Beauty Queens (5 page)

A quick flash of lights near the volcano startled her awake. She stood up quickly, gasping as she got too close to the fire’s warmth. She looked again. Nothing. But she had seen them: short blasts, like signals. Or were the night and the events of the day getting the best of her? In the watery moonlight, the island’s volcano was a formless monster wearing a halo of thin gray clouds. Adina saw no repeat of the mysterious lights, but she hunched closer to the fire, grateful for its light like some primitive ancestor. The jungle nipped at her confidence with each sudden screech or low growl. She’d managed the heels. The swimsuit trauma. The endless interviews with steel-eyed judges asking if she’d ever sent naked pictures of herself to a boyfriend or anything else that could cast a shadow of scandal over the pageant. She’d thrown herself into each challenge with total commitment, thinking only
about the endgame — taking down Miss Teen Dream for good. With each victory, she felt emboldened and determined. Giddy, almost.

Now, for the first time since she’d started this crazy project, she felt afraid.

CLASSIFIED
ISLAND
22:00 HOURS

Sheltered by the dark, the agent watched the girls sleeping on the beach and shook his head. This was not good, not at all. They were six weeks away from Operation Peacock, and this was a serious wrench in the monkey works. The Boss wasn’t going to like this. Better deliver the bad news now and get it over with.

The agent crept back to the catamaran stashed behind the rocks and paddled through rough surf to the far side of the island. As he walked onto the beach, a sudden hiss-growl came from the right. A nearly extinct breed of giant snake particular to the island leapt onto the sand, blocking the path. It puffed out its Elizabethan ruff of colorful neck webbing in warning, and with a terrifying hiss-screech, it lunged. In an instant, the bullet tore through the colorful neck. As it fell, the snake’s expression was one of surprise, as if it had shown up to work only to find someone else sitting in its desk and using its stapler. And then it was dead.

The agent lowered the silencer. Damn snakes. They had no manners. They were tasty, though. Just like chicken. But there were more important things to tend to, and so the agent rolled the creature’s corpse out into the surf, watching it go under. Then, whistling the jaunty Miss Teen Dream theme song about a world of pretty, the agent turned and disappeared into the jungle, covering any trace of his tracks.

Armed guards in black shirts nodded as the agent passed through security and into the secret compound. He punched in four digits on a keypad and the door hidden in the rock facade slid open. The
elevator shot him down five floors. He took the hallway to the conference room and used the red phone. There was a beep and the agent said two words: “Operation Peacock.” He put the phone back on its base and waited. In a moment, the large screen on the wall crackled to life.

“This better be good,” the sleepy voice said from the screen.

The agent cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem,” he said before giving a full status on the plane crash and the surviving girls. The person on the screen listened intently as the agent spoke.

“Agent Jones, in six weeks, Operation Peacock is a go. Nothing can interfere. Nothing. A rescue mission to the island will mean attention. We don’t want attention.”

“I understand. What about the girls?”

“Six weeks is a long time, Agent. And it’s a hostile island. They’ll be lucky to last two days,” the Boss answered. “Brief everyone in the morning. The official word is that there were no survivors. Operation Peacock goes on as scheduled.”

(A PERKY MOM carrying a laundry basket enters her TEEN DAUGHTER’S bedroom. The girl lies on the bed, upset. The mother’s face registers concern. She sits beside her daughter.)

What’s the matter, honey? Why aren’t you ready for school?

I’m not going to school today, Mom!

Not go to school? But you love school. You’re a high achiever who fulfills my narcissistic need to outshine the other mothers on the block.

I know, Mom, but I can’t go! Not with this unsightly lip hair.

(Smiling smugly, Mom pulls a large white plastic vat from her laundry basket.)

Oh, honey. You just need some of this. New Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™.

Lady ’Stache Off. Isn’t that what you use to sanitize our toilets?

(laughing) It does both! And now, with new Lady ’Stache Off’s triple beauty action™, you can
moisturize
and
self-tan
while you rip that unsightly hair from every pore.

Wow! (biting lip) Does new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™ hurt?

Oh, honey, of course it hurts! Beauty is pain. But you don’t want to look like a troll, do you?

Mom!

It’s more than that, sweetheart. Every time you use new Lady stache off with triple beauty action™, you’ are contributing to our ecoonomy, our way of life. Don’t you want to be a contributor to our economy? Don’t you want to make sure we can have bikinis, cable, and porn? What are you, a communist?

Mo-o-om!

