Beauty Queens Part 35

"Man. I thought she was bad before." Nicole shook her head.

The girls pressed on. The jungle was thicker here, darker. Every breath was a struggle.

Shanti gasped. "You guys." She held up Mary Lou's St. Agnes medal.

Adina swallowed hard. Anything could have happened to her out here. "We're going to find her."

"I want to go back," Tiara said. "This isn't fun anymore. I'm scared."

"What if an animal got to her?" Nicole said in hushed tones.

"We're not going back. We're not giving up on her. We're all we've got. Don't you understand?" Adina was near tears. She was exhausted, so exhausted that she thought she imagined the sound. It was the faint rumble of a car engine, like something remembered from a dream. Something that reminded her of normalcy.

A long, Jeep-like vehicle crested the hill, trampling down bushes as it came. The headlights blinded the girls till they had to put up their arms to block the sudden light. They heard the motor stop. A car door opened.

A man in camouflage and mirrored sungla.s.ses blocked the army transport's headlights. He stood, hands at his hips. He wore a rea.s.suring smile.

"Well," he said, "we sure are glad to find you girls."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

In the back of the transport, the girls talked with the manic quickness of those who've been given second chances. "Like, I can't wait to take a shower and put on clean clothes," Shanti said.

"I'm going to catch up on Ragnaroknroll, find my guild," Jennifer said.

"I am going to eat a piece of cake the size of Petra's head," Sosie said.

"I hope you're hungry. My head has a circ.u.mference of twenty-four inches," Petra shouted over the wind, and they all laughed.

It was good. Everything was good - the sun on their faces, the wind drying the sweat on their skin into itchy spots, these people who had come to rescue them, to take them back to civilization and malls and hair removal and Alexandra's Clandestine Closet45 catalogs. Everything would be like it was before.

The transport carried them to the other side of the island and traveled through a barbed wire fence with No TRESPa.s.sING signs posted on it. Two guards in black shirts opened the gates and waved them in, and for a moment, Adina had an uneasy feeling. She caught Nicole's eye and they both looked away quickly, as if neither one wanted to ruin the happiness of this rescue with some distant, probably unfounded fear. The transport stopped at the base of the volcano. Here, the land had been cleared and flattened out.

The agent ushered the girls into a plain white tent outfitted with chairs and a desk. Two a.s.sistants in black shirts offered sweating bottles of water, which the girls drank down in greedy gulps. It seemed that nothing had ever tasted so good. For a moment, there was a fleeting memory of those shirts, but it was gone with the realization that they had been rescued at last.

"Thank heavens we found you girls," the agent said, smiling. The mirrored aviators hid his eyes. "We'd just about given up hope when a satellite picked up the plane's image. You've managed to survive for all these weeks on your own? Outstanding!"

"We had to eat bugs!" Tiara said and shuddered.

"No!"

"We did! Jennifer fought a giant snake."

"Well, I'll be."

"And Petra had to pee on a pirate," Brittani added.

"Could you not make that sound like a fetish site please?" Petra complained, but she was still grinning. They all were. At last! A rescue! There would be shampoo and real beds and food.

Adina looked around at the bustling compound. It was hard to believe that it had been here the entire time. If only they had marched farther, gone looking, they might have been rescued much sooner. But the jungle had been too forbidding, and the girls had stayed close to the beach. Except for Taylor. Taylor! She could be seen by a doctor now.

"We lost one of our friends. Mary Lou. Have you seen her?" Nicole asked before Adina could say anything about Taylor.

"We did," the agent said after a moment's pause.

"I knew she'd be okay," Tiara said, clapping.

"Can we see her?" Shanti asked.

"She's ... already headed back home. On a ship. There was a ship here that took her. She's the one who told us to come looking for you."

"Why wouldn't she come looking, too? Doesn't sound like Mary Lou," Adina said. Something scratched at the door of Adina's subconscious, wanting to get in. Female intuition, her stepfather would say. She wasn't sure of what was on the other side of that door, so she kept it closed.

"People do funny things," the agent said. "Now, if you're anything like my daughters, I know you girls must be dying for a shower."

For a moment, Mary Lou was forgotten as the girls fell into raptures about the simple pleasure of a real shower.

"How old are your daughters?" Shanti asked.

"Uh ... fourteen and sixteen," the agent answered.

"Can we see pictures?" Shanti asked. Normally, she would have said this to be polite, but she found she actually did want to see pictures of this man's daughters. She was not the same Shanti who had arrived on this island.

The man frowned. "I ... uh ... left them in my other wallet."

A college-aged guy in an Ask Me About My Trust Fund T-shirt took a seat and offered the girls a box of cookies, which they scarfed down two at a time.

"Hey, careful there - don't want to get fat."

Jennifer flashed the guy an annoyed look. "Dude, careful we don't roast and eat you."

"Ha!" the Dweeb said. He tried to take back the cookies and Miss New Mexico grabbed hold with both hands.

"No take the cookies. Cookies are the best thing ever! Cookies. Are. Life!"

Reluctantly, the Dweeb let go of the box. "Okay. Kinda scary," he said under his breath. "I'm Harris. Harris Buffington Ewell Davis III."

A woman in camo pants and a black shirt whose name was given as Ms. Smith interrupted. "I'll take you to a place where you can get cleaned up. We ladies have to stick together," she said with a smile. Shanti had the idea that she should be comforted by this comment and this smile, but she wasn't, and the disconnection troubled her. It reminded her of the time in fourth grade when Bethany Williams had said her poncho was "really cool" before dissolving into mean-spirited giggles with the other girls.

"Watch your step," the woman cautioned.

