“I almost believe you’re not a colossal jerk,” Adina muttered under her breath. She was hot and tired and thirsty. Her words were like gunshots. “Miss Michigan! Yo! Front and center!”
“I don’t think Fabio would say, ‘Yo!’” one girl complained, and Adina had to resist the urge to strangle the girl with her own hair extensions.
Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman, sauntered over. Unlike the others, she looked like she enjoyed the occasional cheeseburger. She had real curves and a pantherlike walk. “Yeah. Hi. Jennifer Huberman, Miss Michigan. Go, Blue! I’m from Flint, the smaller Motor City. Well, before they went bankrupt. Now, I’m from Repossessed City. Sorry. Little gallows humor there.”
“Great. Swell. Why don’t you tell us about your platform?”
Jennifer gave Adina a shove. “Yeah? Why don’t you tell me about your platform, Homeroom?”
“Whoa. Chill.”
“Why don’t you chill?”
“What pageant did you enter, Miss Orange Jumpsuit? What’s with the hostility?”
“Maybe I don’t like people asking so many questions.”
“Okaaaay. That’s kind of an important part of the competition.”
“It counts for forty percent of your overall,” Tiara said as she practiced a circle turn in place.
Jennifer relaxed. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get all up in your face. I’m just not used to this beauty stuff.”
“You aren’t?”
“No. First time. My guidance counselor got me into it. Some new program they’re trying out for at-risk girls.” Jennifer rolled her eyes. “Like this isn’t a gang. Please. It’s the freakiest gang ever.”
“Just curious: How did you manage to win Miss Michigan?”
“I didn’t. I was second runner-up.”
“What happened to the winner?” Adina asked.
“She tripped.”
“And the first runner-up?”
Miss Michigan cracked her knuckles. “She tripped, too.”
Adina swallowed hard. “Right. So, Miss Michigan, can you tell us about your platform? Please. I mean, if you’re okay with that.”
“Oh. Sure. My platform’s called Don’t Even Think About It. I go into schools and I say, ‘Whatever bad thing it is you’re thinking of doing, don’t even think about it. ’Cause I can see into your soul, and I will hide in your closet and come for you in the night, and the last sound you ever hear will be my sharp teeth popping through the flesh of my gums, ready to eat you.’ Their eyes get all big. It’s awesome. I love little kids, man. They’re the cutest.”
“Next!” Adina practically shouted. “Tiara, Miss Mississippi, right?”
Tiara stared. “Is that my question?”
“It is a question. I just wanted to make sure I got your name right.”
“Oh. Hi, y’all! I’m Tiara Destiny Swan from Jackson, Mississippi, which is spelled M-I-double-S-I … um … shoot.”
Adina looked to Taylor to end this travesty, but Taylor was trying to keep the signal fire going. The ominous clouds had moved closer to the island, and a strong wind came up, blowing sand and promising rain. “Tiara …” Adina had lost all steam. “What’s your favorite color?”
Tiara’s eyes darted left and right in fear and her smile was strained. “Um. Thank you, Fabio. I personally believe that we have a duty such as … as Americans … to help other people who are not Americans such as the peoples of the China and the Alaska and the freedoms we enjoy in our great nation and such and that is my opinion which I personally believe will make us a stronger nation. Thank you.”
Adina squeezed her hands against her head. “What are you even saying? You just made my brain die a little. You know, people, just being beautiful isn’t enough.”
Tiara looked confused. “But … it always has been.”
Petra gave a sudden cry, startling the others. “There it is!” She barreled down the beach in the direction of the skull-shaped rock and its long tongue of a jetty.
The cry went up. “Oh my God! Is it a ship? It must be a ship! Ship! Ship!”
The girls stumbled over one another on their way after Petra.
Nicole cupped her hand over her eyes. “Where? I don’t see anything but some nasty-looking clouds out there.”
Petra waded into the chest-high water, fighting the heavy surf, and grabbed at a small, green leather satchel. “Oh, Holly Go-Overnightly — thank God you showed up!” Grinning, she held the luggage aloft. “My overnight case — I found it!”
“Are you kidding me?” Shanti complained.
The wind rose, blowing sand into the girls’ faces. The cloud army advanced. It began to rain hard, then harder. The strip of beach seemed to vanish within seconds, and the girls were calf-deep in the sea.
Nicole pointed out at the horizon. “Um, does that ocean look kind of high to you?”
“How can the ocean get high? It can’t inhale. I know a lot about it. My platform is called Don’t Do Drugs Because They Make You Dumb,” Brittani explained.
“And I thought it was just inbreeding,” Petra quipped.
