CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Gummi bear?” Tiara held out the bag.
Petra shook her head. “Where are we?”
After getting the candy and taking some beauty samples from the product room, they’d taken a door to a hallway and followed the stairs to the mysterious fifth floor and the door they were looking for. But it was locked, and they were stuck in a hallway lit by a dim red light.
“Now what?”
A flashlight beam bounced down the hall: one of the workers making the rounds. His card key bounced against his tubby belly.
“Quick, hide,” Shanti whispered. She grabbed Tiara’s face. “Tiara, can you make a sad face?”
She stuck out her lip.
“Great. When he comes, you make a sad face, tell him you’re lost and need help. And then we’ll clobber him over the head and take his card key.”
“Okay,” Tiara said. The girls ducked behind some large pipes. “Wait … what?”
“Hey!” the guard shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Tiara’s eyes widened and her lips quivered. “I came down here for some gummi bears and I got lost.”
“Really?” the guard said, tucking away his flashlight.
Tiara smiled. “No. Not really. I’m supposed to get you over here so my friends can hit you over the head and take your card key.”
“What?” the guard said.
With a “Kee-yah!” Jennifer leapt up from her hiding place and pinched the guard’s neck near the clavicle.
The guard whirled around. “What the …?”
“Crap. That always works on Star Trek.”
“It’s over here.” Petra pinched the other side of the guy’s neck and he dropped like a sandbag.
“Whoa. How’d you learn to do that?”
She put a hand on her hip. “Please. I’m a transgender former boy-bander. You think I don’t know how to defend myself?”
The girls swiped the card. The door opened and they pulled the guy inside.
“Whoa. Holy secret arsenal, Batman.” Jennifer whistled.
The walls gleamed with guns, assault rifles, grenades … things they’d only seen in blockbuster summer movies.
“I’m guessing The Corporation’s expanding its product line.” Shanti picked up a souped-up assault rifle with a scope on the end, then put it back gently.
“This is insane,” Nicole said.
“What’s really going on?”
“I might ask you the same question, ladies.” Harris stood in the open doorway wearing a Three Stooges T-shirt and plaid golf pants. In his hand was a putter. “What are you doing here?”
“Adina needed a tampon?” Tiara said.
“Huh. Why don’t I believe you?” Harris closed and locked the door. Swinging the putter, he made a slow circle of the room, forcing the girls away into a corner. “See, I think you girls are much smarter and savvier than anybody here knows.” Harris gestured to the walls of guns. “Welcome to our secret room. Got some nice automatic weapons. Grenades. Some beautiful killing machines, really. Here’s my personal favorite.” Harris opened a small steel door and took out a jar of Lady ’Stache Off.
“That’s hair remover,” Petra said.
“Looks like it. Actually, if you change one element, it becomes a pretty powerful explosive. Just needs some sort of charge.”
“Where’s Mary Lou?” Adina demanded.
Harris grinned. “Your friend got a little nosy.”
“I’ll ask you again: Where is she?”
“I’m. Not. Telling.”
Nicole grabbed for one of the guns and pointed it at Harris. Her hands shook. “Where’s Mary Lou?”
Harris lined up a shot with the putter. “Cartridge.”
“What?”
“You need a cartridge for that. Which you do not have.”
“Shoot.” Nicole tossed the gun on the table.
“Wait a minute, why are we all standing here?” Adina asked. “There are more of us than there are of him.”
“But I’ve got this,” Harris said, holding out his putter.
“Well, we’ve got this.” Nicole held the can of hair spray out in front of her.
“Hair spray? That’s your secret weapon? See, this is why women will never end up really having power.” Harris swung the putter and the girls jumped back to avoid the blow. “Because I bring a kick-ass, bone-breaking piece of steel …” Harris swung the putter again, forcing the girls closer to the corner. “… and you think you can take me down with a can of hair spray.”
“Yeah?” Nicole said. Her hands shook.
“Yeah,” Harris said.
“Ever get this shit in your eyes? It burns like hell.” Nicole pressed the nozzle and Harris got a face full of The Corporation’s ’Do Me Right with Long-lasting Hold.
Harris was duct-taped to one of The Corporation’s ergonomically correct chairs. His feet and hands had been secured with panty hose, which had been finished off with sailors’ knots.
“Glad those pirates were useful for something,” Nicole said, tightening the last one.
Jennifer ripped off his maxi-pad gag.
“Ow! Jesus, that hurt!” Harris howled.
Jennifer was unimpressed. “You want to know what pain is? Try running out of Advil when you’ve got a Category Five period. I’ve had cramps that would make grown men beg for a bullet between the eyes.”
“You bitches are all so dead!” Harris snarled.
Adina straddled Harris’s legs, hands on her hips. “Uh, Harris? Hate to break it to you, but you’re not in a prime bargaining position. Now. We don’t want to have to hurt you any more. But if you keep threatening us and telling us lies, I will personally give you a Brazilian.”
“She won’t warm the wax first, either,” Petra said.
Tiara shuddered. “I’ve had so many bikini waxes, I cry every time I see a Popsicle stick.”
Harris cackled low. When no one responded, he cackled louder.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Adina said. “What’s with the creepy laugh?”
“You babes have no idea what’s coming.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Don’t you misunderestimate me!” Harris bellowed.
“I am totally misunderestimating you. You have no idea what’s happening tomorrow night, college-boy.”
