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“The first thing we really need to do is make sure we have drinking water.”
“I forgot — why can’t we just drink the ocean water?” Tiara asked.
“Because people pee in there all the time,” Brittani explained with assurance.
“Also, the bloat,” Miss Ohio chimed in. “I retain like crazy.”
“No,” Shanti said. “It’s because if you drink salt water, you’ll get sick. Drink enough and you’ll die.”
Tiara raised her hand. “But will you still be bloated?”
Shanti ignored her. “It’s a tropical climate, so we get some rain every day. We can make a tarp out of Miss Massachusetts’s ugly evening gown to collect that rainwater to drink.”
Miss Montana made a face. “Ew. That is so hurl.”
“Actually, so hurl is the way you look when you die of dehydration.”
Shanti explained the mechanics of the plan and the girls set to work. It was an intricate system of weights and counterweights. But the engineering was best-case scenario, and their meager resources were worst-case. Nothing was working and the girls soon grew frustrated.
“It’s too complicated,” Nicole said. “We need to simplify.”
“It’s not too complicated. You’re just not getting it!”
“Whatever!” Miss New Mexico said. Her face dripped with sweat. “Do you want drinking water or not?”
“That’s the whole point.”
“Then we need to try it another way.”
Shanti crossed her arms. “Like what?”
“Excuse me?” Tiara raised her hand. “One summer when I was about nine, my dad went off to rehab for his dryer sheet addiction. He used to huff ’em down in the basement, box after box. Then he’d come upstairs and start making these dioramas out of old cake mix boxes right on the kitchen floor and tell us that we should leave him alone because he was a serious artist and needed space for his work but that it was okay because the Fluffy Soft™ Laundry Puppy22 would look after us. I always wondered why he smelled like Spring Freesia.”
Adina dropped down into the sand. “Does this story have a point?”
“Anyway, after my mom flipped out, my dad went off to rehab to heal his wounded chi and he got this spirit guide named Astral, who was kind of annoying because my dad would be all, ‘Let’s ask Astral about that,’ even if it was just about whether or not to have Hamburger Helper for dinner, and my mom said she would personally kick his Astral to the curb if he didn’t shut up, and so he went to Jesus rehab instead, and my mom sent me to sleepaway camp for the rest of the summer. I loved it in the woods. But there were no toilets or anything, so we had to build a latrine.”
“’Kay. I’m now officially scared of where this story’s going,” Adina said.
Tiara’s cheeks reddened. “I let you talk.”
“Sorry, Tiara,” Adina said.
“Anyway, it was probably a dumb idea.”
“No. Tell it. I want to hear it. Go on.” Petra silenced the others with a glare.
“Well, I was just thinking that if we dig out the sand like a latrine and stretch the dress across it and hold it down with some rocks or something, maybe the water would catch in there?”
“How’s that going to help?” Miss Ohio asked.
“Hold on.” Shanti pulled the dress taut. She surveyed the sand around it. “That could work.”
“Yeah?” Nicole asked.
“Yes.”
Tiara brightened. “I said a smarty?”
