“Laugh all you want,” he says. “But I’ll be the one laughing when I beat you out for MVP.”
Something about a broad-shouldered, traditionally handsome male does what all the reasoning in the world couldn’t do coming from Lita. The team stands up, shoulder to shoulder, and honestly, they look way more intimidating than I’d like them to.
“Fine,” Royce says, the spokesperson for everyone but Cole, who remains seated. “If you can sink twenty bags without missing, you’re in.”
It’s an absurd number, way more than they’d ever ask during an actual tryout, but Junior clenches his jaw. For the five-hundredth time since they showed up at my door, I wonder how Lita convinced him to participate.
“Why not make it thirty,” he says, like he’s not worried at all, and I want to dig a hole in the field and climb inside, come out when this has all been over for fifty years.
“Your funeral,” says Royce, tossing Junior a mesh bag with ten beanbags inside.
“Or yours,” Junior says, throwing his first bag between Royce’s legs at the world’s most awkward angle and sinking it.
The rest of the team goes quiet, but Royce smirks. “So you’re really good at going between a dude’s legs,” he says. “Hardly something to brag about.”
“So, you get that that’s an offensive thing to say, right Royce?”
My heart sinks and soars at the same time. Cole seems to have graduated from distraction tactics when it comes to Royce, and despite the tense shoulders and clenched fists giving away his nervousness, he’s steady. Solid. And he’s sticking up for Junior.
“Not you, too, Kendall,” Royce says with an eye roll. “Can’t anyone take a fucking joke anymore? Everyone’s so sensitive!”
“I appreciate a good joke as much as anyone,” Cole says, his voice still mild. “But most of us have moved on from cruelty as their sole form of humor. Maybe you should try it.”
Royce is gaping like a fish, and Kendra is glaring at Cole in a “we’re gonna talk about this later” kind of way, and all I can think is that I wish it was me. Defending Junior. Putting Royce in his place. But I’m frozen, and Cole is here, and I feel grateful and guilty all at once.
I look at Cole, trying to communicate all this, and when we lock eyes I nod in solidarity, just a little.
He nods back.
Junior takes his place at the practice line, taking advantage of Royce’s shock over being confronted by another jock, and leaving Lita and me standing beside each other. I think if we could bottle how much we want Junior to succeed right now, how much we want Royce put in his place, Bruja Lupe could sell it by the vial.
The first ten shots are no trouble. One of the JV team members gathers the bags and returns the mesh sack to Junior, who’s rolling his shoulders, looking a little nervous for the first time.
I wish I could tell him how impressive he looks right now. Even to someone who doesn’t understand or care about cornhole, and probably never will.
The next ten are slower, with Junior pausing between shots to realign his stance. By now, some of the team actually looks curious.
Royce and Kendra, however, look murderous.
Junior stretches before the bag returns, his eyes scanning the crowd that’s gathering. I can tell by the way his jaw tenses that he’s realizing it for the first time—how different this is from the bags he threw in private at the museum when the tourists had gone home.
He hesitates for too long on his next shot, and it misses the mark, barely sliding in after hitting the board at an awkward angle.
Beanbag two in hand, he freezes, and I can already tell what’s next, but for once, I don’t just wait to see what’s going to happen. I don’t let the presence of Royce and all his lackies make me small and silent.
Because Junior deserves a friend right now, and I need this to work for more reasons than I have time to articulate. Even to myself.
“Hey,” I say, getting his attention, forcing him to lower his arm.
Keeping his eyes on me, I walk to the business end of the cornhole board, ignoring the stares of several jocks like I can’t feel them crawling all over my skin.
“It’s just you and me out here,” I say to both of us, and he smiles, the kind of smile that sends something warm and fizzy through my bloodstream.
The next three shots go in perfectly, his eyes on me the whole time. The fourth rims in, the fifth nearly bounces back out, but the sixth, seventh, and eighth could be taught in summer camps across the country.
Two beanbags left in his hand, Junior finds my eyes again and holds them. I don’t look away.
With one hand, he throws them at the same time. One arcs high, and the other low. They descend for what seems like an hour, the entire field holding its breath, before one drops neatly into the hole, the other following close behind.
The cheers are deafening, and that’s just Lita and me.
Junior Cortes has just made the cornhole team.
Lita
SPEAK LOUD, SPEAK clearly, and trust that you know what to say. (Cereza’s advice just before I go onstage for the first time.)
Breathe, and remember how many of us you have cheering for you. (Uva’s)
Annihilate those bitches. (Fresa’s)
I run through all three in my head. I’ll need them today and the next three days.
Yes, four more days. Not counting the one-day break for the cornhole championship.
To bring in more tourists for the festival, the Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase only holds one event per day. Question and answer. Swimsuit. Talent. And, on the last day, evening gown.
If we make it that far without them booing me off the stage or throwing lemons at me. (They wouldn’t waste their tomatoes, which don’t grow as well here).
Today is the Q&A, and it’s Cereza’s advice that rings in my head.
Speak loud.
Speak clearly.
Trust that you know what to say.
