Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Ms. Jacobs and Ms. McNeil have been “roommates” for twenty years in a one-bedroom house on Spruce Street, and no one bats an eye because they don’t make a spectacle of themselves in public.

  And then there’s Cole Kendall, who’s treated like one of the golden boys as long as he’s calling little old ladies ma’am, keeping his hair neat, and scoring half the soccer team’s goals all season.

  But here, in the hallway, with Royce sneering at me, it’s all too obvious that this town has already given me my maximum allowance for weird. I’m already the black sheep Quintanilla sister with the bad haircut and the weird clothes. I’m already a different color than the families with money and clout.

  My answer is all over Royce’s face right now, and he’s right. Meteor isn’t going to let me be any more different. Not unless I give something up first.

  Junior steps forward, toward Royce, but I shake my head. Fighting back here, on their turf, will only make things worse. Even he should know that by now.

  Royce waits, his chest puffed out, his arms at his sides. Cole won’t meet my eyes this time, and I can tell whatever moment we almost had is over. Kendra has reminded us all of her power, her boyfriend like some mythical amplifying staff on her arm, the Miss Meteor crown in her hot-pink-taloned grasp. The darkness of all my secrets is folding in on itself again, willing to do whatever it takes to stay hidden.

  The show over, the members of the crowd seem to remember they don’t have to be here anymore and scatter.

  “Tell me what’s going on in there,” Junior asks when we’re the only ones left in the hallway. For a moment I wonder: Should I tell him? Make myself a little less invisible just for a minute? Paint a Chicky-sized outline in this hallway even though it will fade away?

  I know he wouldn’t judge me, but can I really do it? Say: What’s going on, Junior, is that I’m different and I’m afraid?

  But that’s when I see Lita, peeking around a doorway down the hallway, her eyes round and shiny as quarters in the road. I don’t let myself smile when I see what she’s wearing, but it’s hard not to. It’s one of her cactus birthday party outfits. A yellow sweater covered in little, fuzzy pom-poms, and a shiny skirt over hot-pink tights. There’s even a tiny, matching mylar balloon stuck behind her ear like a pencil.

  Feliz cumpleaños, Señora Strawberry, I think sadly, but then it hits me, and the sight of Lita is all it takes to force me back into sixth-grade Chicky’s shell. I remember what it felt like, to be on the verge of telling, to not be able to. How much it hurt. How it made me pull back into a cocoon of my own making and push everyone around me away to keep the secret safe.

  Since then, I’ve kept everyone at arm’s distance. Even when Lita looked hurt and confused in the hallways and eventually started sitting somewhere else at lunch. Even when Junior tries to get closer.

  I can’t risk it. Telling Junior. Because I couldn’t even tell my best friend. The girl closer to me than a sister. The truth was too big to confront, sharing it too big a risk to take.

  The truth that I might not be like everyone else.

  That I might be worthy of the nasty names that flew around behind me at school.

  I couldn’t tell her. And it destroyed us. But telling her would have destroyed me.

  In the hallway now, Junior looks at me quizzically, waiting for an answer I still can’t give, because some stupid flouncing princess and her rock-headed prince made it their mission to make me feel unworthy. Small. Cornered and alone.

  They’re still just as smug, as self-important and drunk on their own power as they were then, and in my building anger I realize:

  Maybe I couldn’t tell Lita then. Maybe I can’t tell Junior now. But there’s one thing I can do. Something I should have done a long time ago.

  I can take something from that girl, who took so much from me with just a sneer and a nickname, and the thing she cares about most is all around us.

  Miss Meteor. Kendra expects to win. Everyone expects her to win. But you can only enter Miss Meteor once. If I can find a way to stop her, she’ll never get another chance.

  Her family legacy broken, humiliated in front of the school and the town and the tourists? It would be a start.

  Leaving Junior shaking his head in the hallway, I walk as fast as my baby-horse legs can carry me to the bike rack outside school. Because there’s only one place to go when you need a secret, insidious plan, and that’s straight to my older sisters.

