CHAPTER NINE

Under Taylor’s direction, her group of girls found their way back to the damaged beach, which resembled a dorm room after an island-themed kegger gone wrong. Broken trees and fractured palm leaves littered the sand. Belongings were strewn about. But the sea was now calm and the sky forgiving. The girls fell into the sand, exhausted and groaning.

“How long have we been stranded here?” someone asked.

“About three days,” Miss Ohio answered.

Mary Lou looked at the hair on her legs. “Four.”

“All right, Miss Teen Dreamers. Let’s get this place a little cleaned up and get us a signal fire going. Tomorrow morning at sunrise sharp we’ll practice the opening number. Just lettin’ y’all know, we might have to make a few more adjustments to the choreography if the other girls don’t make it back.”

“I’m so hungry,” Mary Lou mumbled. “So, so hungry.”

“I can’t move,” Miss Arkansas cried. “I’m too tired.”

Taylor had already begun clearing plant debris into a tidy pile for burning. “This is not the Miss Teen Dream spirit, ladies.”

Miss New Mexico tried scooping a handful of sand into her mouth, but Adina stopped her.

“We need food!” Miss Ohio cried, and the others moaned in agreement.

“Miss Teen Dreamers. It is time to get ahold of ourselves. Miss Alabama, I did not mean that literally. That is gross. Stop it.” Taylor scooped up seawater in a large shell and poured it over the ends of her hair, rinsing out the mud. “Remember: We are Miss Teen Dreamers. We are not victims. We are not cowards. We are bright shining stars, beacons of hope to all who arrive on the shores of our beauty.”

Mary Lou pointed to the surf. “There’s an ocean full of fish out there if we could find some way to catch them.”

“I hope there’s salmon,” Brittani said. “Salmon has a lot of omega-3. My consultant, Tricia, says it’s really good for your skin and nails.”

“Right. Because I’m really worried about my FUCKING NAILS AT THIS POINT!” Adina screamed.

“Language, Miss New Hampshire. You owe me twenty-five cents for that potty mouth.” Taylor took the lip gloss from her zippered pocket and slicked it over her mouth. “Let’s ignore those who would bring us down and affirm, Teen Dreamers: How are we gonna get us some fish?”

Everyone shouted at once. “We could try grabbing them!” “Fishing pole.” “Laser gun!” “Think positive thoughts!”

“We could spear them,” Mary Lou offered.

“With what?” Miss Ohio asked.

Mary Lou blushed. “Um, with a … spear?”

“Oh my gosh! My bad. How could I have forgotten to pack my spear for my beauty pageant?” Miss New Mexico snapped. The tray in her forehead shook.

“Because you probably left it in your competition’s back,” Miss Ohio snarked. Miss Montana high-fived her.

“Well, your evening gown looks like it was put together in the dark by a bunch of dyslexic sweatshop workers!” Miss Arkansas gave Miss Montana a small shove.

Miss Montana shoved back. “Oh really? Says the girl with flotation device boobs.”

“These are one hundred percent real!”

“So’s Santa.”

“At least my talent isn’t totally lame,” sniffed Miss Ohio.

Miss Arkansas laughed a loud HA! “Your talent? Are they letting people perform oral sex in these pageants now?”

Taylor clapped three times for attention. “Ladies! Ladies! My stars! That’s enough. Now. We all know Miss Arkansas’s girls are fake, Miss Ohio’s easier than making cereal, and Miss Montana’s dress is something my blind meemaw would wear to bingo night. And Miss New Mexico — aren’t you from the chill-out state? Maybe you can channel up some new-age-Whole-Foods-incense calm right about now, because we have a big job ahead called staying alive.”

“What do we do?” Brittani asked. She lay in the sand with her arm over her forehead.

“We need something we can use to turn these sticks into spears.”

“A knife!”

“A rock!”

“Two rocks!”

“Adina’s tongue.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot,” Adina snapped.

Mary Lou pulled something from one of the suitcases. It was egg-shaped and shiny. “Pumice stone?”

Taylor examined the palm-size foot grater. “Good work, Nebraska. Sparkle Ponies and Lost Girls, start buffing and polishing those sticks into fish-killing machines.”

“But that could take forever. I’m starving now” Miss Ohio cried.

“Fine. Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Taylor grabbed a shell and gouged the sand, going deeper and deeper. She reached into the sand and brought up a white, cylindrical bug. It wiggled lazily in her palm. “Who wants to eat first?”

“What’s that?” Miss Montana asked with obvious distaste.

“It’s a grub and it’s packed with protein. My daddy said his unit had to survive on these for a whole month once. Who’s going first?”

Collectively, the girls took a step back.

“My stars, I thought y’all were hungry and wanted to survive.”

No one made a move.

