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Nicole started to say, “Fine. Go ahead.” But she was tired of bowing to everyone’s needs but her own. “You know what? I’ll go somewhere else, then.” She grabbed her new drum.
“I knew it. You’re practicing,” Shanti said in triumph. “Trying to get ahead.”
“What? No! I just made this,” Nicole said, and she wondered why she was even explaining herself. “Why are you following me? You don’t even like me.”
“That’s not tr —”
“Please. You have been eyeballing me ever since we met. Don’t lie. It’s just the two of us out here. You can stop with the We’re All One Big Happy World routine.”
Shanti’s smile faded. “Okay. Since we’re being honest. This is a competition. And I am in it to win.”
“Okay. I can get with that. But you don’t give the other girls a hard time.”
“Because they’re not my competition. You are,” Shanti leapt ahead of Nicole on the path. “Come on. You know they’ll never let two brown girls place. And then there are the similarities: You want to be a doctor; I want to be a scientist. You’re doing Nigerian drumming; I’m doing Indian dance. I’ll bet your platform is something nonthreatening like saving animals or teaching kids with cancer to make stuffed animals.”
“Cleaning up litter,” Nicole admitted.
“You see?”
“Hold on. I need this pageant for the scholarship money. So I can go to medical school.”
“And I don’t need the money?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything about you. Because you’re like this big mystery. I’m getting to know everybody else. But you, you’re like a window display for an empty store, if you ask me.”
Shanti’s eyes burned. “Maybe I like to keep myself to myself.”
“Fine. Do that. And I’m going for a walk. By myself. Just go on back to camp.”
“I can’t,” Shanti said, wide-eyed.
Nicole put a hand on her hip. She sighed. “Why?”
“I’m stuck.”
“Stuck being unpleasant?”
“No. I mean I am literally stuck. I can’t move my feet.” A hint of panic worked its way into Shanti’s voice. “I think this is quicksand!”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “C’mon. That’s just a desert island trope.”
“Well, right now, it’s the desert island trope that’s sucking me down. Would you help me out of here?”
“For real? Quicksand?”
Shanti screamed as she slipped down another inch. The quicksand was up to her knees. “Ohmigod! I’m, like, totally going under! Would you just freaking help me, please?” Shanti’s careful, vaguely British-inflected Indian accent was gone. In its place was pure California Valley girl.
Nicole’s astonishment gave way to a smirk.” Freaking. Is that Hindi or Tamil or what? Did your grandmother teach you that? Was it part of your family’s Ohmigod-totally-awesome-popadam recipe handed down through the generations?”
Shanti stretched her arm out and wiggled her fingers for a vine. She fell short by an inch. “I am so totally going to kill you when I get out of here. Like, for real.”
Nicole put a hand to her chest in pretend shock. “No way? For real? I’m, like, totally scared!”
“Help me!”
“Why? You never help anybody else.”
“You won’t help a sister out?”