  Lita

  ALL THROUGH AFTERNOON classes I think about it. It distracts me when we talk about phytoplankton in biology. It makes my mind wander away from a lecture on the ancient Romans. It even draws my attention away from the flowery graphs we make of polar equations in Mrs. LaRoux’s class.

  But my thoughts keep circling around Miss Meteor.

  Am I really thinking of doing this? Am I really considering making what might be my last big act on Planet Earth this, something that might end in my complete humiliation?

  And if I am, how am I even gonna do it?

  I want to tell Bruja Lupe.

  Except I can’t tell Bruja Lupe anything until I have the plan of all plans. Because I know exactly how she’s going to react to “I know you’re losing me, how about in the little time we have together, I parade around a stage for everyone in town to laugh at?”

  “Lita,” Mrs. LaRoux says as I leave class. “Are you feeling all right?”

  Mrs. LaRoux knows math is my favorite subject. I listen to my math teachers with the attention Bruja Lupe gives old Grace Kelly movies. Last time I seemed distracted, it was an hour before I got sent home with walking pneumonia. Nothing takes me out of math class.

  Except this.

  “Yeah,” I say. “All vital signs normal.”

  That makes her relax enough to let me out into the hall.

  Through one of the school windows, I can see that banner.

  The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase

  Bruja Lupe knows that, a long time ago, I wanted to be Miss Meteor. I wanted to embody all the cosmic magic of this town, the same way the space rock does. I used to trip around in old Goodwill ballgowns with Chicky pretending to be my manager (back then, bids for Miss Meteor seemed like such a big deal to us that we thought they were like political campaigns).

  But ever since what happened with Royce and his friends, I stopped talking about it, to anyone, including Bruja Lupe.

  Now I stand in the hall, my brain toggling back and forth between wondering if Bruja Lupe might lend me her lipsticks and trying to come up with any talent I could do on a pageant stage.

  Whenever I catch Cole at the edge of my vision, like I do right now, the things I notice are the things that have been the same since we were small. The cornhusk blond of his hair. His khakis that are cut like jeans. Collared shirts or plain T-shirts, never polos. He breaks from the uniform the rest of the cornhole team wears.

  “Bye, Lita,” Cole says.

  I register him there, but I’m thinking too hard to answer.

  “Little out in space today?” Cole asks.

  The words catch me, like my toe snagging on the edge of the carpet that’s peeling away in Bruja Lupe’s living room.

  My attention snaps back. “What?”

  “Are you okay?” Cole asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Are you?”

  I say it out of instinct, like when someone asks “How are you?” and you say “Fine, and you?” without thinking. But there’s something sad flickering in his eyes.

  “Cole,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Just thinking about practice. Coach has me working on this wrist-flick thing.”

  I know what it is probably, even without knowing what it is. It’s all the little slights he lives with.

  It’s how sometimes people are so busy congratulating themselves on being accepting that there’s no room in them for anything else. Including being accepting. Meteor(ite), New Mexico, may have
a dozen gringos each Halloween dress up in flying-saucer-sized sombreros and fake mustaches, but point out the flaws in their costumes or opinions, and they’ll respond like you’ve told Martha Stewart her angel food cake is dry. It’s just not something they consider possible, that they are anything less than small-town neighborly. They act as though they’ve always embraced Cole Kendall as the guy he is. They don’t want to remember the ridiculous meetings debating whether he should be allowed in the boys’ locker room, or where to put him for sex ed. (That was how they phrased it too. Where do we put him?)

  “Is your dad gonna make it home this week?” I ask.

  Cole shakes his head. “Can’t.”

  He holds his jaw tight, keeping his face from falling. Every time I ask Cole about his father, Mr. Kendall seems to be in a different city, giving a presentation or smoothing over a project in a different regional office. All of which seems to be more important than making it home for Cole’s games.

  Even this week’s cornhole championship.

  “He’s gonna have to stay in Buffalo.” Cole shrugs like it’s nothing. “Some kind of deal going through. It’s fine though. When I’m throwing, it’s not like I notice who’s there. Hubert Humphrey himself could stop by and I’d miss it.” He tries to laugh.