“Well, then. I guess as team leader I will just have to draft someone as a volunteer.” Taylor looked over the girls like a general inspecting the ranks of new recruits. She stopped at Adina. “Miss New Hampshire. Congratulations. You’re the winner.”

“If you’re so keen on it, why don’t you go first?” Adina asked.

“Because y’all know I’ll do it,” Taylor answered. “This is about building trust. Take one for the team, New Hampshire.”

Adina had a memory of Alan and the ridiculous trust-building exercises he conducted for business retreats full of blowhard execs who apparently liked wasting money on glorified corporate camp. Once, Alan had asked her to fall backward with the assurance that he would catch her and that she would see she could trust him. But Adina balked. The only person she trusted was herself. She was not ending up on the floor with a concussion, and she was not, absolutely not, eating that filthy bug in Taylor’s hand just so she could prove her mettle and get a round of high fives from the beauty queen set.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “No. Sorry. Not doing it.”

“I’ll do it,” Miss Arkansas volunteered.

“No. This is about Miss New Hampshire. We are the Miss Teen Dream team. We are only as strong as our weakest link. There is no I in team.”

“There’s no U in asshole, either, and yet …” Adina muttered.

“I’m dockin’ you another twenty-five cents for your potty mouth and bad attitude, Miss New Hampshire.”

“Fine. Let me just go to the JUNGLE ATM TO GET A WITHDRAWAL!”

Taylor leveled her gaze at Adina. “Do you know what your problem is, Miss New Hampshire?”

“You mean, besides the fact that my plane crashed on a hostile island, we haven’t eaten in days, you want me to chug a bug, and you keep calling me New Hampshire?”

“Your problem is not having any trust. You expect the world to fail you, so it does. And then you get all pouty-pants about it. How’s that workin’ out for you, New Hampshire?”

Adina’s cheeks reddened. “Well, you’re the one who wanted to practice that pageant crap instead of trying to find a way off this island! We should have been looking for food and shelter days ago, trying to build a boat — something other than practicing our goddamned canned responses to stupid questions about our life goals thought up by clueless adults who need their own life goals!”

Taylor pursed her lips. “Well, like Ladybird Hope says: There’s two ways to look at things — crowns and pimples. For instance, right now, I am coated in a sweater set of sand. I could complain about that nonstop — pimples. Or I could see this as an exciting exfoliation opportunity that will give me the smoothest skin of my life — crowns. And you owe me another twenty-five cents for taking our Lord’s name in vain.”

“You are truly Satan’s sequined spawn.”

Taylor held the pale, wriggling grub up to Adina’s face. “So what’s it going to be, New Hampshire?”

“Adina … Adina … Adina …” the girls chanted.

Taylor dropped the larva into Adina’s open palm.

“Adina … Adina … Adina …”

Adina felt the slimy wetness of the bug in her hand. Her stomach lurched. The chants of her name grew louder. It was like falling, waiting for untested hands to catch her.

“Oh God …” Adina whimpered. In one quick gulp, she downed the white larva, then fell to her hands and knees, gagging like a cat with a hairball. The girls backed away, giving her space. Finally, Adina staggered to her feet and wiped her mouth. For a moment under the hot sun, she thought she might faint. Or hurl. Or both.

“Adina?” Mary Lou whispered. “You okay?”

Adina gave a thumbs-up, and the girls grabbed her in a group hug. They cheered. For me, Adina thought. They were cheering her, and she was hit with a sense of pride and camaraderie she would have found cheesy back home.

“You’re so brave,” Mary Lou said, hugging her.

“How was it?” Brittani asked.

“Not totally awful. It kind of reminded me of French kissing Jake Weinstein and his spelunker tongue.”

Taylor appraised Adina coolly. “Let’s all give some snaps to New Hampshire.” Taylor clicked her fingers like castanets and the others followed till it sounded like Cinco de Mayo night at the senior home. “All right, Teen Dreamers — start digging for worms. It’s what’s for lunch.”

Tiara heard singing, and for a moment she thought she was in her room back home listening to Boyz Will B Boyz and waiting for her mom to wake her for her daily weigh-in. Instinctively, she tried to shove her secret snack cake wrappers under the imaginary mattress, only to feel a caterpillar crawling across her hand, startling her awake. Nicole and Shanti were still passed out, and she definitely heard singing. She walked in the direction of the song, following it till she found a small, bucolic waterfall that fed into a turquoise pond. On the bank lay Petra’s mud-caked clothes.

Petra stood in the pond, her lithe back to Tiara. She was as skinny as a boy or a supermodel, or a boy supermodel, and Tiara felt a pang of envy that Petra would never have to endure daily weigh-ins or go on juice fasts. She felt bad for spying, though. It wasn’t very nice. Should she make a noise? What if she scared Petra? She was trying to decide the best way to announce herself when Petra, still oblivious to Tiara’s presence, turned and rose from the water, and Tiara made the only sound she could. She screamed.

