“Of course not.”
“So he steps up to the door and requests permission to come aboard . . .”
I can’t help it. I laugh. And despite everything, it feels good to laugh with him.
“And then I realize he’s not just wearing the hat, he’s in a full-on Next Gen costume, with the Enterprise jumpsuit and one of those brutal-looking sash things that Worf wears?”
Junior’s dad is really into Star Trek: Next Generation, so not only have we seen almost every episode, we had the benefit of his near-constant commentary too.
“Wait, aren’t those things like thousands of dollars?”
“Oh yeah,” Junior says. “And it was one of the nice ones, too, like the one I tried to sell lemonade to buy before seventh-grade Halloween?”
“I remember,” I say, and I do. How we were going to be Worf and Deanna Troi, but then we watched an episode where they kiss and I pretended to be sick to get out of it.
“Anyway he requests a private audience . . . with the rock.”
“No!”
“Oh yes. So I get a soda and stand in the other room, close enough to jump in when things get weird.”
“Which they always do.”
“Right. So this guy pulls out, like, an official-looking scroll of paper, unrolls it, and starts reading from it in Klingon, with pauses for the rock to talk back.”
“Oh man, too bad we didn’t go to that summer camp at the Klingon Language Institute,” I say, getting into it now. “You could have understood every word!”
“Trust that I regretted that decision for every minute this dude was talking,” he says, shaking his head. “Especially because he walked out a few minutes later looking super happy, like, just won the lottery happy, and he saluted me before ‘departing the bridge.’”
I’m laughing for real now, and so is he, and the feeling in my stomach is almost gone.
“If that guy disappears it’s all your fault,” I say when I catch my breath.
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe they’ll put my picture in the tabloids.”
“Isn’t that everyone’s ultimate goal in life?” I ask.
“Probably not people who don’t live in a hotbed of extraterrestrial tourism, honestly.”
“Good point.”
The silence settles again then, and with it the sick feeling comes back. And suddenly, as quick as a lightning strike, I’m more than sick. I’m mad. I’m mad at him for doing what he did, and for trying to act like everything’s normal. I’m mad at myself for letting him.
“Just say it,” he says. “Whatever it is. I can’t stand this.”
“Fine,” I say, a Fresa-like flare of recklessness pushing me on. “You’re a jerk.”
“Is that all?” he asks, trying and failing not to look offended.
“You’re a jerk because . . . ,” I begin.
“Really?”
“. . . because you’re my best friend.” I say. “And like, the only person in this town who doesn’t look at me and think I’m less or different than I should be.”
He unfolds his arms, but his eyes stay straight ahead, like he’s counting every leaf on Mr. Jacobs’s prized corkscrew willow tree across the street.
“I know. I messed up. It’s just . . . I look at you and I see . . .” He tugs on his hair, and suddenly I’m remembering her pushing it out of his eyes, and I don’t know if I’m ready for what he’s gonna say, but I also can’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him.
Unfortunately, he stops himself.
“What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry. You’re my best friend, and I pushed you, and I made what I wanted more important than what you needed, and that’s not okay. You’re enough, just like you are. So don’t worry about it. It won’t happen again.”
He’s saying all the right things, offering our friendship back to me without all the complications of growth spurts and puberty and stupid hormones. I should be thrilled, right? And I am. Thrilled. But under it is something just a little sad. Like a star that died millions of years ago finally disappearing from the sky.
“Look,” I manage. “I know you have a girlfriend now or whatever, but I don’t want to just be some girl you used to watch Star Trek with, and . . .”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he blurts out, interrupting me.
“What?” I ask, but in my mind’s eye the Hair Pony is prancing into the white-hot center of the sun, and I know. It’s not very feminist of me, and I’ll unpack that later. But for right now I’m thrilled.
“I kind of asked her out to make you jealous, and I feel terrible about it. It was such a bad idea, and we had a terrible time and had nothing to talk about, and I wanted to tell you like five minutes after I got there.”
My eyes get big, it’s what Junior calls my judgy face, but I can’t help it.
“It’s not who I am, okay?” he says. “It’s not who I want to be. I just felt so . . . bad. And I did a dumb thing, and I’m sorry.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” I say. “Just . . . don’t become one of those guys, okay?” And it hits me then, that it’s what I’ve been most worried about since the day Junior started getting cool-guy looks at school. That he’ll change. That he’ll leave me behind.
“I won’t,” he says, and his eyes are so sincere I don’t even recognize the guy from last night in them. “I promise.”
“Come with me,” I say impulsively, before I can chicken out.
“Where?”
“No questions,” I say, shoving my feet into my sneakers and striding out the door.
“So what are we doing here?” he asks when we stop in front of Selena’s. “I thought the diner was closed today.”
“Only if you don’t have the keys,” I say, dangling them in front of him and opening the door.
Inside, the mood is strange, like it’s a relic of a place instead of a living, breathing one. I fight the urge to turn on “Baila Esta Cumbia” just to make it seem less empty.
“I know it’s not mac and cheese day, so . . .”
“Shh,” I say. “Just trust me.”
