Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  I hold the candle to Señora Strawberry, and I swear I can feel her waiting for the wind to blow it out for her. Then I leave the cactuses to their celebration. Because before lunch period is over, I have another stop.

  I take the second bag of galletas dulces I brought with me today, and I go visit the rock.

  Well, it’s not the whole rock. Most of the rock turned to dust and fire as it streaked through the atmosphere all those years ago.

  But a piece did survive, so big that there’s not enough of me to give it a full hug. A few men and one woman (the history books usually forget her) claimed the meteorite as property of the town they just then decided to establish.

  “About time,” Buzz says when he lets me into the Meteor Meteorite Museum. “It’s been waiting.”

  I haven’t figured out if the museum is called this because Meteor is the town name and the museum houses the meteorite, or because no one can agree on whether this town is actually called Meteor or Meteorite.

  Except for the poor clerks in the town hall, this is less of a problem than you’d expect. Until festival season, when it’s time to make banners. A tourist has an equal chance of seeing either name proclaimed in a window or draped above the main street. Celebrating Meteor flutters alongside Meteorite: The Pride of New Mexico.

  I hand Buzz the other bag of galletas dulces, my thank-you for letting me in when the Meteor Meteorite Museum isn’t technically open.

  From the outside, the museum looks like a weather-beaten house with a lit sign above it. But here, under Buzz’s care, is my favorite rock in the whole world, with a bulb-lighted billboard and even a velvet rope that keeps tourists from trying to chip off pieces of it.

  This is probably the quietest moment I will get with the rock until the end of next week, when the tourists leave.

  “Buzz?” I ask.

  Buzz uncoils the twist-tie from the galleta bag. “Hmm?”

  “Could we have a minute?”

  He combs down a few stray pieces of his white hair, nods, and leaves me to it.

  I ease into setting both hands on the rock; lightly, so I don’t startle it.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask.

  The rock hums under my hands.

  “Should I do it?” I ask. “Before I . . .” I can’t say it, even to this rock, especially to this rock. I can’t say that I will turn to stardust, and there will be nothing left of the girl I am now. “Before I go?”

  You can enter Miss Meteor up until you turn eighteen, and most girls wait until their last possible year.

  Almost no one enters as a sophomore.

  But this is probably the last chance I’ll get.

  A vein of silver flashes through the rock. It could be some trick of the light, but I know better. The rock is telling me what I already know.

  I have nothing to lose. And if the sky’s going to take me back, I’m going out as a girl who goes after what she wants.

  Chicky

  AT SCHOOL, I’M even more invisible than usual. You’d think it would be hard to go unnoticed when you’re about four inches taller than every other girl in your class, stomp around in combat boots, and perpetually smell a little like diner grease, but the kids in my class are very talented at erasing me.

  Plus, it’s Friday, the last day before the entire town takes two weeks off for the annual suck-up-to-tourists-fest known as the Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.

  Some schools get homecoming, we get this. And as usual, I seem to be the only one in town who sees what a joke it is.

  To some of the people at this school, it’s about town unity, or a break from school, or a ridiculous dress and world peace. To some of them, it’s about the glittering hope that for one night, they’ll transcend their small-town mediocrity and brush up against greatness.

  You can already see it in the halls. Long, fake nails painted sparkly blue and orange (Meteor Central High colors), fake eyelashes fluttering. The only salon in town is booked weeks in advance, so the girls without an in have to be careful with their manicures.

  Mine, of course, are bitten ragged and unpainted as usual.

  No one notices.

  In the air, there’s the futile hope that Kendra Kendall and Royce Bradley won’t fulfill their genetic destiny to be Miss Meteor and Cornhole MVP respectively, golden and chosen, lip-locking over the spiked punch bowl before one of them inevitably pukes electric red on the other’s super-shiny shoes.

  And before Kendra Kendall, who already lives in one of the nicest houses in town, walks away with a check for ten thousand dollars.

  What I wouldn’t give.

