Beauty Queens (8 page)

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.

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’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?
  

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 bullshit
¹⁵
.

“What Would Wonder Woman Do?” she said, like a prayer.

And then, as if in answer, Jennifer raced for the spear, which had been thrown free when the girl was swallowed. But the snake’s undulating tail knocked it just out of reach.

“You scaly bitch
¹⁶
!” Jen gasped.

The snake lunged. With a loud screech, Jennifer leapt up and grabbed hold of a tree limb, hoping that it was, in fact, a tree limb, and not some other freaky form of island life intent on eating her. Inside the snake’s throat, the girl pushed with her hands and feet,
forming a blockade with her body. She wasn’t going down easy, and it gave Jen new courage.

A quick drop to the ground and she snatched the spear in her right hand. With a loud “GAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!” she hopped onto the snake’s back and jabbed the sharp end into the creature’s head. It thrashed wildly and Jennifer was thrown clear. Now it was truly pissed. But it wasn’t from Jen’s assault. From inside the snake, the swallowed girl had managed to crawl up. She positioned what looked like a smallish white tub between the snake’s back teeth. It allowed just enough room for her to slide out on a tide of heavy saliva. Without thinking, Jennifer pulled the girl to safety behind a fat, broken tree.

The snake bit down on the large jar between its teeth and exploded. The girls were coated in snake insides.

“Yes!” Jennifer screamed. She pumped her fist. “How ya like me now, Snake Parts?”

Beside her, the rescued girl coughed and hacked. Her eyes widened as she hacked up a mouthful of slime on Jennifer’s shoulder.

“Ew.”

“Sorry,” the girl said in a voice that sounded slightly broken and a little loud. “I was choking. I’m Sosie Simmons. Miss Illinois.”

“Jennifer Huberman, Miss Michigan. Oh my God. I thought that you were a total goner, man. But you were all, ‘Feel my fists of fury, Amphibian Bitch,’ and I was all, ‘Let’s settle this, X-Men-style,’ and you were all, ‘Aaaaaaahhhhhh jar action!’ and I was all, ‘Kayaaaaaaaa spear time!’ and, oh my God, that was flippin’ amazing. Wasn’t that amazing? I haven’t felt so good since I punched Dennis Anastasias during sixth grade recess when he called me thunder thighs ’cause, I’m sorry, that little punk had it coming.” Laughing maniacally, Jennifer combed her hands through her snake-slimed, muddy hair and looked up at the doily of sky far above, and even though she had just nearly met her demise with a gigantic snake on a deserted island far from home, somehow this moment was glorious.

Sosie stared at Jennifer’s mouth, trying hard to make out the
words that rushed over her lips in a formless torrent. “Um, sorry. I didn’t get that. I lost my hearing aid inside that thing. I’m hearing impaired.”

Jennifer was forced to really look at Sosie. What she saw was a face with large, green eyes and a light dusting of freckles across a small nose. And for a moment, she was more undone by this girl’s beauty than by the carnivorous snake.

“Oh. Sorry,” she said slowly.

Sosie smiled. “That’s okay. Even though I have a disability, it doesn’t stop me from realizing my aspiration of representing my country as Miss Teen Dream.”

“No. Of course —”

Sosie placed a hand over the left side of her chest. “They said that because I could not hear the music, I would not be able to dance, but I refused to be limited. I chose to listen to the music of my soul. With the help of my teachers, I organized a dance troupe of non-hearing kids called Helen Keller-bration! And we travel America, showing that nothing can stop you if
you
don’t stop believing.”

Jennifer looked around. “Who are you talking to?”

Sosie squinted at Jen’s mouth. “Oh! My handler said you should act like the cameras are on you at all times and always be at your best.”

“There are no cameras. The crew, the handlers, they’re all dead.”

“What?”

Jennifer mimed a finger across her throat.

“Oh.
oh!
”

Slowly, with great care, Jennifer explained about the storm, how she lost the others, that she didn’t know if they had survived.

Sosie took it all in, nodding. “After the crash, I was so scared. I found this place. It was really weird. There were all these jars of Lady ’Stache Off.”

“Maybe they fell when the plane crashed?”

“That’s what I thought at first. But one of the jars — the one the snake just had for breakfast — had this weird, almost-battery-looking
thing in it. The jars were all in a box. And that’s not all. Come on, I’ll show you.”

She offered her hand to Jennifer, and Jennifer took it, marveling at the softness of the girl’s fingers.

“Sorry. I stink like snake insides.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What?”

“It’s okay,” Jennifer shouted, feeling like an idiot because wasn’t that what people always did with the deaf? Talked louder, as if that would help?

Sosie positioned Jennifer’s fingers in her own, nudging them gently into new forms. “O … kay,” she said.

“Okay,” Jen repeated, putting her fingers through the motions again.

Sosie smiled. “Very good. If you want, I can teach you to sign.”

Jennifer blushed. She wanted. She wanted very much.

Sosie inched closer to the snake corpse. She poked it with a stick. It didn’t move. Feeling braver, she and Jennifer examined it and saw that it had been sick. Its long body was covered in disgusting sores and tumors. Its scales were mostly gone. The few that remained were an iridescent greenish blue that dazzled. It had probably once been a glorious creature, and Jen was reminded of the old, tough-as-algebra barflies in her neighborhood, the ones with the long, permed hair who still clung to the leopard-print dresses they’d put on thirty years ago and refused to retire.