As a unit, the girls turned to gaze at the forbidding expanse of jungle. No one raised her hand. Taylor clicked her tongue. “Well, I guess there aren’t any Ladybird Hopes4 in this crowd. My stars, I’m glad she’s not here to see this. I bet she’d vomit in her mouth with disappointment. And then, like a pro, she’d swallow it down and keep smiling.”
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!”
Roland 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!”
J. 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.
Ladybird 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.”