CHAPTER ELEVEN

“All right, Teen Dreamers. Let’s take stock of everything we have.” Taylor marched before the line of sleepy beauty queens, inspecting them drill sergeant–style. “Miss Nebraska, what are the island’s natural resources, please? Report.”

Mary Lou scratched at a bite on her leg with the toes of her other foot, holding on to Adina for balance. “Um, trees. Plants. Grubs. Fish. Coconuts. Water. Mud. That’s all I can think of right now.”

“Very good. Miss New Mexico, what salvaged materials do we have from the plane?”

Miss New Mexico listed things off, using her fingers to keep count. “Some teeth-bleaching trays, padded bras, three safety razors, bobby pins, thongs, the jars of Lady ’Stache Off and the radio Jennifer and Sosie found, the hot roller sets, two straightening irons, bathing suits, assorted shoes, some makeup, and a few evening gowns, including that unholy beaded green thing over there.”

“That was Miss Massachusetts’s, I think,” Brittani said.

Petra smirked. “Maybe it wasn’t the plane crash that killed her. Maybe she actually saw herself in that dress.”

“Let’s not speak ill of the dead, no matter how hideous their fashion sense,” Taylor instructed. “All right, Teen Dreamers. These are our tools. Starting today, we are adding a new survival skills portion to our pageant. I want you to treat this with the seriousness you would your other duties, like tanning and exfoliation. You need to wow the judges. Think about what you can make with what we’ve got.”

“It’s like an episode of Design This!²¹ All we need is Roger Piston to come in and say, ‘Do your magic!’” Miss Montana said.

“I’m turning our program over to Miss California and Miss Colorado. Please give them the same attention you would the makeup artist showing you how to contour your nose and make your lips look bigger under the lights, which I never have to do as my lips are in perfect proportion to my face.”

Shanti and Nicole stood side by side, but they’d left plenty of space between them. Nicole’s arms were crossed.

Shanti cleared her throat. “The first thing —”

“Who said you were first?” Nicole interrupted.

“Do you want to go first?”

“No. But it’s nice to be asked. Go ahead.”

“The first thing we really need to do is make sure we have drinking water.”

“I forgot — why can’t we just drink the ocean water?” Tiara asked.

“Because people pee in there all the time,” Brittani explained with assurance.

“Also, the bloat,” Miss Ohio chimed in. “I retain like crazy.”

“No,” Shanti said. “It’s because if you drink salt water, you’ll get sick. Drink enough and you’ll die.”

Tiara raised her hand. “But will you still be bloated?”

Shanti ignored her. “It’s a tropical climate, so we get some rain every day. We can make a tarp out of Miss Massachusetts’s ugly evening gown to collect that rainwater to drink.”

Miss Montana made a face. “Ew. That is so hurl.”

“Actually, so hurl is the way you look when you die of dehydration.”

Shanti explained the mechanics of the plan and the girls set to work. It was an intricate system of weights and counterweights. But the engineering was best-case scenario, and their meager resources were worst-case. Nothing was working and the girls soon grew frustrated.

“It’s too complicated,” Nicole said. “We need to simplify.”

“It’s not too complicated. You’re just not getting it!”

“Whatever!” Miss New Mexico said. Her face dripped with sweat. “Do you want drinking water or not?”

“That’s the whole point.”

“Then we need to try it another way.”

Shanti crossed her arms. “Like what?”

“Excuse me?” Tiara raised her hand. “One summer when I was about nine, my dad went off to rehab for his dryer sheet addiction. He used to huff ’em down in the basement, box after box. Then he’d come upstairs and start making these dioramas out of old cake mix boxes right on the kitchen floor and tell us that we should leave him alone because he was a serious artist and needed space for his work but that it was okay because the Fluffy Soft™ Laundry Puppy²² would look after us. I always wondered why he smelled like Spring Freesia.”

Adina dropped down into the sand. “Does this story have a point?”

