Beauty Queens

  Age:17

  Height: 5’ 3”

  Weight: 128 lbs. A lot of it is muscle. 116 lbs

  Hair: Black

  Eyes: Brown

  Best Feature: My hair. People say it is glossy. I use an old Indian treatment.

  Fun Facts About Me:

  I have studied botany, fencing, synchronized Tae Kwon Do, gymnastics, classical piano, cello, Bollywood dancing, and Indian cinema.

  I can make popadam as my mother and grandmother taught me.

  My favorite class is chemistry.

  I hope to be the head of my own Fortune 500 company.

  My platform is called First Generation Health. It helps kids in immigrant populations get the health care they need.

  My proudest accomplishment was hearing my handler, Mrs. Mirabov, tell me that my evening gown walk only made her want to put out one eye. Trust me — that’s a compliment.

  The thing that scares me most is failure.

  12These words have been sanitized for your protection. An adjective and a noun, respectively.

  13A part of the body. Not the knee or the nostril.

  14A spectacular cursing display. Really, an absolute ten. And the dismount was spot-on.

  15This is not cursing. This is delineating.

  16This is also not cursing. This is … oh, all right. It totally is.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The river had carried Nicole, Shanti, Petra, and Tiara through the mountains and deposited them in a steaming spring surrounded by blackened rock that looked like burned-over cake batter.

  “Wh-where are we?” Tiara asked.

  “Some kind of lava fields, it looks like,” Shanti answered. Algae clung to her scalp. She’d lost her sash in the raging waters. They all had. They were covered in mud till all that could be seen were their eyes and mouths.

  “I hate this place,” Tiara whimpered. “It’s super creepy. Like a haunted Chuck E. Cheese’s where the games all want to kill you and you never get your pizza.”

  Shanti glared at Petra. She struggled to keep her tone even, but it was difficult. “Why didn’t you let go of that case? If you had just let go, we could have held on to the tree, and we wouldn’t be out here in the middle of some lava field with no idea how to get back to the beach.”

  “I’m sorry,” Petra said. “It … the case was — is — important to me.”

  “What do you have in there — a vintage Bermes scarf17?” Nicole struggled to her feet and offered Petra a hand.

  “My medicine.”

  “Bipolar Bears18,” Tiara said sympathetically. “My mom put me on those as soon as I turned thirteen. She couldn’t deal.”

  “It’s not that,” Petra said. “I have a medical condition.”

  “What kind of medical condition?” Nicole asked.

  “It’s a hormonal thing,” Petra answered nervously.

  Tiara’s hands flew to her mouth. “In health class, they told us there’s an or in whore because you always have the choice to respect your body and say no. You’ve got one of those STPs now, don’t you?”

  Petra stared. “STP is a motor oil.”

  “Oh. My. Gosh. We didn’t even learn about that one. It must be really bad!” Tiara gestured solemnly to her crotch. “Protect the citadel. Protect the citadel.”

  Petra looked to the others. “Help.”

  Nicole shook her head. “Public school Sex Non-Ed. When I’m surgeon general, I am so fixing that.” On the walk, she explained hormonal, and Tiara nodded, smiling.

  “Ooh. It’s okay, Petra. When I get my monthlies, I need a handful of Advil and a chocolate donut. I’d give anything for a chocolate donut right now. I’m so hungry. Even hungrier than when my mom put me on that grapefruit and hot sauce diet before the Miss Tupelo pageant last year.”

  “I’ve done that diet,” Nicole said.

  Shanti nodded. “Me, too. Except without the grapefruit.”

  Tiara’s eyes filled with tears. “All those years of starving myself and now I’m really starving.”

  “All those pageants — local, city, state. The car rides with my hair in rollers,” Shanti echoed.

  “Straighteners and extensions,” Nicole said.

  “Teeth bleaching,” Tiara added. “Eyebrow shaping. Tanning booths. Bikini waxes. Lipo.”

  “Pills. Injections,” Petra mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Feels like we’ve been in training for the wrong pageant,” Nicole said with a sigh.

  “What are we going to do?” Tiara asked.

  Their bellies ached with hunger, and the earlier thrill of losing a few pounds before pageant time had been replaced with a terrible, desperate longing for food. To make matters worse, the rain had started again. It pounded wet fists against them.

