Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Maybe the smile reads better from the stage?

  Edna stamps the form and hands me back a registration number. “And that’s for you, sweetheart. Best of luck to you. And don’t forget, show up early to the question and answer so we can check you in.”

  The fluttery feeling in my stomach settles partway between excitement and nausea from all the Vaseline I’ve swallowed. I’ll be up against the Kendra Kendalls of the whole region, girls whose families are legends in the Miss Meteor pageant.

  But I can do this. The Quintanilla sisters will make sure I can do this.

  And I’ve already done the first part. I have an official contestant number and a place in the Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional . . . I mess it up in my head the first time I try to say it back to myself.

  I turn around to step out of line, reading the top of my contestant badge over again.

  The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  I read it again and again, trying to stick it in my brain.

  Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  When I look up, there’s Kendra Kendall, looking more polished and with better posture than I’ll probably look on my best day of the pageant. She wears a sundress that seems both like she bought it new from a store yesterday and like it came from some boutique half a century ago, the first dress store that ever existed in Meteor.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says with more disdain, more pity, than anger, like the way Bruja Lupe sounds when she gets yet another request for her to fortune-tell winning lottery ticket numbers.

  Cole stands behind her, drinking from a green water bottle that he will carry with him from now until the championship later in the week. Every cornhole player has their rituals. Some eat bowls of spaghetti the size of their heads. Cole drinks the most disgusting flavor of Powerade there is (the green kind).

  “Did you really just enter?” Kendra asks.

  “Kendra,” Cole says. “We do not have time for pageant stuff right now.”

  Kendra looks back at him. “This”—her eyes flash back at me, and I realize I’m the this—“is not pageant stuff.” She glances at Cole once more. Then her eyes cling to me. “You are not pageant stuff.”

  “What’s the matter, Kendra, can’t take a little competition?” Cole asks.

  “Yeah, real competition.” She looks at my chest, but not in an admiring way. I know what admiring looks like between girls from seeing the way Chicky sometimes notices other girls, that kind of light, glancing consideration.

  This is not that.

  This is evaluating, like the school nurse checking our spines for scoliosis.

  “She doesn’t even have boobs,” Kendra says.

  That makes something in me flare. Maybe I was flat all the way up until the fall of freshman year. Maybe even now I don’t have much compared to Kendra or Fresa. Maybe my boobs took their sweet time coming in, but they did get here. And the fact that Kendra doesn’t know it means she probably hasn’t taken a good look at me since I came to her house for Cole’s birthday party in eighth grade.

  I am nothing to her but the chubby girl her brother talks to because no one else does.

  “Yes, I do.” I draw down the V-neck of my shirt, just enough to show her the cleavage Fresa insists we’re going to show off during the swimsuit competition. I don’t just have boobs, I have a bra that fits them right, something Bruja Lupe is as proud of as she is of teaching me to make chiles rellenos. Your body is worth something that makes you feel good, she always tells me. Never forget it.

  This is even one of my new bras, patterned with pink and yellow flower shapes. I’m almost glad to get to show it off. Maybe it’ll show Kendra I can be a little like her, wearing pretty clothes that fit me.

  Cole, drinking from the water bottle the same moment I tug my shirt down, does a spit-take worthy of the best old comedies Bruja Lupe has ever shown me. He practically mists the back of his sister’s hair.

  He puts a hand to his mouth, either to cover it or wipe it.

  Kendra glares back at him. “Ew.”

  “What, you think I meant to do that?”

  “You’re a guy and so inherently gross, so yes, I do.”

  “I’m gross? You’re dating Royce Bradley.”

  “He’s your teammate.”

  The second of them bickering gives me enough time to realize everyone is staring.

  Everyone is staring at the bra I only meant to show Kendra Kendall.

  Edna comes up behind me. “Let’s save those for the swimsuit competition, shall we, dear?” She urges my hands away from my neckline.