An enormous pipeline snaked over the broken land and disappeared farther into the jungle. It smelled of sulfur and the water looked muddy and diseased.

"What happened here?" Nicole asked.

"Oil and gas pipelines," Ms. Smith explained. "This place is rich with natural resources. And The Corporation is working hard to bring those comforts to America, where they belong."

"Don't they belong here?"

"These resources make our way of life possible!" Ms. Smith chirped with a smile. "Without them, you wouldn't have your bottled vitamin water, your eye shadows, the packaging on your favorite perfume, your colored contact lenses, clothes, hair color, and nail polish."

"What happened to the people who used to live here?" Shanti asked.

"Relocated."

"Where?"

"To places where relocated people go. Trust me, they're better off," Ms. Smith said crisply. She opened the door to a gleaming gym and led them to a large, clean bathroom with individual shower stalls. "Enjoy your showers."

Smiling, Sosie tugged on Jennifer's shirt. "Cool, huh? This looks like something that could be in the Flint Avenger and Sosie, right?"

"It's just the Flint Avenger now," Jennifer said, and pushed ahead.

After they'd showered and shaved, moisturized and conditioned, Agent Jones appeared. "Got a surprise for you girls. Come with me."

Outside the volcano, he lifted the panel in the rock, punching in the code that opened the secret door.

"Whoa. Holy Loch Lomond movie," Jennifer said in awe.

"This is our headquarters," the agent said. The girls entered a gleaming, stainless steel elevator. A pleasant, British woman's voice asked for the floor.

"Four," the agent said, and they rocketed down.

"How many floors are there?"

"Five." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Product development. Marketing. Packaging. Corporate."

"You said five. That's only four."

Agent Jones held up one finger - "Product" - then another - "Development. We're here."

The doors opened into an open room divided by half-wall cubicles and desks. The employees clapped and cheered as the girls came through, and it was almost like walking up the aisles of the hotel ballrooms where most of the girls had performed in various pageants.

"Thanks," Nicole said. She smiled and waved, but it felt odd, like laughing at a joke you no longer found all that funny.

They entered a conference room where Harris sat at a computer. On the wall above his head was a flat-screen TV. A table and chairs dominated the center of the room.

"Hey! You girls smell a lot better - no offense. Have a seat."

The girls settled into the big black chairs.

"Those babies cost five thousand dollars a pop," Harris said. "Ergonomically correct."

"Oh," Tiara said, sitting uncertainly. "Springy."

"Somebody special wants to talk to you," Agent Jones said. "Harris?"

Harris clicked on the screen and Ladybird Hope appeared, wearing a red suit with a flag pin on the lapel. Her hair had been styled into a poufy twist. She waved and her charm bracelet rattled.

"h.e.l.lo, Miss Teen Dreamers! I cannot tell you how happy I personally am to see you. I told the world, I said, 'Don't you count my girls out. A Miss Teen Dream never gives up. She's a bright light in the world!'"

The girls were overcome. Ladybird Hope!

"What do you think of my new suit?" Ladybird asked.

The girls agreed that it was very nice. They were still dazed from the rescue and all that had come after. They talked excitedly, telling Ladybird everything that had happened to them since the crash, about how they, Miss Teen Dreams, had risen above and survived. No. More than survived. Thrived.

Tiara beamed with pride. "Like for our huts, we used engineering and physics. And interior decorating."

"Well, isn't that a kick in the head? That's pretty darn cute."

Tiara felt like she wanted to say something to Ladybird. She wanted to tell her that it wasn't cute. It was awesome. And smart. And really cool that they'd managed to do it all together, without any help from anybody. But these people were here to rescue her, and she didn't want to make waves. So she said, "I put flowers in mine."

Ladybird gave her two thumbs up and smiled. "Fan-tas-tic!"

Tiara knew she should feel good that she made everyone smile like when she was little and did her sparkle hips and blew kisses. But she didn't. She felt like a sellout.

"The good folks at The Corporation there are gonna give y'all a little tour and let you test our new beauty products, and then I have a super surprise for all my Teen Dreamers." Ladybird Hope paused for dramatic effect. "We would like for you to stage the pageant right there on the island. Isn't that something?"

The girls exchanged puzzled looks.

"It'll be a real tribute to what you girls have been through, to let the world see how you triumphed. We think the folks back home would love it. It might be the highest-rated show ever. You girls will be famous!"

"Well, we were kind of hoping to go home as soon as possible ..." Adina started.

Ladybird Hope's expression changed to one of disapproval. "Well. Of course, if that's what you want. I would just think that you would want to say a big thank-you to the folks who rescued you and be a credit to girls everywhere. But if you don't want to, we'll just cancel the pageant this year."

"No, we'll do it," Miss Ohio said.

Ladybird smiled. "Terrific! Oh, I'm so happy. Don't you worry, it's going to be great," Ladybird a.s.sured them with a wink.

"When?" Nicole asked.

"Tomorrow night," Ladybird answered.

"And we could tell them all the stuff we've learned about eating grubs and safe s.e.x and v.a.g.i.n.as," Tiara said.

Petra grinned. "Tiara, you said the V word. Gimme five."

"That would blow their little minds, wouldn't it?" Jennifer said with a smirk. "h.e.l.lo, America. My new platform is Kicking a.s.s, Girl-Style."

"My goodness, I don't know what you girls are talking about, but it hurts my ears! So stop it," Ladybird Hope chided. She put a hand to her heart. "You know what? America needs you girls. It's no secret the world's as messed up as a hockey game played on non-Zambonied ice right now. It needs you to smile and wave and remind us that we are a great nation full of pretty. And that we will not allow any threats to our pretty. No matter what."