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“I miss practicing piano!” “I miss my friends.”
“I miss my playlists I spent two days making and posting to UConnect26.”
“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.”
o;Verity Bootay is kind of hot,” Jennifer said.