(Smiling and hugging)

Of course not! You’re my eager-to-please teenage daughter with a hair maintenance problem, and I am your sympathetic mom here to help you. In addition to new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action
™
, there’s also Lady ’Stache Off Organic with bonus buffing pad.

There’s an organic hair remover?

MOM

No. Not really. But don’t you love the package? Look, it has butterflies.

(holding out hand)

INT. CAR – LATER

(Teen daughter emerges with a freshly plucked upper lip. She also has porcelain teeth veneers, hair extensions, and a body-hugging school uniform. Her skin is artificially tan and shiny.)

Wow! Look at you! You’re looking great!

DAUGHTER

Thanks to you — and new Lady ’Stache Off with triple beauty action™.

Lady ’Stache Off. Because there’s nothing wrong with you … that can’t be fixed.

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!

• I love old Hollywood glamour, and my dream role would be to play Marlene Dietrich’s role in
  The Blue Angel.
  
• My mom is a seamstress and artist. She taught me to sew, bead, knit, smock, and just about everything else. I make all my own costumes.
  
• My favorite novel is
  Orlando
  , by Virginia Woolf. I’ve read it four times.
  ^*
  
• The Corporation product I couldn’t live without is Lady ’Stache Off. It leaves my legs silky smooth for days.
  Sometimes it gives me a bad rash first, but that’s the price of beauty, right?
  ^**
  
• I can do all the moves from the video for “You’re My Only Girl, Girl” by Boyz Will ? Boyz. But only if you beg.
  
• I believe in mystery and old-school modesty, so I wear a sarong in the bathing suit competition.
  
• The thing that scares me most is not being myself.
  

Petra woke before the others and began the search for her overnight case and the necessary medication hidden inside the lining. The tide had delivered a few more of their belongings in the night — random shoes, clothing, beaded headdresses, gloves — and Petra’s heart beat with new hope as she moved up the beach toward a skull-shaped rock and its tongue of a jetty where a few colorful garments floated, stopped by the natural barrier.

Silently, she cursed herself for entering the pageant in the first place. It was a foolish, desperate move, and now here she was, stuck on an island with only a week’s worth of pills. Once that ran out … well, she wouldn’t think about it. Stay positive. That was the thing.

The salt spray kissed her skin, and Petra thought back to the first time she’d played dress-up when she was eight. Sitting at her mother’s makeup table, she’d felt a giddy joy as she’d applied the eye shadow — blue and too heavy — the pink blusher, the powder, and finally, a coat of red lipstick. When Petra had looked at herself in the mirror, she’d felt pretty for the first time, a fairy-tale frog transformed into a princess.

So enamored was Petra of her new self that she didn’t hear her mother come up from her art studio in the basement. Her mother’s lips were parted slightly, as if she were calculating the answer to a math problem that had been in her head a long time but she had only just come upon the answer. She kissed Petra’s cheek and said, “Through playing?”

Petra wasn’t through playing, not by a long shot, but she nodded,
and her mother helped her wash her face and then treated her to a special moisturizing mask, which was cold and green and made them both giggle.

“Will I be beautiful like you someday?” Petra asked her mother.

“You already are beautiful,” her mother answered.

“No. Like you,” Petra repeated, and her mother’s expression was unreadable.

“I guess we’ll have to see.”

A bikini-clad Taylor emerged through the skeletal rock’s mouth like a beauty from a Loch Lomond
⁸
movie. Watching Taylor, sun-kissed and bronzed and effortless, Petra felt jealous and more than a little out of her league. What was she doing here? What did she hope to prove? That she, Petra West, had just as much right to the Miss Teen Dream crown as all these other girls? That there was beauty in her, too? She could still drop out, she supposed. Give it all up. After all, she’d been in the spotlight before, and while it had been exhilarating in some ways, it had been a nightmare in others. Would she handle it any differently this time? Or would it implode as it had before?

During her mother’s chemo, Petra had promised she would go after her dreams. “Life is too short not to be who you are, honey,” her mom had told her. She thought of her mom back home in her art studio in Providence, scarred and shorn and still beautiful, full of fierce belief in the rightness of her daughter. And Petra knew she would see it through.

“Good morning!” she called as politely as possible.

“Good morning, Miss Rhode Island. Oh, Miss New Hampshire!” Taylor called out. “How was first watch? Anything to report?”

Adina trudged over sleepily and plopped down onto the sand with a groan. “Yeah. I have five humongous bug bites on my legs
and arms, my butt crack has been thoroughly exfoliated with sand, I’m hungry, exhausted, and I haven’t seen a ship anywhere.”