Agent Jones’s shoulder throbbed where he’d taken the full brunt of the coconut. He ran fast, but he was no match for the beauty queen’s youth and conditioning. If she made it back to the beach, she’d warn the others. The operation would be exposed. His pension and benefits would disappear. Or he’d have to kill them all. Quick thinking. It was what separated the men from the dweebs. Agent Jones was no dweeb. He might not be able to catch her, but he had something that could. Still running, he reached into his pocket for the darts.
Taylor felt a sharp pain in the back of her arm. She reached back and pulled out the small, pointed tip. She chanced a glance behind her and saw the blow tube at the man’s mouth. Panic set in now. Her father always told her that panic was a soldier’s enemy. Fear could be used, but panic was no good. Focus, Miss Texas, she told herself. All she had to do was make it to the top of the hill and get off one scream to the others. Just. One. Scream. As she sprinted, the hill bounced in her vision. Almost clear! She was clear!
“Teen … Dream … Misses!” she gasped out. “This is … your … team … captain!”
The second dart stuck fast in Taylor’s neck.
“Danger!” The shriek was torn from her.
A third dart lodged in her butt. A fourth followed. She fell to her knees and tried to stagger to her feet again, but her legs felt numb and nothing looked right anymore. She felt like a visitor in her own body as the drug released directly into her bloodstream. Within seconds, her vision altered in terrifying ways. She whispered the word she’d never allowed herself to say, the word that she’d buried in her toy sculpture years before when her mother left.
“Help.”
And then Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins, Miss Texas, passed out.
Panting heavily, his jaw bruised and his leg bleeding, the agent crawled toward the beauty queen and smeared her mouth with the Mind’s Flower fruit, torn from a neighboring plant. He put a few broken petals in her hands to suggest that she’d eaten her fill. Then he limped off toward the volcano lair. Before he’d settled into the corporate life of privatized security, the agent had initiated coups in third world countries. He’d overseen arms deals and planned assassinations. He’d taken out a rhino once on illegal safari with the board of directors for a fair trade company in Tanzania. The rhino went down after two shots. It took four for this beauty queen. None of his assignments had been as much of a headache as this one.
Women were a lot of trouble.
He hoped the Mind’s Flower would keep her nonsensical long enough to formulate a Plan B. MoMo was due on the island soon, and things were going from bad to worse. He didn’t relish telling the Board.
He certainly didn’t relish telling the Boss.
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CHAPTER NINETEEN
The girls had brought Taylor into her hut and placed her on the palm fronds like a sleeping princess. Taylor had been vaguely aware of the movement, but her mind was too confused to speak. She woke from her fever dream sometime in early morning. She’d gathered a few supplies and stolen away to a remote part of the jungle where she could be safe. It was so hard to feel safe in the world when you were a girl. But this place was good. It was a small cave hidden in the leafy growth of a mountain not far from a freshwater lagoon. And there were unicorns with rainbow-sparkle tails. Sometimes the unicorns spoke to her, and that was a little disconcerting. But then she would tell them to go off and work on their step-ball-change for the opening number and they did.
Now she was alone. She was alone like when her mother left and the world became a frightening place. When she’d had to build the sculpture to feel safe. But Taylor had proof that her fears were real. She’d seen what they were doing. She put her head down on her knees and began to cry.
“Tay-Tay, why is my pretty girl so sad?”
Taylor lifted her head. Through the haze of tears she saw her mother, resplendent in a bright yellow evening gown and surrounded by a silvery glow. “Mama? You’re here?”
“Yes, I am, Taylor. I’m here to help you.”
In the flickering glow, Taylor’s mother looked just like she had when Taylor was six, but this mom wasn’t crying at a sink full of dirty dishes. “Something’s wrong, Mama. I can’t make my head work right.”
Her mother sat beside her and offered her a section of orange, which Taylor couldn’t be certain she was eating. “Why did you leave?” Taylor said.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know it was okay not to be perfect.” Her mother tucked Taylor’s hair behind her ear softly. “You’re not like me, Taylor. You’re a fighter. Who’s no quitter?”
“Me.”
“That’s right. Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins. Miss Texas.” Her mom tapped her nose gently with her finger. Outlined by the fertile greenery, she was like an exotic plant. “Life can be ugly, Taylor. That’s why it’s so important to keep things pretty. And we are going to keep things pretty, aren’t we?”
“Yes. We are.”
Taylor’s mother was no longer there. “Mama?” Taylor whispered urgently. Sweat beaded on her skin and ran down her arms. A snake hissed from a tree. And Taylor was afraid. In the jungle, she heard the creak of branches breaking, the squawk of a walkie-talkie. She hid behind a bush and watched the man with the earpiece and the AK-47. In his left hand was a cell phone, which struck Taylor as odd, but she tried to keep her focus. That was what made winners — focus. Not getting distracted by the little things. The man wore a black shirt like the others she’d taken out, five by her last count. The walkie-talkie squawked with a voice, and the man in the black shirt answered. “Nope. Haven’t found her yet.”
