hi. I’m Petra West. Miss Rhode Island. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine. A little sore and scratched up from where I got thrown into some bushes, but no contusions or signs of internal bleeding.” Nicole allowed a small smile. “I’m pre-pre-med.”

  Shanti frowned. She’d hoped to have the ethnic thing sewn up. Having a black pre-pre-med contestant wasn’t going to help her. She covered her unease with a wide smile. “It’s good we found you.”

  Taylor sheathed her makeshift club. “We’re trying to find survivors. Did you see anybody else out here?”

  Nicole shook her head. “Just a lot of dead chaperones and camera crew. I was scared I was the only one left alive. Are we the only ones?”

  Tiara shook her head. “We left the Sparkle Ponies on the beach to tend to the wounded. We’re the Lost Girls. Oh, but you can choose to be a Sparkle Pony if you want. You don’t have to be a Lost Girl.”

  For a second, Nicole wasn’t sure that she should go with these white girls. They sounded like they’d gone straight-up crazy, and the only other brown girl was giving her an eyeful of attitude. Nicole did what she’d been taught since she was little and her parents had moved into an all-white neighborhood: She smiled and made herself seem as friendly
and nonthreatening as possible. It’s what she did when she met the parents of her friends. There was always that split second — something almost felt rather than seen — when the parents’ faces would register a tiny shock, a palpable discomfort with Nicole’s “otherness.” And Nicole would smile wide and say how nice it was to come over. She would call the parents Mr. or Mrs., never by their first names. Their suspicion would ebb away, replaced by an unspoken but nonetheless palpable pride in her “good breeding,” for which they should take no credit but did anyway. Nicole could never quite relax in these homes. She’d spend the evening perched on the edge of the couch, ready to make a quick getaway. By the time she left, she’d have bitten her nails and cuticles ragged, and her mother would shake her head and say she was going to make her wear gloves.

  “I’m glad to see you.” Nicole smiled right on cue and watched the other girls relax. She fought the urge to put her fingernails in her mouth.

  “Daylight’s wasting, Miss Teen Dreamers. Let’s not stand here jibber-jabbering,” Taylor said and set off in the direction of the smoke.

  On the trail, Shanti hurried to walk alongside Nicole. “Hello. I’m Shanti. Miss California. I can make popadam as my mother and grandmother taught me in honor of our heritage.”

  “Oh. Cool,” Nicole said.

  “Do you have any traditions like that?”

  Nicole shrugged. “We go to my Auntie Abeo’s house on Thanksgiving. That’s about it.”

  Shanti smiled. Bingo. “Sounds fun.”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty fun, I guess,” Nicole said, trying to seem extra friendly. “She’s Nigerian, and it’s all about teaching me traditional Igbo drumming. Sort of boring. But it comes in handy for the talent portion.”

  Shanti’s smile faltered. “You do traditional Nigerian drumming as your talent?”

  “Mmm-hmm. What’s your talent?”

  “Traditional Indian dancing.”

  “Oh. Cool,” Nicole said.

  “Yes. You, too.”

  A low-lying branch almost caught Shanti in the nose, but her reflexes had been honed through years of synchronized Tae Kwon Do, and she whapped it away at the last moment. She glanced sideways at Nicole, sizing her up. Pre-pre-med. Traditional Nigerian drumming. Great legs. The degree of difficulty had just gone up, but Shanti hadn’t spent two years under the tutelage of her handler, Mrs. Mirabov, for nothing. It was just another challenge to be met, another challenge to win.

  “Go ahead,” Nicole said, letting Shanti pass.

  “No. After you,” Shanti said. After all, it was the last time Nicole would get ahead of her.

  They reached the smoking wreckage of the plane’s cabin. The front still burned. Debris was spread out in a wide circle. Inside, Adina could make out the charred bodies of the pilot and copilot still strapped to their seats, hands stuck to the gears. There were other bodies burned beyond recognition.

  “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Mary Lou whispered.

  They spread out, searching for anyone who might have survived, but there was no one. And the plane was too hot for them to go inside. They called, but no one answered.

  “We better go back and see what the Sparkle Ponies have found,” Taylor said.

  Mary Lou squealed and the girls rushed to her side. The body of a flight attendant lay in the bushes about ten feet away, her arms reaching forward as if she had tried to escape by crawling into the jungle. Her dark blue uniform was only slightly singed.

  “So sad,” said Mary Lou.

  “Miss Teen Dreamers, we can’t leave this body here. It will attract predators,” Taylor said.

  “You mean like those guys who NetChat you and pretend they’re a hot German pop star named Hans but who turn out to be some old fat guy in a house in Kansas?” Tiara shook her head. “My mom was so pissed.”

  “She means like tigers or bears,” Petra said.

  “Oh my.”

  Mary Lou made a face. “What … what should we do?”

  Taylor thought for a minute. “Put her in the fire.”

  Shanti swallowed hard. “Way harsh. I mean, it’s terrible.”

  “Yes, it is. But sometimes a lady has to do what’s necessary,” Taylor said. “From Ladybird Hope’s I’m Perfect and You Can Be, Too, Chapter Three: ‘A lady’s quick thinking can save a bad situation.’