  “Let’s move on,” Shanti said. “I think if we follow the stream it’ll lead back to the beach and the others.”

  They marched alongside the stream as it fattened into a river, alert all the while to the constant sound track of caws, shrieks, growls, and croaks. Birds flew suddenly from treetops, the slapping of their wings like gunshots. Things slithered, hissed, and cackled in the great unknown. Petra sang a Boyz Will B Boyz song softly to herself to drown out the noise.

  “You have a really nice voice,” Tiara said. “Almost as good as the record.”

  “Thanks,” Petra mumbled and blushed. “I was a big Boyz Will B Boyz fan.”

  “Who wasn’t?” Nicole laughed. “When I was eleven, I had their posters all over my room.”

  “Me, too!” Tiara said, smiling. “Who was your favorite?”

  “Mmm, maybe Joey”

  Petra let out a loud “Ha!”

  “What’s wrong with Joey?”

  “Nothing, if you like boys who tan like it’s an Olympic sport.”

  “He was pretty orangey,” Nicole agreed. “J. T. Woodland was the best, anyway. He was so cute, with those big eyes and those curls. He was the most talented one, I think. I wonder why they kicked him out?”

  “I’ll bet it was drugs.” Tiara batted away a dragonfly.

  “It wasn’t drugs,” Petra said.

  “How can you be sure?” Tiara asked.

  “He just didn’t seem like the drugs type to me.”

  “Boy band loyalty.” Nicole nodded. “I feel you.”

  “Can we keep going please?” Shanti called back.

  The girls picked up their pace. On the other side of the river, orange-and-pink birds waded on stalklike legs. Shafts of sun broke through the heavy trees. They lit patches of ground like the reflections from some tropical disco ball.

  “What was your favorite song of theirs?” Tiara asked.

  “ ‘Let Me Shave Your Legs Tonight, Girl,’” Petra blurted out.

  “Ohmigosh, I LOVE that one!” Tiara said, clapping. “How about ‘I Only Want to Be with You’ or ‘I Just Need to Be Yours’ or ‘You, You, You’?”

  Nicole chimed in. “‘I Gave Up My Hobbies So I Could Spend More Time with You.’ ‘I Love You Like a Stalker!’ Or — ooh, I know: ‘Safe Tween Crush’?”

  “That one is so awesome!” Tiara began to sing. “Wanna rock you, girl, with a butterfly tunic. / No, I’m not gay, I’m just your emo eunuch. / Gonna smile real shy, won’t cop a feel, / ’cause I’m your virgin crush, your supersafe deal. / Let those other guys keep sexing. / You and me, we be texting / ’bout unicorns and rainbows and our perfect love. / Girl, we fit together like a hand in a glove. / Now I don’t mean that nasty, tell your mom don’t get mad. /I even wrote ‘You’re awesome’ on your maxi pads.” Tiara sighed. “My mom let me use that song for my Christian pole dancing routine.”

  Petra sputtered. “Christian pole dancing?”

  “Yeah. It was my talent for a while. I was a virgin bride on her wedding day — kinda like in that TiffanyJeanTiffany video? I wore this mini wedding dress and these white stockings with garters and some pretty silver handcuffs. It was a real fun routine.” She sighed. “But once I
turned ten, my mom said I needed something new.”

  “That is total crazytown,” Petra said.

  “I know! I think I could have done it till I was at least twelve.”

  Petra rolled her eyes and sang, “Let me shave your legs tonight, girl. Let me show you how it feels when your man …”

  “Your man!” the girls sang.

  “Can’t stand …”

  “Can’t stand!”

  “The stub-ble inside your heart, oh!”

  Annoyed, Shanti walked a good ten paces ahead of the others. She liked being in the lead, and as she walked, she practiced.

  “Hello,” she said, practicing her intonation, because tone was everything. “I am Shanti Singh, Miss California, land of opportunity! I am a junior at Valley High School, where I currently maintain a 4.0 CPA. My parents immigrated to America just before I was born, and I am so grateful to this country for giving me so many great opportunities. I hope to show my gratitude one day by becoming the first Indian-American president. And I also hope to work with children,” she added hastily. “And, um, animals.”

