Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “Fine, I was getting bored anyway.” She turns imperiously to the boys sweating over her afternoon task. “Shoo,” she says, waving a hand, and they do it. Just like that. Scamper back off to their soft serve like she has the authority to physically move them through space. Like she’s not just an almost-nineteen-year-old girl who spends an absurd amount of time on her hair.

  This, more than anything so far, convinces me I’ve come to the right place.

  “Okay,” she says when they’re gone. “Let’s talk while you help me clear tables.”

  “I need to make Kendra Kendall lose Miss Meteor,” I blurt out before she can go inside. The effort of not saying it since the hallway is finally too much. “With, like, as much suffering as I can inflict along the way.”

  Fresa raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “I’m not even gonna ask why,” she says, and I know she means it. She doesn’t care. I probably had her at “suffering.”

  She considers me again, something else gleaming in her eye this time. It says maybe I’m not just the useless weirdo that sleeps across the hall, after all. That maybe I do share an iota of her DNA after she’s spent years trying to prove I was adopted.

  She’s still thinking when the bell rings, and I hate myself for the hope that jumps into my throat. Maybe it’s a group of old ladies after book club, or a bus trip to Santa Fe that stopped off to see the rock . . .

  I run to the counter even though I’m not technically working today, ready to put on my best “you want to eat here” smile, but it’s only Lita, her wide eyes taking the place in like she’s never seen it before. Like she didn’t practically grow up across from Bruja Lupe in the third booth on the left—the one you can see the moon sign from. Back when she was working her way through the menu from top to bottom, looking for something that felt like home.

  The distance between us tugs at my chest, just like always, the piles of words left unsaid not enough to fill the hole our friendship left when it faded like a comet’s tail in the sky.

  “Hey,” I say, like I’d say it to anyone.

  “Hey,” she says back, imitating my casual nod.

  Don’t be awkward, I tell myself, right before I say: “So, the weather, it’s . . . uh . . . tater tot nachos. The special is tater tot nachos.”

  Even Lita Perez, the strangest girl in Meteor by a landslide, looks at me like she’s worried maybe I have a concussion.

  I sigh. “Sorry, can I get you something?”

  She pretends to look over the menu, even though we both know she doesn’t need to, and I try to remember the last time we actually spoke. We see each other constantly, it’s the curse of the small town. But I avoid Bruja Lupe’s neighborhood, even though it means riding my bike the long way to school, and Lita avoids the diner.

  At least, she used to.

  “I’ll take a cupcake with . . .”

  “Jalapeños?” I can’t help finishing for her.

  “Jalapeños,” she confirms, and we both smile.

  “Chicky,” Lita says as I pull a red velvet cupcake from the glass pastry display (she was never picky about the flavor) and a jar of pickled jalapeños from below the counter. I arrange five of the green discs on top of the frosting and push it across the counter on a plate.

  “Lita?”

  “Do you remember when we used to play Miss Meteor?”

  It’s the absolute last question I expected her to ask, and my first reaction is to curl up like a porcupine against the memories. All the togetherness that I distanced myself from because I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  But before I can, her words start to stir something in me. Something as old as paper dolls and cactus-flower crowns. Something that makes itching powder seem like child’s play.

  “I do,” I say cautiously, because with Lita you never know what’s coming next.

  “Remember how you used to be my manager?” Her voice is high and breathless, her eyes sparkling.

  I can’t help it, I sparkle back. “I do.”

  “We always won,” she says. “Every pageant.”

  “The other contestants were Señora Strawberry and three of Cereza’s old dolls,” I reply, trying not to smile too much. It’s just going to hurt when I have to put it away again later.

  “Señora Strawberry was always our stiffest competition,” she reminisces, smiling, but then she pauses, a long thing with plenty of space for imagining inside it.

  “What if it wasn’t pretend?” she says when the silence has run its course. “No cactuses, no bent-spoon tiaras. The real deal.”