“Anyway, after my mom flipped out, my dad went off to rehab to heal his wounded chi and he got this spirit guide named Astral, who was kind of annoying because my dad would be all, ‘Let’s ask Astral about that,’ even if it was just about whether or not to have Hamburger Helper for dinner, and my mom said she would personally kick his Astral to the curb if he didn’t shut up, and so he went to Jesus rehab instead, and my mom sent me to sleepaway camp for the rest of the summer. I loved it in the woods. But there were no toilets or anything, so we had to build a latrine.”

“’Kay. I’m now officially scared of where this story’s going,” Adina said.

Tiara’s cheeks reddened. “I let you talk.”

“Sorry, Tiara,” Adina said.

“Anyway, it was probably a dumb idea.”

“No. Tell it. I want to hear it. Go on.” Petra silenced the others with a glare.

“Well, I was just thinking that if we dig out the sand like a latrine and stretch the dress across it and hold it down with some rocks or something, maybe the water would catch in there?”

“How’s that going to help?” Miss Ohio asked.

“Hold on.” Shanti pulled the dress taut. She surveyed the sand around it. “That could work.”

“Yeah?” Nicole asked.

“Yes.”

Tiara brightened. “I said a smarty?”

“You definitely said a smarty.”

The girls used coconut shells to dig a deep trench. They packed sand around the edge into a high wall, stretched the evening gown, which they had ripped open to make it bigger, across the hole, and weighted the dress’s edges with rocks. Beneath the dress, they placed anything that could collect whatever rainwater fell through the fabric’s pores: empty coconut shells, high heels, and a jewelry cleaning unit they’d rinsed four times with seawater.

“Not bad,” Shanti said, inspecting it. “Not bad at all. Now we just have to wait for the afternoon rain shower.”

“I can’t believe we’re gonna drink out of a ground toilet!” Tiara trilled.

Adina put a hand on her arm. “Please never say that again.”

Right on cue, the skies opened up. Normally, the girls cursed the rain that soaked them and brought the bugs out after. But now, they cheered it. They do-si-doed around the dress like an offering dance and cheered as it filled up with water and tipped down to pour into the waiting coconuts.

“Bottoms up!” Petra said, and guzzled from the half shell of fresh rainwater. Her eyes grew large. She grabbed at her throat. The girls backed away. Petra grinned. “Needs a slice of lemon, but otherwise, it’s really good,” she said, and drained the shell of the last few drops.

By the end of the week, the girls had managed to erect eight huts, and Taylor announced that there would be a Miss Teen Dream cutest hut contest. The girls went about the business of survival, collecting rainwater, identifying and gathering edible plant life, catching small fish with their straightening irons. Miss Montana, who turned out to be from a family of fishermen and women, showed them how to plait seaweed and vines to construct loose fishing lines, which had netted them a decent catch in addition to the straightening iron haul. The whole thing had come to resemble a giant science fair, with teams of girls proudly showing off their various projects.

“Hey, you guys, over here, please!” Miss Ohio called. The girls lined up to see what Miss Ohio had put together. She’d shoved two sticks into the sand and rigged a piece of metal plane wreckage between them so that it caught the sun’s light.

“Careful,” she warned Nicole, who’d gotten close. “It’s really hot.”

“Now watch.” With a flourish, Miss Ohio dropped a fish on the metal’s steaming hot surface. It sizzled and popped.

“It’s a solar hibachi,” Miss Ohio explained, serving up a perfectly done fillet. “I used a safety razor to descale the fish, rinsed it in a little of the freshwater, and now …” Using the handle of a hairbrush, she scooped up the fish and dropped it onto a mound of clean rocks. “Miss New Mexico?”

Miss New Mexico took a bite and rolled her eyes in bliss. “OMG, this is so good, I’m not even going to make myself barf it back up.”

“Tiara and I caught the fish with these!” Brittani said, brandishing a pair of straightening irons.

“Awesome!” Mary Lou high-fived them.

“This is so cool. How did you come up with this?” Adina asked. “Hello!” Miss Ohio rolled her eyes. “I’m from the Buckeye State. We are serious about our tailgating parties. I can turn anything into a grill.”

