Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Worse than ridiculous.

  Something they had to crush.

  They weren’t happy until they’d scared me down onto the locker room floor, gotten me small and crying and hating that I ever thought I could be anything but what they decided. They weren’t happy until they ripped the tiara off my head, its plastic teeth taking pieces of my hair, and put something else, something they considered more appropriate, in its place.

  Maybe I’m not much bigger now than I was back then. But I have something I didn’t have then, the recklessness of having so little left to lose.

  “Chicky’s going to help me,” I say.

  “Chicky Quintanilla?” A laugh rattles through Bruja Lupe’s throat. “You chose the one Quintanilla girl who’s never been on that stage?”

  I almost say how she used to be my coach in our fake Miss Meteor pageants, but now all that feels so small and babyish.

  A knock comes at the door. The back one, the one we go through, not the one Bruja Lupe lets tourists in through.

  Bruja Lupe gives the biggest sigh of this whole conversation. “What now?”

  “I’ll get it,” I say before she can stomp toward the door.

  I open the door, and a whirl of styled hair and fruit-bright color rushes at me. Six eyelinered eyes all fall on me. Six manicured hands grab me and pull me into the center of the three oldest Quintanilla girls.

  “Thank goodness we got here in time!” Fresa rushes toward me and takes my face in her hands. “Well, she’s pretty, or at least she will be when we’re done with her.” She says it less like she’s paying me a compliment and more like she’s identifying a type of duck. She looks at her sister Cereza. “Some highlighter would make her drop-dead perfect, no?”

  “You don’t heat-style, do you?” Cereza asks. “Don’t worry, we’ll teach you.”

  Fresa taps my upper lip and glances at Uva Quintanilla. “Depilatory or cream bleach?”

  “Fresa!” Cereza shouts.

  “What?” Uva says.

  Cereza steps back to consider me. “If we start now, we might just be able to find her perfect lip color in time,” she says. “Do you see yourself as more of as a red girl, a plum girl, a coral girl?”

  I look down at my arms. “I see myself as the color I am?”

  “Stand up straight, lovely”—Uva pokes me between the shoulder blades—“you need every inch you’ve got.”

  Cereza taps my ankle. “If we find her a pair of heels that match her skintone, her legs’ll look longer than you think.”

  “Love these big eyes,” Fresa says. “She looks like a cartoon cow.”

  “Fresa!” Uva says.

  “I meant in a cute way.” Fresa rolls her eyes at Uva and then brushes her fingers along my temples. “But we have to do something about those brows. Have you ever tweezed?”

  Uva steps back, considering. “I wanna see her dressed in blue.”

  “Blue?” Cereza asks. “A girl with coloring like this and you’re gonna count out red and purple?”

  “Just trust me on this one,” Uva says. “We’ll try a few different shades. We don’t like it, we go with red.”

  “Conditioner.” Fresa takes a lock of my hair between her fingers. “Say it with me. Lots of conditioner. Sleep with it in every night. I always did it the week before a dance. You’ll thank me later.”

  Fresa moves just enough to let me see into the kitchen.

  Bruja Lupe rushes around the stove. She’s probably making tlayudas, her standard people-coming-over-unannounced dinner (her secret ingredient: ground jalapeño. They’re good not just in whole pepper form, and not just on top of cupcakes).

  I can tell from the size of the pan that she’s cooking for all five of us.

  Six of us.

  Chicky leans against the counter and crosses her arms. She gives me a smile that’s half weary, half smirking, a look of “careful what you wish for.”

  “Thank you,” I mouth.

  Miss Meteor, here we come.

  Chicky

  YOU HAVEN’T DIED of boredom until you’ve watched three former beauty queens teach their new protégé how to smile.

  Yeah, I thought it was a natural reflex too. Apparently, there’s a lot more Vaseline involved than I ever knew.

  “Did you put it on?”