  “Listen up, I know you all have pageant week on the brain, but there are still ten more minutes of school, and we’re gonna make them count, okay! Look alive!” Mr. Hamilton hasn’t had his spirit crushed by the profound disinterest of Meteor Central High’s sophomore class yet. He’s the kind of teacher who cares so much, he can make you not care just to compensate.

  Also, he makes history puns about his own name, which is just humiliating.

  “With all this extra time over the break, I want you guys to do a little . . .” He actually gives himself a drumroll on the edge of Amelia Perkins’s desk. “Partner project!”

  An audible groan goes up from the crowd, but I don’t bother joining in. It’s survival time. My eyes dart around the room until I find the familiar dark, glossy curtain of hair atop Junior Cortes’s head. Junior’s different than the rest of the people here, in that he’s not altogether horrible. At least, as other people go.

  Case-in-point: He’s already looking at me when I find him, eyebrows raised in silent solidarity. He doesn’t have to do this anymore. Hide. He could be sitting with them back there if he wanted to, but instead he sticks with me. We were both awkward in middle school, so it made sense to band together, but while my body doubled down on it, growing taller and more gangly by the second, his sprouted a jawline and muscles in all the right places to give him “potential.”

  On me, five-nine looks like a circus sideshow, but on him, even another two inches looks effortless. It’s deeply unfair.

  In a town the weather-beaten color of the desert, a sandy brown like mine blends right in. But Junior’s is darker, like the stones of the seventeenth-century Spanish ruins we visited on a field trip when we were twelve. His skin is warm, even under these torturous fluorescent lights.

  People notice him these days. I notice them noticing. But if Junior knows it, he hasn’t changed to fit the mold. That’s what makes him the one I look to when I’m forced to leave my invisible bubble.

  Unfortunately, it’s not up to us today.

  “I can already see you all partnering up with your eyes out there,” says Mr. Hamilton, “but we’re gonna do things a little differently this time . . .”

  It’s all I can do not to slam my head against my graffitied desk. Like he’s the first teacher in history to ever assign partners. Like it’s so different and quirky and cool. Like if he picks just right, he’ll be responsible for the total upending of a decades-old, rigid high school hierarchy.

  I should already see where he’s going with this, but somehow, I’m still surprised when he calls my name.

  “Chicky Quintanilla?” He goes overboard on the accent, why does that embarrass me? “Why don’t you try . . . Kendra Kendall?”

  My mute horror must show on my face, because Junior shoots me a pitying look. He might be the closest thing to a friend I have in this town, but he’s definitely not the only one who knows Kendra and I have been mortal enemies since fourth grade. The whole class snickers, looking between Kendra and me like the air might catch fire.

  To his credit, Junior doesn’t look away until Mr. Hamilton pairs him with Kendra’s brother, Cole Kendall, who’s just leaning back in his chair with that half smile he always wears, like he knows something we don’t.

  Meteor’s so small we’ve had blended classes since second grade, so even though Cole is a grade ahead of us he’s
still subject to Mr. Hamilton’s bad fourth period puns.

  My secret is this: As much as I loathe his sister, I’ve always secretly envied Cole. We’ve never spoken a word to each other, but it’s clear just from proximity that he knows who he wants to be, and he’s brave enough to be it out loud.

  Case-in-point: He was the only one who ever tried to stop his friends from going after me in middle school, when the lunch room was my daily torture. The only one who nodded or said “hey” in the hallways when everyone else was pretending I didn’t exist.

  I wasn’t the only one he stuck up for, either. Royce calls him the patron saint of losers because he’s always talking them down from their latest bullying escapade, but he just takes it in stride.

  Well, unless they started teasing him. Then he clams up just as fast as I do.

  I always wished I could return the favor, but I’ve never had the guts to even talk to him, not really. I mean, besides the occasional mumbled “thanks” when he distracts Royce with something and lets me escape to the bathroom to eat in peace.

  But sometimes I wonder if we could have been friends. You know, in another life.