Petra sat surrounded by fabric strips. That morning, she’d ripped apart swimsuits and dance costumes. She’d fashioned a needle from a fish bone and stripped plant roots down to a stiff, thin thread. From a dead girl’s evening gown, she’d harvested sequins; from another girl’s jewelry pouch, she’d taken rhinestone earrings. These elements she sewed into a colorful banner with sparkles to catch the sun. When she was finished, they would stretch the banner between two trees in the hope that it would draw the attention of a passing plane or ship. Petra had been hunched over in the same position for hours. Her fingers ached. At last she finished, smiling at the message she’d sewn into the center. If that didn’t get somebody’s attention, they were lost for sure.

Mary Lou and Sosie gathered rocks and pebbles from the beach and spelled out the word HELP along the shore so that it might be seen from a passing plane. At the end of the word, Sosie made an exclamation mark with a smiley face at the bottom.

“That way, they’ll know we’re friendly,” she reasoned.

Jennifer took off the back cover of the radio and examined the tangled inner workings. It was a mess and more complicated than anything she’d worked on before. Why had she been so quick to volunteer? To promise the girls that she could get it up and running? What if she couldn’t? They were counting on her. That in and of itself was an odd feeling. Nobody counted on her. Back home, she’d been written off so many times and by so many people, she’d begun to feel like a comic book character who’d died but wouldn’t stay down. She knew what they thought when they saw her: Trash. Wrong side of the tracks. Dyke. Juvenile delinquent. Rehabilitation project.

When Jennifer had stepped in to take over for Miss Michigan after the first girl broke her leg skiing and the second had to go to anorexia camp, she knew no one expected much from her. “Just do your best,” her social worker had said, giving her a lame thumbs-up. Nobody expected anything from girls like Jennifer, except for them to drop out, get pregnant, fuck up. She stared hopelessly at the tangle of red, blue, green, and white wires. If she were like her comic book alter ego, the Flint Avenger, she’d have this up in a nanosecond. But she wasn’t. She was Jennifer, and she was utterly baffled.

“Can you fix it?” Sosie asked. She made the sign for fix and Jennifer repeated it. Sosie bit her lip, waiting for an answer.

Jennifer gave her a thumbs-up. Sosie hugged her and Jennifer closed her eyes, inhaling the slightly salty smell of her hair. She watched her go, then turned her attentions back to the radio and the strange, beautiful mystery of wires.

Adina and Mary Lou stood thigh-deep in the cool, clear lagoon where Adina tried her luck and her new, pumice-sharpened spear on the fish. So far, the fish had proved wilier than they’d imagined. Each time, Adina missed and the spear struck the muddy bottom, sending little tornadoes of sand swirling.

“I see one!” Mary Lou shouted.

Adina turned left and right. “Where?”

Mary Lou pointed. “There — by that rock. Oh. Not anymore. Boy, they’re fast.”

“Why didn’t you just spear it instead of telling me?” Adina said with some annoyance.

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“They have vegetarians in Nebraska?”

“Well.” Mary Lou thought for a moment. “There’s me.”

“If you’re a vegetarian, why did you volunteer to come fishing with me?”

Mary Lou shrugged. “So you’d have a friend with you.”

“Oh.” Adina hadn’t had a close friend since Roxie Black in fourth grade, who let Adina borrow her headband. Adina and Roxie both got lice and Roxie’s mom didn’t let her come over much anymore. “Well, thanks.”

“No problem. Still hoping for Miss Congeniality when we get back. Oh, there’s another one!”

Adina made a stab, but the golden fish was too swift. “You’ll never evolve!” she shouted as it swished away. “Just like Ray Marshall.”

Mary Lou laughed. “Okay. No love for Ray Marshall. Ex-boyfriend or something?”

“What? God, no. He’s this idiot in my Adolescent Issues class who spends the whole time putting things in his nose. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t need a man to be complete.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“Plus, there is the small problem of none of the guys in my high school being interested. My teachers say that when I get to college I’ll meet guys who aren’t intimidated by a smart, confident girl.” With a grunt, Adina stabbed again and again at the water, coming up empty. “What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No. I used to. Sort of,” Mary Lou said, playing with her purity ring. Her fingers were thinner, and it fit loosely now.

“A sort-of boyfriend? Is it like a time-share and you get him for a couple of weeks in May and November?”

