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*Pageant officials think this makes me sound Muslim. Want to know if we can change it to “Shout-out to Mo and Alice.”
11Patriot Daughters (Tuesdays, 9:00 P.M. EST), The Corporation’s drama chronicling the lives of three teen girls during the Revolutionary War as they fight the British, farm the land, and take off their clothes to secure America’s freedom.
**Pageant officials didn’t think this was funny. Pageant officials not big on the jokes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the muddy waters receded, Jennifer found herself in a part of the jungle where nothing was familiar anymore. Far overhead was a small clearing of blue sky bordered by the wizened branches of thick-trunked trees whose gnarled roots clutched the earth like the talons of some primeval bird frozen midgrip by a sorcerer’s curse. She called out for the others, but there was no response.
Being alone didn’t scare Jennifer. She’d been alone since she was ten, when she begged her mom to stop sending her to stay with Grandma Huberman, the religious nut, who told her God could see into her wicked, wicked heart. While saying this, she’d waved the copy of Women’s Basketball Weekly she’d found under Jen’s bed, the one in which Jen had drawn a heart around the picture of star point guard Monica Mathers.
“God doesn’t like lesbians,” Grandma Huberman hissed, throwing the magazine in the trash.
Jennifer knew what lesbian meant, and she knew she probably was one. But she couldn’t understand why God would hold that against her or against Monica Mathers, who’d never started a war or killed anybody, and whose deadeye three-pointers were straight-up amazing. After all, hadn’t God made both of them? But people were like that, she’d noticed. They’d invoke Godly privilege at the weirdest of times and for the most stupid of reasons. Jen decided that if God wasn’t putting any faith in her, she wasn’t putting her faith in Him. And so, now, alone in the jungle, she did not call out for special favors. As far as she was concerned, that would be cheating. Jennifer played rough sometimes, but she always played fair.
A long rope of root formed an almost-bench above the mossy ground, and after testing its solidity, she sat on it to think. It was only moments later that she heard off-key humming and saw a girl marching between the trees, a spear in one hand. The girl had a strawberry blond bob and an impish face. The remnants of her sash read Miss Illin, and for a moment, Jennifer thought of her as being from a very cool hip-hop state.
“Hi. Uh, hello,” Jennifer said. “I’m Jennifer Huberman. Miss Michigan.”
The girl didn’t respond.
“Hey!” Jennifer waved her arms. “Over here!”
The girl looked up. Startled, she dropped the spear, which stuck fast in a fat tree root. A flock of shrieking black birds spiraled skyward as the giant, gnarled tree seemed to uncoil, and Jennifer saw that it was not a mass of roots looped about the trunk but a freakishly big snake the length of a custom RV.
Jennifer leapt to her feet. “Holy {bleep bleep}12! Get your {bleep}13 out of the way!”
Too late, the girl looked up just as the snake opened wide and swallowed her down in a giant gulp.
“{Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep}14!” Jennifer said many, many times.
The snake, with its girl-size, midthroat bulge, turned to Jennifer with a strangled hiss.
They say in near-death experiences that one’s life plays out before one’s eyes. Jennifer’s brain went to scan, flitting from one random image to the next: her mom coming home from the factory, bone-weary, angry, and utterly defeated, the bills sitting untouched on the chipped, Rent-A-Racket dinette set. Tommy, her little brother, riding around the crappy, one-bedroom apartment on a dumpster-dive Big Wheel till Jennifer thought she would scream from the constant whine of it. The days of ditching school to hang out at Galaxy Comics and talk mutants and Watchmen with Mohammed and Akilah, who ran the place and sometimes paid her in old comics if she’d help them stock. Getting busted for stealing a pack of Ho Hos from a Gas-It-N-Go and landing in juvie. The counselor who saw Jen as the perfect do-gooder project on her resume, offering her a chance at beauty pageant redemption meant to save them both. The crash. The island. The snake.
The snake. It seesawed its way toward her in an ungainly, almost blind fashion, tongue lashing wildly, mouth pulled back slightly to reveal double rows of grungy, bladelike teeth and puffy, bleeding gums. This was how she was going to die? After the years of crushing poverty, the dismissal by her teachers and schoolmates, the way that most people looked through girls like Jennifer as if they were too inconsequential to acknowledge with a glance? She was going to go down as kibble for some giant snake alcoholic? This was utter bullshit15.
“What Would Wonder Woman Do?” she said, like a prayer.
And then, as if in answer, Jennifer raced for the spear, which had been thrown free when the girl was swallowed. But the snake’s undulating tail knocked it just out of reach.
“You scaly bitch16!” Jen gasped.
The snake lunged. With a loud screech, Jennifer leapt up and grabbed hold of a tree limb, hoping that it was, in fact, a tree limb, and not some other freaky form of island life intent on eating her. Inside the snake’s throat, the girl pushed with her hands and feet, forming a blockade with her body. She wasn’t going down easy, and it gave Jen new courage.
A quick drop to the ground and she snatched the spear in her right hand. With a loud “GAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!” she hopped onto the snake’s back and jabbed the sharp end into the creature’s head. It thrashed wildly and Jennifer was thrown clear. Now it was truly pissed. But it wasn’t from Jen’s assault. From inside the snake, the swallowed girl had managed to crawl up. She positioned what looked like a smallish white tub between the snake’s back teeth. It allowed just enough room for her to slide out on a tide of heavy saliva. Without thinking, Jennifer pulled the girl to safety behind a fat, broken tree.
The snake bit down on the large jar between its teeth and exploded. The girls were coated in snake insides.
“Yes!” Jennifer screamed. She pumped her fist. “How ya like me now, Snake Parts?”
Beside her, the rescued girl coughed and hacked. Her eyes widened as she hacked up a mouthful of slime on Jennifer’s shoulder.
“Ew.”
“Sorry,” the girl said in a voice that sounded slightly broken and a little loud. “I was choking. I’m Sosie Simmons. Miss Illinois.”
“Jennifer Huberman, Miss Michigan. Oh my God. I thought that you were a total goner, man. But you were all, ‘Feel my fists of fury, Amphibian Bitch,’ and I was all, ‘Let’s settle this, X-Men-style,’ and you were all, ‘Aaaaaaahhhhhh jar action!’ and I was all, ‘Kayaaaaaaaa spear time!’ and, oh my God, that was flippin’ amazing. Wasn’t that amazing? I haven’t felt so good since I punched Dennis Anastasias during sixth grade recess when he called me thunder thighs ’cause, I’m sorry, that little punk had it coming.” Laughing maniacally, Jennifer combed her hands through her snake-slimed, muddy hair and looked up at the doily of sky far above, and even though she had just nearly met her demise with a gigantic snake on a deserted island far from home, somehow this moment was glorious.