  Hubert Humphrey. Everyone around here knows he was vice president when Meteor was founded. Everyone knows there’s a statue of him in the park. But Cole Kendall is probably the only one who remembers what number vice president he was. I definitely don’t know. Just like I don’t know why Cole still talks to me.

  Probably because I am little (Bruja Lupe’s word) in a way that makes him look out for me, cute (Mrs. Quintanilla’s word) in a way that’s easy to feel sorry for, and made fun of enough that his conscience won’t let him forget me entirely.

  You can’t really know what makes people keep caring or stop caring. I learned that from Chicky.

  Right now, I catch a last glimpse of Chicky, watching Junior’s back as he goes.

  And an idea hums through the desert, landing on me like a blown-loose party streamer. It’s bright as yellow-and-pink crepe paper, waving and fluttering to get my attention.

  Fresa Quintanilla was second runner-up in last year’s Miss Meteor pageant. Before her, Uva and Cereza placed high, the crown almost in reach. And they did it while older versions of Kendra Kendall hid their talent ribbons and mascara wands.

  Scheming is in the Quintanilla blood. I know that from Chicky. It was Chicky who figured out that putting out the right wind chime late at night would, to Bruja Lupe’s dreaming brain, sound like our laugh behind my bedroom door. It let us sneak out while Bruja Lupe stayed asleep.

  When we wanted to make nopales, it was Chicky who managed to borrow Fresa’s tweezers for the spines and get them back before she noticed.

  If anyone knows how to hatch a plan, it’s Chicky.

  Chicky, my old campaign manager.

  Maybe Chicky isn’t my friend anymore. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe there’s something I could offer her. The prize money? Me live-serenading her and Junior on their first (long overdue) official date? Whatever it is, she can have it.

  “Earth to Estrellita Perez?” Cole says, a laugh in his voice.

  “Huh?” I startle back to him. “What?”

  “Okay, I’m starting to worry,” he says. “You’re way far out there. Even for you. Are you okay?”

  I watch Chicky fleeing down the hall. I can’t ask her here. First, I have shorter legs than she does, I’ll never catch up.

  Second, I still remember the last time I talked about being Miss Meteor at school, and I’m never making that mistake again.

  “Yeah,” I tell Cole. “I just had an idea.”

  Chicky

  SELENA’S DINER IS one of those all-chrome anachronisms you see in fifties horror movies. You know, with a giant praying mantis standing over them, holding a screaming blond lady in a red evening gown?

  On my way there, I take the only hill in town as fast as I can on my bike. The burning in my muscles won’t slow me down, because I am a girl on a mission. I fly past the low, drab buildings and the scrubby trees and the cactuses that grow like weeds.

  I fly past out-of-date storefronts with bulbs burned out of their signs, benches that desperately need to be repainted, and so much cheesy space-inspired stuff it kind of makes me sick to my stomach.

  Would it kill them to clean the place up a little? I wonder. Repaint some stuff? Make it look like something besides the dusty, nowhere town where every campy sci-fi movie starts?

  The people in those movies never end up staying in the town once the threat has been neutralized.

  I can take some comfort from that, at least.

  When I stop, finally, I lean my bike up against the stack of pallets in the back, catching my reflection in the dingy, scratched surface of the diner. I don’t look any different than normal. There are the too-long legs that I call “stick brown” and my mom calls “sepia.” The black cutoffs I’ve been wearing since seventh grade. The striped T-shirt I wear when Fresa hides all my black tank tops and tells me to stop being so weird.

  As if I can help it.

  I might look the same on the outside, but on the inside I’ve been totally rearranged. Today, I’m the meteor, hurtling forward on a collision course. Only this time it’s not a ramshackle town in danger, it’s a long-legged blonde with her nose in the air.

  Because at the end of next week, Kendra Kendall will be watching someone else don the Miss Meteor crown with a frozen smile on her face. For me. For Cole. For the absence of Lita. For everyone who has ever felt like a demoted dwarf planet in the presence of her sun.