Mary Lou fashioned a chain from grasses, carefully knotting them together, end to end. “We were dating. And then we weren’t.”

“Okaaaay,” Adina said. “That’s not cryptic. What happened?”

In her mind, Mary Lou saw Billy’s horrified face, heard him say, “What’s wrong with you?”

“He didn’t really like me,” Mary Lou said softly.

“What? What the hell was the matter with him?”

Mary Lou allowed a small smile. “I think we might have more luck over there.”

The girls waded through the shallows into deeper water. It was a beautiful blue, and they could see tiny neon-bright fish darting about. What they needed was a big one, and they waited.

“Have you ever been in love?” Mary Lou asked after a period of quiet.

“Me? No. Not really. The closest I got was when I dated Matt Jacobs for one summer. He was smart enough. And nice. Too nice. He stared at me all moony-eyed a lot.”

“Sounds romantic to me,” Mary Lou said.

“It was irritating. Too much devotion feels like an obligation. Anyway, I think Matt and I were doomed from the start because of our musical disconnect. I mean, he burned me a CD with Feast for the Fishermen²³ on it. Feast for the Fishermen! Such a sex killer.”

Mary Lou thought back to that night in the back of Billy’s station wagon. How close they’d come. Her heart beating so quickly, every sense sharpened. She had wanted to throw away all the rules and eat up the world. Even her skin had been full of want. And that want had been her undoing. Billy’s eyes wide with alarm. What’s wrong with you? Mary Lou had run off into the night, hiding in the sheltering stalks of the cornfields until it was safe to face the world again. Her mother had taken one look at her when she came through the door at dawn and she had known. They had the ring made the next day.

“Are you okay?” Adina was looking at her strangely.

“Yeah!” Mary Lou said quickly.

“You don’t have to do this if it makes you queasy.”

“No. I’m okay. Oh, hey, bulrush.” Mary Lou pointed to the tall stalks bordering the pond.

“What’s a bulrush?” Adina asked.

“This funny little plant. They grow wild on my uncle’s farm. You can eat the roots and this white part of the stem. It’s pretty tasty. And the tougher stems are really strong — we used them to make sit-upons in Girl Scouts. These’ll be good for tonight.” Mary Lou yanked one up by the roots. “So do you think you’ll ever meet The One and get married and have kids?”

“‘The One?’” Adina snorted. “My mom has had five husbands, and every single time, it was ‘The One,’ and every single time, it was like I lost her. Like she shape-shifted into whatever form the guy wanted till I couldn’t recognize her anymore. I’m never letting some guy come in and change me.”

“But don’t you think …” Mary Lou stopped to regroup her thoughts. “Love has to change you some, right?”

Adina shrugged. “I guess. But all those romances they feed us are wrong. They make us think it’s just supposed to be hearts and wind machines and boys who slay dragons for you.”

“But … is it wrong to want a guy to slay a dragon for you? Not that I would want a guy to slay a dragon, because I’m a vegetarian. But maybe he just needs a little encouragement. He’d do right by you if you could just see past his faults, like in Beauty and the Beast.”

“Riiiiight.” Adina swept a hand dramatically to her brow. “And only your love can heal him.”

“Well … yeah.”

“That’s how they get you, my friend.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Unless it’s about spearing fish, because apparently I suck at that.”

“Do you think people can be cursed?”

“I believe Taylor is cursed to be a pain in the ass.” Adina craned her neck. “I should be careful. I’m sure she has supersonic hearing, too.”

“I mean really cursed.” Mary Lou turned her ring.

“What do you mean?” Adina gave Mary Lou a quizzical look.

“Forget it. It’s silly. I still believe in true love, though. You’re wrong about that.”

“You know what you are, Mary Lou? You are a hopeless romantic.”

“I’m not the one who’s hopeless, Adina.”

Adina gave a little shriek. “That fish just swam past my leg! Creepy! Where did it go?”

“To your right! Two o’clock! Get it!”

“You are officially the most bloodthirsty vegetarian ever.” Adina stabbed hard and yelled in triumph. A fat fish wriggled on the end of her spear. “OMG. That was harder than the SATs.”