  “You’re not thinking of entering . . . ,” I say, because I can’t picture it, even though I remember the way she daydreamed about it back then. But then, just as suddenly, I can picture it. Kendra Kendall, losing Miss Meteor. But not just losing. Losing to Lita Perez . . .

  “Not without your help,” she says in a wheedling tone. “I mean, you know I never could have beat Señora Strawberry if you hadn’t coached me through the Q&A.”

  She’s steeled herself, I can see it on her face. Despite her jokes, this is what she walked through those doors to ask me.

  It breaks my heart and makes me hopeful all at once, that even after years of distance and avoiding and the terrible sadness of growing apart, we’re still scheming in tandem.

  Lita’s still watching me, her brave face faltering a little as I think it over.

  It’s a crazy idea. Worse than crazy. Lita and I barely know each other anymore, and honestly the itching powder probably has a higher probability of success than the two weirdest girls in Meteor staging the biggest pageant upset in the event’s fifty-year history.

  And so I’m about to say no. Ask Bruja Lupe for something itchy from her hierba drawer when Lita’s out and go the easy route. But then I remember the end of our pretend pageants, where we’d crack open the shoebox full of chocolate coins and split our winnings.

  Ten thousand dollars. Even a portion of it would keep the lights on a little while longer around here. Maybe fix some cracking paint or replace the chairs with the wobbly legs.

  “Never mind,” Lita says, her voice small. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “I’ll do it,” I say, my voice clear and decisive even though alarm bells are ringing louder than the ancient fire bell in the town square and every cell in my body is demanding an explanation. “I’ll help you become Miss Meteor.”

  Lita’s jaw drops. “You . . . I . . . What?”

  “I’ll help you. But we’re not competing against dolls and cactuses anymore. You’re gonna need more help.”

  Luckily, I know exactly who to ask.

  Lita

  I WOULD HAVE been less surprised to see Hubert Humphrey, vice president of the United States when Meteor was incorporated, waltz into Selena’s than I am at this moment.

  Because Chicky saying yes—so quickly and so surely—is as odd as having a politician who died in 1978 sit down and order onion rings.

  “Really?” I ask. I was ready to offer her the prize money I may or may not win. I was ready to learn to play mariachi for the Chicky-Junior first date. I was ready to scrub plates the next time the dishwasher in the diner kitchen breaks down.

  “To be clear,” Chicky says. “I’m not entering with you. It’d be you up there in sequins and fake eyelashes, not me.”

  I can’t help laughing. Not because Chicky couldn’t rock an evening gown (probably with combat boots), but because she would be stomping across the stage and rolling her eyes through the entire promenade.

  “I know,” I say.

  A memory hangs between us, of when we used to play dress up, pretending to be actors in Bruja Lupe’s favorite movies that no one our age had ever heard of but us. I’d borrow one of Bruja Lupe’s dresses and pretend I was Rita Hayworth, and she’d borrow one of her dad’s old suits and strut around with the style of Marlene Dietrich and the suaveness of Humphrey Bogart.

  It brings the familiar ache of something that faded and just got lost.

  Friendships do
n’t always end with a big fight, a sudden silence. Sometimes it’s a sad, slow drifting apart. Sometimes it’s one of you getting the flu so bad you’re out of school for two weeks, and then when you come back you just don’t sit together at lunch anymore. Sometimes it’s realizing there’s something big you’re not saying and something big she’s not saying, and that you’re both not telling each other the big things anymore.

  This is how you stop being friends, a little at a time.

  “Can I ask you something?” I say.

  She nods.

  “What made you say yes?” I ask.

  I’m ready for her to say, “Do you want my help or not?” Or something about a gifted horse—a phrase people on this planet seem to really like when it comes to questioning favors, but that I’ve never gotten up the nerve to ask the meaning of.

  But Chicky shakes her head at the glitter-flecked Formica tabletop. “You ever just wake up one day and realize you’ve taken something for years and you can’t do it for another day? Like, literally can’t do it anymore?”

  Mr. Hamilton might pick on her use of the word “literally,” but from the look in her eyes, I get the feeling she means it.

