Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Lita

  MY FAVORITE PART of the morning used to be when I got on my bike and my fingers brushed the streamers. The slight movement of the tinsel strips and the desert sun, already bright early in the morning, would cast pink bands of light over the ground as I got the wheels started. It always felt like our nearest star’s way of winking at me.

  Now the little flickers of light make me sick to my stomach. It reminds me how my body is dissolving, how I’m turning back to what I once was but can’t remember being.

  I pack up my backpack.

  “Still you go to school?” Bruja Lupe asks. “I’ll write you a note.”

  I’ll write you a note. Like I have a cold.

  Bruja Lupe’s thinks I should be out getting fresh air, talking to my cactuses, breathing in the world.

  But I’m taking as much of Meteor into me as I can before I dissolve all the way.

  Even Meteor Central High.

  Math class is there. So are Cole Kendall and Junior Cortes.

  “Buenos días, Señorita Opuntia.” I greet the cactuses as I fly by on my bike. “Bon matin, Monsieur Cereus. Good morning, Mr. Hedgehog Cactus.”

  I stop my bike in front of the school.

  “Looks like My Little Pony decided to show up.” I hear them whisper—the kind of whisper I’m meant to hear.

  If the tinsel flashing in the sun used to be the best of my morning, this was my worst. These are the same girls who make fun of how I wear the powder-blue tights Bruja Lupe bought me, or how my lunch always comes in old plastic Tupperware instead of between slices of white bread.

  I don’t look at them.

  I never look at them. Because I already know how they look at me and my bike, which is clearly designed for someone half my age. But really, I’d like to see these girls try handling their beach cruisers with legs as short as mine.

  “What is she even riding?” one of them asks.

  Cole Kendall steps off the curb, and his shadow cools the back of my neck.

  “My old bike,” he says.

  That shuts them up.

  How comfortable Cole is with himself often makes other people uncomfortable. I’ve heard him joke about borrowing his brother’s old clothes, which were usually several sizes too big. About how his habit of collecting earthworms as pets horrified his mother and sister. About how he doesn’t have the luxury of hating sparkles, because in a family that’s won three Miss Meteor pageant titles, he had to become immune to them sticking to his backpack and socks.

  And now he makes a crack about this bike. A little girl’s bike, all shimmery pink varnish and those glittering streamers. I was there the day his grandmother, not yet understanding just how much of a boy Cole was, bought it for him for his seventh birthday, and Cole walked it around the neighborhood with a look of both pain and obligation.

  I was six, and even though I barely knew him, I shouted across the street, “That’s the best bike in the world!”

  Because it really was, and I thought he should know.

  “You want it?” he asked, looking so much like a light had come on inside him that I couldn’t even open my mouth to ask if he was sure.

  The one thing Cole never jokes about is the name he was given when he was born. Why would he? There’s nothing funny about being called something that’s wrong.

  He’s Cole. He’s always been Cole, even before he told everyone. Not that it took him long. He was five.

  “Personally,” Cole says now, “I think we should give that bike a round of applause for still running after a decade. Don’t you?”

  Even with his back to me, I hear the undertone, his warning of “lay off her.” I’m one of many people Cole breaks out this tone for. Daniel Lamas, who sometimes dresses up as Amelia Earhart or Frida Kahlo for Halloween. Beth Cox, who got made fun of every day for having scoliosis until Cole and his older brother made clear that anyone who did would answer to them. Oliver Hedlesky, who probably never would have tried out for the soccer team if Cole’s presence didn’t make Royce a little less, well, Royce.

  And when Cole Kendall uses his “lay off” voice, they do. Because Cole is not just one of the boys who anchors the soccer team (striker) and the baseball team (shortstop or second base, depending on the lineup). He is one of the boys carrying the weight of the cornhole team.

  Yes, cornhole.

  In seventh grade, they made us memorize a William Carlos Williams poem about how much depends on some chickens and some rain and a red wheelbarrow. And I didn’t understand it until I realized that the poem could have been about Meteor, because around here a lot depends on boys throwing beanbags into wooden boards with holes in them (boards that Junior Cortes almost undoubtedly painted).

