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“Roland Me’sognie2,” Adina said, and she honestly couldn’t figure out why. She didn’t care about the stupid brand. That was her mother’s influence. Shock. It had to be the shock.
“If I can find my suitcase, I’ve got an extra pair of sneakers in there. I’m a size eight.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I like to be helpful. It’s sort of a Nebraska thing. My pageant sponsor says I’ve got a real good chance at Miss Congeniality this year.”
“Miss Congeniality represents the true heart of the pageant,” Adina found herself repeating from the Miss Teen Dream manual. She vaguely remembered that she used to make a gagging motion at that, but she was too dazed for snarkiness just now. Dazed because, yes, when she’d been looking for her shoe, she’d seen bodies in the water. Lifeless bodies.
“Miss Congeniality is an ambassador of smiles,” Mary Lou said in a choked voice.
“It’ll be okay,” Adina said, even though she was pretty sure that this was the textbook definition of so not okay. “I think we should find everybody else.”
Mary Lou wiped her nose on the torn chiffon of her sleeve and followed Adina along the crescent of beach. The air smelled of smoke. A blackened metal wing lay on the sand. Sparkly evening gowns floated on the tide like jellyfish skin, the shininess attracting the curiosity of the seagulls who swooped over them in a repeated figure eight. Girls in various states of bedraggled dotted the sand like exotic, off-course birds. The contents of opened suitcases and flung purses were strewn across the beach. A red-white-and-blue, fringed baton-twirler’s dress hung from a tree. A soggy beauty whose sash identified her as Miss Ohio stumbled out of the surf and sank to her knees, coughing up water and bile.
“Oh my God,” Adina muttered. She knew she should do something here; she just couldn’t remember what. The Corporation’s Miss Teen Dream plane had been flying them to Paradise Cove for the Forty-first Annual Miss Teen Dream Pageant. They were to film some fun-in-the-sun promotional pieces, ride the waterslides, and practice their performance numbers. They had all just arrived in Florida the night before, and that morning, at ten A.M., fifty beaming girls in outfits adorned with something emblematic of their states had boarded the plane. Adina had wanted to put New Hampshire’s famous poet Robert Frost on her outfit, but her mother and Alan had said there were no poets among the judges, and now her dress had an image of the White Mountains that ranged disastrously across her 36DDs. She’d sat on the plane, her arms folded over her chest, hating that she’d been talked into wearing it. Then came the bang and the smoke, the screams, the falling, the exit doors opening, the sensation of tumbling through the air and landing in a mound of warm sand. How many had made it out? What had happened to the pilots, the chaperones, the Corporation film crew? Where were they now?
A voice with a strong twang rang out. “All right, Miss Teen Dreamers! Yoo-hoo! Over here! I’m wigglin’ my fingers for y’all’s attention! Could y’all come on over here, please?”
The waving goddess stood outlined by the smoking metal wing as if she were a model in a showroom of plane wreckage. She was tall and tanned, her long blond hair framing her gorgeous face in messy waves. Her teeth were dazzlingly white. Across the midriff of her dress was a sheer mesh inset of a Lone Star Flag. The girls wandered over, drawn to the command her beauty bestowed. “Y’all come on down and gather round, horseshoe formation — thank you. Some of y’all can fill in here in front where there are gaps.”
The girls did as they were told, happy that someone had taken the reins.
“Hi. I’m Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins, and I’m Miss Teen Dream Texas, the state where dreams are bigger and better — nothing against y’all’s states. I’m a senior at George Walker Bush High School and I hope to pursue a career as a motivational speaker.”
There was polite, automatic applause. A dazed girl beside Adina said, “I want to pursue a career in the exciting world of weight-management broadcast journalism. And help kids not have cancer and stuff.”
Miss Texas spoke again: “Okay, Miss Teen Dreamers, I know we’re all real flustered and everything. But we’re alive. And I think before anything else we need to pray to the one we love.”
A girl raised her hand. “J. T. Woodland3?”
“I’m talkin’ about my personal copilot, Jesus Christ.”
“Someone should tell her personal copilot that His landings suck,” Miss Michigan muttered. She was a lithe redhead with the pantherlike carriage of a professional athlete.
“Dear Jesus,” Taylor started. The girls bowed their heads, except for Adina.
“Don’t you want to pray?” Mary Lou whispered.
“I’m Jewish. Not big on the Jesus.”
“Oh. I didn’t know they had any Jewish people in New Hampshire. You should make that one of your Fun Facts About Me!”
Adina opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Ahem. Dear Jesus,” Taylor intoned more fervently. “We just want to thank you for gettin’ us here safe —”
There was a loud, gurgling groan. Somebody shouted, “Oh my gosh! Miss Delaware just died!”
“— for gettin’ some of us here safe,” Taylor continued. “And we pray that, as we are fine, upstandin’, law-abidin’ girls who represent the best of the best, you will protect us from harm and keep us safe until we are rescued and can tell our story to People magazine. Amen.”
“Amen,” the girls echoed, then fell into noisy chatter. Where were they? What would happen to them? Would they be rescued? Where were the adults? Was this something to do with the war?
“Teen Dream Misses!” Taylor singsonged above the din, smiling. “My stars. It’s gettin’ kinda noisy. Now. My daddy is a general, and I know what he’d say if he were here: We need to do a recon mission, see if there are any more survivors, and tend to the wounded.”
“My head kinda hurts,” Miss New Mexico said. Several of the girls gasped. Half of an airline serving tray was lodged in her forehead, forming a small blue canopy over her eyes.
“What is it?” Miss New Mexico checked to make sure her bra straps weren’t showing.