Hidden by the thick vegetation, Taylor watched the man carefully. It was hard because sometimes things didn’t look right to her anymore. She could see smells and smell colors and it was all just a little fantastical. She couldn’t even be sure of this man. She needed to be sure, though, and so she risked stepping out from the bush.
“Well, I’ll be,” the man said, smiling. “Come on out. I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
For a moment, her mind slipped sideways again, and she imagined he was her daddy coming to offer her a hand out of her stuffed-animal cave after her mother left. “Come
on, baby. Come on out,” her dad had said. The light from her bedroom window had fuzzed the top of his buzz cut like a dandelion.
“No,” Taylor had said. And then she’d started crying. “What did I do to make Mommy leave?”
“You didn’t do anything. This isn’t your fault.”
“Then why?” she’d wailed.
“I don’t know,” her daddy had said, and he looked so sad.
“It isn’t fair!”
“No, it isn’t, baby. Not by a mile. The world’s only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your little cave, that’s one less fighter on the side of fair.”
He’d let her be, but every morning, he’d put down a tray with French toast, her favorite. It was brown around the edges and squishy in the middle, just the way she liked it. And eventually, she’d come out. When she was good and ready.
Focus, Miss Texas. Taylor forced herself to look again and concentrate. This man offering his hand was not her father or anyone like him. In this man’s smile was all the unfairness of the world in its thuggish seduction. “Just come with me. We’ll take care of you.”
“No, you won’t.” Taylor stroked the man’s cheek. She reached her arms up to cradle the back of his head and, with the skill of a champion, she broke his neck. Then she dragged him into the bushes, took his gun and walkie-talkie, and kept moving.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“What is she doing?” Adina asked.
It had taken two days, but the girls had found Taylor’s hiding place deep in the jungle and had gathered to watch her. She looked rough. Her normally smooth blond hair was a matted tangle. She’d camouflaged her face and arms with dirt like a soldier in a war movie. The white dress she’d taken the care to wash out every day was ragged.
“I can’t believe she ate that psycho-fruit. It’s like she was trying to kill herself or something,” Mary Lou said.
“It’s weird,” Adina said. “That’s just not something I could remotely imagine Taylor doing.”
“She was pretty upset about not getting rescued,” Jennifer said.
The girls kept a safe distance, crouched low behind the cover of plants as they watched Taylor work. For days she’d been sneaking into the camp and stealing random items — eyelash curlers, a hair dryer, earrings, stockings. It wasn’t like they needed them here, but why did she? Only Mary Lou had worked up the courage to approach Taylor’s XL Crazy. “What do you need those for, Taylor?” she’d asked, and Taylor had done a little circle-turn and half a jig punctuated with jujitsu moves.
“If chosen as Miss Teen Dream, I will not let the bad people mess with our pretty. Their outfits are wrong. They’re not good people. Tonight on Patriot Daughters!”
“It’s like she’s some freaky pageant robot that went haywire,” Mary Lou said. “Also, she licked a tube of mascara.”
“Don’t use that now,” Brittani said. “You’ll get eye herpes.”
“Boy, I hate eye herpes,” Tiara agreed. Beside her, Nicole pretended to write something on imaginary paper, which she tore off and handed to Tiara. “What are you doing, Nicole?”
“Writing you a prescription to come talk to me.”
“Can you do that if you’re not a real doctor?”
“Sure,” Miss Ohio said. “I found a guy on the Internet to write me a prescription for horse diet pills.”
“Horse diet pills?” Nicole repeated.
“Yeah. They worked great, but my mom made me stop when I grew an extra set of teeth inside my large intestine.”
Petra stuck her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la-la-la.”
“What’s she wearing?” Sosie signed.
Around her dress, Taylor had constructed a makeshift bandolier out of airplane seat belts, a pink unicorn wallet, and a tampon carrying case.
“That girl is serious about her feminine hygiene,” Shanti said.
“Should we tackle her, bring her back?” Jennifer asked.
Shanti shook her head. “No way. She’ll cut a bitch. Even hopped up on crazy juice.”
“I don’t understand — you guys ate those berries and you’re fine,” Adina said. “It wore off in a few hours. I wonder how come it’s not wearing off for Taylor.”
“Her bitch cells are binding to the proteins,” Petra murmured.
“Shh, she’s coming closer,” Shanti whispered.
