Beauty Queens Part 20

Mary Lou didn't want to cry. Pirate queens were not weepy. They lived and died by their own code. "Look at that moon. Pretty happening tonight."

"Yeah. Impressive," Tane said, but he was not looking at the moon. "Tomorrow it'll be even bigger."

"You never know about tomorrow," Mary Lou said. She pulled Tane to her for a deep kiss.

Under a three o'clock sky, they explored each other with their mouths. He slid down along the curve of her stomach until she could no longer see his face and her hands were in his hair. It was exquisite, this thing he was doing to her, and she closed her eyes tightly and cried out, and it joined with the shrieking of birds who took to the unfettered skies with the powerful push of their wings. When this happened, she was sure that all those things she'd been taught about feeling shame were wrong. It was not a curse to fully inhabit your body. You were only as cursed as you allowed yourself to be.

After, when they were a sweaty tangle of limbs, she told him, "I'm not ready for the other things yet." He was quiet and she wondered if this would drive a wedge between them. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I'm starving and I have a candy bar in my bag. You want half?"

It was caramel and nougat, her favorite. She licked the chocolate from his fingers, which led to more kissing and exploring, and when the moon paled against the dawn, Mary Lou tucked her St. Agnes medal into Tane's pocket. She inhaled the scent of him so that she'd have it with her no matter what.

"You have really good hands, Tane Ngata," she said and kissed the sleeping prince good-bye.

Mary Lou was not the only girl awake under a three o'clock sky. The sound of rain had woken Jennifer. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and remembered fragments of a dream in which she was Wonder Woman and Sosie was Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. From under her pillow - a wadded-up evening dress - she brought out her pen and notepad and began to draw. Her style was rough; her people had heads too big for their bodies, but Jennifer liked the feel of drawing the same way some people enjoyed singing in their showers.

In the panel, the Flint Avenger and her loyal sidekick, Sosie, had been trapped in the island lair of the archvillain, Madame Travatsky.

"You vill tell me ze location of ze nuclear submarine or I vill use ze ZombieRay on your little girlfriend, Flint Avenger!"

Jennifer mouthed the words while she drew.

"Don't do it, Flint Avenger! It's a trap!" Sosie's speech bubble said. In the panel, she was clearly signing.

"I can't let her hurt you, Sosie! Because ..."

"Because ... what?"

"I love you!"

Jennifer concentrated on the next panel, Sosie's face. The light dusting of freckles across her pert nose. The dark eyebrows that gave her face a brooding quality. Silk-straight bangs. She worked hard on the eyes, and in the panel, they were very open with surprise and a sudden joy.

"What are you doing?"

Sosie's voice startled Jennifer. She dropped her pen.

"Nothing." Jennifer patted around on the sandy floor in the dark. Sosie reached over her for the notebook. Jen tried to swipe it back, but Sosie was too quick. Giggling, she sat down to read. She stopped giggling and stared at Jennifer. The last time Jennifer had felt like this, her grandmother was holding her copy of Women's Basketball Weekly in one hand. But Jennifer hadn't really cared too much about Grandma Huberman. It was different with Sosie.

"Give it back," Jennifer signed. "Please."

Sosie gave her the notebook. Then she took Jennifer's hand in hers, gently bending Jen's fingers to form the letters. "R U G-A-Y?"

Jen's heart beat faster. She nodded. Then she bent Sosie's fingers to form her own question. "R U?"

Sosie wasn't sure how to answer. Since she could remember, she'd had crushes on both girls and guys. They were person-specific infatuations - Brian Levithan's wicked sense of humor was every bit as s.e.xy as Valerie Martinez's sweet smile and amazing krunk routines. It seemed odd to Sosie that she had to make some hard-and-fast decision about such an arbitrary, individual thing as attraction, like having to declare an orientation major: I am straight with a minor in gay.

