Beauty Queens

Adina stared. “That is quite literally the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.”



“Thank you. I’m not really that ludicrous, but thanks anyway for saying so. See? That’s how it works.” Mary Lou gave a shy smile. “Um, that was a joke, by the way. I do know what ludicrous means.”



“Thank God.”



Out in the ocean, waves crashed over broken fists of treacherous-looking black rock.



Mary Lou played nonstop with a silver ring on her left ring finger.



“Pretty,” Adina said. “Special?”



“This? Yeah. It’s, um, a purity ring?”



“Oh. The old patriarchal chastity belt. Now in convenient ring form,” Adina snarled.



“It’s not like that,” Mary Lou said, blushing. “It’s a symbol. It shows that you’ve made a pledge to bring your purity into the marriage. It’s the ultimate gift to your husband.”



“Really? Like you can’t just give him a gift card to GameStop or something?”



Mary Lou stopped smiling. “You don’t have to make fun of me.”



“I’m sorry,” Adina said.



“Some girls need protection,” Mary Lou mumbled.



“What?” Adina asked.



“Nothing. Jeez, I hope that thing isn’t active,” Mary Lou said, pointing to the volcano.



“No kidding. That’s all we need. Think we’ve got enough to make a fire?”



“Worth a shot,” Mary Lou answered.



Back on the beach, the girls built a signal fire from sticks, palm leaves, and paper from their morals clause contracts, rescued from their official “Welcome, Miss Teen Dream” folders. Taylor lit it with a book of matches that had survived the crash. Night crouched around them, a hungry, patient animal. The girls lay in the sand, exhausted. Some cried themselves to sleep.



“You’re on first watch, Miss New Hampshire. Don’t let us down,” Taylor said. She performed a few high kicks, stretched her long limbs, then settled under a tree to get her beauty sleep.



MISS TEEN DREAM FUN FACTS PAGE!



Please fill in the following information and return to Jessie Jane, Miss Teen Dream Pageant administrative assistant, before Monday. Remember, this is a chance for the judges and the audience to get to know YOU. So make it interesting and fun, but please be appropriate. And don’t forget to mention something you love about our sponsor, The Corporation!



Name: Adina Greenberg



State: New Hampshire



Age:17



Height: I resent this question.



Weight: I really resent this question.



Hair: Brown. Obviously.



Eyes: Also brown. Also obviously.



Best Feature: My intellect



Fun Facts About Me:



I hate high heels. Walking in high heels for eight hours a day should be forbidden by the Geneva Convention.



I am applying to Brown, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia.



I was voted Most Likely to Figure Out Who Really Killed JFK.



My mom is married to Alan, aka, Stepfather #5. He is a complete tool. No, you have no idea.



My favorite Corporation TV show is the news. If you can call it that.



My platform is Identifying Misogyny in American Culture. It’s all about helping girls ID the objectification of women when they see it. You know, like when girls are asked to parade around in bathing suits and heels and get scored on that.



The thing that scares me most is falling in love with some jerkwad and ending up without an identity at all, just like my mom.



I intend to bring this pageant down.



You will never see this.



CHAPTER FIVE



Alone on the dark beach, Adina had to laugh at her lousy luck. Unlike the others, she’d entered this cheesy pageant as a revolutionary act. She hated the Miss Teen Dream Pageant. Hated everything it stood for. Mostly, she hated how much her mother loved it. Ever since she was four, Adina and her mother had watched Miss Teen Dream. It had seemed to Adina then to be a TV fairy tale: All those pretty girls smiling and waving and showing off their tumbling skills. And the gowns! Such sparkles and movement!



“Those girls will never have trouble getting husbands. They’ll have their pick,” her mother had said dreamily.



Adina’s mom had had her pick, too. She’d gone from one guy to the next, in an act of downward husband mobility, until she’d married Alan the Tool. Alan, who ran self-improvement seminars for business leaders. Alan, who spoke in blowhard aphorisms like “A bird in the hand can still poop in your palm” and “If you want to beat a snake at its game, you have to think like a snake and not like a duck.”



It was both Adina’s mom and Alan who encouraged her to enter the Miss Teen Dream Pageant to show that “just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you can’t also be pretty.” They told her if she placed in Miss New Hampshire, they’d buy her a bass for her all-girl punk band, Drink My Sweat. They figured once she got wrapped up in the pageant work, she’d forget all about the bass and the band and her journalistic aspirations.

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