But the other contestants, they’re all so beautiful. With every shade of hair and skin I’ve ever seen on this planet. And they all stand up straight. They smell like the perfume samples in Fresa’s magazines.
Their teeth all gleam as much as their polished nails, and their eyeshadow catches the sun in perfect rhythm with the translucent sequins on their sundresses.
Now I’m glad Fresa talked me into the glittery teal eyeshadow and blush that was nearly magenta. I know I can’t wear the wispy pinks the gringas wear because it doesn’t show up on my skin, but . . . magenta? And teal glitter? I was sure pageant week had made Fresa snap, but on this stage, now, I realize she just made me look like everyone else.
We all line up, and the pageant coordinators file us through the opening in the curtain to backstage. Behind there, it’s already a mess of makeup bags and extra underwear and the rubbery plastic slices they all call “chicken cutlets.” False eyelashes litter the ground like sun-stupored caterpillars. Body and face glitter speckles the concrete like the flecks in granite. Half the contestants are rubbing shimmer powder onto their chests or gluing their underwear to their asses. I adjust my bra (and the duct tape) without trying to hide it.
Any sense of modesty has been glitter-bombed.
The sight of Cole Kendall slipping through the curtain is so strange, so out of place, so distinctly masculine in this flurry of sequined shoes and lipstick cases, that for a second I think I’m dehydrated. Uva warned me about that.
I only know he’s there for sure when a girl spots him and calls out, “Hey! No dicks backstage!”
Cole looks right at her. “You have no idea what I do or don’t have in my pants.”
The girl pales.
“And unless you want to make sure this gets known as the beauty pageant no trans girl will ever feel safe entering, can we just not with talk like that?” Cole is the only boy I’ve ever met who can sound so angry and so measured at the same time. “Thanks.”
The girl steps back, nodding, her stare so wide I ca
n’t see her eyeshadow.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he tells everyone, and they all sweep back into their flurry.
He looks around. “Good. She’s not here yet.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Kendra. This is the first time I’ve ever been glad of . . .”
He trails off.
Heat fills my cheeks as I realize Cole Kendall is staring at my boobs that have been duct-taped into defying gravity.
“What?” I ask.
“Sorry.” He shakes his head like he just now realized he’s been staring at my rack. “I’m sorry.”
“No, tell me,” I say, gesturing at my chest. “Does it look weird?”
He winces and blushes. “No.” His voice sounds strained. “Looks great.”
“Good,” I say. “For what it’s gonna take to get it off later, it better.”
He pulls his eyes back up to my face. “Anyone taught you the baby powder trick?”
“What baby powder trick?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, put baby powder on your chest before you tape. It’ll help in the heat and later when you want to get the tape off. Kendra does it every time. She likes to pretend she never sweats, but I know better.”
Cole Kendall and I are talking about my breasts, and worse than that, we are talking about the possibility that breasts perspire, which I am sure is on the list of things beauty queens cannot think about let alone talk about. I wonder if the judges can sense my thoughts through the curtains and are deducting points before they’ve even gotten their first look at me.
Kendra Kendall has to tape her breasts too?
Cole knows what baby powder is?
“You know what baby powder is?” I ask.
“Yeah, of course,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re a guy?”
“I use it when I pack. It helps the silicone slide instead of stick.”
“Pack?” I ask. “Are you going on a trip?”
He laughs. Not his usual mild, good-natured laugh. A full-on, I-startled-him-with-something-funny laugh. “So that’s the one Trans 101 article you didn’t read.”
His eyes flash down to his pants and up again so fast no one else would catch it. But it’s enough that I feel my face heat. Even though I still don’t know what packing is, I can now guess, but I can’t think about it too much, because I cannot be thinking about Cole Kendall and his pants when I go out there.
I can’t even look at him without my cheeks turning as hot as the pageant stage light bulbs, so instead I scan the other girls.
“What are you even doing back here?” I ask.
“I need to talk to you for a second.”
“Now?” I look around. “Kendra’s not gonna like seeing you talking to me.”
“Kendra’s still looking for her shoes.”
“Why?”
“Because I hid them.”
“Cole!”
“Relax, they’re in my mom’s car, she’ll find them, I was just stalling her.”
“I do not need you sabotaging my competition.”
“Yeah, speaking of that.” He pulls me aside, out of earshot of as many contestants as he can. “I know I’m the brother of your competition. I know you probably think I know nothing about this, but believe me, I know more about beauty pageants than I ever wanted to. And I have the advantage of overhearing things because I’m a guy and everyone thinks I don’t know what any of the words mean.”
“You definitely know what words mean.”
“Thanks, but not the point,” he says. “Point is: you’re about to be set up.”
“Set up?” I ask. “This is a beauty pageant, not a 1940s detective movie.”
He blinks a few times.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing, that’s just the kind of thing people are usually saying to you.”
“I have about ninety seconds, Cole. Can this wait?”
“No. It can’t.”
“Then make it quick.”
He checks the curtain entrance again. “I’m about to ask you for something, and I just need you to trust me.”
