“This better be good,” the sleepy voice said from the screen.
The agent cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem,” he said before giving a full status on the plane crash and the surviving girls. The person on the screen listened intently as the agent spoke.
“Agent Jones, in six weeks, Operation Peacock is a go. Nothing can interfere. Nothing. A rescue mission to the island will mean attention. We don’t want attention.”
“I understand. What about the girls?”
“Six weeks is a long time, Agent. And it’s a hostile island. They’ll be lucky to last two days,” the Boss answered. “Brief everyone in the morning. The official word is that there were no survivors. Operation Peacock goes on as scheduled.”
COMMERCIAL BREAK
INT. BEDROOM – MORNING
(A PERKY MOM carrying a laundry basket enters her TEEN DAUGHTER’S bedroom. The girl lies on the bed, upset. The mother’s face registers concern. She sits beside her daughter.)
MOM
What’s the matter, honey? Why aren’t you ready for school?
DAUGHTER
I’m not going to school today, Mom!
MOM
Not go to school? But you love school. You’re a high achiever who fulfills my narcissistic need to outshine the other mothers on the block.
DAUGHTER
I know, Mom, but I can’t go! Not with this unsightly lip hair.
MOM
(Smiling smugly, Mom pulls a large white plastic vat from her laundry basket.)
Oh, honey. You just need some of this. New Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™.
DAUGHTER
Lady ’Stache Off. Isn’t that what you use to sanitize our toilets?
MOM
(laughing) It does both! And now, with new Lady ’Stache Off’s triple beauty action™, you can moisturize and self-tan while you rip that unsightly hair from every pore.
DAUGHTER
Wow! (biting lip) Does new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™ hurt?
MOM
Oh, honey, of course it hurts! Beauty is pain. But you don’t want to look like a troll, do you?
DAUGHTER
Mom!
MOM
It’s more than that, sweetheart. Every time you use new Lady stache off with triple beauty action™, you’ are contributing to our ecoonomy, our way of life. Don’t you want to be a contributor to our economy? Don’t you want to make sure we can have bikinis, cable, and porn? What are you, a communist?
DAUGHTER
Mo-o-om!
MOM
(Smiling and hugging)
Of course not! You’re my eager-to-please teenage daughter with a hair maintenance problem, and I am your sympathetic mom here to help you. In addition to new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™, there’s also Lady ’Stache Off Organic with bonus buffing pad.
DAUGHTER
There’s an organic hair remover?
MOM
No. Not really. But don’t you love the package? Look, it has butterflies.
DAUGHTER
(holding out hand)
INT. CAR – LATER
(Teen daughter emerges with a freshly plucked upper lip. She also has porcelain teeth veneers, hair extensions, and a body-hugging school uniform. Her skin is artificially tan and shiny.)
MOM
Wow! Look at you! You’re looking great!
DAUGHTER
Thanks to you — and new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™.
MOM
Lady ’Stache Off. Because there’s nothing wrong with you … that can’t be fixed.
MISS TEEN DREAM FUN FACTS PAGE!
Please fill in the following information and return to Jessie Jane, Miss Teen Dream Pageant administrative assistant, before Monday. Remember, this is a chance for the judges and the audience to get to know YOU. So make it interesting and fun, but please be appropriate. And don’t forget to mention something you love about our sponsor, The Corporation!
Name: Petra West
State: Rhode Island
Age: 16 1/2
Height: 5’ 11”
Weight: A lady never tells
Hair: Caramel blond
Eyes: Topaz
Best Feature: My mouth
Fun Facts About Me:
I love old Hollywood glamour, and my dream role would be to play Marlene Dietrich’s role in The Blue Angel.
My mom is a seamstress and artist. She taught me to sew, bead, knit, smock, and just about everything else. I make all my own costumes.
My favorite novel is Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. I’ve read it four times.*
The Corporation product I couldn’t live without is Lady ’Stache Off. It leaves my legs silky smooth for days. Sometimes it gives me a bad rash first, but that’s the price of beauty, right?**
I can do all the moves from the video for “You’re My Only Girl, Girl” by Boyz Will ? Boyz. But only if you beg.
I believe in mystery and old-school modesty, so I wear a sarong in the bathing suit competition.
The thing that scares me most is not being myself.
7Che Guevara, the Argentine Marxist revolutionary who later became a bestselling T-shirt icon.
*Pageant official says I should change this to something more “relatable,” like I Love You So Much I Forgot to Have a Real Life. But that book makes me want to yak.
**Pageant official also says not to mention rash.
CHAPTER SIX
Petra woke before the others and began the search for her overnight case and the necessary medication hidden inside the lining. The tide had delivered a few more of their belongings in the night — random shoes, clothing, beaded headdresses, gloves — and Petra’s heart beat with new hope as she moved up the beach toward a skull-shaped rock and its tongue of a jetty where a few colorful garments floated, stopped by the natural barrier.