“Chicky, you’re being weird,” he says, and it occurs to me that I love the way he says my name. Not like strangers, who think it’s a weird thing to be called, not like my parents, who’ve said it so many times it sounds worn and boring, but like someone who’s rediscovering it every time and keeps liking what he finds.
Of course, I would notice this one day after it’s too late to notice things like that.
“Sorry, I know, but it’s gonna get slightly weirder when I ask you to close your eyes.”
The eyes in question widen at the request, and I grab a clean dish towel from a table and hold it up apologetically.
He raises his eyebrows but closes his eyes.
Behind him, I reach up to cover them with the square of fabric, which suddenly seems much more awkward than I anticipated. My fingertips tangle in the sleek strands of his hair, once or twice bumping his ears and brushing the back of his sun-darkened neck as I tie the knot.
My stomach flips more than once, and I silently curse myself for not putting on music, or making him cover his own damn eyes, or letting this idea fade away like a fever dream before saying anything out loud.
“Okay, can you see?” I ask, my voice weird and soft, like I’m breathing too much around every word. The white towel against his skin makes it glow a little, sun behind amber, and I wish I could tell him. Just for a second.
“Can’t see a thing,” he says, his own voice deep and a little croaky, like when he wakes up from a nap he shouldn’t have been taking in class and has to answer a question about geography.
“Okay, walk to the left,” I say, and he goes more forward than left. “No, wait, like, straight to the left.” This time it’s closer, but he’s still facing the wrong way, and we’re gonna be here all day at this rate, so I sigh and stand behind him again.
“What?”
“Just . . . okay.” I put my hands on his shoulders, way too warm through
possibly the world’s softest green T-shirt, and steer him, pushing when he needs to walk, guiding when he needs to turn. He goes wherever I steer him.
Not that I’m thinking about it what that means. More than a normal amount, anyway.
“Okay,” I say at last, letting go, my hands feeling cold without the warmth of his skin beneath them, even though it’s easily ninety degrees in the diner. “We made it.”
“Can I take this off?” he asks, and maybe I’m terrible, but I do it for him, bumping, brushing fingers and all.
When he’s unmasked, we’re both facing a blank wall. The paint is peeling along the baseboard, and there’s a crack running through the left side from where a pipe burst when I was in seventh grade. Across its surface, squares of discoloration are obvious, sun damage around the borders of magazine articles my dad taped up when we couldn’t afford real art.
It’s a hideous wall. An ugly wall. A totally unworthy gift. But Junior is looking at it like it’s the lost city of Atlantis.
“Chicky . . . ,” he says, that heavy deepness still in his voice. “Do you mean it?”
“Look,” I say, unable to look at his face. “I’m not always good at this either, but I . . .” I take a deep breath. “No, you. You’re the cipher that makes the weird code of high school and this town and just . . . life . . . make sense.”
I’m butchering this, but he’s looking at me like he looks at that dumb wall, like there’s something magic in both of us that he sees clearly even when no one else can.
He bumps my shoulder with his.
“I believe in you, Junior,” I say. “And no matter what happens, I never want to not know you.”
Is it my imagination, or is there something glinting in one of his eyes?
“If I help you prime it, will you paint this wall, Junior Cortes? Will you show this town and every weird, Klingon-speaking yahoo that you’re part of this family, too?”
He steps closer to take the dish towel from my hand, but he doesn’t step away once he has it, and there’s something magnetic happening in his eyes, there has to be, because I can’t look away.
“Why, Chiquita Quintanilla,” he says. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Lita
JUNIOR CORTES IS actively trying not to smile as he unlocks the Meteor Meteorite Museum.
He’s smiling in a way that can only be about Chicky. It’s brighter than the morning flaring behind him.
“I . . . ,” I stammer. I came here to try to convince him to show up somewhere Chicky will be, but from the look on his face, they already figured all that out.
Which makes me feel both happy and even more useless than before.
Junior goes in and holds the door open behind him. “How’s your pursuit of the crown going?”
I try to laugh. It comes out hoarse and sad. “Nonexistent. I’m not doing the pageant anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” I ask. “Are you serious? Have you not witnessed the disaster I’ve made of the last few days?”
“Don’t take all the credit.” He turns on the overhead lobby lights. “You didn’t make a mess of everything alone. You had the help of the Four Sisters of the Apocalypse.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” He clicks on the ancient air-conditioning unit, which will take a full hour to work up to cooling this place. “You also had the help of possibly the worst human being at Meteor Central High, who managed to take out you, his own teammate, and a priceless artifact of town history.” He points to the display case where the sadly dented bicycle now leans against a wall.
This is one more thing I like about Junior Cortes: he thought about the bicycle.
Buzz was too nice to ask, and nobody else even bothered.
“You’re really gonna let those jerks scare you off?” Junior asks.
“Um, yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I am.”
Junior turns on the flickering spotlight over the rock, another part of the museum that needs warming up before open hours.
“What if I have a proposition for you?” he asks in a voice of a 1950s private investigator.
Not fair. He’s speaking the language he knows gets to me, the language of Bruja Lupe’s old movies.
“What kind of proposition?” I ask. I can’t not ask.