With her hand waiting in Jennifer's, she thought about this now. She liked Jennifer, liked her lack of pettiness, her tough-but-fair stance, her honesty. If Jennifer were a dance, she would be the Agnes de Mille dream sequence from Oklahoma! Strong. Romantic. Forthright. Graceful. No wasted movement. Sosie didn't know if she was a lesbian; she was, however, a Jenniferian. And so she leaned forward and kissed her.

To Jennifer, the kiss was like a silent communication full of meaning. It wasn't the best kiss she had ever had. That honor belonged to LaKisha Damian on a Friday night in September behind the bleachers while the South Side Panthers marching band played "Baby, One More Time" and LaKisha wiggled her hand into Jennifer's jeans without ever losing her lip-lock. Sosie's kiss was tentative but warm. A question more than a declaration. Jennifer kissed her back with more a.s.surance. The third time they banged mouths.

"Ow!" Jennifer said, rubbing her lips. She tried again, and this time, they fit. Sosie's mouth was warm, her tongue skittish. Jennifer made small circles around it with her own, drawing Sosie more into her mouth. She pulled back, cradling Sosie's face in her hands, kissing her intently, hungrily. s.h.i.+fting onto her back, she drew Sosie on top of her, letting her hands rest on the muscular curves at the back of her thighs, letting one hand wander to the small of Sosie's back, pressing gently there.

To Sosie, Jennifer's body was a surprise - the curves where she had expected straight planes, the pliability of a breast in her hand, the silky skin of her arms. She had made out with only two boys and had shared a quick, truth-or-dare kiss with a girl named Eve at a seventh grade dance party. This was very different, and her mind could scarcely keep up with all the new sensations. Was she a good kisser? Was she lame? With renewed vigor, she suckled Jen's neck, wanting to brand her with a love bruise, then felt suddenly shy about it and stopped.

"Need some air," she managed, before staggering out.

Sosie left the hut so abruptly that Jennifer was afraid she had done something wrong. She followed her and found Sosie stretched out on her back in the sand, watching the clouds and stars perform their own ch.o.r.eography. Awkwardly, Jen lay beside her, her left shoulder just grazing Sosie's right. She didn't know how far she should take things. Should she kiss her again? If she were her alter ego, the Flint Avenger, she'd sweep Sosie up into the sky and they would fly over the island, defying gravity with their kisses, building an exquisitely intolerable friction with the press of their bodies.

Jen finally found the courage to sign, "Okay?"

Sosie nodded, smiling. She snuggled closer and threaded her fingers through Jen's, holding fast. There was more truth and hope in that one gesture than in all the things that had come before. These were the moments that kept you going, Jennifer thought. When you looked up to the sky and cried "Why?" sometimes the sky shrugged. Yet other times it answered with the warm a.s.surance of linked hands. "Sorry," it whispered on the wind. "Sorry for all the pain and loneliness and disappointment. But there is this, too."

It was enough.

The girls had lost track of how long they had been on the island. During the daylight hours, they dove into the surf with abandon, emerging tanned and sure-footed, as if they were selkies who had let their timidity float out on the tide like a false skin. Only Taylor remained vigilant in her pageant work, getting up every morning, rain or s.h.i.+ne, to go through the paces of her routine, from first entrance to talent to final interview.

"When we get rescued, I guess I'm the only one who'll be in fighting form," she'd say while circle-turning and practicing a stiff wave.

"I've been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on the island," Mary Lou said to Adina one afternoon as they rested on their elbows taking bites from the same papaya.

"Lord of the Flies. What about it?"

"You know how you said it wasn't a true measure of humanity because there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls?"

"Yeah?"

Mary Lou wiped fruit juice from her mouth with the back of her hand. "Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's watching them so they can be who they really are."

Adina gazed out at the expanse of unknowable ocean. "Maybe."

There was something about the island that made the girls forget who they had been. All those rules and shalt nots. They were no longer waiting for some arbitrary grade. They were no longer performing. Waiting. Hoping.

They were becoming.

They were.

A WORD FROM YOUR SPONSOR.