  Kendra snaps her head back toward me. “Thank you for that demonstration, because you’ve just proved my point. Every girl from Meteor who enters is representing the whole town of Meteor.”

  “Meteorite!” someone calls out from half a block away.

  “Shut up, Alex!” Kendra calls back. She looks at me again. “You know you can’t win, so you just want to embarrass us all, right? Make fun of this whole thing? You’re just like your friend.”

  I perk up. “I have a friend?”

  “Your little lesbian friend. She’s always acting like she’s better than all this.”

  Chicky.

  I almost correct Kendra and tell her that Chicky isn’t a lesbian, that I’ve seen her crushes on girls and her crush on Junior, the boy who makes her laugh in the halls at school. But it wouldn’t matter. I’m not telling Kendra anything she hasn’t noticed herself. Besides, anyone who says lesbian like it’s a bad thing doesn’t care about getting words right.

  It makes me wonder how she fits in her head the truth that Cole is a guy, and her sureness that anyone else’s truth isn’t worth considering.

  “So think about what you’re doing.” Kendra pivots, shifting her weight. “Because you’re just gonna make our whole town look bad.”

  She takes her first step away.

  “You’re right,” I say.

  She stops and looks back.

  “Maybe I don’t have boobs compared to someone like you,” I say.

  Kendra looks less satisfied than pitying, like she’s softening. “We don’t all store our fat the way we wish we did.”

  “Can we leave already?” Cole says. “I’m not covering for you this time when Mom asks why we’re late.”

  She ignores him. This time she looks at my stomach, at the softness Uva told me never to be ashamed of, and my hips, wide enough to match Fresa’s even though I’m shorter.

  And I don’t know what I’m doing next, but it’s like Cereza and Uva and Fresa all have their hands at my back, urging me on as though teaching me good posture or the beauty queen stride.

  The sky is going to take me back anyway.

  Why do I have to let Kendra and Royce and everyone like them make me small anymore?

  What do I have to lose?

  “But at least I have an ass,” I say.

  A satisfied ohhhh rises up from the crowd, like they’re watching a fight and I just got in a good shot. It comes with the stifled, sudden laugh of half a dozen people, and the unstifled, shocked smile on Cole Kendall’s face.

  I stride away, feeling everyone’s eyes on my back, and for once, it makes me stand up straighter.

  It also leaves a deeper, weirder fluttery feeling on my skin, like the time I got heat exhaustion.

  As soon as I’m out of sight of the crowd, I duck behind the Space Bar and lift up my shirt.

  The second I see my stomach, I am breathless, air shuddering in my throat.

  The patch of stardust is smaller.

  More of my skin is skin instead of glimmering light.

  Maybe Miss Meteor isn’t just something I have to do before I turn back to stardust.

  Maybe it’s something that can save me from turning back.

  Chicky

  I BARELY SLEEP at all, but I still manage to stay in bed
too late.

  “No, no, no, no!” comes Cereza’s voice through my open window, followed by a scream (Lita) and a metallic crash (Uva’s unicycle?). But I don’t actually throw off the blankets until the neighbors’ car alarm starts going off.

  I can’t believe they started without me.

  The scene in the yard is worse than I imagined it. I squint into the too-bright morning, my plaid boy’s pajama pants and black T-shirt the exact wrong uniform for the relentless desert heat.

  Lita is disengaging herself from an upended, yes, unicycle, which has somehow made its way beneath Mr. Miller’s minivan. Uva hovers worriedly, although whether she’s more concerned for Lita or the precious one-wheeled death trap that won her crowd favorite four years ago is not immediately clear.

  “Sorry, Mr. Miller!” Cereza calls, flashing the same grin she uses at the diner when Fresa burns someone’s grilled cheese con nopal.

  “You girls practicing for the pageant?” he asks, his scowl gone in the face of Reza’s perfect-Mexican-daughter radiance. With the press of a button, the incessant honking of the alarm mercifully ceases.