  I think of the skin on my stomach turning to stardust, my desperate wish to hold on to my body and my life on Earth.

  I think of how I can’t leave this town, this planet, without trying for the dream I had all those years ago. Because then I would have stayed small and afraid forever, right up until the sky takes me back.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know that feeling.”

  “Now can I ask you something?” Chicky says.

  I nod.

  “Why now?” she asks. “You have two years. No one in our grade enters. You know that.”

  “Except Kendra.”

  “Right. Exactly.”

  If she says I’m too brown/too chubby/too wobbly on high heels to win a pageant, I’m leaving. I know all that, and I don’t need to hear it from her.

  When she doesn’t, I answer her question.

  “You know how you literally can’t do it anymore?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “I literally can’t wait two years,” I say.

  I wince, waiting for her to ask why, knowing I won’t tell her.

  I only told Bruja Lupe—weeks ago, when the first ribbon of stardust appeared—because I thought she’d know how to make it stop. The air in our house has felt a little sadder ever since the night she told me she couldn’t, didn’t know how. Ever since every remedio didn’t turn it back.

  But Chicky doesn’t ask why.

  Instead, the sunflowers in the centers of her eyes brighten, as sudden as clouds clearing. “And you’re sure you have this in you? Prancing around in sparkles?”

  “If I had the stomach to help you steal Fresa’s tweezers, I have the stomach for anything.”

  “Oh my God!” Fresa comes thundering toward the booth. “That was you two! I knew it!”

  “Run,” Chicky says under her breath.

  I slide out of the booth.

  Chicky lopes after me.

  Our only salvation is that I’m pretty sure Fresa’s nails are wet—I can tell by how they’re shining—so she won’t grab the door and come after us.

  But we’re still running and laughing, and we could almost be out with the cactuses again, years ago, when we were friends and Miss Meteor was something we acted out in old evening gowns under the desert sky.

  Chicky

  I’M SITTING AT the kitchen table, stress-eating pickles and wondering what I’ve gotten myself into, when the fight breaks out.

  “Give me back my leggings!”

  “You guys, can’t we handle this without screaming?”

  “I’m gonna KILL you!”

  I roll my eyes, putting the pickle jar back before taking the stairs two at a time. I’ve been avoiding this moment. Asking Fresa for help with the pageant makes it more than just nostalgia. More than remembering Lita and I in the cactus field, her in too-big high heels, me with a clipboard shouting out instructions.

  If I get Fresa involved, that means we’re doing this. For real. In front of God and Kendra Kendall and Junior and Mr. Hamilton and everyone.

  Everyone . . .

  In the hallway outside our bedrooms, Uva is still standing between Cereza and Fresa, but I can tell her courage won’t last much longer.

  “You know those are my leggings,” Cereza says, in a voice that will probably convince patients to agree to risky medical treatments someday, but it does nothing for Fresa, whose pupils are dilated in a way I have associated with danger since I was six years old.

  “They’re my leggings,” she says. “I bought them because Berto said my ass looks good in them. Like I would forget that.”

  “Oh yes, because the objectifying comments of a guy who drinks tall cans of Modelo out of paper bags in the gas station parking lot hold any sway in this argument whatsoever.”

  “Hey, Fresa,” I say, knowing I’d be better off waiting for the next ice age than the end of one of their legendary arguments. She doesn’t even turn.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t be so mad if anyone ever told you your ass looks good in something,” Fresa retorts. “In fact, you know what, Rez, you can have them. My gift to you. Maybe you’ll get laid and stop being such a b—”

  “Oh, like I even want your ho charity!” Cereza screeches.

  “So you admit they’re mine!”

  “OH MY G—”

  “HEY, FRESA!” I yell, and for once, they all go silent. Three pairs of surprised eyes turn my way. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Uh, sure, Flaca,” she says, turning back to Cereza. “You’re lucky I’m such a good sister, bitch. Wear those leggings tonight, and your hoops. Thank me later.” She turns and beckons me into her room before Cereza’s face can go from red to purple.

