BARRY REX: The plane was a Corporation plane, which have been rumored to have navigation troubles. The Corporation has been accused of cutting costs on its airlines. Do you think that could have something to do with this? Does this reflect badly on The Corporation?
LADYBIRD HOPE: I like your suit, Barry.
BARRY REX: Can you answer the question, please?
LADYBIRD HOPE: Barry, my opponents will stop at nothing to smear me just because I’m a straight talker who loves her country and her pageant. I can’t talk too much about it, but there’s evidence, Barry, that the plane was shot down by hostile forces. That this was a terrorist attack on this country’s best and brightest. The sort of scenario I warned about in my new book, Get Scared, America!
BARRY REX: What are you saying, Ladybird?
LADYBIRD HOPE: I’m saying that if I were president, this wouldn’t have happened. Not on my watch.
BARRY REX: The call-board is lighting up like a Christmas tree over here!
LADYBIRD HOPE: Well, it’s no coincidence that Christmas is Jesus’s holiday, Barry.
BARRY REX: We’ll take your calls in a moment. But first, Ladybird, you’ve come under fire recently for your promotion of a pageant that some see as antiquated. That the system rewards girls for being pretty and it values compliance and conformity rather than the boldness and rule-breaking that we pride in our boys and which often help them feel entitled to success, to getting ahead in life.
LADYBIRD HOPE: Well, frankly, that’s the sort of stuff I expect my critics to say, because they want to turn all women into sluts who can get an abortion at the drive-through while they’re off at college gettin’ indoctrinated with folk-singin’, patchouli-wearin’, hairy-armpit-advocatin’ feminism, which is just one step away from terrorism, and we should all be afraid of that.
BARRY REX: I’m not sure I —
LADYBIRD HOPE: Barry, let me give you a history lesson, Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to fight a war to stop it, did we give in?
BARRY REX: Uh …
LADYBIRD HOPE: No! We said “Crack is wack!” and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of drugs. Back before the British were our friends, and they had a mean king who made us pay too much tax instead of just having hot princes who go to nightclubs, they wanted to keep us from bringing freedom to the people of Mexico and making it a state, and George Washington had to chop down a cherry tree and write the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and that’s the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting, because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be rich and good-lookin’ and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don’t Sweat It line, and they want us all to learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind. Our country needs something to believe in, Barry. They need us to be that shining beacon on the hill, and that shining beacon will not have all these complications and tough questions about who we are, ’cause that’s hard, and nobody wants to think about that when you already have to decide whether you want Original Recipe or Extra Crispy and that little box is squawkin’ at ya. And let me tell you something, Barry, that shining beacon will have a talent portion and pretty girls, because if we don’t come out and twirl those batons and model our evening gowns and answer questions about geography, then the terrorists have won.
BARRY REX: Your Don’t Sweat It line is made in China.
LADYBIRD HOPE: Well, I can find China on my map, Barry, and these days, it looks a lot like America. All I can say is, these brave girls represent the very best of us, in both evening wear and talent, and I sure hope they’re okay. But if this is a terrorist attack, we will go after these evildoers, so help me, God.
BARRY REX: Anything else you’d like to add?
LADYBIRD HOPE: I think at this point all we can do is pray.
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: Jennifer Huberman
State: Michigan
Age:17
Height: 5’ 5”
Weight: Super featherweight
Hair: Auburn
Eyes: Brown
Best Feature: My razor-sharp retractable claws. Kidding. That’s an X-Men joke. Gotta say my guns. Check ’em out.
Fun Facts About Me:
I’m pretty mechanical. My mom worked in the auto industry and I can pimp your ride rebuild an engine in a hot minute.
I’m a total comics fiend, and my favorite shop is Galaxy Comics in Flint. Shout-out to Mohammed and Akilah!*
My favorite Corporation show is Patriot Daughters.11
I came to Miss Teen Dream via a new program for at-risk girls that takes them from juvie to pageants, or, as I like to call it, from one correctional facility to another.**
My personal motto is: WWWWD?: What Would Wonder Woman Do?
8 Loch Lomond, the sexy and manly spy in a series of popular Scottish crime capers. Known for his fancy gadgets, fast cars, beautiful women who often end up dead, and his trademark phrase, “I’ll have the haggis — boiled, not fried.”
9Fabio Testosterone, former teen star of the nighttime soap Study Hall, where he spent ninety percent of his time shirtless, and host of this year’s Miss Teen Dream Pageant, where he will wear a rip-away tux.