  And I’m gonna be the one to make it happen.

  So far, I’ve thought of itching powder in her strapless bra, blue Kool-Aid in her shampoo, foot cream in her expensive moisturizer, but I know that’s kid stuff compared to what I need.

  Luckily, my sister Fresa is working today, and no one can scheme for nefarious purposes quite like she can.

  Trust me, I learned that the hard way when she caught me borrowing her purple high tops in sixth grade without asking. Revenge came low and slow, and my left eyebrow never grew back the same.

  I walk into Selena’s filled with righteous fire, but when I push through the back doors, my heart sinks down to join my stomach. I can tell from the kitchen window there are no customers here. Not even old Buzz, who sometimes drinks coffee at the counter all day long when the museum is closed. It’s too late in the day to hope for an after-school rush, so we just have to cross our fingers for dinner. Again.

  “Chicky! Good thing you’re here. We need all the help we can get!”

  My dad approaches from the empty grill, and the sinking feeling just gets worse. Dad’s doing the same thing he did at home during lunch, pretending everything is all fine and well. I wish that, for once, my parents would just be honest with me.

  Selena’s is a family business, which means my parents run it most of the time, and the four of us help out after school and on weekends. Five women, and yet my dad is the one prancing around the kitchen, singing “Como La Flor” into a spatula.

  “Pero, aaaaaaayyyy, como me duele . . . ,” he serenades me. “Aaaaaay, como me duele! Come on, sing with me!”

  But the sinking feeling is too heavy, I can’t even smile. How can he be dancing around back here like nothing’s wrong when even the lights being on in this room is like throwing money into the gutter?

  “Sorry, Dad,” I mutter. “Just looking for Fresa.”

  He stops singing, turning the music down. “You okay, Mija?” he asks, concern putting a crease in his unibrow. My dad is so handsome, he could have been in movies, but instead he’s stuck back here, in an empty kitchen, singing a dead girl’s songs to no one.

  “Just thought there’d be more people here,” I mumble, before I can help myself.

  My dad’s too-bright smile falters. “You know pageant week’s coming up,” he says. “We’ll get plent
y of business. We’re okay, Mijita.”

  But the question lingers between us: Will pageant week be enough to make up for a year’s worth of empty lunch tables?

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, not meeting his eyes. “Um, Fresa?”

  “Uh-oh, what’d she do now?” he asks, obviously trying to cover up the worry thick in the fryer-smelling air between us, but I can’t even answer around the lump in my throat.

  “In the alley breaking down cardboard,” he says when I don’t reply.

  “Fat chance,” I say, cracking half a smile. An offering.

  Dad rolls his eyes affectionately, taking it. “Okay, okay. More like convincing the dishwashers from next door to break down cardboard for her,” he amends.

  I try to widen my smile, but on my way through the diner there are tears pricking the backs of my eyes. “What are you looking at?” I ask Selena’s life-size cutout by the counter. She doesn’t answer; she just keeps smiling.

  There’s a flickering neon moon on the sign outside, a thinly veiled attempt to fit in with the space craze this town is famous for, but the Tejana queen reigns supreme inside. Signed photos, cutouts, and album covers are all over the walls.

  In other parts of the country, nostalgic places like this one pay homage to Elvis, but we don’t kneel for kings in here. Only for La Reina. “Don’t you know?” my dad asks tourists with Meteor T-shirts from Buzz’s gift shop. “Selena is a moon-goddess’s name, and all the Quintanillas are blessed by proxy.”

  No one has the heart to tell him we’re not those Quintanillas, and we pretend we don’t see him combing genealogy free trials at night when everyone else is asleep.

  Through the side door, Fresa examines a nail haughtily while sure enough, two dishwasher boys from the Milky Way Ice Cream Parlor across the street break down a stack of Selena’s cardboard boxes and toss them in the shared dumpster.

  “Fres,” I say, and she looks up. “I need your help.”

  She sizes me up for a second, taking in my cooling cheeks and my eyes that must still be reflecting all my destructive urges.