  “So, what’s up?” She pulls a pillow onto her lap. I haven’t been in this room for months. There are cutout photos of greased abs on every flat surface. It’s nauseating.

  “It’s . . . about Miss Meteor,” I begin, and she perks up instantly. “I’m not entering,” I clarify quickly. “But . . . Lita wants to.”

  I wait for her to laugh.

  “You mean in the cactus field like you guys used to when you were little, right?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. “Great, I’m glad you found a hobby, hermanita. Because you can’t possibly be talking about Lita Perez and the actual Miss Meteor pageant.”

  I exhale loudly. “Except that I am.”

  “Take it from me,” Fresa says, with an expertly arched eyebrow. “Try underwater welding or something. It’ll be safer.”

  “I’m . . . pretty determined.”

  Fresa blows her bangs up, then fixes me with a penetrating stare.

  “Why on earth would you do something that stupid? Is this about your weird obsession with Kendra Kendall again?”

  “No,” I say, instantly defensive. “Okay, yes.”

  “I thought you wanted to humiliate her, not yourself.”

  “Think about it, though,” I say, some of the delusional magic that made me say yes to Lita’s diner pitch infecting me again. “Losing to Lita? It would be total social devastation.”

  Fresa would never admit it, but her eyes start to sparkle, just a little. It’s dangerous, like the glint of a streetlight on the barrel of a gun.

  “To not just lose, but to lose to people like us?”

  Fresa twirls a strand of perfectly blown out hair around her French-manicured index finger. “Okay, I mean, in theory I kind of love it. But Lita, really? I mean . . . she has even less of a chance at winning than you do, and that’s . . . really saying something.”

  “Why do you think we need you?”

  Fresa’s eyes unfocus, like she’s gone somewhere deeper in search of an answer. It’s a few minutes before she comes back.

  “Fuck it, I’m in,” she says.

  “Just like that?” I ask, halfway through coming up with another prong of
attack. I’m instantly suspicious. “What’s in it for you?”

  “Duh, justice,” she says. “I mean, everyone knows I was robbed last year. And the only thing this world loves more than a dynasty blond girl is a good Cinderella story, right? So, we make Lita fucking Perez a real contender for the tiara. We upset the balance. We piss off the Kendalls and all their weird groupies.”

  I can tell she’s serious, because she hasn’t said “bitch” in, like, five minutes.

  “Worst-case scenario, she doesn’t win, but everyone’s talking about this for years to come. Kendra’s spotlight gets stolen. Best-case scenario, she actually wins, Kendra is ruined, and there’s finally a brown girl wearing that sash.”

  In Fresa’s no-nonsense tone, it almost sounds like it makes sense.

  “But if you think I’m getting Lita onto that stage by myself you’re—and I never say this—overestimating me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have three sisters. Go get the rest of them on board. We’re going to need them.”

  Lita

  “YOU WANT TO what?” Bruja Lupe asks.

  I can almost feel the sky vibrating above us, even through the popcorn ceiling.

  I weight my feet into the worn-down carpet. “I’m going to enter Miss Meteor.”

  “Do you have a fever?” Bruja Lupe reaches for my forehead.

  “No,” I answer slowly, because this sounds like a trick question.

  “So this is a decision you made in your right mind?” she asks. “This is what you want? Spending your precious hours fluttering your eyelashes?”

  “It’s my choice what I do with . . . ,” I can’t say it.

  The time I still have.

  Bruja Lupe sighs. “And the choice you want to make is to invite the whole town to make fun of you?”

  Now I don’t have to try to plant my weight. I feel like I’m going to sink into the carpet.

  “That’s what you think?” I ask. “That I’ll just fail completely?”

  “Towns like this don’t want girls like us to succeed. You know that.”

  My brain slips down a familiar path. I want to pull it back, but it keeps going. It slides into an old memory that still stings no matter how many times it’s played in my head. How I was stupid enough to come to school in a rhinestone tiara and polyester sash on Halloween, playing at being the beauty queen I thought I could one day become. How ridiculous Royce and his friends thought I was.