  This whole region has a circuit of teams who play each other. Cornhole officials debate the merits of nylon versus polyester. Boys shave their arms because they want their throws to be as aerodynamic as possible. Wooden boards and the holes set therein are inspected months in advance (I don’t know what you can do to sabotage a cornhole board, but around here, it’s treated with the gravity of state secrets).

  Along with the pageant, the cornhole championship jams Meteor full of tourists, and we need every one of them. Our motels and restaurants and souvenir shops depend on it. Thanks in large part to Cole’s older brother, Meteor Central High School won last year. This year, Meteor wants a win even worse—not just to hold on to the title, but because this year even more tourists will be watching, ones with money in their wallets. This year is the fiftieth-annual Miss Meteor pageant, and they’re already expecting the biggest crowds this town has ever seen. Cole has been practicing his signature shot (“the airmail,” the one his brother taught him).

  Those girls shuffle off.

  I kiss Cole on the cheek to tell him thank you.

  He used to pull away when I did this, pulling his palm across his cheek and saying something about girl-germs.

  He doesn’t do that as much anymore.

  I don’t think about how, once I turn back into stardust, I’ll never see Cole Kendall again. I make it a point not to. Because when I do, it gives me a hollow feeling, like the whole inside of me has already crumbled into dust.

  Maybe it’s good that I already lost Chicky. We already got it over with. She’s not someone I’ll have to figure out how to say goodbye to.

  I hand Cole the bag of galletas dulces I brought him, because I won’t be at lunch today.

  I always bring him sugar cookies on the last days of school. Before winter break. Before summer. Before the break in the school calendar for the annual festival. It’s my continued thank you for this bike that keeps bringing me to and from Meteor Central High, and everywhere else in town.

  “Thanks,” he says. “I’ll consider this fortification.”

  “For what?” I ask.

  He nods toward a banner getting hoisted up across the street.

  We stand next to each other, reading the calligraphy-like blue script:

  The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase

  “It’s a beauty pageant,” Cole says. “Can we all just call it a beauty pageant?”

  I glance at him.

  “Sorry,” he says. “When I was born my mother expected me to take the title one day. I have strong feelings.” He opens the bag. “Especially this time of year.”

  This time of year.

  It’s not so much a break as the school’s way of acknowledging how many of our families need our help once the tourists flood in. Chicky Quintanilla, my once-friend, and her sisters will be trading off at the diner, and I will pretend my heart doesn’t pinch every time I pass Selena’s and see Chicky in the window. Evie Lewis will make sure her aunt’s souvenir shop never closes, so there’s no hour that tourists can’t buy Meteor town postcards or nebula scarves or tiny replicas of the space rock. Junior Cortes will have his hands full both with his hours at the museum and with painting. Thanks to his skill at turning famous works into cornhole boards, our
practice field always looks like a gallery. Where else but Meteor can you find a board identical to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, or one a perfect match to Edvard Munch’s The Scream? (The hole is the round O of the subject’s mouth.)

  Junior is bound for some art school that’s so sophisticated I (and half of Meteor) have probably never heard of it.

  “Kendra’s gearing up,” Cole says.

  “What?” I ask. “Already?” Cole’s sister is in my grade. Almost no sophomores ever try for the crown. Since you can only enter Miss Meteor once, you only get one shot. You can take it whenever you want, but almost everyone who enters waits until they’re seventeen, the last time they’re eligible. “She’s not waiting until next year?”

  “Yeah, apparently not,” Cole says. “It’s a whole thing.”

  Of course Kendra’s not waiting. Why would she? While we’re all still waiting to grow into ourselves, she’s already the pale kind of beautiful I used to see on almost every page of Fresa Quintanilla’s magazines.

  And this year’s the fiftieth. Why wouldn’t she go after the crown?

  “I’m already bracing for the bathroom to be covered in eyeshadow and duct tape,” Cole says.

