Petra winced. “Harsh. I have faith in Sinjin. He’ll send help.”
“Oh my God. You guys just don’t get it, do you? We got hosed! We got all moony-eyed over a bunch of pirates and let everything go just to take care of them. Even on an island in the middle of nowhere, we can’t seem to change the dynamic. Pathetic.”
Jennifer raised her hand. “Exception to the rule.”
“You’ve got your own distractions.” Adina jerked her head toward Sosie, and Jennifer blushed. “Now, listen up. It’s your team leader, Miss New Hampshire, speaking. Here’s the plan: Pack whatever you’ve got. We are going to march into that jungle to find Mary Lou, and then we are going to bring Taylor back, and then we are going to build our own freaking ship or rocket or Sparkle Pony from Hell and get the hell off this island! Screw this waiting around. No one is coming. It’s up to us. But we are not leaving without our friends.”
The girls armed themselves with sticks and small rocks, curling irons and bottles of tanner.
Petra brought along a can of hair spray. “Anybody or anything messes with me and they will get a face full of chemical nasty that will stick their eyes open for weeks.”
They set off into the dense growth, and they weren’t coming out until the job was done.
They came upon the Empire of Taylor. It was like a forgotten hermitage — the cave hidden beneath the growth, the strange fertility goddess statue of Our Ladybird with her tattered Miss Miss sash in place. But it was well camouflaged, as if it had long been part of the island. As if Taylor were hiding in plain sight.
Taylor had built another weird sculpture. This one looked a lot like a catapult. She opened a jar of Lady ’Stache Off and emptied the contents inside, adding the bleach from the girls’ teeth-bleaching trays.
“Hey, Taylor. What’re you doing?” Adina called.
“Getting ready for the pageant. It’s very important, Ladybird.”
“Have you seen Mary Lou at all?”
Taylor cocked her head to one side as if listening to music only she could hear. “Five-six-seven-eight. And step-ball-change!” Taylor launched into a series of dance moves punctuated by ninjalike kicks and strikes. “Don’t believe their lies, Sparkle Ponies. They don’t want to save us.”
Taylor shimmied up a tree, swung to another, and disappeared in the unkempt green canopy overhead.
“Man. I thought she was bad before.” Nicole shook her head.
The girls pressed on. The jungle was thicker here, darker. Every breath was a struggle.
Shanti gasped. “You guys.” She held up Mary Lou’s St. Agnes medal.
Adina swallowed hard. Anything could have happened to her out here. “We’re going to find her.”
“I want to go back,” Tiara said. “This isn’t fun anymore. I’m scared.”
“What if an animal got to her?” Nicole said in hushed tones.
“We’re not going back. We’re not giving up on her. We’re all we’ve got. Don’t you understand?” Adina was near tears. She was exhausted, so exhausted that she thought she imagined the sound. It was the faint rumble of a car engine, like something remembered from a dream. Something that reminded her of normalcy.
A long, Jeep-like vehicle crested the hill, trampling down bushes as it came. The headlights blinded the girls till they had to put up their arms to block the sudden light. They heard the motor stop. A car door opened.
A man in camouflage and mirrored sunglasses blocked the army transport’s headlights. He stood, hands at his hips. He wore a reassuring smile.
“Well,” he said, “we sure are glad to find you girls.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
In the back of the transport, the girls talked with the manic quickness of those who’ve been given second chances. “Like, I can’t wait to take a shower and put on clean clothes,” Shanti said.
“I’m going to catch up on Ragnaroknroll, find my guild,” Jennifer said.
“I am going to eat a piece of cake the size of Petra’s head,” Sosie said.
“I hope you’re hungry. My head has a circumference of twenty-four inches,” Petra shouted over the wind, and they all laughed.
It was good. Everything was good — the sun on their faces, the wind drying the sweat on their skin into itchy spots, these people who had come to rescue them, to take them back to civilization and malls and hair removal and Alexandra’s Clandestine Closet45 catalogs. Everything would be like it was before.
The transport carried them to the other side of the island and traveled through a barbed wire fence with No TRESPASSING signs posted on it. Two guards in black shirts opened the gates and waved them in, and for a moment, Adina had an uneasy feeling. She caught Nicole’s eye and they both looked away quickly, as if neither one wanted to ruin the happiness of this rescue with some distant, probably unfounded fear. The transport stopped at the base of the volcano. Here, the land had been cleared and flattened out.