  In this one, I’m too busy trying to sink into the floor as Mr. Hamilton moves on to pair up some other unfortunate social misfits with their cool-kid counterparts, I pray that I’ll disappear as Kendra rolls her eyes at the girls around her. She doesn’t even bother to glare at me.

  The rest of the period passes in a fog of wishful thinking. That this is all a bad dream. That the bell ringing will project us all into an alternate reality where the Kendall family never moved to Meteor, or I skipped fourth grade like my teacher said I could, or even that my parents really did stop having kids after Fresa and I don’t even exist.

  Unfortunately, when the bell does ring, all it does is cause a stampede. School is out. Pageant week has finally arrived.

  Junior hangs back, and I fall in step with him as we walk out the door in comfortable silence.

  “Hey, Ring Pop!” comes Kendra’s voice from behind us.

  Every one of my muscles clenches at the nickname. I quickly scan the hallway to see who heard her and how much damage has been done. It’s the first time she’s addressed me directly since we started high school.

  And I guess Kendra is ready to remind me of that. Maybe I’ve gotten too comfortable in my anonymity, but this throwback to the most humiliating moment of my school career is like being thrown into the deep end.

  Fourth grade. A field trip where I was lucky enough to be seated next to Allison Davis on the bus after admiring her shiny, golden hair since the beginning of the year.

  And look, I was nine, I wasn’t sure what my feelings meant yet. If I wanted to be best friends with Allison, or if I wanted to be her, or if I wanted something else altogether. Something I didn’t even know the shape of yet. All I knew was that my mom had given me two Ring Pops in my lunch and told me to share one with a friend, and the saints had sat me next to Allison.

  I didn’t get up the nerve to offer her one until the bus ride back, after she leaned close to show me a rock that looked like a horse head, and I got goose bumps because her hair smelled like flowers.

  Later, I’d kick myself for not just handing her the candy like a normal person, but I was carried away on the wings of what I didn’t yet know was my first crush, so I took Allison’s hand and went to slide the plastic ring onto her finger. My heart was beating so hard I was sure she could hear it, and she smiled.

  But that was before Royce Bradley, seated behind us with Cole, leaned over the seat. “Ew, what are you guys, lesbos?” he asked, loud enough for the whole bus to hear, elbowing Cole, whose eyes widened for just a fraction of a second with something I knew even then was fear. Cole had never been under fire from Royce, but he had to have known he was protected by very thin social armor.

  Kendra was behind them of course, she and Royce already an item at nine and ten. While Royce was usually the instigator, Kendra was cruel, and I saw it in her eyes. She’d remember this moment long after Royce lost interest.

  She’d make me pay for my mistake.

  I froze. Lesbo. I’d never heard the word, but I knew what it must mean. My summer-brown skin hid my blush, but Allison’s was spreading like strawberry jam, and she yanked the ring off her finger and threw it at me.

  “I’m not gay,” she sneered. Kendra laughed loudly, and I knew I should have said I wasn’t either—because I wasn’t, right?—but I knew if I spoke I would cry, so I just sat there as Allison turned a stony shoulder toward me and spent the rest of the trip looking out the window.

  She moved again, at the end of the year, and Cole punched Royce on the arm and asked him a question about some sports thing, and eventually they moved on to ridicule someone else. But Kendra called me “Ring Pop” until well into middle school, and absolutely everyone knew why.

  Forget asking questions, or exploring, or coming out. From the moment Jeff Hanson peed his pants at the blackboard at the end of seventh grade and my daily harassment ended, I knew I was lucky to be left alone. Even if being left alone was sometimes lonely.

  Even if the weight of the secret cost me my best friend.

  “Kendra,” I mumble when she reaches me, trying and failing to present a smaller target by collapsing my shoulders. I know I’m ruining months of what Cereza calls posture training (which is just her jabbing me in the spine whenever she catches me slouching, anyway).

  Kendra glides up to me with her usual precise steps, her long legs golden beneath a sunflower sundress. “I thought we should talk about the project before you take off to serve . . . whatever it is your family serves out of that tin can.” Her entourage of long-legged, perfectly made-up lackies laugh, like the bleating of sheep.