  Shanti cursed her verbal clumsiness. Ums were deadly. Hadn’t her handler, Mrs. Mirabov, told her so? Keeping it together under pressure was what separated the winners from the losers. Shanti had been setting goals since she was four and won her preschool’s finger painting contest. By the time she hit middle school, she’d won just about everything there was to win — science fair, debate team, gymnastics, soccer, synchronized Tae Kwon Do. Winning was easy and addictive; the more she won, the more she felt she couldn’t risk failing. It was as if she were in constant competition with herself.

  But she couldn’t control everything.

  She looked back at Nicole — friendly, easygoing Nicole — with envy and unease. She knew the Top Five would not hold both a black and a brown contestant. No matter what they claimed, the pageants were not multicultural-friendly. It was funny to Shanti how her white classmates could distinguish between several white faces but would get confused when confronted with, say, two Asians, frequently mistaking one for the other as if looking at a spot-the-difference kids’ magazine puzzle and feeling stumped.

  To win Miss Teen Dream, Shanti knew she would have to work twice as hard as the other girls. That’s why she’d hired Mrs. Mirabov, whose record was superb and whose drive matched her own. It was Mrs. Mirabov who’d evaluated Shanti through narrowed, steel-gray eyes and made her pronouncement: “Your problem, Comrade Singh, is a lack of likeability. No one wants to be your friend. You are efficient and ambitious, which is good for KGB agent; not so much for teen beauty queen. We must humanize you.”

  Shanti had flinched slightly at Mrs. Mirabov’s assessment, as if she’d told Shanti that her personality made her look fat. “Tell me what you can do,” Mrs. Mirabov demanded. And Shanti dutifully recited all her talents. “No, no, no. Not what you can do like trained dog. What you love. What you have special passion for?”

  Shanti had stared blankly, feeling a sense of panic as if she were in a dream in which she had forgotten to study for a test. There was one thing Shanti loved, but it was not the sort of achievement that wowed judges. It was a secret passion, and that’s what it would remain: secret.

  “No,” Shanti had answered. “Nothing.”

  “Well, then. We will have to try on personalities until we find one that fits.”

  They tried everything: telling jokes, country and western songs, a ventriloquist act with a lovable fuzzy sidekick, photo ops with terminally ill children. But Shanti wasn’t natural with the kids, whose wary expressions seemed to suggest she’d actually given them cancer. Finally, during a painful roller boogie version of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” that was supposed to make Shanti appear “quirky, but cute and patriotic,” Mrs. Mirabov had moaned in Russian and begged her to stop. After a long pause, she raised her perfectly coiffed gray head. There was a new gleam in those eyes. “You know, Comrade Singh, there is one thing I learned during my defection: Everybody loves a happy assimilation story.”

  An American underdog was born.

  Shanti delighted the judges with the Parents, what-can-you-do? anecdote about her dad putting out the life-size, blow-up lawn Santa on the Fourth of July. She charmed them with heartwarming tales of making popadam in her grandmother’s kitchen while simultaneously introducing the old woman to the joys of hip-hop. At regionals, she dazzled the crowd during her Bollywood dance routine. Her likeability scores came back in the high nines. Representing the marriage of old-world traditions with the apple-pie aspirations of the new country, she took crown after crown. It made everyone feel warm and hopeful, and they moved Shanti forward as if reaffirming their beliefs in all they stood for. It was great for everyone. It just wasn’t true. And Shanti wondered if her actual talent was fraud.

  Shanti stopped to catch her breath. She had never been so tired. More than anything, she wanted to stop and rest. That was what her grandmother used to say to her all the time. “You work too hard. You should relax and enjoy your life. Maybe play Ragnaroknroll19, like your nani. I made an avatar of myself — I’m Super-Kali-Fragilicious! I just laid waste to the Dungeon Master of Carpathia. It was fun.”

  “I can’t go another step,” Nicole said, panting.

  Shanti was relieved that somebody else had said it first. The rains had stopped. They’d reached a wide plain sheltered by tall rock walls. In the distance, the rock yielded to more jungle.

  “All right,” Shanti said. “We’ll rest.”

  The girls stretched out on the carpet of green and fell asleep.