  “Pendeja, I’m holding the damn tub in my hand, aren’t I? My finger all smeared with the stuff? What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Well it’s not enough! I can’t see her canines!”

  “It’s because she keeps licking it off!”

  “Lita bonita, it’s supposed to stay on, okay? Just try to forget it’s there.”

  They’re gathered around her like vultures on a carcass. My sisters couldn’t be more different from each other, but with a common goal they become a three-headed beast, dangerous to all who cross its path.

  “Chicky! How do I look?” Lita calls, as Uva balances a book on her head to “promote good posture.” It falls to the ground, pages splayed, when she does a ridiculous twirl to face me, her teeth bared in what I can only describe as a rabid Barbie smile.

  “Sorry, is there a scaring-neighborhood-children event I’m not aware of?” I ask before I can think twice. Honestly, I haven’t flexed my friend muscles in a while, especially not with Lita, and when her face falls I know I messed up.

  “No! Lita! Don’t close your mouth!”

  “The Vaseline!”

  But it’s too late. They all groan before whirling on me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it. With maneuvering skills I’ve had a lifetime to practice, I dodge their swatting hands and offer Lita an apologetic shrug. “You know I don’t get this beauty pageant crap,” I say, tugging at my own DIY haircut. “And I didn’t think your regular smile needed improvement.”

  She rewards me for this with exactly the smile I mean, like a beam of light through a dark sky.

  “Your posture, Lita!” Uva groans, shoving me aside just as Cereza swoops in with another glop of Vaseline on the tip of her finger.

  “Reza, get a Q-tip or something!” shrieks Fresa as she sticks the offending finger right in Lita’s mouth, spreading the fourth coat of slime across her teeth.

  “Ha! You think this is gross,” Cereza says, “you should spend a day in the Meteor Clinic.”

  “Hard pass,” Fresa says with a withering glare.

  They’ve just got her Barbie smiling again when a voice from behind me freezes me in my tracks.

  “So, is now a bad time, or . . . ?”

  Junior Cortes is standing at the end of the driveway, his face halfway between alarm and amusement.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, a little more harshly than I should. It’s just that I can’t stop seeing this through his eyes. How ridiculous we must all look.

  His eyes say he’s a little hurt, even though he’s trying not to show it.

  “It’s . . . Wednesday.” He shrugs. “But I can come back another time.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Uva says in that high voice she always uses around company. “Chicky, visit with your friend, we can take care of Lita for a little while.”

  Lubricated teeth shining in the afternoon sun, Lita gives me the double thumbs-up.

  “Come on,” I mumble, leading the way into the kitchen, still too embarrassed to meet his eyes.

  On Tuesdays Selena does mac and cheese, with the nacho cheese and the little green chilies in it. My dad keeps making it even though Junior is the only one who likes it—and he works at the museum on Tuesdays.

  The compromise they worked out is this: Junior comes over every Wednesday, and my dad makes sure there’s a plate of leftovers waiting for him. Usually we do homework while he eats it, but today, with Lita, with the pageant, I forgot all about it.

  “I’m thinking of getting my schedule switched just so I can eat it fresh,” he says, obviously trying to get me out of my head. “Your dad never lets me pay for the leftovers, and plus there’s a certain Meteor landmark I’m dying t
o visit . . .” He raises an eyebrow, and I sigh because I know he doesn’t mean the life-size statue of Vice President Hubert Humphrey on the downtown plaza.

  Although if I were picking landmarks, Hubert would be way above the one Junior means on the list.

  See, there’s a gross, sagging, dingy, grease-stained wall in the usually empty second dining room of Selena’s, and Junior’s been offering to paint something on it since eighth grade. It’s one of our longest ongoing disagreements, and with Junior and I that’s really saying something.

  “Still no,” I say, trying to hide how sad it makes me. His art is amazing. It deserves a bigger stage than Selena’s failing diner. Bigger than the cornhole boards, even. Bigger than anything this sorry place has to offer.