  My head snaps toward him. “Duct tape?”

  “Trust me,” he says. “You don’t wanna know.”

  But I do.

  I want to know everything about the pageant, even though it stings just to look at the banner. I even want to know whatever horrifying magic Kendra works with duct tape.

  Right now, the thing I want most in the world is to stop turning back into stardust.

  But once, the thing that I wanted, more than anything else, was to be Miss Meteor.

  Chicky

  PEOPLE SOMETIMES MAKE fun of me for eating lunch at home, but none of them live with the best cook in Meteor.

  I’m already exhausted from half a day of school by the time I dump my shoulder bag on the floor inside the door, but the smell of bean tlacoyos revives me slightly, and I stagger into the kitchen with my mouth watering.

  “Just in time, Banana.” Dad puts two of them on a plate and slides it down the weathered, farm-style kitchen table that used to belong to Bisabuela Gloriana.

  “Thank you.” I grab one and take a huge bite despite the still sizzling oil on the outside.

  Dad’s tlacoyos are so much more than stuffed tortillas. The gently spiced masa, the black beans he cooks for two days before mashing them in garlic oil. The slight crunch of the cilantro and onion he adds just before he fries it all together into a little pocket of heaven.

  “Chicky!” Uva exclaims from the front door. “Stop leaving your bag on the floor! You know what Abuela says.”

  “Abuela says a lot of weird stuff,” I mumble, my mouth still full.

  “Don’t underestimate her,” Uva says, her green-gray eyes far too intense for the matter at hand. “Remember that time there was no purse hook at the restaurant we went to in Santa Fe?”

  I stare at her blankly, finally swallowing. “No?”

  “Chicky! I put my bag on the floor! And the very next day I got seventeen dollars stolen on the Rail Runner.”

  When I don’t answer, she rolls her eyes, hanging my bag carefully on the back of my chair. “I’m just saying.”

  “Give it a rest, Uva,” says Fresa, who’s slouched over a bowl at the end of the table. “Just because you’re prematurely ninety years old doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to suffer.” I’m about to agree, but she turns on me next. “Although, putting shit on the floor is gross, Flaca.”

  Only Fresa can somehow disagree with two people who disagree with each other.

  “Anyway,” I say, when Dad turns to the fridge to grab a pitcher of horchata. “It’s not like I have any money to lose.” Uva shushes me, but it’s true. I used to get twenty dollars a month allowance, but sometime last spring it just stopped showing up in the painted bowl on the hall table.

  Cereza told us all not to complain, that Mom and Dad were doing their best, but I didn’t want to complain anyway. I was just worried.

  “Nobody has any money in this junk heap,” Fresa mutters now, rocking the crooked-legged chair at the table loudly for emphasis. Uva tries to shush her, too, but this time she’s not quick enough. Dad hears her.

  “I’ve been meaning to fix that chair,” he says. His voice is too bright, the tops of his ears turning purplish as he pours us each a glass, cinnamon flecks spinning around the ice cubes.

  I can smell the orange blossom water he calls his “secret ingredient,” and I feel terrible for bringing up money. I should have known Fresa couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

  “And . . .” He digs into his wallet and pulls out three crumpled five-dollar bills. “I forgot to put allowance in the bowl this week.”

  “Dad, it’s fine,” I say, just as Uva says, “I’m too old for allowance, Papa.” Fresa, of course, pockets hers without looking up. Uva kicks her under the table.

  “Girls, your sister is right,” he says. “You’ve all been working hard. Have a little fun.”

  I don’t bother telling him you can’t do anything fun with five dollars anymore. Not even in Meteor. Not even if I had anyone to do fun things with instead of just sisters who look at me like I’m a bug and classmates who have pretty much stopped looking at me at all.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I mutter, shoving more food in my mouth so I won’t have to come up with anything else to say. Fresa is still staring moodily into her bowl. She doesn’t say thank you. She doesn’t even acknowledge him.