  She was talking about putting nail polish on a runner in your hose, but I think the same rule applies here.”

  The girls set about their grisly task. They dragged the body to the front of the plane, where the fire raged, and hoisted the flight attendant into it.

  “Oh God,” Mary Lou said, and threw up in a bush.

  In her head, Adina said a mourner’s prayer for the flight attendant, and for everyone else who’d died. It was true that the situation was dire and Adina had hardly known these people. But their deaths still deserved the dignity of a prayer here in the wilderness.

  Petra stared at the dead woman another long minute. In her head, she did the math of survival. Seven days of medication. That was all she’d brought with her — and that was if she could find her overnight case.

  “What do we do now?” Mary Lou asked through fresh tears. She rubbed the St. Agnes medal at her throat.

  “They’ll be looking for us,” Nicole assured her. “Right? I mean, they have to be looking for us.”

  “There’s probably a search plane on its way right now,” Mary Lou said.

  The jungle answered with unknown screeches and a low, murmuring hiss. No one moved. They watched what was left burn.

  “We should get back and let the others know,” Taylor said at last. “It’s just us. We’re the only survivors. We’re on our own.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time the Lost Girls returned to the beach, the sky was the color of wet slate and an army of angry clouds massed along the horizon, awaiting further instruction.

  Taylor convened the girls in the same spot as before. “All right, Miss Teen Dreamers. If y’all could settle into our horseshoe all nice and orderly, please? Miss Montana? Is that the way a Miss Teen Dream sits, all slutty like that with her hoo-hoo showing?”

  Miss Montana knocked her knees together and yanked down the hem of her skirt.

  “Thank you.” Taylor addressed the crowd. Her expression was calm. “I’ve got a little bit of bad news: Everybody else is dead.”

  A great gasp went up. A few girls cried and some simply stared, unable to process the information.

  Miss Ohio raised her hand. “What about the film crew?”

  “Gone,” Petra confirmed. She’d added a rescued shawl to her ensemble, tying it in an elaborate bow beneath her chin. In times of stress, she relied on her skills at accessorizing to calm her.

  “That’s terrible,” Brittani wailed. “They seemed so nice.”

  “One of the camera guys told me I was just like Lorrie Connor on The Shills5,” Tiara said.

  “OMG, I love that show!”

  The girls fell into excited chatter. “Did you see the one where Lorrie and Chad broke up and she gave him back the Frou-Frou handbag he bought her after she agreed to fake marry him to promote his new beer line? I totally cried.”

  “That was awesome TV. I heard she’s gonna hire a ghostwriter to write a book about that episode.”

  Taylor’s sharp clap echoed on the beach. “Teen Dreamers! We need to focus like it’s the final interview round and the questions are all about anorexia and current events. Now, I know y’all are upset. This is just plain awful. But God doesn’t make mistakes. Is this is a setback, Teen Dreamers?”

  “Totally,” wailed Miss Arkansas. Her left arm was broken. It had been bandaged into a ninety-degree angle as if she were perpetually waving to an unseen crowd.

  “No, ma’am. No, it is not. I know what Ladybird Hope would say. She would say that this is an opportunity for growth and the establishment of your personal brand. Everybody loves a survivor. And everybody loves a Miss Teen Dream contestant. When you put those two together,
you have a lot of hope. And big endorsement opportunities when we get back. Let’s get a woo-hoo goin’!”

  A halfhearted chorus of “woo-hoo” rippled through the horseshoe-shaped cluster of exhausted, hungry girls.

  Taylor shouted, “Now, I know y’all can be louder than that!”

  “WOO-HOO!”

  “That’s the Miss Teen Dream spirit. Sparkle Ponies, report: What did y’all salvage from the plane?”

  The girls listed off their bounty: four hot roller sets, two straightening irons, a few teeth-bleaching trays, five seat cushions, three waterlogged beauty magazines, a notebook, laxatives, diet pills, a few suitcases filled with clothes, evening gowns, a collection of mismatched bathing suit tops and bottoms, various shoes, bags of pretzels, and bottles of water.

  “Good work, Sparkle Ponies,” Taylor commended. “We are going to stay here and build a fire that any passing ships can see so we can be rescued. And I think for now we should keep our sashes on so we can identify one another easily, especially in the dark. And, of course, we need to keep up our pageant skills.”

  “Pageant skills? You’re kidding, right?” Adina hadn’t meant to blurt it out.

  Taylor narrowed her eyes. “I never kid about Miss Teen Dream.”

  “Reality check: We’re stuck on a freaking island with only a few bags of pretzels to eat and God only knows what kinds of dangerous animals or mega-zombie-insects out there, and you want us to keep working on our pageant skills?”

  Taylor glossed her lips again and smacked them together. “Correct.”

  “Don’t be so negative,” Miss Ohio said. “I’ll bet the coast guard is on its way to rescue us right now.”

  Adina shook her head. “What we need is a team leader.”

  “I accept,” Taylor said.

  “Um, not to be rude or anything, but usually you put it to a vote. It’s a democracy, right?” Adina laughed uncomfortably.