Mary Lou liked Adina. She liked her directness. In school, they would tell you that life wouldn’t come to you; you had to go out and make it your own. But when it came to love, the message for girls seemed to be this: Don’t. Don’t go after what you want. Wait. Wait to be chosen, as if only in the eye of another could one truly find value. The message was confusing and infuriating. It was a shell game with no actual pea under the rapidly moving cups. Mary Lou knew this firsthand, and she wished she could ask Adina more questions. But that would mean telling her everything, and she just couldn’t risk that. Like the bulrush shoots, shame and fear could be woven into a plaiting of surprising strength.

Taylor led the girls deeper into the jungle to a basin surrounded by hills. An enormous cave cut into one of the hills.

“Sparkle Ponies and Lost Girls, we already know that Miss Illinois and Miss Michigan had to take down a giant snake. We don’t know what other hostiles we might run into while we’re waiting for the rescue ship. As you know, I am a card-carrying member of Femmes and Firearms, just like my spiritual leader, Ladybird Hope. And if we’re gonna protect ourselves, we need to build us some weapons. The Glitz Attack. Everything we need is here. We just have to be resourceful. And there are bonuses,” Taylor said. She held out a makeup bag. Unconsciously, the girls took a step forward. “Before we left home, I took the liberty of having a makeover at every counter in every mall in town. I racked up quite a few free gifts with purchase.” She jiggled the bag. “There is some very nice conditioner in this bag. Teen Dreamers, it’s time to represent. Your platform is Personal Arsenal. Miss Montana, Miss Ohio, Miss California. Are you ready?”

The three girls moved to a mound of palm fronds, carefully removing them to reveal a rickety wooden trebuchet made of bamboo and counterweighted with coconuts. “This is our new Teen Dream missile launcher. As you can see, it’s a catapult. You can thank Miss Montana, Miss Ohio, and Miss California for that.”

“We rock physics.” Miss Montana beamed. “Made one of these for ninth grade science. And Shanti makes them for fun in her spare time.”

Tiara raised her hand. “I thought Catapult was a spring break city in Mexico.”

“That’s Acapulco,” Mary Lou said.

“Next up: geography skills,” Adina muttered.

“Eyes up here, ladies,” Miss Montana continued. “You’ll note back here is a net thingy. Well, technically it’s a pair of DiscomfortWear™.”²⁴

“Shapes you and makes an awesome launch pad,” Miss Ohio joked as she thumped the taut fabric attached to the long arm like an exotic underwear lacrosse stick. “If you put something in here — Miss California, will you do the honors, please?”

Shanti brandished a pastel pump for everyone to see before placing it in the nude-fabric basket.

“And cut the vine — oh, y’all might want to step back.”

The girls moved to the side. With one swift move, Shanti cut the vine. The coconut hit the ground and the trebuchet arm swung up, launching the pump through the air with a ferocious zip. It stuck, heel-first, into the bark of a small tree with such force, it split the tree in two.

“Holy stiletto, Batman,” Jennifer said.

“We used a shoe, but you can use anything, really.”

Taylor balanced herself on the bottom beams of the catapult like MacArthur in the South Pacific. “Beauty is pain. And in this case, it’s somebody else’s pain. Miss Ohio, Miss Montana, Miss California, you have each earned yourself something from the goody bag. Reach in.”

“Oh my God, microfiber mascara!” Miss Ohio clutched the tube to her chest.

Shanti smiled. “Body glitter!”

“Coral Frost All-Day lip quench,” Miss Montana said. She didn’t seem as excited. But Taylor had moved on.

“Miss Colorado and Miss Alabama, what do you have for us?”

Nicole held up a thin, hollowed-out tube of bamboo. “This is the makeup splat gun. You pour a small amount of foundation in the end like so,” she said, letting Brittani demonstrate. “And then …” Nicole blew hard into the tube and the makeup splattered the ground. “It’s hypoallergenic and noncomedogenic, but you still wouldn’t want it in your eyes.”

“Excellent work, ladies. Goodies?”

Nicole took her swag. “Cocoa butter! Thank you, universe!”

Brittani rooted around, eyes closed, mouth moving as if making a wish. She pulled out a small plastic bottle of bubble bath.