“Oh. My. God,” Nicole said.

“You’re a … you’re not even …” Shanti stammered. “You’re really J. T. Woodland? From Boyz Will B Boyz?”

Nicole raised an eyebrow. “Not anymore.”

“I had your poster in my room when I was ten!” Tiara blubbered. “I wrote to your fan club. You sent me a bandanna with your autograph.”

“I hated those bandannas. They were so cheesy.” Petra pulled her knees close and rested her chin on them.

“I think you’re missing the salient point here,” Shanti said. “Miss Teen Dream is a girls’ pageant. You are not a girl. Ergo, you are disqualified.”

“Who says I’m not a girl?”

“You have a wang-dang-doodle!” Tiara squeaked.

“Is that all that makes a guy a guy? What makes a girl a girl?”

And the girls found they could not answer. For they’d never been asked that question in the pageant prep.

Tiara’s expression was pained. “I don’t mean to offend you, Petra or J. T. or whatever, but my mom says that’s against nature and God.”

“Maybe you should ask God and nature why they put a girl inside a boy’s body?” Petra shouted to the uncaring sky. “And while you’re at it, maybe you should ask your mom why she thinks it’s not against God and nature to dress her little girl up in garters, spackle her face with makeup, and let her pole dance.”

“It’s Christian pole dancing,” Tiara said softly.

“It’s abuse,” Petra said. “Making your third grader go for a spray tan instead of playing in the park just so Mom can outsource her failed dreams to her kid? So wrong.”

Tiara’s eyes filled with tears. “She only wants what’s best for me. She knows I love the pageants.”

“Do you, really?” Petra challenged, and Tiara was silent.

“Why did you enter Miss Teen Dream?” Nicole asked Petra. “I mean, that’s, like, suicidal.”

Petra let out a long exhale. “My parents always wanted me to be able to have the surgery. I got the therapist, had the electrolysis, went on the hormones and the androgen blockers. I did almost everything. But then my mom got cancer. The chemo was expensive and the insurance wouldn’t pay. Said it was a preexisting condition.”

“Breast cancer?”

“Breasts,” Petra said bitterly. “Long story short, we were massively in debt. So long, sex reassignment surgery.”

“What about all that money you made with Boyz Will B Boyz?” Nicole asked.

“Embezzled by our manager.”

“Harsh. Wow, I’m really sorry,” Nicole said. “So how’d you decide on Miss Teen Dream?”

Petra rocked back, still holding tightly to her knees. “It wasn’t my idea. Through my support group, I met these political activists from a transgender rights group called Trans Am.”

“Trans Am?” Shanti made a face. “Your transgender rights group named themselves after a cheesy 1980s car and you aligned yourself with them? That’s like picking a plastic surgeon out of the grocery circular.”

“Okay. The name’s stupid. But they wanted to make a statement. They got me my hormones and promised to pay for the surgery if I’d go through Miss Teen Dream, the ultimate female pageant, as a contestant. All I had to do was place and then reveal myself at a press conference afterward and people would have to question everything they think about transgender people and about gender itself.”

“So you’re making fun of us?” Tiara asked.

“No! Not at all,” Petra said.

“Why not do one of those drag pageants, win money that way?” Nicole asked.

Petra kicked the tree. “Because I’m not in drag! This is who I am. That’s why I want to make a statement, so people understand. It’s a stand against discrimination. Look, I don’t need to win. I just need to place and do the press conference, and then I’ll have enough for the operation. Can you just not say anything? Please?”

The girls exchanged glances. It was Shanti who spoke. “I’m sorry. You broke the rules. I have to turn you in.”

“He — she might not even place,” Nicole tried.

“And if he does, that’s taking away a spot that could go to you or me. It’s not like the pageant just loves women of color, you know.”

Tiara looked up. “I thought you said the pageant wasn’t racist.”

“Bitch, please,” Shanti and Nicole said in unison.

“Besides, the pageant’s already on shaky ground,” Shanti argued. “All we need is another scandal, and then it’s over and none of us gets scholarship money. I’m sorry. But I’m a rules girl. I have to turn you in, Petra. We should get moving while there’s daylight.”

Nicole was torn. She liked Petra and she understood what it was to be discriminated against. But this was different, wasn’t it? Petra had deceived them, and Nicole didn’t like being lied to. She honestly didn’t know what to do.

“Maybe there’s another way to get the money.” She patted Petra’s shoulder and fell in behind Shanti.

Petra turned to Tiara. “I guess you hate me, too.”

Tiara tried not to look at Petra. Her eyes kept slipping down to her non-girl region. “I’m so confused. I don’t know if you’re a girl or a boy.”

“I’m a girl who just happened to get the wrong body.”

“My mom says people like you are wrong.”

“I can’t speak for your mom.”

“I don’t know. I have to think about it,” Tiara said, and she hurried to join the other girls on the trail.