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“Me, too.”
Shanti rested her head against the bank and let her body float out in front of her. “Okay, secret want? Like, pinkie-swear-you-can’t-tell secret?”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Who am I going to tell?”
“I kind of want to be a DJ.”
Nicole laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“DJ? Really?”
“Everything in my life has always been about the goal, about being perfect and not letting the seams show. But, like, with DJing? It’s about finding that groove. It’s like you have to play around. It’s, like, process.”
“Like, that’s deep.”
“Shut up!” Shanti laughed. “If we were up onstage right now in front of the judges, you know what I would say when they asked me my life goals? I would say, ‘You know what? Let me get back to you. I’m still figuring it out.’ We should wash this stuff off now. I can barely move my lips.”
The girls splashed their faces with warm water, rubbing off all the clay. Nicole ran a finger over her cheeks.
“Wow. That really works. My skin is silky smooth34.”
“Yeah. I might have to make this part of my skincare line. Shanticeuticals. I could do a whole cosmetics line for ethnic skin. The packaging would be killer! Sort of a henna tattoo thing?” Shanti said.
Nicole laughed. “Good. You’re back. For a second there, I was starting to worry.”
“I still like to win,” Shanti said, grinning. “I’m not saying I’m not, like, totally Type A. I just need a B side, too.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Just promise me that Shanticeuticals will not have a bleaching cream.”
Shanti held up three fingers in a scout’s-honor pose. “No bleaching cream.”
Nicole put up her fist. “Bump me, Bollywood.”
“Namaste, sassy black sidekick,” Shanti said, and gave Nicole’s fist a thump with hers. She pulled herself out of the water, squeezed the water from her hair, and loosely plaited it. “What do you want for dinner — grubs or bulrush?”
“A cheeseburger,” Nicole said. “And fries.”
“When we get back, I’m eating everything. Twice.”
“That sounds like the best plan ever.”
Arm in arm, Shanti and Nicole walked back toward the beach camp. Behind them, the wind swooped down from the painted mouths on the hill over the ruined land as if it could reach out fingers to tap them on their shoulder, turn them around. To warn them.
Jennifer stared at the radio. “Work with me,” she pleaded. With a sigh, she took off the cover again. How she wished she had a sonic screwdriver or a superhero’s radio-fixing powers. Jennifer tried to remember all she’d learned both at her mother’s plant and from comic books. She touched two wires and got a small shock.
“Ow!” she said, shaking her finger. The radio blurbled to life. “Oh my God. I did it,” she said. “I fixed the radio. Hey, you guys! I got a signal!”
The girls ran to Jen, crowding around the radio. Taylor pushed her way through to the front.
“Listen,” Jen said. Beneath the static, the girls could hear a whisper of sound.
“It’s too soft. See if you can get a stronger signal, Miss Michigan,” Taylor said.
Jennifer made a few gestures to Sosie up in the tree to adjust the makeshift antenna. Jen twisted the knobs, listening for some heartbeat of sound. The radio answered in static and loud hisses, like a radiator coming to life on the first cold day of fall. A blurp of an old country and western song thrilled everyone for a moment.
“I go out walkin’ after midnight… .“Nicole warbled along. “Ooh, I love Patsy Cline!”