  He shrugs as I uncover the plate of mac and cheese and put it in the microwave, like he was expecting it.

  “You know,” he says, “centuries from now, they’re gonna find a fossilized can of Ortega chilies beside a bag of elbow noodles and this will be venerated as a sacred ancient dish.”

  “I keep telling my dad this stuff is an abomination, but he doesn’t care.” Despite my grumbling, when the microwave beeps I get two forks.

  “What’s not to love?” he asks with his mouth full. Even though it’s ridiculous, I think he means it.

  I can’t help it. I smile back. He pokes me in the cheek, where I have a dimple that makes me look about five years younger than I am.

  “So, are we gonna talk about what’s going on out there?” he asks, careful to look at the plate and not my face, which I appreciate. It’s easier to talk when both people are looking straight ahead. It was Mrs. Cortes who told me that, which is probably why Junior knows. She’s the only shrink in town.

  “Lita’s entering Miss Meteor,” I say quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “I see that,” he says, taking another bite. “But . . . why is she doing it here? You guys cool again?” He asks this like it’s no big deal. Like it wouldn’t be the second-biggest cosmic event in Meteor for Lita and I to make up.

  “It’s not about that,” I say, deflecting because I don’t know. “It’s about . . . you’re gonna think it’s stupid.”

  “Chicky, when have I ever thought anything you said was stupid?” His amber-brown eyes are too big when he asks, and he’s turned them on me, like he’s asking something without really asking.

  This makes me nervous enough that everything just spills out, with what Mr. Hamilton would call “a disappointing lack of punctuation.”

  “It’s because I want Kendra Kendall to lose Miss Meteor so she knows what it’s like to feel humiliated and Lita’s wanted to enter the pageant since we were kids so for a second it seemed like it made sense but now it seems crazy and they’re putting Vaseline on her teeth and I—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” Junior says.

  I do him one better. I stop completely.

  “What?” I ask when he doesn’t respond right away, and it sounds snappier than I meant it to but I don’t apologize.

  “Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “Forget it. It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.” The mac and cheese is only half gone, but he stands up anyway, and suddenly I’m panicky.

  “I have nothing figured out!” I say, feeling bad for the snapping, and for my less-than-warm welcome. “I’m floundering in my own life! And I can tell by that thing you do with your forehead that you have an opinion about it, so let’s just have it already.”

  Junior smiles grudgingly, sitting back down. “Look, I just think if you want to hang out with Lita you could probably just ask. You don’t have to go all elaborate destructive plan about it. I never really got what happened with you guys anyway.”

  “That’s not what this is,” I say, sticking my fork in the congealing cheese and leaving it standing there. You know, in case I have to flee. “I can’t explain what happened. And this Kendra thing isn’t a ruse, it’s for real. She and Royce are the worst, and I want them to pay for it, and I didn’t have any better ideas and—”

  “Okay, okay!” Junior holds up his hands, but he’s laughing. “Look, they’re flawed, no question. I just think if you happen to get your friend back in the process, it’s not the end of the world, right?”

  For a minute, I picture it. Lita and I. Friends again. It’s something I haven’t let myself wonder about—not further than reminiscing about our outside-town pretend pageants anyway.

  I can only get so far in my imagining, though, even now, because I can’t picture telling her. I’m still not ready. And if I can’t tell her, I already know how this ends.

  “It’s not gonna be a thing,” I say, looking him in the eye this time so he knows I mean it. “We’re just working together. We have a mutual goal. And I should probably be getting back to it.”

  “World domination to follow,” Junior says, but he looks kind of bummed.

  And I’m kind of bummed, too, so I just bump his shoulder with mine and say, “I know being my only friend is a big burden to carry, but you’re not getting rid of me that easily, Cortes.”

  He looks at me with those big question eyes again, the sadness all but gone.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and hands me my fork. “Maybe you better fuel up, just in case things get ugly out there.”

  I strain my ear toward the open kitchen window.

  “No screaming, maybe I can steal another minute?”