Silently, she cursed herself for entering the pageant in the first place. It was a foolish, desperate move, and now here she was, stuck on an island with only a week’s worth of pills. Once that ran out … well, she wouldn’t think about it. Stay positive. That was the thing.
The salt spray kissed her skin, and Petra thought back to the first time she’d played dress-up when she was eight. Sitting at her mother’s makeup table, she’d felt a giddy joy as she’d applied the eye shadow — blue and too heavy — the pink blusher, the powder, and finally, a coat of red lipstick. When Petra had looked at herself in the mirror, she’d felt pretty for the first time, a fairy-tale frog transformed into a princess.
So enamored was Petra of her new self that she didn’t hear her mother come up from her art studio in the basement. Her mother’s lips were parted slightly, as if she were calculating the answer to a math problem that had been in her head a long time but she had only just come upon the answer. She kissed Petra’s cheek and said, “Through playing?”
Petra wasn’t through playing, not by a long shot, but she nodded, and her mother helped her wash her face and then treated her to a special moisturizing mask, which was cold and green and made them both giggle.
“Will I be beautiful like you someday?” Petra asked her mother.
“You already are beautiful,” her mother answered.
“No. Like you,” Petra repeated, and her mother’s expression was unreadable.
“I guess we’ll have to see.”
A bikini-clad Taylor emerged through the skeletal rock’s mouth like a beauty from a Loch Lomond8 movie. Watching Taylor, sun-kissed and bronzed and effortless, Petra felt jealous and more than a little out of her league. What was she doing here? What did she hope to prove? That she, Petra West, had just as much right to the Miss Teen Dream crown as all these other girls? That there was beauty in her, too? She could still drop out, she supposed. Give it all up. After all, she’d been in the spotlight before, and while it had been exhilarating in some ways, it had been a nightmare in others. Would she handle it any differently this time? Or wo
uld it implode as it had before?
During her mother’s chemo, Petra had promised she would go after her dreams. “Life is too short not to be who you are, honey,” her mom had told her. She thought of her mom back home in her art studio in Providence, scarred and shorn and still beautiful, full of fierce belief in the rightness of her daughter. And Petra knew she would see it through.
“Good morning!” she called as politely as possible.
“Good morning, Miss Rhode Island. Oh, Miss New Hampshire!” Taylor called out. “How was first watch? Anything to report?”
Adina trudged over sleepily and plopped down onto the sand with a groan. “Yeah. I have five humongous bug bites on my legs and arms, my butt crack has been thoroughly exfoliated with sand, I’m hungry, exhausted, and I haven’t seen a ship anywhere.”
“Don’t you have anything positive to say?” Taylor chided.
Adina glared. “There’s still a possibility this is all a very bad dream.”
“My goodness. Somebody needs to learn resilience. It’s a miracle you’ve gotten this far in the pageant system, Miss New Hampshire. I myself slept just fine.”
“Did you see a green overnight case with an Audrey Hepburn decal on top?” Petra asked. She bit nervously at a fingernail, thought better of it, and hid her hands behind her back.
“Nuh-uh. I did see some weird lights up near the volcano, though. Flashes, like signals or something. At least, I thought I did. I don’t know. I was really tired.”
“Battle fatigue, my daddy calls it,” Taylor said with assurance. She rubbed at the stains on her minidress with seawater.
Adina ignored Taylor. With a stick, she wrote This sucks in the sand. “I had this weird feeling that we were being watched last night.”
“Watched by what?” Petra asked.
“I don’t know. But it gave me the total creeps.”
“Sounds like Most Holy Name Academy,” Mary Lou said, joining them. Damaged spangles hung from her dress on hair-thin threads like some molting bird. “When those nuns say they have eyes everywhere, they are not kidding. I didn’t pee at school for the first two years. I wore a pee pad.”
Petra put a hand on Mary Lou’s shoulder. “TMI.”
“I think we should go check it out,” Adina said.
Mary Lou glanced at the great lava wall protecting the heart of the jungle. “You mean go in there?”
“Yes. As a journalist, I am compelled to know the answers.”
“As a girl, I am compelled to protect what’s left of my manicure,” Petra said.
“But what if the rescuers are looking for us there and not here? What if …” Adina swallowed hard. “What if there’s somebody else on this island with us?”
“Somebody with food?” Mary Lou asked weakly.
“Or somebody who wants to make us into food,” Adina said.
Mary Lou’s eyes widened. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
Taylor smoothed the wrinkles from her wet dress and wiped her hands on her knees. “I am team captain. And I say we’re doing our pageant prep first, according to plan. Priorities.”
“Shouldn’t our priorities be food, shelter, and rescue?”
“Miss New Hampshire, I appreciate your concerns. But I am eighteen. This is my last year to compete. I do not intend to lose my edge. Besides, I’m sure the rescue team will be here today. And we want them to find us at our best. Miss Teen Dreamers! Let’s get to it!” Taylor clapped in a cheerleader rhythm for attention and began to give the day’s structure. Adina cupped a hand over her eyes and squinted in the direction of the volcano. The top disappeared into mist. It seemed unassailable and uninhabitable. She’d probably imagined the lights.