“Oh yeah? So I suppose you know that MoMo B. ChaCha is powering toward this island right now on his yacht. He’s here to make a secret arms deal with The Corporation. Tomorrow, just before the new Miss Teen Dream is crowned, our black shirts dressed as ROC soldiers will charge out of the jungle, gunning down America’s best and brightest beauty queens. We’ll get it all on camera. We will go to war to avenge your deaths and set up a Corporation-run stronghold in the ROC. Ha! Wait. I just said that out loud, didn’t I? Damn.”
“They’re gonna kill us?” Tiara said. “That’s so mean.”
Shanti sat next to Harris. “So let me get this straight: You booted the indigenous people off this land. You screwed up the environment. You tested products on helpless animals. Your ‘Made in America’ label is really made offshore. And now you’re dealing illegal arms to a country we’ve levied sanctions against and you plan to murder us and frame them for it so you can go to war and take over their resources? Any rights you didn’t violate or laws you didn’t break?”
Harris thought for a second. “Our coffee is fair trade.”
“What happened to Mary Lou?” Shanti pressed.
“We took her and her eco-warrior boyfriend and tied them up over a piranha tank and slowly lowered them in.”
Jennifer whistled. “Wow. You really have seen too many Loch Lomond movies.”
“Take us to her right now,” Adina demanded.
“You’re too late. They should be fish food by now.”
“Take us there.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No,” Harris said, swiveling his head.
“Yes,” Adina mimicked.
Nicole brandished the hair spray. “Show us where you’ve stashed Mary Lou.”
“I’ve got a pumice stone and I’m not afraid to use it,” Jennifer said.
“Full. Body. Wax,” Petra whispered directly into Harris’s ear.
“Okay! Okay. She’s down below, in the caves.”
“Just for that, you don’t get a gummi bear,” Tiara said and finished off the last one.
Adina yanked Harris to his feet. “Take us there now.”
They kept Harris’s hands together with panty hose and he led them to a secret elevator that took them down one more floor. It opened on a secret, high-tech laboratory hidden in a cave.
“Whoa,” Jennifer said, taking in the cave’s gleaming high-tech devices. “Total tech porn.”
“Oh, no,” Tiara cried. She pointed to the piranha tank. The hook that had held Mary Lou and Tane was completely submerged. The remains of Mary Lou’s sash bobbed on the water. A ravenous piranha surfaced briefly to eat several floating sequins.
“We’re too late,” Nicole said, a catch in her voice.
“She was my best friend.” Adina was near tears. “I’m so sorry, Mary Lou. So, so sorry.”
“I thought we outlawed that word.” Mary Lou’s head poked up from behind a rock. Her hair was disheveled and her face was flushed. “What’s up, Teen Dreamers?”
“Mary Lou!” Adina rushed toward her friend.
“Wait! Hold on a sec.” Mary Lou dropped behind the rock. In a second, she stood, hurriedly buttoning her top. A young man in a similar state of quick-dress rose next to her. “You guys, this is Tane, my boyfriend.”
Tane waved. “H’lo.”
The girls did not move. Could not move. They looked from Mary Lou to Tane and back again.
“They’re staring because they thought you were imaginary,” Mary Lou told him. “Also, because you’re hot.”
“Objectifying me much?”
“No!” Mary Lou said quickly. “Well, a little.”
“ ’S all right. I’ve objectified you in my head plenty.”
“Awwww. Thanks, sweetie.” Mary Lou kissed Tane and wrapped her leg around his waist.
“Okay, we could come back in an hour if you need more time,” Jennifer said.
“Could you?” Mary Lou managed between kisses.
“No. That was a joke.”
The girls rushed to hug Mary Lou, except for Petra, who kept watch over Harris with the can of hair spray at the ready. They talked in a torrent: “Gonna kill us … MoMo B. ChaCha … cameras …” “If MoMo’s coming in on a yacht and we can get to it, we can use it to get off the island,” Shanti said.
“But they’ll be counting all of us for the pageant. They’ll notice if one of us is gone,” Nicole reminded them.
“Tane and I can do it,” Mary Lou said. “They think we’re dead.”
“Where’s the ship going to dock?” Petra asked Harris. She raised the hair spray.
“Down the beach about a hundred yards. There’s a secret docking cave.”
“You have a secret docking cave and you couldn’t afford to give my mom overtime and dental?” Jennifer pressed Petra’s finger on the nozzle and gave the hair spray can a squirt. It got Harris in the ear.
“Ahhhh! That’s cold!”
Jennifer narrowed her eyes. “You would know.”
“This cave leads out to the water,” Mary Lou said. “We’ll take this ledge out and swim down to the shore, be waiting for them when they come. As soon as you can, make a beeline for the docking cave.”
“We have to go back out the front and get the others. The guards only let us in for gummi bears and tampons. If we don’t go back up, they’ll come looking for us.”
“Okay. Everybody play it cool. We can’t let on that we know the plan.”
“What plan?” Tiara said.
They all looked at Tiara. “Tiara, you can’t say anything, okay?” Adina pleaded.
“You mean pretend? Blow kisses and put on my sparkle hips like when I was little?”
“Like your life depends on it. Because it does for a while.”
“What should we do about Harris the Misunderestimated over here?” Jennifer asked, eyeing him.
Mary Lou grabbed the ropes that had held her to Tane over the piranha tank. “I’ve got a few ideas.”
They left Harris tied up behind the rock where he wouldn’t be seen by anyone. Mary Lou secured the maxi pad over his mouth. “Bet you’re sorry The Corporation gave us wings now, aren’t you?”
“Take these flare guns. They might come in handy,” Petra said, grabbing two from the wall and tossing them to the girls.
Mary Lou and Tane swam out into the night ocean. And the other girls gathered their tampons, gummi bears, and beauty samples — a smokescreen of female products — and headed back up to the surface.