  “More like practicing for having wrinkles before I’m twenty,” Fresa mutters, stalking over to untangle a glittery purple ribbon from the van’s rearview mirror. Even angry, she wields it like the girl that, in an American flag swimsuit and white leather cowboy boots with fringe, won second runner-up in the Forty-Ninth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. “I have a list of possible talents upstairs and literally none of these things are on it.”

  When we were younger, the talent portion of our pretend pageants usually involved both of us singing karaoke into cactus flowers until we collapsed into giggles on the ground.

  Let’s just say it was a good thing none of our audience members were human. Or in possession of working eardrums.

  “Like I told Lita,” says Cereza, the same intense gleam in her eye that she gets when she’s talking about scalpels and contagious skin rashes. “I know other talents might seem showier, but I think you’ll agree that Shakespeare”—she thumps the heavily dog-eared volume for emphasis—“never goes out of style.”

  Fresa tosses her hair, narrowly missing Uva’s face. “Spoken like someone who didn’t even make the top five . . . how long ago was it, Reza, ten years?”

  Uva backs away slowly. It’s the best idea she’s had all week.

  “Excuse me,” Cereza says, Lita forgotten as she rounds on Fresa. “I graduated six years ago, and you know that.”

  Fresa shrugs in that infuriating way of hers, like nothing you say can possibly get under her skin. “If that’s your story.”

  “Oh, you did not!” Cereza, nursing student, five-time Meteor Monthly best service industry professional, lunges at her little sister like they’re roosters in a ring, going for the only thing Fresa Quintanilla truly cares about.

  Her hair.

  “Okay, seriously? ENOUGH!” I yell, stomping across the heat-withered grass in my bare feet.

  They don’t even hear me. Fresa is quitting, and Cereza is firing her somehow, and even Uva is yelling. I know they’ll get over it eventually, they always do, but that’s not what I’m worried about right now.

  Lita is still standing against Mr. Miller’s van, twisting the end of her braid and biting her lip like she’s physically forcing herself not to apologize. And suddenly I remember, one night during our last pretend pageant together, when I found twelve-year-old Lita crying at the base of Herr Rainbow, clutching a copy of the newspaper, which was running a retrospective on all the past Miss Meteors.

  All the tall, leggy, blond, past Miss Meteors.

  She’d been sure she could never fit in, the pretend pageant clashing with the real one in her mind, her dreams seeming out of reach.

  Lita looks just like that now, and I find my friend-muscles aren’t so out of shape after all. I sidestep the sister cyclone and grab her arm.

  Junior’s words from yesterday are in my ear, painting the picture of Lita and me as friends again like he painted a perfect Frida on last year’s championship cornhole board. But this isn’t that, I tell myself. This isn’t friendship. This is just protecting the asset.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” I ask her, trying not to add to the overload.

  She turns to me with wide, grateful eyes that look almost on the edge of tearful, and nods. It’s enough for me.

  I go inside and shove my feet into the first shoes I lay eyes on. The pajama pants and oversized T-shirt that I’m wearing will have to do. Lita’s already standing by the door when I get back to the porch.

  “Wait,” she says when I take the stairs two at a time. “I need to get my bike. What if someone steals it?”

  I don’t have the heart to tell her that scuffed, scratched, fifty-times-repaired bike with ten-year-old streamers isn’t the least bit valuable to anyone but her.

  We walk without a destination in mind, just a little space from my sisters while I think of a pep talk worthy of a real pageant contestant, but I shouldn’t be surprised when we end up outside the Meteor/Meteorite museum.

  I sigh, leaning on the wall outside the rock room, trying not to notice the peeling paint, the billboard with the missing letters, the velvet rope that was probably really plush, like, thirty years ago.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Her smile is sad, but it’s a smile. “Your sisters are all just so . . . determined. They’re proud of their talents. But I’m not sure any of them are really me. And I want to be me in this pageant. I . . . have to be. One last time.”

