Beauty Queens Part 16

Sosie stretched out her arm as if wielding some invisible energy source. "I have a secret weapon. A secret weapon ... of dance!"

"Ooh!" Jennifer mock shuddered.

"You will be powerless against it."

Jennifer dropped to the ground and sat, arms crossed, a defiantly amused expression playing across her face.

"Okaaay ..." Sosie said in warning. She stood perfectly still, her hands held stiffly before her chest, her head tipped to one side, a blank expression on her doll-like face. With startling precision, Sosie's feet began to move one way while her torso inched the other direction. Her hands jerked up and down like pistons. "Dance, earthling, dance."

Jennifer's mouth twitched toward a smile. "Are you doing ... the robot?" She spelled out robot. "Oh. My. G.o.d."

Sosie frowned. "Robot. Is. Sad. Because silly b.i.t.c.h. Will. Not. Dance."

With that, Sosie dropped quickly to her knees and backed up, moving with tremendous skill. It was as if she were made of liquid and elastic. Her arms worked independently of her shoulders, and her neck swiveled back and forth like a pendulum. Somehow, she incorporated a mechanical beauty queen wave, which exploded into a motion where she seemed to pull herself up by an invisible string. It was ridiculous - and amazing.

"Sad. Sad. Sad." Sosie lurched toward Jennifer, who laughed.

"That is messed up! Get away!"

"Dance, silly b.i.t.c.h," Sosie intoned.

She made a strange whirring sound and watched wide-eyed as her arm shot out, machinelike, toward Jennifer's. She pulled Jennifer to her feet, and this time Jen didn't object. Sosie snaked an arm around Jennifer's waist and bent her side to side as if they were a robot couple taking a turn around some factory dance floor.

"Robot. Getting. Happy. Robot. Like. Girl. Who. Can't. Dance."

"Hey!" Jennifer said, but she couldn't stop laughing.

"Robot girl give rhythm chip for disability," Sosie said, starting to lose it. "Do not let bad-dancing disability define you, bad-dancing girl. We will have benefit concert to help you. Can't-Dance-For-s.h.i.t-A-Thon."

Both girls laughed uncontrollably - full, body-shaking guffaws. In the laughter, the girls' feet became entangled and they fell to the ground, Sosie on top of Jennifer, their faces separated by no more than an inch of warm jungle air. Jennifer looked into Sosie's eyes. A small, involuntary sigh escaped. Sosie felt the breath soft and warm on her face and something fluttered deep inside her. A dance she did not yet know had begun.

Sosie tensed and jumped to her feet. "Robot leave girl alone now."

"Thank G.o.d," Jennifer said, but she didn't mean it.

They glanced nervously at each other.

"Maybe you could teach me?" Jennifer signed.

Sosie smiled. "Sure," she signed back.

The bird scrabbled into view. Seeing the girls, it squawked and darted into the dense jungle growth. With a war cry, Sosie grabbed her spear, and she and Jennifer ran after it, full-bore, without second-guessing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Brittani raced into Petra's hut, her voice full of alarm. "Petra, come quick! Tiara's freaking out!"

A crowd had gathered around the hut Tiara shared with Brittani.

"What's going on?" Petra asked.

"Tiara grabbed the machete and started going all women's prison movie on her hair," Miss Ohio informed her. "She said something about sparkle hips and pretty feet and princess hair."

"She won't let anybody in. She keeps waving the machete around," Brittani said. "And the earrings I wanted to wear are in there."

"Why me?" Petra asked.

"She likes you," Brittani answered.

"She thinks I'm a freak of nature."

"I know. She says she's a freak, too, and you're the only one who would understand."

Petra went inside. Tiara sat on a rock, sawing through a section of hair with the machete. Her hair was a mix of short and long pieces. She pointed the machete at Petra.

"Whoa! Whoa, there. Can't a friend just drop in and say hi?"

Tiara blinked. She gave a vague smile. "Oh, hi, Petra. Come on in."

"So. Going for a new 'do?"

"Yeah. Something new," she said in an empty voice. A clump of hair hit the sand. "My parents are gonna be so p.i.s.sed, though."

"Your parents aren't here. Can I have the machete?" "Huh-uh." Tiara pulled a long piece of hair in front of her face and examined it. "Split ends. Guess I'll have to get some princess hair when I get back."

"Princess hair?"

"That's what my mom calls the hairpieces we use. Princess hair. They cost a lot, about five or six hundred dollars."

Petra made a whistling sound.

"The dresses, too. And you need new dresses for each pageant."

Petra did the math in her head. "You could start a business on that. Or pay for college. Well, state college."

Tiara hacked off another bit of hair.

"Hey, could I see that awesome knife for a sec? It's so cool!"

"No, thank you. I like the knife." More hair hit the sand.

Petra needed to distract Tiara. She glanced around the hut for something that might help and noticed that Tiara had bobby pinned fat, blue flowers to the walls. It was crazy-cool and very adorable. "Wow, you did this?"

Tiara looked up for a moment and gave a weak smile. "Mmm-hmm. I wanted to give my hut a jungle theme."

"Tiara, I think they've all got a jungle theme," Petra said. "But yours is definitely the most creative. And h.e.l.la cute."

"You think?" Tiara seemed to come alive. The knife stopped its mutilations. "Can I tell you something? I kinda always wanted to be an interior decorator."

"You'd be great at it."

The empty stare returned to Tiara's eyes. She flicked the blade against her arm, drawing blood.

"Hey. Don't do that. Please."

"My parents want me to do the Miss USA pageant after I'm too old for this one," she said.