“You get back in the pageant”—he pauses, like he’s still considering—“I’ll try out for the cornhole team.”
“What?” I ask. “Why would you do that to yourself? Those guys are jerks. They call you Picasso behind your back.”
“I know that. I also know they’re too stupid to realize I take it as a compliment.”
I appreciate what he’s trying to do. Chicky’s told me how good he is, from all those bored hours throwing beanbags into his stunningly painted cornhole boards. If he makes the team, Meteor Central High has a shot at the championship again. It might make everyone hate me and the Quintanillas a little less.
But it’s not worth Junior having to deal with Royce and the whole team.
“To my knowledge, there’s only one guy on the team you can stand, and he’s out for the season,” I say. “So why would you subject yourself to the rest of them?”
“Why are you subjecting yourself to this pageant?” Junior asks.
“Because I wanted it a long time ago, and I thought I could never have it. Don’t try to pretend your dream is sinking a trampoline shot through a bunched target.”
“Wow.” He laughs. “Somebody’s been getting Kendall to school her.”
“Honestly, I didn’t even try,” I say. “You’re around him long enough, you just start picking it up. You can’t help it.”
Junior stands near the tiny gift shop (two postcard racks, plaster models of the rock, a shelf of T-shirts, a few little-green-men stuffed animals).
“Come on,” he says. “There’s not a little part of you that likes the idea of shaking things up? That’s not even a tiny piece of you entering?”
I try not to smile.
I try not to notice the vein of silver winking through the space rock, telling me that yes, of course it is. Of course, even years ago, I loved the thought of being a brown girl with baby fat, taking a crown that almost always goes to thin-limbed blondes with perfect, printer-paper-white teeth.
“If you’re back in,” Junior says, “then I’m in.”
Junior doesn’t even know about the stardust. But I do. And I know he’s right. If I drop out now, that’s how I’ll leave this planet, as a girl who got scared off.
“I’m in,” I say.
Chicky
“SELENA’S DINER SHUTDOWN: Day Three.” Uva has taken to narrating our lives. It would be so much more irritating if Fresa didn’t hate it so much.
“Tense, hopeful, the Quintanilla sisters make their way across town to the Meteor Central High field—the site of the recent town incident between a coven of teen witches and a sad-eyed teen athlete with a heart of gold . . .”
Fresa groans, right on time.
“Is it a paranormal story or a newscast?” Cereza snaps. “Make up your mind!”
“Or, and this is a really out there suggestion: Just stop it. Forever.”
“Can we focus, please?” I ask, butterflies in my stomach. Lita wouldn’t tell me how she got Junior to agree to try out, just that we all needed to be there. At this point, what could I do but show up? It’s not like things can get worse.
Right?
“The field looms in the distance,” Uva says, ignoring all of us, her eyes a little manic after an unprecedented three days without cleaning the fryer. “The intrepid young women make their way through the fog. Hopeful . . .”
“You already said hopeful,” Cereza cuts in.
“Shut up, all of you,” I say. “We’re here.”
But we do feel a little like an intrepid coven as we approach.
“Well look who it is,” says Kendra Kendall as we draw closer to the center of the field. “The misfit squad, here to join t
he assassin who cut my brother down in his prime.” Her ire is directed at Lita, who shrinks a little beneath the weight of her disapproval, but she makes her way over to us nonetheless.
“We’re here to . . . ,” Lita says, quietly at first, but Junior elbows her and she stands up a little straighter. “I’m here to propose a covenant.”
“Which one?” Royce asks with a smirk. “Africa? Antarctica? Europe?” His buddies chuckle, and Kendra tosses her hair.
It takes me a while to understand, but when it clicks I forget to be nervous. Just for a second. “Not continent, are you serious? A covenant.”
“That’s, like, when a relationship is unhealthy because the people can’t do things apart,” says one of Kendra’s sycophants. “I heard about it on Dr. Phil.”
The only person who laughs is Cole, sitting on the sidelines in his sling. “Co-ve-nant,” he recites, like he’s reading from the dictionary. “An agreement. To agree, especially by lease, deed, or other legal contract.” He has to be here, it’s part of his Advanced Gym grade, but he doesn’t seem to fit in quite as well as he did before he started hanging out with us.
And he doesn’t look at Kendra once.
Royce blinks at him, the rest of his face still troublingly blank.
“It means she has a deal to offer you, Royce,” Cole says, humor and derision fighting for dominance in his tone. When he thinks no one’s looking, he winks at Lita.
“Well, fuck,” says Royce. “Why didn’t you just say that?”
“The deal is this,” Lita says, gesturing Junior forward. “If he can shoot as well as Cole, you guys quit telling people to avoid the diner and let him play with you in the final match.”
It’s my turn to stand up straighter. We can’t go back in time and get my family the meet and greet back, but we can get the social boycott lifted, and that’ll be a start.
This time, it’s the whole team that laughs.
“What, Picasso over here?” Royce asks. “Sorry, but there are no points awarded for coloring inside the lines in this sport.”
My vision goes slightly red, and I object so strongly to the description of cornhole as a sport that my knees almost stop shaking, but Junior steps in front of me, which is probably good.
Miss Meteor Page 14