10Sandeces, a denim line sewn by small Peruvian children and adorned with the face of one’s celebrity avatar on the back pockets. Each pair is blessed by droplets of local holy water said to ward off unhappiness.
*Pageant officials think this makes me sound Muslim. Want to know if we can change it to “Shout-out to Mo and Alice.”
11Patriot Daughters (Tuesdays, 9:00 P.M. EST), The Corporation’s drama chronicling the lives of three teen girls during the Revolutionary War as they fight the British, farm the land, and take off their clothes to secure America’s freedom.
**Pageant officials didn’t think this was funny. Pageant officials not big on the jokes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the muddy waters receded, Jennifer found herself in a part of the jungle where nothing was familiar anymore. Far overhead was a small clearing of blue sky bordered by the wizened branches of thick-trunked trees whose gnarled roots clutched the earth like the talons of some primeval bird frozen midgrip by a sorcerer’s curse. She called out for the others, but there was no response.
Being alone didn’t scare Jennifer. She’d been alone since she was ten, when she begged her mom to stop sending her to stay with Grandma Huberman, the religious nut, who told her God could see into her wicked, wicked heart. While saying this, she’d waved the copy of Women’s Basketball Weekly she’d found under Jen’s bed, the one in which Jen had drawn a heart around the picture of star point guard Monica Mathers.
“God doesn’t like lesbians,” Grandma Huberman hissed, throwing the magazine in the trash.
Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn’t understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who’d never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn’t God made both of them? But people were like that, she’d noticed. They’d invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid of reasons. Jen decided that if God wasn’t putting any faith in her, she wasn’t putting her faith in Him. And so, now, alone in the jungle, she did not call out for special favors. As far as she was concerned, that would be cheating. Jennifer played rough sometimes, but she always played fair.
A long rope of root formed an almost-bench above the mossy ground, and after testing its solidity, she sat on it to think. It was only moments later that she heard off-key humming and saw a girl marching between the trees, a spear in one hand. The girl had a strawberry blond bob and an impish face. The remnants of her sash read Miss Illin, and for a moment, Jennifer thought of her as being from a very cool hip-hop state.
“Hi. Uh, hello,” Jennifer said. “I’m Jennifer Huberman. Miss Michigan.”
The girl didn’t respond.
“Hey!” Jennifer waved her arms. “Over here!”
The girl looked up. Startled, she dropped the spear, which stuck fast in a fat tree root. A flock of shrieking black birds spiraled skyward as the giant, gnarled tree seemed to uncoil, and Jennifer saw that it was not a mass of roots looped about the trunk but a freakishly big snake the length of a custom RV.
Jennifer leapt to her feet. “Holy {bleep bleep}12! Get your {bleep}13 out of the way!”
Too late, the girl looked up just as the snake opened wide and swallowed her down in a giant gulp.
“{Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep}14!” Jennifer said many, many times.
The snake, with its girl-size, midthroat bulge, turned to Jennifer with a strangled hiss.
They say in near-death experiences that one’s life plays out before one’s eyes. Jennifer’s brain went to scan, flitting from one random image to the next: her mom coming home from the factory, bone-weary, angry, and utterly defeated, the bills sitting untouched on the chipped, Rent-A-Racket dinette set. Tommy, her little brother, riding around the crappy, one-bedroom apartment on a dumpster-dive Big Wheel till Jennifer thought she would scream from the constant whine of it. The days of ditching school to hang out at Galaxy Comics and talk mutants and Watchmen with Mohammed and Akilah, who ran the place and sometimes paid her in old comics if she’d help them stock. Getting busted for stealing a pack of Ho Hos from a Gas-It-N-Go and landing in juvie. The counselor who saw Jen as the perfect do-gooder project on her resume, offering her a chance at beauty pageant redemption meant to save them both. The crash. The island. The snake.
The snake. It seesawed its way toward her in an ungainly, almost blind fashion, tongue lashing wildly, mouth pulled back slightly to reveal double rows of grungy, bladelike teeth and puffy, bleeding gums. This was how she was going to die? After the years of crushing poverty, the dismissal by her teachers and schoolmates, the way that most people looked through girls like Jennifer as if they were too inconsequential to acknowledge with a glance? She was going to go down as kibble for some giant snake alcoholic? This was utter bullshit15.