Petra sidled up next to her. "Is that what you want to do?"

Tiara gave the smallest of shrugs. "It's all I know how to do. I did my first pageant when I was two weeks old."

"Two weeks!" Petra sputtered.

"Mmm-hmm. But my parents said I really really wanted to do it. They could tell by the way I was crying."

"Babies cry. That's pretty much their job description."

"Everything they did, they did for me. Because I loved doing it," Tiara whispered. She sliced a jagged arc across a new section of hair.

"How do you know?"

"They told me. They said I was always perfect and happy and so good. Except for once. Only once."

"What happened?" Petra kept her eyes on the knife in Tiara's hands.

"It was at a Mega-Glamour Pageant. We'd just come off a Glitter Pageant and before that a Miss Pizzazz Pageant. I was really tired. And when it was almost my time, I threw myself down on the carpet at the Holiday Inn and pitched a fit. I just didn't want all those people looking at me. It was like, the more they looked at me, the less I felt like anybody really saw me. Does that sound stupid?"

"No," Petra said. "Not at all."

"My mom was all, 'Come on now, pretty girl. It's time to do your sparkle hips. You know the judges love your sparkle hips. Don't you want to be Mommy's good little girl and blow kisses and get a crown?' Then my dad told me I was his special princess and he'd buy me a big pink teddy bear if I'd go onstage and show everybody how good I could dance to 'Mama's Gotta Go-Go.' I still wouldn't get up."

"So what happened?"

Tiara dug her big toe into the sand. "My mom said I was embarra.s.sing her. That she guessed the other girls just wanted it a little more than me. My dad said those dresses cost a lot of money and that's why he was working two jobs. They both said they were doing this for me and not them and they'd sacrificed a lot for my dream."

"Wow. Guilt trip much?" Petra said. "And did you get up?"

"No. I kept pitching a fit."

"Good for you."

Tiara sniffled as a tear rolled down her cheek and plopped into the sand. "That's when my mom told me that I was being a bad little girl and n.o.body loved bad little girls. So I'd better straighten up, stop crying, be quiet, and get my best smile on, or she was gonna sell all my crowns and trophies." Tiara sniffled again. She wiped her eyes so quickly it was like it didn't happen. "I stopped crying. Mama hurried me off to get my spray tan and this lady named Mirabella put on my eyelashes and makeup. My mom gave me my princess hair and sprayed it up high. Daddy put the flipper back over my teeth so my smile would be all perfect. And I went out in my big, blue, fluffy petticoat dress, and swished my sparkle hips, and blew kisses to the judges with a wink. That night, I won Miss Grand Supreme."

"Does that come with fries?"

"My daddy bought me that pink teddy bear but I never liked it. I used to beat it up." Tiara wiped her nose on her arm. She looked up at Petra through a broken curtain of hair. "You sure you want to be a girl? It's a lot of work."

"Yeah. I know."

"Don't tell anybody, but sometimes, I just don't want to sparkle."

"That's okay."

"This is all I know how to do."

"That's not true." Petra gestured to the flower-bedazzled hut.

Tiara smiled a little. "Do you really think my hut is cute?"

"Are you kidding me? It's awesome."

"Thank you." Tiara reached over and took one of the flowers from the wall. It was a deep blue tinged with black around the petals. She pinned it to Petra's hair like an old-fashioned movie star. "You look pretty."

"Thanks."

Tiara closed her eyes and blew out five sharp exhales. Then she opened her eyes again. "I'm a winner, I'm a winner, I'm a winner," she intoned. She fingered a section of freshly hacked hair. "I guess I really messed up my hair, huh?"

"Well, you could start a whole new career as a deranged Muppet. Okay. Not funny. Sorry."

Tiara bit her bottom lip. "Can you fix it? I don't care what you do. I just want something different."

Tiara swung the machete around and Petra jumped back. "Let's be careful with the sharp objects, okay?"

"Sorry."

Petra wielded the machete with surprising grace. Chunks of bleach-blond hair hit the sand. Tiara's hair was darker underneath and there were bits that had been kissed by the sun. At last, Petra stood back and wiped the sweat from her forehead. "All done."

Tiara's 'do was short and spiky with a longer strip sticking up in the middle, warrior-style. Petra held the machete sideways. Tiara gazed at her reflection in it. She ran her hands across her scalp, over and back, examining her head from left and right, and Petra braced herself for sobbing. Instead, she smiled and her face opened like a blossom.

"I guess this isn't princess hair," Tiara said.

"Sure it is. It's warrior princess hair."

And Petra tucked a flower above Tiara's ear.

That night, the girls cooked up a dinner of slightly burned fish, grubs, and bulrushes. For dessert, they scooped the sweetmeat from coconut sh.e.l.ls, licking the juice from their fingers. The fire sent up wispy smoke messengers that vanished before they cleared the tree-tops. The girls were taking turns with the pumice stone, sc.r.a.ping it along the ends of sticks to make spears. The air was warm, the sound of the waves soothing. And they fell into contented conversation, as if they'd been lucky enough to con all their parents into letting them have a colossal sleepover with no supervision.

Jennifer pretended her hand was a microphone. "Miss New Mexico, can you tell the audience about your day?"

Miss New Mexico adopted a fake-cheery voice and an artificially wide smile. "Well, Fabio, judges, I spent my day digging for grubs in the most disgusting mud you can possibly imagine. Then I helped build a desalination still. Oh, and my shoes are by Cheri of Paris."

"I made a hut out of mud, palm fronds, and ripped-up swimwear. And walking in the sand is toning my calves while I work!" said Miss Arkansas.