  He smiles.

  When the plate is empty, I realize maybe I was too hard on the mac and cheese. It really isn’t bad.

  Lita

  “EVERY TIME I think we’ve found the basement, they start digging,” Bruja Lupe whispers to me.

  She’s referring to her latest customer, a man asking if we can make him a potion that will render him irresistible to women.

  “If you have any essence of musk-ox,” he says.

  Bruja Lupe has promised to stop trying to talk me out of Miss Meteor if I let this man stare into my eyes.

  “Gaze into them as you might gaze into the firmament,” she urges, her voice dreamy and light as she flicks her wrist, “and therein you shall discover all the secrets of love held in the universe.”

  At first, he seems ill at ease. But then his look shifts, as all their looks do.

  “Do you understand?” Bruja Lupe breathes.

  “Yes,” the man answers in a hypnotized voice. “I understand it all.”

  Because would a man like this ever really admit otherwise?

  She sells him a few overpriced sachets.

  “Steep in hot water and drink a half hour before going out,” she tells him. “It will give you the confidence of a hundred kings and the charm of a hundred gentlemen.”

  The mesh bags are probably full of lemon balm. The only thing it will give him is a desire to take a nap. But he nods with the solemn look that tells us he intends to follow her directions precisely.

  After he leaves, I hand Bruja Lupe the parent permission form for the pageant, and she pretends to have to look around for a pen. “You sure this is what you want?”

  “I have to do this,” I say.

  “Okay.” She scrawls off her signature. “Just don’t expect me to put in hair pins or fix your lipstick.”

  “Don’t worry.” I beam at her. “I have four whole coaches.”

  I will not let this be sadder than it has to be, the sky taking me back. Instead, I will show Bruja Lupe that I am not just turning to stardust.

  I am leaving a streak of light across this town.

  I grab a sweater off the wooden hooks near the front door. Bruja Lupe never lets me go out without one, afraid I’ll catch cold even when it’s ninety degrees. That’s another way I know she’s made of the same star-stuff as me. Something in her remembers the blaze of burning through the atmosphere with the meteor that brought us here. In comparison, New Mexico heat is like the ice tail off a comet.

  “Wanna come with me?” I ask.

  “What, you want a fifth opini
on about lipstick?” She ropes her hair into a bun. Her hair goes halfway down her back, but it never takes her more than three pins. Threads of gray glint among the coiled black.

  “Don’t even pretend you don’t want to see Cereza and Fresa claw each other’s eyes out over types of hairspray.”

  “I do, realmente.” Bruja Lupe grins. “But I’m meeting the girls.”

  “The girls” usually means the Meteorite Birding Club. Leanne Cortes has gotten Bruja Lupe to care deeply about the number of cactus wrens and Costa’s hummingbirds in the desert around town. She’s had that effect on enough Meteor residents to double the membership.

  “Lita?” Bruja Lupe says.

  I stop just before the door. “I’m glad you and Chicky are partners-in-crime again.”

  If she’d said friends, I would have felt the wavering guilt of having to lie to her. But she said it right. Partners-in-crime. We are doing this one thing together.

  On my way out, I stand on tiptoes enough to kiss Bruja Lupe on her hair. She rolls her eyes, and I know she’ll get me back, leaving a plum-red lipstick print on my cheek when I’m not expecting it. But it’s worth it.

  The neatest handwriting of my life on Earth goes on this registration form for Miss Meteor. Or—it occurs to me that I better learn the whole name—the Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  Because I won’t just be competing against the prettiest and most talented girls in Meteor. I’ll be competing against girls from every town around that’s too small to have a pageant of its own.

  Buzz’s wife, Edna, sits at the registration table, the street and sidewalk around her humming with all the festival preparation. I present the form like Elizabeth Taylor showing off her latest engagement ring, and I give Edna the smile the Quintanilla sisters have spent hours teaching me.

  Edna looks frightened more than delighted.