Taylor made her way down the line, inspecting each girl’s work. The girls had worked in teams, and they beamed with pride at their inventive defense systems.

“Miss Michigan?” Taylor asked.

“Well, I melted down some of our jewelry and made arrows,” Jennifer said, holding up the thin, homemade metal shafts.

Petra admired one. “Wow. That’s cool. How’d you know how to do that?”

“I took a smelting class at the Y one time. Well, it was between that and water aerobics with my grandmother, so I took the smelting class. It took me a few tries but I think these turned out pretty well. And Ohio gave us some of that tree sap nail polish to stick them to the wood. What up, O-hi-o!”

Miss Ohio did a little dance.

“Very nice,” Taylor said. “Do we have bows?”

Jennifer nodded to Sosie, who held up a curved bow of tree limb strung with seaweed. “We steamed the wood. The first one burned to a crisp. So did the second one. The third one fell in the fire. The fourth one sucked ass. The fifth one I wouldn’t wish on my math teacher, Mr. Buttons, and he is a total chancroid. This is the sixth one.” Sosie held it high overhead like an ancient warrior. “Just like Green Lantern!”

Jennifer put a hand over her heart. “They grow up so quickly.”

“Claim your prizes, Miss Michigan, Miss Illinois.” Taylor offered the makeup bag.

“Sparkle-blue nail polish!” Sosie danced around with the bottle. “Oh yeah! Uh-huh!”

“Butterfly barrettes,” Jennifer said.

“I’ll trade you!” Miss Montana offered the lipstick.

Jennifer clutched the barrettes to her chest. “No way. I love butterflies.”

“Damn,” Miss Montana said.

“Okay, last but not least, Miss New Hampshire, Miss Rhode Island, and Miss Nebraska. You’re up.”

Taylor peeled a banana and waited for their demonstration.

“We’ve got ground defense,” Adina said. “If some big animal runs through here and catches a paw, it’ll be hoisted up into the air in a big hammock.”

“But it will not be harmed,” Mary Lou assured everyone. “It’s a humane containment system.”

“We’ve also dug a pit over here — watch your step!” Petra cautioned. She removed a covering of leaves. Below was a pit about eight feet deep. “Anything running after us can crash right through here and kaboom!”

“It was a lot of digging. But check out my arms!” Mary Lou’s bicep curved with new muscle.

“We should totally make that into a workout video when we get back,” Shanti said.

“Good idea, Miss California,” Taylor agreed. “Goodies.”

The girls stepped up to claim their prizes.

“Blotting sheets,” Petra said.

“Hand lotion!” Mary Lou squealed.

“Miss New Hampshire?” Taylor offered the bag again.

Adina reached in. “Oh, look! It’s a boat with a GPS set for home — awesome!”

“Trade you,” Miss Montana said.

“I was kidding about the boat. It’s bronzer.”

“Ooh!” the girls squealed at once.

“You got the best one,” Miss Ohio lamented.

“Here. Merry Christmas. I come from sallow people. I accept my fate.” Adina handed the bronzer to Miss Montana, who singsonged “Awesome!” and promised to share with her teammates as long as they didn’t all use the brush and get it bacterified, which would give them pimples.

“Teen Dreamers, I am very proud of us. You’ve given us the Department of Teen Dreamland Security. Personally, I know I will sleep better tonight knowing this is here. If anything tries to mess with us, we will show it that Miss Teen Dreamers mean business.”

“What’s your weapon?” Adina pressed.

Taylor cocked her head as if she had just asked the stupidest question in the world. “I am my own weapon, Miss New Hampshire.”

“Ready!” Petra shouted.

The girls stopped what they were doing and went to help Petra with the banner she’d been sewing for many days. “All right, Miss Teen Dreamers. Let’s get that banner a-wavin’ proud like the red, white, and blue!” Shanti balanced on Jennifer’s shoulders, and Adina sat on Nicole’s. They tied the corners to the limbs of two scraggly trees.

“How does it look?” Shanti called down.

Petra’s needlework was evident in the carefully crafted letters: IT’S MISS TEEN DREAM, BITCHES!

Petra stepped back to examine it. She smiled. “Perfect.”