  When Shanti woke again, the island sky had sneaked toward dusk, and she noticed that Tiara was missing. Quickly, she shook the others awake, and they searched the surrounding area, shouting Tiara’s name. An almost ecstatic moan led them to a large bush adorned with a haphazard assortment of red, star-shaped fruit. Tiara was sprawled beside it, her mouth and hands stained with red juice.

  “Tiara, did you eat this fruit?” Nicole asked, frightened.

  “Uh-huh. Don’t tell my mom. She’ll make me go for a run.”

  “How many did you eat?”

  “I don’t know. Four or twelve.”

  “Which one was it — four or twelve?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not good at math. They’re really yummy. They taste kinda like gummi bears, but with dirt on them.”

  Shanti whispered to the others, “Those could be poisonous.”

  “Tiara, do you feel okay?” Nicole asked.

  “I feel … full,” Tiara said, tasting the word, which seemed as delicious as the fruit. “I can’t remember the last time I felt full. It’s awesome.”

  “It’s getting dark. We should get going,” Shanti said.

  “So tired,” Tiara muttered. Her eyelids fluttered.

  “I think we should wait to see if Tiara’s okay,” Nicole whispered.

  “It’s her fault she ate that fruit, not mine.”

  “Harsh much? I thought you were all about family and togetherness.”

  Shanti’s cheeks colored. “No one in my family would do something that stupid.”

  “She was hungry! Look, we’ll just watch her for a while. If she’s fine, then we know that fruit is safe to eat. We might have found a food source, okay?”

  “It beats cannibalism,” Petra said. “Plus, do you really want to be walking through the jungle at night? At least this place seems open.”

  “Remember that big zit I had on my chin this morning? It’s all gone,” Tiara said, rubbing her thumb over her chin. Tiara’s skin was, in fact, perfectly clear and dewy.

  “Wow. It looks like you just had a rock dust facial,” Petra said.

  “Are those good?” Nicole asked. “I’ve always wanted to try one.”

  Shanti examined Tiara’s face and looked more closely at the small fruit. She wished she had her botany book. “I’ll bet these have special properties that cause cell turnover in your skin — I did a science project on free radicals. I’ll bet I cou
ld turn this into my own skincare line and be Fortune 500 before I’m twenty-five. I’d call them Shanti Berries™.”

  “You can if there are any left.” Petra grabbed a handful and gobbled them down.

  “What are you doing?” Nicole asked.

  “Tiara ate those hours ago and she’s fine and her skin looks great. If I’m going to die, I’d rather go out with a full stomach and amazing skin.” Petra smacked her lips, tasting. “Oh wow. These really are good!”

  “Told you,” Tiara said sleepily.

  “Okay. Here goes nothing.” Nicole crossed herself and bit into one, squirting juice. “Mmm. Oh wow.”

  Shanti was weak from hunger, but she didn’t like going into situations in which she was not one hundred percent in charge. The fruit was an unknown. What if it were poisonous? She knew what Mrs. Mirabov would say: “Comrade Singh, you must train yourself to be without. Being beauty queen is like being marine, only harder. Marines do not fight in four-inch heels.” Still, the fruit was so inviting, and Tiara seemed fine. In the end, her hunger was stronger. She allowed herself three small pieces of fruit, marveling at their sweetness.

  The sun’s light retreated. Sated and tired, the girls stretched out in the soft grass and watched the pale rind of moon grow more pronounced.

  It began as a slight tingling in her fingers, and then Shanti was aware that her vision was more acute and that the edges of the jungle were unfolding, showing her more and more, like one of those accordion birthday cards.

  “Anybody else feel … strange?” she asked, trying to keep the panic at bay.

  Petra sang another old Boyz Will B Boyz tune to herself and mimed dance steps. Nicole giggled. Tiara stared up at the sky. From the corner of her eye, Shanti caught a colorful bird skating above the bushes. It looked at her and trilled one word: fraud.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What’s the matter, Bollywood?” Nicole asked, and laughed at the nickname.

  “Don’t call me Bollywood,” Shanti snapped, but it only made Nicole giggle more. “What’s happening? I don’t understand — Tiara was fine after she ate that fruit. You didn’t see or hear anything strange, right?”