Beauty Queens (18 page)

“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 hella 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 embarrassing 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 nobody 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 shells, 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, scraping 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.

“I used seaweed to reinforce the walls on my lean-to,” Miss Montana chimed in. “And worked on my tan.”

“I peed in the ocean,” Brittani said.

Miss Arkansas made a face. “Which part?”

Brittani looked confused. “All of it.”

“I know this is going to sound weird, but this is kind of fun,” Nicole said, grinning. She stuck a piece of fish on the end of her stick and turned it in the fire.

“All we need now is a scary movie to watch,” Mary Lou said.

Miss Ohio snapped her fingers. “Ooh, like that one about the crazy stalker guy who hunts girls down and kills them off one by one.”

“Which one?” Adina snarked.

“I think it was called
I See Your Naked Blood Naked.’
Miss Ohio tossed bark peels into the fire. “The main girl has to strip down to her underwear to get away from the killer.”

“You’re thinking of
Sorority House Bloodbath
,” Miss Montana said.

“No,” Shanti piped up.”
Sorority House Bloodbath
is the one with Verity Bootay
²⁵
where she tricks the psycho killer into watching her do a sexy striptease before she nabs him through the eye with her stiletto.”

“Verity Bootay is kind of hot,” Jennifer said.

“What about
Shop to Kill?
I love that one!” Brittani said.

“Is that where the killer straps the girl to a dentist’s chair and uses a drill on her, but first he says, ‘Now, this might sting a little… .’?”

“Huh-uh,” Nicole said. “That’s
Dentist of the Damned,
and the dentist lures ugly girls to his office with a promise to make them pretty, then he tortures and kills them. The sexy girl who’s only going there to ask about cosmetic dentistry for her little sister who was born with a mouth defect is the one who survives. But only after she accidentally has sex with him.”

“Hold up. How do you
accidentally
have sex with somebody?” Adina scoffed. “Is she all, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see your penis there’?”

Tiara squealed and waved her hands. “Don’t say that word!”

“What? Accidentally? Sorry? Penis?”

“Gah!” Tiara put her fingers in her ears.

“What about
phallic
?” Petra teased. “Like, ‘Yon volcano is quite phallic, Lady Tiara.’” Tiara looked confused.”
Phallic
means penislike,” Petra explained.

“Ooh,” Tiara said.

“Right! I remember,” Miss Arkansas said.”
Shop to Kill
is the one where the girls are trapped in the department store and the killer hunts them down in every department and, like, strangles one with a thong and kills another one with a makeup brush through the head and there’s, like, the most
shut up
clothes ever!”

“The ribbon vest?”

“Shut. Up.”

“So shut up.”

“I thought there was a shower scene.”

“There’s always a shower scene.”

“I miss showers.”

“And shopping.”

“Movies.”

“Pizza.”

“School.” Everyone stared at Shanti. “What? I like school.” “Me, too,” Nicole said and gave Shanti a fist bump, which Shanti fumbled. “You sure you’re not white, Bollywood?”

“I miss getting in my car and just driving without anybody telling me what to do or how loud I can play the radio or asking if I’ve practiced piano.”

“I miss practicing piano!” “I miss my friends.”

“I miss my playlists I spent two days making and posting to UConnect
²⁶
.”

“I miss my bed.”

“Flip-flops.”

“Books.”

“Basketball.”

“Shopping.”

“My laptop.”

“Frozen yogurt.”

“Guys.”

“I so miss guys.”

“Yeah,” Jennifer said dreamily. “Sometimes they have nice trucks.”

“I wouldn’t want any guys to see me now. My pits are totally tragic.”

“My legs are, like, man-hairy.”

“No joke. I thought you’d put on kneesocks.”

“You think that’s bad, you should see my —”

“Stop.”

The girls screamed with laughter. It was the first time some of them had laughed in days, and it felt good.

“You guys don’t know about hair trauma. I am a black woman without her grease. My weave is all kinds of messed up right now,” Nicole said.

“I like it natural,” Petra said.

“My mom would freak out. I got my first relaxer at five.”

“Harsh.”

“She wanted me to blend in,” Nicole said with a sigh. “Have you ever been to Colorado? I think there are ten black people in the whole state. I don’t miss people looking at me funny.”

The wind caught the fire and it flared. Somewhere in the jungle, an unidentified bird trilled, cawed, and fell silent.

“I don’t miss the baton twirling,” Brittani said softly. “Or the teeth bleaching.”

“I don’t miss having my dad yell at me for messing up during my talent program. If I make one little mistake, he gets real upset and says I don’t appreciate what he and my mom have sacrificed for me so I can do this,” Tiara said.

“What
they’ve
sacrificed,” Petra scoffed.

“That sounds like
my
mom,” Miss Arkansas said. “She’s all, ‘Sparkle, sparkle, sparkle!’ Sometimes I want to say, ‘If you like this so much, why don’t you put down the donuts and get up here and sparkle yourself?’”

Miss Montana stared into the fire. “Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it’s so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, ‘Are you on the rag or something?’ And it’s like I want to say, ‘No. I’m just pissed off right now. Can’t I just be pissed off? How come that’s not okay for me?’ Like my dad will say, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re hysterical.’ And I’m totally not being hysterical! I’m just mad. And he’s the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not. Anyway.” Miss Montana pasted on an embarrassed half smile. “Sorry for the rant.”

“Why do you have to be sorry?” Nicole asked.

“Well … I don’t know.”

“Why do girls always feel like they have to apologize for giving an opinion or taking up space in the world? Have you ever noticed that?” Nicole asked. “You go on websites and some girl leaves a post and if it’s longer than three sentences or she’s expressing her thoughts about some topic, she usually ends with, ‘Sorry for the rant’ or ‘That may be dumb, but that’s what I think.’”

“I say
sorry
all the time. The other day, this lady bumped into me with her grocery cart, and I said I was sorry,” Mary Lou said, shaking her head.