“Trust you with what?”
He leans down a little to talk to me. “When they give you the question, just say ‘world peace.’”
“What?” I ask.
“Look, I don’t know what they’re gonna ask you, but I heard enough to know they’re gonna go hard on you. So whatever they ask”—he lands hard on each word—“say world peace. It’s one of the few things you can answer to just about any pageant question. Believe me, I’ve been to enough of these things to know.”
“But what if the question’s about . . .”
“Lita, please, just do this for me.”
I back up, my bare shoulder blades brushing the worn velvet of the curtain.
“Just say world peace,” he says, quieter this time.
Then he’s gone, a few seconds before Kendra strides in, annoyed, with a metal train case.
She walks right past me.
Before I can sort out everything Cole just said, the coordinators herd us onstage.
There’s applause as we all walk out for the first time, but I hear it dulled, like it’s far away.
Mr. Hamilton, I mean, the emcee, introduces each of us, and I smile more from muscle memory than from meaning to do it.
He asks each girl a question. I barely hear them, these questions about where they would most want to travel in the world (“Europe, the whole thing.”), what they would do if they had a week to live (“I would pet every puppy in the world.”), if they’d been an animal on Noah’s ark which one they would’ve been (“The dove, because I like to think of myself as a sign of hope to those around me.”), what’s the first thing they would do as president (“Send everyone a bouquet of daisies and then get right to work fixing things!”).
Applause rushes through the air after each girl finishes. Their answers twinkle; I can hear it in their voices even when I can’t make out all the words through the fog of the ones Cole left with me.
World peace, no matter what the question is.
Was Cole asking me to throw this competition? So his sister can win? So his family can get current on their bills?
And would I do it for him when the Quintanilla sisters got me this far?
Then it’s my turn, and the man grinning into the microphone is standing in front of me.
“Next up is another hometown gal, Estrellita Perez.” He rushes upward on the syllables of my name to cue the clapping.
Very scattered applause.
Most don’t know me.
The rest hate me.
The emcee continues with as big a smile as if I’d gotten a standing ovation. “Your question comes from Judge Halpern.”
The judge nods, one in a line of men and women in pressed business attire, sitting at a shaded table.
“Estrellita, you’ve lived in this town your whole life,” the emcee says.
“Is that the question?” I ask.
This gets a laugh, more from out-of-town visitors than anyone.
It’s still a laugh.
I curtsy and smile, my eyes finding Cole in the audience and shooting him a “what exactly were you worried about?” look.
“You’re a lifelong resident of this fair town, and we want your take on the real Meteor, New Mexico,” the emcee says into the microphone.
Oh no.
Are they about to ask me about the rock in the museum?
Years of the government blocking off the crater site, decades of rumor about whether it holds secrets about life in other worlds, and millions of whispered speculations from both residents and visitors.
Is the emcee about to ask me to settle all of that?
“Estrellita,” he says. “What is the most important thing you think is missing from your hometown?”
He holds the microphone in front of me.
My next breath turns hard in my throat.
No girl wins Miss Meteor without a sugar-pa
cket-white smile and a love for her hometown so bright it shines. And now the judges are asking me to criticize it, to pick it apart, to say what Meteor needs that it does not have.
I am a brown-skinned girl. I love this town, but if I say what I really think it’s missing, if I say where its sharp places and weak points are, the judges will cast aside my name before we even get to swimsuit.
The emcee and the microphone and the audience and even the craning-forward contestants are waiting for me to say something. But there is no way to answer this question without half the town, and half the judges, counting me as even more of a traitor than they already think I am.
I scan the audience, finding the horrified faces of Bruja Lupe and the Quintanillas.
Bruja Lupe.
She hated the idea of me entering, but she’s here anyway, and now she’s watching me try to answer an impossible question.
If I say nothing’s missing from Meteor, I’m lying. I’m lying about myself, about the Quintanillas, about Junior, about Cole, about everyone who isn’t exactly what Meteor thinks we should be.
But if I say the truth, if I pick this town apart the way this town picks us apart, Bruja Lupe will have to watch me get booed off the stage.
My eyes keep moving.
They stop on Cole.
He was right.
They are setting me up.
This town thinks I charged their star cornhole player with an old bicycle. They think I’m a girl who exists to wear down everything they care about.
And now they have me on this stage, where they’re trying to get me to admit it.
Because I cannot answer this question without being the girl they already think I am.
He nods slowly, urging me on.
He knew.
He asked me to trust him.
And I have to trust that he gave me that answer to take with me for a reason.
I put my hands on my hips, give my best Rita Hayworth smile, and call out, “World peace.”
The audience stares at me.
They look to the emcee.
They look at each other.
Then they start clapping.
They really start clapping, because they take my answer to mean that there’s nothing missing from Meteor, that to find something missing from Meteor I have to find something missing from the whole world. They clap because they love the idea that the only thing wrong with Meteor is that the rest of this planet can’t be exactly like it. They can’t not clap, because they can’t not clap for the idea of world peace, especially not at a beauty pageant.
Miss Meteor Page 15