Beauty Queens

“The girl?” the black shirt answered.

“No! Under that. Like a whine or a beep.”

It was hard to tell with Taylor doing a monologue of crazy, but Adina noticed it, too — a faint, steady beep, like a tiny alarm clock.

“Find out where that’s coming from!” Agent Jones demanded via the earpiece.

“What’s going on?” Petra whispered.

“Not sure yet,” Adina whispered back.

“In the pageant of life, a girl fixes the sequins. Fixes. Fixes. So much to fix.” Under the walkie-talkie static, Taylor’s voice was almost little-girlish. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”

“Where is she?” Nicole whispered.

Adina shook her head. She didn’t see Taylor anywhere, and she was afraid of drawing too much attention. Right now, the black shirts were distracted. Distracted was a good thing. Some of them had fanned out to look for Taylor and the source of the beeping. On the sidelines, Agent Jones looked angry and tense as he barked terse orders. The girls needed to use this momentary chaos to their advantage, but how?

“I will represent to the best of my ability the … the … now, come on, Miss Texas!” Taylor giggled. “The, um, dreams of the ultimate sparkle and circle-turn and wave!”

Adina surveyed the scene desperately, looking for a possible exit strategy. She glanced past Miss Miss, then came back again. At first, she could scarcely make out the message. She had to block the light to get a better look. But there was no mistaking it, and a small ha bubbled up inside Adina.

The note had been scrawled in red lipstick on the back of Miss Miss’s sash where only the girls could see it. It was just one word: Run.

“Oh, Taylor, you beautiful, beautiful bitch.” Adina motioned to the others, shouting. “Teen Dreamers! Fall back! Fall back!”

The girls bolted, scattershot, toward the jungle.

“It’s a whole new world of pretty. …” Taylor sang over the walkie-talkie.

“Hey!” One of the black shirts trained his gun on the girls just as another black shirt approached Miss Miss.

“I think that beep’s coming from inside… .”

“Thank you. Thank you. I love you all,” Taylor said.

At that same instant, the watch inside Miss Miss beeped from one to zero, and the most busted-ass beauty queen ever exploded in a spectacular fireball.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Adina’s ears rang and she was covered in a shower of dirt, scorched sticks, and sequins. Chaos. It was chaos. The beach was on fire. Staccato gunfire punctuated clauses of shouting. Black shirts fought with MoMo’s real guards. The remaining Corporation employees screamed and ran, panicked, along the beach. A cameraman asked if he should be getting this, and a black shirt answered by bashing in his camera.

Through the smoke, Adina caught a glimpse of Taylor. She swung down from the tree where she had been hiding and stood at the edge of the jungle, mesmerized. Tendrils of light screamed down from the sky. The white stars of it were reflected in the glassy blue of her eyes. “Pretty …” Taylor said in awe just before the explosives took out a section of trees and sent Adina flying back on her butt. Agent Jones peered into the smoke and pointed to the girls. He signaled his black shirts.

“Time to go, Miss Texas!” Adina warned.

Like a switch had been thrown, Taylor turned and ran. Adina scrambled to her feet and followed the faded glitter of Taylor’s gown into the jungle.

Shanti and Nicole had dodged left in the melee. Now they were running deep into the jungle with a phalanx of black shirts behind them.

“Are they still there?” Shanti called. Her lungs burned and her legs were cut from switches.

In answer, a bullet blasted a chunk from a nearby tree and the girls sped up, twisting and turning through the green.

“I can’t …” Shanti said. “Can’t run …”

“We have to keep moving.”

“You go.”

“Not without you.” Nicole looked around for something — a weapon, a hole, a hiding spot. Through the trees, she saw one of the totems. “Just a little farther, Bollywood.”

They found their way to the ruined temple and slipped between the columns, hiding. The moon wasn’t cooperating; bright and full, it might as well have been a spotlight. Their breath came out in small rips. The men and their guns had arrived. If the girls ran, they’d be easy targets. Their only hope was to remain hidden, and that wasn’t much hope at all. Nicole reached out for Shanti’s hand. Shanti closed her eyes tightly. Her lips moved in silent appeal to whatever ancestral spirits might still live on in this place.