  An awkward silence falls, and suddenly I wish Cereza was here, instead of working the lunch shift at the diner with Mom. She would know exactly what to say to get us all laughing again.

  “Hey, Fresa,” I say, taking the number one play out of Cereza’s well-worn oldest-daughter handbook: Make fun of Fresa. “Is that another grapefruit? No wonder your face looks all pinched up like that all the time.”

  Uva looks at me gratefully, then back at Fresa. “Her face is kind of pinched up,” she says, picking up a fresh tlacoyo from the plate. “Here, Fres, have some caaaarbs.” She says it in a spooky Halloween voice, and I snort into my horchata.

  “Girls, be nice,” Dad says, but there’s a glimmer of mischief in his eye. Sometimes Dad is a bigger kid than any of us. “I hear grapefruit is good for skin rashes. Maybe your sister has a rash.”

  This time, I almost choke. Fresa’s skin care regimen is more detailed than some astronaut training programs. The word “rash” is the stuff of her nightmares, and it shows in her eyes, which have narrowed to angry slits.

  “Oh, maybe you’re right, Dad,” Uva says. “Fresa, if you have a rash, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I hope the grapefruit helps.”

  “I do not have a rash!” she shouts.

  I would almost feel bad, except Fresa gives five times as good as she gets, so anytime you can best her, it’s a victory.

  “It’s called. A cleanse.” She stands up, stomping to the sink and dumping the bowl too loudly.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “There’s a little redness there, on the back of her neck. Maybe that’s where it starts.”

  “I hate all of you!” she shrieks, taking the stairs two at a time, but I hear the bathroom door slam, and I would bet this five dollars in my pocket she’s checking the back of her neck.

  Dad is laughing as he sets my school bag on my shoulder, but as he returns to the kitchen he bumps into Fresa’s abandoned chair, which wobbles with a loud, wooden thunk that echoes down the hall.

  Lita

  TODAY IS SEÑORA Strawberry’s birthday.

  Like always, I bring aguas frescas to pour over the cactuses, and streamers in the same pastels as their spines, and party horns.

  I would never tell the other cactuses—I give birthday parties to all of them who’ve told me their names—but she’s one of my favorites. She cheered up her neighbor, Herr Rainbow Hedgehog, enough to bring him back to life. Herr Rainbow was drooping like a
n overwatered daisy until Señora Strawberry burst into magenta bloom right next to him. Then his base filled out green, and he grew a fine coating of pink and yellow spines.

  Now I think they’re a little bit in love. I swear his spines blush a deeper pink as I sing “Happy Birthday” to Señora Strawberry.

  “Señora Strawberry,” I say, holding her birthday candle in front of her. “I wouldn’t ask you this unless I absolutely had to. But I need you to make a birthday wish for me.”

  I’ve asked other cactuses to wish that I wouldn’t turn back to stardust. They have, every time. Monsieur Cereus even wished it so hard I felt it in the air.

  A dust-covered pink wrapper blows across the ground. It’s about to blow right through Señora Strawberry’s birthday party. I stomp over to it. If I catch the tourists littering as much as they did last year, they are going to see me throw a fit bigger than they thought possible from a girl this short.

  I pluck it from the dirt.

  It’s not a wrapper.

  It’s a flyer.

  I unfold it and find the same words from the banner. The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  Something about those letters traces down my spine.

  Señora Strawberry’s birthday candle still flickers in my hand.

  Once, being Miss Meteor was my dream, as big as the whole desert sky. I wanted to earn that crown for Bruja Lupe and me and the stardust under our skin. I wanted to wear the name of this town I love and the rock they named it after.

  But then Royce Bradley and his friends taught me, in ways that feel as hot on my skin now as my tears felt on my cheeks then, that girls like me are never Miss Meteor.

  The Miss Meteor judges pick the same girl every year, like blond and blue-eyed and size-nothing is the best thing in the whole universe.

  I am nothing like those girls, like Kendra Kendall. And I’m two years younger than almost every other girl who enters.

  But the sky is going to take me back anyway. So what if I went for what I wanted all those years ago?