The Corporation would like to apologize for the preceding pages. Of course, it's not all right for girls to behave this way. s.e.xuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. s.e.xual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.

The Corporation would like you to know that they are deeply regretful of this tawdry display. So often these books for our young people do not enforce a moral. The Corporation would like to take the time now to present this moral in the following montage.

ALTERNATE SCENES:.

1. The beauty queen made the first move and kissed the prince. "You know what I really like?" she whispered into his ear. Seconds later, he was sliding his mouth down the curve of her stomach. As he did, she looked up and saw the boulder teetering on the edge of the cliff above them.

"Oh my G.o.d! Look out for that boulder!"

"What bould -?"

The rock fell off and killed her dead. The prince was blinded in the accident, but was later healed by the love of a goodly, virginal maiden who suffered a lot first.

The End.

2. The savage warrior girl raised her spear. "I'm not going to keep quiet anymore! I'm going to say what I need to say and not worry about whether or not it upsets somebody or makes me seem unfeminine. Because you know what? I have opinions. I have feelings and needs, and I'm tired of feeling like I can't voice them or I'll get ridiculed or attacked!"

In the firelight, it was easy to see that she was the least attractive girl of the bunch and she probably smelled bad. Just then, a giant snake lurched out of the trees, bit her in two, and swallowed her down. And the other girls realized they should probably keep their mouths shut.

The End.

3. The girl felt feral and strong. She felt feral and strong because, of course, she had been contaminated with the alien virus, which made her not like a normal girl, but more like an alien. With alien desires. The kind that are not normal.

"I killed everybody I ever kissed," the beautiful, long-legged girl with raven hair and full lips purred.

"I knew it. You're an alien," said her former best friend, the pale, bespectacled creature with the spectacular cleavage.

"Yes, I'm an alien and I still made cheerleader. And now I'm going to steal your boyfriend to prove girls can't really be friends."

"I sat back timidly when you torched my house, killed my parents, and ate my dog. But now you're stealing my boyfriend? That's a step too far!"

The bespectacled good girl with the nice rack plunged the jousting lance - constructed in Latin club - through the hot alien cheerleader's stomach in a deeply Freudian display.

"Hasta la vista, b.i.t.c.h27."

The End.

4. The wind blew the beauty queen's skirt higher, exposing the curve of her b.u.t.t beneath her panty. The humidity made her perspire in a s.e.xy way, almost as if she'd been squirted with a mixture of water and baby oil by a makeup crew. She arched her back. "This jungle heat sure is all hot and stuff. Mind if I take off my top?"

"No! Let's all take off our tops!" said the other girls.

"Mmm, if there's anything I like better than taking off my clothes, it's using new Tan-So-Right28 to keep my skin sweet and supple," the beauty queen said. She reached behind a rock for the bottle of liquid tanner and spritzed herself. As it hit her skin in a slow-motion mist, she gasped in pleasure and bit her lip.

"Hot," said a redhead in a thong.

"So hot," they all agreed.

"Oops, I just dropped my bottle of tanner. I'll just bend over slowly to pick it up," said the beauty queen.

"That's hot."

"Totally."

"You know what else is hot?" said a nameless blonde as she put her arm around the one black girl.

"What?"

"Bis.e.xuals."

"Totally. Well, not like real bis.e.xuals who are just sort of your everyday people, but, like, the kind of bis.e.xuals you see in magazines wearing nothing but body paint and kissing both boys and girls to promote a new single."

"Totally, totally hot."

Laughing and frolicking, the girls jumped into a bubbling island spring that was a lot like a hot tub, and then a rugged explorer type jumped in. The girls fawned all over him because he had used Stud m.u.f.fin Body Spray for Guys29.

The End.

MISS TEEN DREAM FUN FACTS PAGE!.

Please fill in the following information and return to Jessie Jane, Miss Teen Dream Pageant administrative a.s.sistant, 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: Nicole Ade

State: Colorado

Age:16

Height: 5' 5"

Weight: 130 lbs

Hair: Black

Eyes: Brown