Beauty Queens (2 page)

“Oh my God,” Adina muttered. She knew she should do something here; she just couldn’t remember what. The Corporation’s Miss Teen Dream plane had been flying them to Paradise Cove for the Forty-first Annual Miss Teen Dream Pageant. They were to film some fun-in-the-sun promotional pieces, ride the waterslides, and practice their performance numbers. They had all just arrived in Florida the night before, and that morning, at ten
A.M
., fifty beaming girls in outfits adorned with something emblematic of their states had boarded the plane. Adina had wanted to put New Hampshire’s famous poet Robert Frost on her outfit, but her mother and Alan had said there were no poets among the judges, and now her dress had an image of the White Mountains that ranged disastrously across her 36DDs. She’d sat on the plane, her arms folded over her chest, hating that she’d been talked into wearing it. Then came the bang and the smoke, the screams, the falling, the exit doors opening, the sensation of tumbling through the air and landing in a mound of warm sand. How many had made it out? What had happened to the pilots, the chaperones, the Corporation film crew? Where were they now?

A voice with a strong twang rang out. “All right, Miss Teen Dreamers! Yoo-hoo! Over here! I’m wigglin’ my fingers for y’all’s attention! Could y’all come on over here, please?”

The waving goddess stood outlined by the smoking metal wing as if she were a model in a showroom of plane wreckage. She was tall and tanned, her long blond hair framing her gorgeous face in messy waves. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. Across the midriff of her dress was a sheer mesh inset of a Lone Star Flag. The girls wandered over, drawn to the command her beauty bestowed.

“Y’all come on down and gather round, horseshoe formation — thank you. Some of y’all can fill in here in front where there are gaps.”

The girls did as they were told, happy that someone had taken the reins.

“Hi. I’m Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins, and I’m Miss Teen Dream Texas, the state where dreams are bigger and better — nothing against y’all’s states. I’m a senior at George Walker Bush High School and I hope to pursue a career as a motivational speaker.”

There was polite, automatic applause. A dazed girl beside Adina said, “I want to pursue a career in the exciting world of weight-management broadcast journalism. And help kids not have cancer and stuff.”

Miss Texas spoke again: “Okay, Miss Teen Dreamers, I know we’re all real flustered and everything. But we’re alive. And I think before anything else we need to pray to the one we love.”

A girl raised her hand. “J. T. Woodland
³
?”

“I’m talkin’ about my personal copilot, Jesus Christ.”

“Someone should tell her personal copilot that His landings suck,” Miss Michigan muttered. She was a lithe redhead with the pantherlike carriage of a professional athlete.

“Dear Jesus,” Taylor started. The girls bowed their heads, except for Adina.

“Don’t you want to pray?” Mary Lou whispered.

“I’m Jewish. Not big on the Jesus.”

“Oh. I didn’t know they had any Jewish people in New Hampshire. You should make that one of your Fun Facts About Me!”

Adina opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Ahem.
Dear Jesus,”
Taylor intoned more fervently. “We just want to thank you for gettin’ us here safe —”

There was a loud, gurgling groan. Somebody shouted, “Oh my gosh! Miss Delaware just died!”

“— for gettin’ some of us here safe,” Taylor continued. “And we pray that, as we are fine, upstandin’, law-abidin’ girls who represent the best of the best, you will protect us from harm and keep us safe until we are rescued and can tell our story to
People
magazine. Amen.”

“Amen,” the girls echoed, then fell into noisy chatter. Where were they? What would happen to them? Would they be rescued? Where were the adults? Was this something to do with the war?

“Teen Dream Misses!” Taylor singsonged above the din, smiling. “My stars. It’s gettin’ kinda noisy. Now. My daddy is a general, and I know what he’d say if he were here: We need to do a recon mission, see if there are any more survivors, and tend to the wounded.”

“My head kinda hurts,” Miss New Mexico said. Several of the girls gasped. Half of an airline serving tray was lodged in her forehead, forming a small blue canopy over her eyes.

“What is it?” Miss New Mexico checked to make sure her bra straps weren’t showing.

“N-nothing.” Miss Ohio managed an awkward smile.

“First things first,” Taylor said. “Any of y’all have first-aid training?”

Miss Alabama’s hand shot up at the same time as Miss Mississippi’s. They were both artificially tanned and bleach-blond, with the same expertly layered long hair. If not for the ragged state sashes they still wore, it would be hard to tell them apart.

“Names?” Taylor prompted.

“I’m Tiara with an
A,”
said Miss Mississippi.

“I’m Brittani with an I,” said Miss Alabama. “I got my Scouting Badge in First Aid.”

“Ohmigosh, me, too!” Tiara threw her arms around Brittani. “You’re so nice. If it’s not me, I hope you win.”

“No, I hope YOU win!”

“Ladies, this part is not a competition,” Taylor said. “Okay. Miss
Alabama and Miss Mississippi are on first-aid duty. Anybody have a phone that survived?”

Two of the girls brought forward phones. One was water damaged. The other could not get a signal.

Adina spoke up. “Maybe we should have a roll call, see who’s here and who’s missing.”

Missing
settled over the girls like a sudden coat of snow shaken loose from an awning, and they moved forward on autopilot, dazed smiles in place, and stated their names and representative states. Occasionally, one would divulge that she was an honors student or a cheerleader or a volunteer at a soup kitchen, as if, in this moment of collective horror, they could not divorce themselves from who they had been before, when such information was required, when it got them from one pageant to the next, all the way to the big one. Of the fifty states, only twelve girl representatives were accounted for, including Miss California, Shanti Singh; Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman; and Miss Rhode Island, Petra West, who, ironically, was the biggest girl in the pageant at nearly six feet. Some girls argued over whether the death of Miss Massachusetts — favored by bookies to win the whole thing — meant that the competition would never feel entirely fair.

“Thank you, ladies. I’m guessing that’s where the rest of the plane is.” Taylor pointed to the thick black smoke spiraling up from the jungle. “There might be more of us in there. We need to organize a search party. A Miss Teen Dream Recon Machine. Any volunteers?”

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 Hopes
⁴
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!”

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.