After a breakfast of rationed airline pretzels and four sips each from the rescued water bottles, the girls worked on their opening dance number. Each girl had received a DVD of the dance steps in her prep packet, but they’d never had a chance to rehearse it as a unit. That’s what this week before the pageant was supposed to be about. Now, without the choreographer, it wasn’t coming together smoothly. Somebody would inevitably high-kick when it was time for spirit fingers, the timing was off on the contagion, and the whole thing was such a disaster that Petra pronounced it “so dinner theater on Mars.” After an hour of work in the hot island sun, Taylor called a break.
Nicole tapped Adina. “Taylor wants you to play Fabio Testosterone9 and ask all the questions.”
“Why me?”
Nicole faltered. “Um, I guess because you’re smart and good at questions and …”
“Because you pissed her off,” Petra said, dabbing self-consciously at the sweat on her upper lip. “Count me out. I already know where to find Iran on a map and I have to look for my overnight bag.”
Nicole whistled. “That won’t make Taylor happy.”
“Tell her I’ll keep a watch out for a rescue ship. That I’m taking one for the team.”
“Tell her I’m doing that, too,” Adina seconded.
“I got there first,” Petra said.
Nicole patted Adina’s shoulder. “Sorry. Guess you better go round everybody else up, Fabio.”
Ten minutes later, the girls lined up as they had in every pageant. It was a relief to know this part. All they had to do was be charming and answer the questions with confidence.
“Remember, don’t show fear,” Taylor called. Over the firewood, she struck two rocks together, trying to catch a spark. “Judges are like dogs: They’ll smell it. If you don’t know the answer, answer it like you do anyway.”
“Can I get started?” Adina snapped. The heat was making her bug bites itch and she hadn’t had a decent meal since yesterday. “Our first contestant is Brittani Slocum, Miss Mississippi.”
“I’m Miss Alabama,” Brittani corrected.
At the end of the line, Tiara raised her hand. “I’m Miss Mississippi.”
Adina looked from one tan, blond southern goddess to the other. They both cocked their heads to the left and smiled in a practiced, patient way.
“Whatever,” Adina grumbled. “So, Miss Alabama, Tiara —”
“Brittani!”
“Brittani Slocum. First question. The pageant has come under fire for perpetuating an unrealistic image of superthin girls as beautiful, and many people feel this is harmful to girls’ self-esteem. What do you say to these critics? And what do you personally feel about these narrow standards of beauty?”
Brittani’s smile remained Vaseline smooth, but her eyes showed fear. “Um, what does perpetuate mean?”
“Keep something going.”
“Keep what going?”
“No, perpetuate means to keep something going.” Like I am perpetuating your stupidity, Adina thought.
“Oh. Um, well, I would say that being skinny and stuff is good because you can, like, fit into supercute jeans, unlike my friend Lisa? She totally ballooned up to a size six and none of her pants fit, and she had, like, three-hundred-dollar Sandeces10 jeans!”
In the line, several girls gasped.
“Seriously! And she got all depressed and stuff? And she wouldn’t come out of her room or do cheerleading anymore because her uniform wasn’t fitting right and her parents had to do, like, a li’l benefit concert to raise the money to send her to fat camp, and when she came back from fat camp, she was super, super angry and started piercing things. She took a nail gun and nailed all her old Barbies to the wall in a cross pattern just like little Barbie Jesuses. It was so, so freaky. And we had, like, nothing in common anymore, and before she got fat we used to go shopping every weekend and watch all our favorite Corporation shows. It was super, super tragic, and so, like, I know the pain of this because I lost my best friend in the whole world over it and stuff, so, yeah, it’s bad and, um, what was the question again?”
Adina stared, openmouthed. “I have no idea.”
“My turn!” Miss Ohio walked the makeshift runway. She stopped beside Adina, her body turned in a perfect three-quarter pose, which her handler said made her
look thinner. She gave Adina a flirtatious, fingertips-only wave.
“What was that about?”
“It’s my flirty wave so I can get Fabio’s attention and we can establish a joking patter and maybe end up as a clip on ViralVideo. See, you have to do something to stand out. I’m going to be the naughty one.”
“The naughty ones don’t win Miss Teen Dream,” Taylor called. She’d started a small fire. Now she fanned the flames by performing military dance exercises.
“I don’t need to win. I just need to get noticed. So for now, I’m pretending you’re Fabio Testosterone.” Miss Ohio waved again and winked.
“Well, I’m not, so don’t.” Adina slapped at a mosquito on her arm. “Miss Ohio, what are your life goals?”
Chin held high, Miss Ohio beamed at an imagined crowd. “I want to be a motivational speaker.”
“What are you going to motivate people to do?”
Smile still in place, she cut her eyes at Adina. “You know. Motivational … stuff.”
“Well, are you going to motivate people to bring peace to war-torn nations, or are you going to motivate people to join a cult and drink the Kool-Aid?”