Nicole began to back away from the beach. “Hey, y’all, I don’t like the looks of that wave out there.”
The back of the sea curled up and fanned out, blocking the sky, threatening to bear down on the island.
Taylor gave three short, attention-focusing claps. “Miss Teen Dreamers! This is your team captain speaking. It is time to get our Rumpelstiltskins in gear and run for higher ground. Ready? Okay!”
Taylor tried to lead the way, but many of the girls ran scattershot for the forbidding jungle, scrambling over brambles, scraping their tender flesh against the prickly trunks of the palms. They were nearly up the first hill when the wave hit full force, upending girls like bowling pins, the fast-moving current carrying them down, out, under.
Tiara, Shanti, and Nicole had managed to climb into the branches of an ornately limbed tree. Below them, Petra held tight to a low-lying branch with a precarious crack in it. The water tugged at her overnight case, bending the tree dangerously close to the raging waters and threatening to bring them all down.
“You have to let go!” Shanti yelled.
“I can’t!” Petra shouted. If she let go, her pageant dreams and her secret, more important dream would wash away with it.
“Let it go!” Shanti tried to kick the case loose. The strain broke the tree’s limb, and the four girls plummeted into the water and were borne along by the fast-moving current. They bobbed up and down like a wet Whack-A-Mole game, their screams cut off only when they disappeared for a few seconds before fighting their way back to the surface. They barely even noticed the falls as they slipped over them.
Jennifer had been the first one away from the beach. She broke right, running hard and fast toward the volcano and the mist-shrouded circle of mountains that bordered it. The water caught her like a giant Slip ’N Slide, spinning her through trees, making her dizzy.
“Holy f —!” she managed before going under again, as if the water sensed that young ladies of such beauty and promise should never curse.
“Move, move, move!” Taylor shouted to her crew as the angry sea chased them relentlessly. “Go higher, Teen Dreamers!”
The girls clambered over the steep terrain. The growth was thick here, and the ground turned to mud as if by an alchemist’s touch, but they managed to reach the top of the mountain.
Taylor addressed the soaking, exhausted survivors. “Ladybird Hope says a lady’s true colors come out in times of crisis. These circumstances are not as big as you are! We are bright, shining lights in the darkness, and nothing can extinguish the fierce light of a Miss Teen Dream’s true heart.”
“That’s mixing your metaphors!” Adina spat out bits of mud and grass.
“Don’t be a hater, Miss New Hampshire,” Taylor scolded.
“I hate everything about this! It’s the beauty pageant from hell! I didn’t even want to be a Miss Teen Dream! Do you know why I’m here? I’m an investigative reporter for the New Castle Knights school paper. I embedded myself so I could expose the pageant from the inside.”
“That explains the budget weave,” Miss Ohio said.
Adina whipped around. “This is my own hair.”
Miss Ohio put her hands up in a “whatever” gesture.
“Why did you want to do that?” Mary Lou asked.
“Because it’s wrong! It exploits women. We’re parading around in bathing suits and evening gowns, letting people judge us for the way we look. No wonder the world doesn’t take us seriously.”
“What’s wrong with wanting to look pretty?” Brittani asked.
Taylor’s face was as hard as the lava cliffs jutting up from the island green. “I am shocked, Miss New Hampshire. You are a real Judas. When we get back, I intend to make a full report to the pageant officials and have you replaced with your state’s first runner-up.”
Adina threw her hands in the air and laughed bitterly. “Fine. You do that. IF we ever get back, Little Miss Perfect!”
“For your information, I have not held the title of Little Miss Perfect since I was six. We will be rescued, Miss Teen Dreamers. I have absolute faith in that. And you, Miss New Hampshire, will be reported.”
“Cripes, you guys. Let’s not fight. At least we’re safe here,” Mary Lou said.
The muddy ground shook. Adina’s eyes widened. “Oh sh —” The earth beneath them gave way suddenly, and the girls were swept down the mountainside in a spiral of mud and sequins and screams.
LIVE ON BARRY REX LIVE
BARRY REX: Ladybird Hope, thank you for joining us tonight.
LADYBIRD HOPE: You betcha, Barry. I just want to assure everybody out there in our great nation that we’re doing everything we can to make sure we bring these girls home safe. You know, Barry, it just makes my heart kinda sick when I think of all the bad girls whose planes could have gone down. It’s such a tragedy that these sweet girls who follow the rules set down for women through the ages while also learning to walk in bathing suits and heels are the ones who are now missing. Some of those bathing suits are from my own Ladybird Hope, Pageant Princess swimwear line, which is America’s bestselling teen swimwear line, by the way.