Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

“Everybody tells you what to do. ‘Exercise.’ ‘Suck in your stomach.’ ‘Eat your vegetables.’ ‘Smile.’”
    Temple smiled. “Imagine making smiling an order? How many of those rules does your mother harp on?”
    “The vegetables.”
    “That’s not too bad.”
    “No. But being a girl is harder than that.”
    “Being a girly girl is harder. We don’t all have to be pretty in pink.”
    Mariah squinted up at Temple. “I can’t see the real you in pink. But it does go with that Elvira wig in a weird sort of way.”
    Temple pushed the hot, damp hairdo back on her forehead. It felt like a heavy wet turban.
    “This thing makes one admire Cher in concert. Pink doesn’t go with my natural hair color, so it’s kinda fun to wear it now. I feel like a 1958 Cadillac convertible.” Mariah giggled. ‘You’re not big enough to be a huger-rific car like that.”
    “No, but I can think I am. You see anything suspicious around the camp today?”
    “I snooped, like you said, and I found six cans of Razor’s Edge in the contestants’ lockers.”
    “Good work! Empty? You didn’t touch them?”
    “No! Only picked ‘em up with a towel. All of them were pretty light. You know what I’m thinking?”
    “That whoever sprayed those yoga mats used what was on hand?”
    “Yeah. How’d you know?”
    “With this vast cast of competitive characters, it’s so easy to spread the blame. I bet our perp used latex gloves
    though.”
    Mariah nodded. “My mom has a whole box at the house. She never leaves home without ‘em.”
    Temple giggled this time. “She sounds like a gynecologist.”
    “Ah, I have my first appointment after this is over.”
    “The pits!”
    “Is it scary?”
    “Oh, yeah, but you get used to it. I mean, we all have to do it. Consider it a badge of courage.”
    Mariah considered while Temple watched, remembering her own first gynecological exam. No matter how prepared you were, it was always a bit of a psychic violation.
    “We heard about that in school,” Mariah was saying. “The badge of courage story. It was about war.”
    The red badge of courage for women was a different kind of war, Temple thought. The onset of menstruation. Of being different from men. Of being capable of being hurt just for your gender, physically and psychologically.
    Temple was a modern girl. She bought her own “sanitary protection” with careless regularity, somewhere between the way she bought breath mints and condoms. The euphemistic phrase “sanitary protection” still made the process seem dirty and secret, even today. What did you tell a girl on the brink? Relax and enjoy the anxiety, the shame of doing something guys don’t and sometimes mock?
    Where was Carmen Molina when you needed her?
    Adolescence was murder.
    For guys too, remember.
    Temple pointed to the bloody nick on her shin. “Nothing is smooth, Mariah. Everything hurts a little. That’s how we know we’re alive. And we want to stay that way. I’m afraid someone around this competition doesn’t feel the same way.”
    “Yeah.” Mariah ran the disposable pink razor up her still fuzzy lower leg. “That’s obvious. We gotta find out who. That’s why my mother sent you here.”
    “You think so?”
    “No, she wanted you here as my babysitter but I’m not a baby anymore, so you might as well do something more useful.”
    Temple gave her a high five. “Baby, you are so right!”

    They were all on a schedule. Boot camp for beauty. That made them predictable targets.
    Temple didn’t like being separated from Mariah for most of the day but they were on opposite ends of the age meridian.
    The moment when Temple realized that she was old enough to be Mariah’s mother, she got cold chills. And then she heard her own biological clock ticking. What did she want? To be a pal or a parent?
    But this wasn’t about her.
    And then there were more one-on-ones with the judges in their advisor capacity.
    First up was her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson.
    Temple went to that one chewing a wad of gum big enough to choke a camel (and therefore disguise her voice).
    She slumped on her tailbone on the single rattan chair before the Consultant Room One desk, and snapped gum-
    Aunt Kit remained admirably cool to the whole act as she flipped through Xoe’s file.
    “You wouldn’t be here at all if Manship hadn’t liked your cheeks,” Kit finally noted, slapping the file shut to gain Xoe’s attention, and staring at her over the rims of her