Out of sticks, palm fronds, salvaged shoes, glittery jewelry, two suitcase wheels, and evening gown scraps, Taylor had built a found-object beauty queen sculpture upon which she placed a scrawled sign for a sash. The sash read Miss Miss, making it seem as if the sculpture were just off. Taylor talked to the figure. She called it Ladybird and seemed to be waiting for its approval.
“What is that thing? It looks like the most busted beauty queen ever,” Nicole whispered, and no one was sure which one she meant.
“I thought it was a gay bunny,” Tiara said.
“Ladybird, watch this!” Taylor executed three backflips, ending in a machine-gun stance.
“Okay, that’s not disturbing at all,” Shanti said.
“She could probably sell that at MOMA for a fortune,” Petra said appreciatively.
Taylor tilted her head to one side and smiled. “Yes, Ladybird. You have to put your heart, soul, and sparkle into it. It is a total commitment to the sparkle.”
“She really has lost it,” Adina murmured.
Taylor stopped, suddenly alert. She scrambled up the tree and disappeared.
“O-kaaay,” Nicole said. “What’s next?”
“Do you hear something?”
The girls listened, but in the constant burble of jungle noises, it was hard to hear anything unusual. It was only when the enormous snake dropped down from the tree that they realized the sound was a hiss.
“What is that?” Mary Lou whispered.
“Big snake thingy?” Tiara offered.
“Thanks. I hadn’t figured that out yet.”
“Don’t move.” Jennifer instructed.
“Does ‘don’t move’ include your bowels? Because you’re too late,” Miss New Mexico said.
With a piercing scream, Taylor jumped forward, circling the blow dryer over her head by its cord. She let it fly and smacked the snake across the tail. It turned with a fierce roar.
“Come mess with Texas,” Taylor said.
The snake obeyed. It lunged for her and Taylor dodged with acrobatic grace.
“Miss Teen Dream is a bright light in the world,” she said with prayerlike intensity. From the makeshift bandolier, she removed a small can of hair spray, thumbing off the top. “Long-lasting hold!” she yelled. “Never let your ’do droop!” She pressed the nozzle on the spray can and lit a match, igniting a huge fireball that engulfed the snake. It screamed and fled into the trees like a wounded comet. Taylor shoved the can back into the unicorn wallet on the bandolier. She blew on the end of the hair dryer and shoved it nozzle-down into her rope belt.
“Whoa,” Petra said. “Toto, I don’t think Taylor’s in it for Miss Congeniality anymore.”
Adina called the meeting, having everyone sit in the same horseshoe formation that Taylor had. “Now that Taylor’s incapacitated —”
“What?” Tiara asked.
“Gone nuts,” Petra explained.
“Now that Taylor’s gone nuts, I am assuming the duties of team leader. After all, I am first runner-up, and you know what that means. I can’t help feeling that something’s not right about this whole thing. Taylor was clearly trying to warn us about something. She said ‘Danger.’”
“There were all those weird things in the old temple where I found Sosie,” Jennifer remembered. “Ration kits. The machete. Candy bars.”
Tiara eyed Sosie and shook her head. “It’s always the handicapped ones you have to watch out for.”
“What?” Jennifer said.
Sosie tugged on Jennifer’s ragged outfit. “What is she saying about me?”
“Maybe she’s some kind of
spy. For all we know, she may not really be deaf,” Miss Ohio said.
“That’s crazy!”
“Right! How many fingers am I holding up?” Tiara thrust three raised fingers near Sosie’s face.
“Get your fingers out of my face!”
Tiara smiled triumphantly. “I knew it!”
“Uh, Tiara?” Petra said. “Sosie can see just fine.”
“I think we just proved that.”
“What’s going on?” Sosie demanded.
“Well, if we’re talking about suspects, one of us was found in the jungle, far away from any wreckage.” Miss Montana flicked a glance at Nicole.
“Oh, right. Let’s suspect the black girl right off the bat.”
“How do we know you didn’t steal that sash from the real Miss Colorado?” Miss New Mexico said.
“How do we know that tray in your head isn’t a recording device?” Nicole shot back.
“Nicole is no traitor,” Shanti growled. “Or are you going to profile me next?”
“Knew you’d have my back.” Nicole stood with Shanti.
“What’s she saying? Don’t leave me out!” Sosie yelled.
“I’m sorry. I feel really bad that I don’t speak deaf,” Tiara said.
Adina banged the baton against the nearest tree. “Okay, everybody. Cut it out. I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but do you know what Taylor would say right now if she weren’t off licking trees in the jungle? She’d say, ‘I am really disappointed in you, Teen Dreamers. We are supposed to be sisters. Sisters who love and trust one another, who work together until it’s clear that there is a favorite sister chosen to be the best and wear a pretty crown. So let’s cut the crap.’” Adina shrugged. “And then she’d probably make us pray and practice our circle-turns.”