Beauty Queens Read Online Free

Taylor said.
    “You mean like those guys who NetChat you and pretend they’re a hot German pop star named Hans but who turn out to be some old fat guy in a house in Kansas?” Tiara shook her head. “My mom was so pissed.”
    “She means like tigers or bears,” Petra said.
    “Oh my.”
    Mary Lou made a face. “What … what should we do?”
    Taylor thought for a minute. “Put her in the fire.”
    Shanti swallowed hard. “Way harsh. I mean, it’s terrible.”
    “Yes, it is. But sometimes a lady has to do what’s necessary,” Taylor said. “From Ladybird Hope’s
I’m Perfect and You Can Be, Too,
Chapter Three: ‘A lady’s quick thinking can save a bad situation.’
    She was talking about putting nail polish on a runner in your hose, but I think the same rule applies here.”
    The girls set about their grisly task. They dragged the body to the front of the plane, where the fire raged, and hoisted the flight attendant into it.
    “Oh God,” Mary Lou said, and threw up in a bush.
    In her head, Adina said a mourner’s prayer for the flight attendant, and for everyone else who’d died. It was true that the situation was dire and Adina had hardly known these people. But their deaths still deserved the dignity of a prayer here in the wilderness.
    Petra stared at the dead woman another long minute. In her head, she did the math of survival. Seven days of medication. That was all she’d brought with her — and that was if she could find her overnight case.
    “What do we do now?” Mary Lou asked through fresh tears. She rubbed the St. Agnes medal at her throat.
    “They’ll be looking for us,” Nicole assured her. “Right? I mean, they have to be looking for us.”
    “There’s probably a search plane on its way right now,” Mary Lou said.
    The jungle answered with unknown screeches and a low, murmuring hiss. No one moved. They watched what was left burn.
    “We should get back and let the others know,” Taylor said at last. “It’s just us. We’re the only survivors. We’re on our own.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    By the time the Lost Girls returned to the beach, the sky was the color of wet slate and an army of angry clouds massed along the horizon, awaiting further instruction.
    Taylor convened the girls in the same spot as before. “All right, Miss Teen Dreamers. If y’all could settle into our horseshoe all nice and orderly, please? Miss Montana? Is that the way a Miss Teen Dream sits, all slutty like that with her hoo-hoo showing?”
    Miss Montana knocked her knees together and yanked down the hem of her skirt.
    “Thank you.” Taylor addressed the crowd. Her expression was calm. “I’ve got a little bit of bad news: Everybody else is dead.”
    A great gasp went up. A few girls cried and some simply stared, unable to process the information.
    Miss Ohio raised her hand. “What about the film crew?”
    “Gone,” Petra confirmed. She’d added a rescued shawl to her ensemble, tying it in an elaborate bow beneath her chin. In times of stress, she relied on her skills at accessorizing to calm her.
    “That’s terrible,” Brittani wailed. “They seemed so nice.”
    “One of the camera guys told me I was just like Lorrie Connor on
The Shills 5 ,”
Tiara said.
    “OMG, I love that show!”
    The girls fell into excited chatter. “Did you see the one where Lorrie and Chad broke up and she gave him back the Frou-Frou handbag he bought her after she agreed to fake marry him to promote his new beer line? I totally cried.”
    “That was awesome TV. I heard she’s gonna hire a ghostwriter to write a book about that episode.”
    Taylor’s sharp clap echoed on the beach. “Teen Dreamers! We need to focus like it’s the final interview round and the questions are all about anorexia and current events. Now, I know y’all are upset. This is just plain awful. But God doesn’t make mistakes. Is this is a setback, Teen Dreamers?”
    “Totally,” wailed Miss Arkansas. Her left arm was broken. It had been