  I know she’s talking about the one-time entry rule, but there’s something strange about her voice. I’m about to ask when she turns to me, eyes blazing like twin stars. “I want to make your sisters proud after all they’ve done for me. I want the town to see not only the Kendra Kendalls of the world deserve this. I want to get that money for your parents. And I want Meteor to . . .”

  She trails off here, looking away, like she’s not saying something so big it’s actually stuck in her throat. But I barely notice, because my face is heating up.

  “Wait, what do my parents have to do with this?”

  Her eyes are as round as an owl’s, brown and kind of fathomless, as she looks at me. “They need the money.” She says this like it’s obvious, and it is, but I didn’t know it was obvious to everyone.

  “We’re fine,” I mutter, scuffing my shoes. “I mean, I figured we’d split the prize, but for like, normal stuff, you know? College or whatever.”

  It’s a feeble argument, and Lita’s eyes say she knows it. “Sure,” she says. “I didn’t mean to say . . .”

  I’m dreading what she’ll say next, the pity already seeping in around her eyes. But her expression is replaced by wild delight before I can find a way to escape.

  “What?” I ask, hoping for nothing more than a radical subject change.

  “I think I just had an amazing idea! Get excited!”

  She’s got color in her cheeks again, life back in her eyes. I always thought I was imagining it, the way she got shinier the closer we came to the rock, but right now she’s almost . . . glowing . . .

  “I can’t tell you what it is right now,” she’s saying, grabbing the sparkly pink bike and throwing her leg over it. “There’s something I have to do, but I’ll tell you everything this afternoon! On the practice field! At three o’clock sharp! And bring your sisters!”

  I know better than to try to stop her now. She pushes into wobbly motion on the bike, and I’m sure she’s going to fall, but at the last second, she rights herself and makes it across the parking lot unscathed.

  “This terrifies me!” I call after her.

  “It’s gonna be great,” she calls back. “Three o’clock! Trust me!”

  I want to, but it doesn’t help that a neighborhood cat runs screeching out of her irregular path the moment the words have left her lips.

>   Lita

  THE QUINTANILLA SISTERS all mostly want me to do the same things. Smile. Smile bigger. Stand up straighter. Let them pull at my hair and poke at my face until they turn me into a pretty enough version of myself that they’ll let me onstage.

  Then they tried to agree on a talent for me.

  Cereza says if I perform Juliet’s death monologue right, I’ll have all the judges and half the audience reaching for their tissue packs. Uva insists that if I can manage a unicycle, I’ll charm them all into adoring me. And Fresa is sure that her shimmery white ribbon wand will not only look perfect against the brown of my skin but will mesmerize the audience like they’re all fish watching a shiny object.

  If I pick any one of their talents, I hurt two of their feelings. And I can’t do it, not to these women who are fixing my hair and my beauty pageant stance and staying up nights debating what color evening gown we should try to find at the Goodwill for the final stage walk.

  The answer was obvious. Or it should have been. I just didn’t see it until Chicky gave me the idea.

  Chicky’s sisters are helping me, so shouldn’t I pay tribute to all of them?

  I show up to the park with Vaseline freshly applied to my teeth. My cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, but I will give them a pageant smile even if I have to ice my face afterward.

  Hubert Humphrey Memorial Park is the biggest green space in Meteor, and considering the water restrictions in our county, we’re lucky to have it. In a feat of civic engineering that’s truly shocking from a town that can’t even decide its name, the planners doubled what would have been its size by setting nine cement paths in the grass. They’re all rings, like the orbits of a planet. A playground is at its center, with sand-filled arms like the rays of the sun.

  The downside: Once Pluto was declared not a planet, even our park became out of date. I would feel sorry for Pluto if the classifications the men on Earth make mattered beyond the atmosphere of this planet.

  To make it seem like we have even more grass, they set the park next to Meteor Central High’s track and field. The scrub sod they laid down might look cheap to everyone else, but right now, I’m ready to put on a show so great, it’ll look like the rolling hillsides from the finale of Hello, Dolly!