  My face heats up, but I don’t answer, just shrink even further into myself.

  She rolls her eyes. “Well, even you must know the Miss Meteor pageant is next week.” She gestures to the banner just being strung up in the school’s main hallway, as if the event needs to be announced. “I’m gonna be doing my duty to the town by being the fourth woman in my family to be crowned . . .”

  The girls around her whoop, twirling, showing off their tiny dresses and blindingly white braces-corrected smiles.

  “So, I’m just saying, if my duty is to attract tourists to save this town and all the sad little businesses in it—like, what’s that little lunch shack called? Se-Loser’s?” Another chorus of bleating fills the hallway. “I’m gonna need you to do your duty, too, do we understand each other?”

  “It’s called Selena’s,” I say, because my parents deserve it, but honestly, I’m not even sure she hears me, and I don’t try again. If I upset her too much, she’ll forget whoever is in her crosshairs this week and I’ll be right back where I started.

  “Hey, Kendra,” says Cole from the group behind her, and my stomach flip flops. His voice is usually mild, laid back, but there’s something tense in it as he takes the target from me again. He must be afraid of them, I think. Afraid of what they’ll do if he steps too far out of line. But he doesn’t let it stop him. Even though he doesn’t know me. Even though this isn’t his fight.

  “Cole,” Kendra says, in a way that grants permission and relaxes the crowd. Her gaze is imperious, unearned, and directed at Cole. It makes me feel something closer to anger than fear. Just for a second.

  “It’s weird,” Cole says. “But I’m actually on the cornhole team—which some say is an even bigger draw than the pageant—and I don’t have a problem finishing my homework.”

  “Yeah, Kendall?” Royce Bradley says, approaching in a crowd of letterman jackets with little beanbags sewn onto the chests. “Well some of us are busy getting laid.”

  Cole’s jaw tightens. Just a little. Not enough for anyone to see. Anyone but me, anyway. Because I think Cole Kendall has just helped me transcend my fear, if only for a second. At this moment, I don’t feel totally alone, and that feeling lights a tiny, reckless flame in me. Like a single match.
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  Something small, but with the potential to be utterly destructive.

  “Is that any way to talk about a man’s sister?” Cole asks, but there’s more effort behind that casual tone now, and my tiny flame finds more fuel. What right do Kendra and Royce have? Why doesn’t anyone ever stop them?

  “The project,” Kendra says to me, glowing even brighter with her upperclassman boyfriend draped around her, already turning to go. “It’s all yours. Don’t expect any cozy late-night study sessions or anything . . .”

  My face burns, my hair in my eyes again, my only armor against this place.

  “Yeah, don’t get any ideas about my girl, Ring Pop.”

  Not everyone laughs, but enough people do, and the flame of my anger withers and dies as the panic sets in. Please no, I think. Not here, not today.

  The shape of the word has occurred to me, peeking up and out no matter how invisible I stay.

  Pansexual. I didn’t know the word when I needed it, but I know it now. It’s a word that means it’s okay if I don’t notice “boy” or “girl” or any other gender first. It’s a word that means it’s okay the way I notice the spark of a person, and that what’s on the outside doesn’t change the way I’m drawn to it like a moth.

  And it’s a beautiful word. I loved it the moment I overheard one of Cereza’s friends say it through the thin wall separating our bedrooms. But as beautiful as it is, it doesn’t belong in this hallway. It belongs in a someday future maybe, far from here when I don’t have to hide. Today, being pansexual, being anything outside the norm, is a liability. A disaster waiting to happen.

  See, Meteor prides itself on being a place where you “look out for your fellow man” (I actually think I lifted that straight from the town brochure). But it’s also the kind of place where you’re expected to fit in, to earn that down-home courtesy. To be one of the smiling faces on the brochure. To let the town pretend it’s tolerant by not making them reach too far to prove it.

  For instance, probably a third of our town’s five-thousand residents are Latinx—but Meteor “doesn’t care if we’re purple,” so long as we’re not too loud about it.