Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  I’m quiet long enough that Cereza flashes me a look.

  “I mean it,” she says. “You breathe a word to her, I’ll deny this whole conversation.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not that.”

  “Then why do you look even more worried than you did a minute ago?”

  Because I dragged so many people into what was just a stupid dream I had to try for.

  Because, for a minute, it seemed like that stupid dream might save me.

  Because whatever patch of my skin I got back, I can already feel stardust closing over it.

  “Because if girls like us can’t even win when they’re as good as Fresa,” I say, “I have no chance.”

  “Don’t throw in your contestant number yet.” Cereza settles back into watching the movie. “You shouldn’t give up, because we’re not giving up on you.”

  Chicky

  THE STREETS OF Meteor look different when you’re a coward and a traitor.

  I walk them anyway, the pavement unfriendly beneath my sneakers. I can’t go home. I can’t go to the diner. I can’t go to Lita’s—not that I ever could. I can’t go anywhere I’ll have to look into the eyes of someone who knows me.

  Not after shrinking down into nothing in front of Royce and Kendra again.

  As I walk aimlessly, the tin siding of mobile homes catching the afternoon sun, I can practically hear the gossip spreading from the telltale heart of town—the cornhole practice field. They’ll talk about how Loca Lita Perez took out Cole Kendall doing something totally batty and weird.

  They’ll say what a shame it is, that the Meteor cornhole winning streak is over after just one year thanks to Lita and those Quintanilla girls.

  They’ll talk about boys being boys whenever anyone mentions Royce’s wayward beanbag, just like they do every time. The blatant bullying. The complete refusal to acknowledge the humanity of anyone not like him. The joy he seems to get from making people feel small and weak and bad.

  There are never consequences for him, so why would he stop? It occurs to me as I mourn the dying possibility of taking him down for good that Royce wouldn’t be so scary if everyone in this town wasn’t so predisposed to congratulate him.

  As if being white and rich and a boy makes up for being a monster.

  I’m almost to the highway, the houses giving way to empty desert, before I turn my sneakers back toward town. Honestly, I don’t even know where they’re taking me until I see the Meteor Meteorite Museum looming in the distance, and by then I’m already resigned to it.

  No matter how much I hate this place, I always seem to be drawn back to it—and to the people who love it.

  Junior is out back as usual, deeply concentrated on painting the final cornhole boards for the match next week. He’s already done Starry Night, the famous Warhol soup can, and the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind flawlessly. Like the artists themselves were painting through him.

  It’s a little mesmerizing, I’ll admit it. Even if he won’t.

  Tonight he’s priming, which I know he loves. Turning a splintery, unusable surface into something ready to shine.

  For the second time in a week, I feel guilty for not giving him the diner wall.

  “Hey,” he says, without looking up.

  “Hey.”

  It’s something I’ve always liked about Junior, the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to fill every silence with chatter. After a lifetime as a Quintanilla, you really start to value silence.

  Well, if you can still imagine what it must be like.

  When the last brush strokes have been applied and the board is a uniform, gleaming white, Junior meets my eyes for the first time.

  “So, funny story . . . ,” I begin, trying to be casual even as my traitorous voice catches in my throat.

  “I, uh . . . ,” he begins, rubbing the back of his neck. “I heard.”

  “Already?” I ask, getting to my feet and pacing, like it’ll dull the next blow.

  Junior stands, too, but he shifts on his feet. “You know how it is, Chicky. It’s a small town. People talk.”

  “Who told you?” I ask. “What did they say?”

  He looks right at me, while I try to look anywhere else. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  I deflate at his words. He’s right. Who cares who it was or what they said? It’s not like it wasn’t always gonna be all over town before the start of the evening news. Hell, with what passes for content in Meteor, it probably is the evening news.

  I can hear the intro now: “Local Pageant Underdog Maims Town’s Favorite Athlete in Freak Shakespeare/Ribbon/Antique Cycle Accident—TONIGHT on Meteor News!”

  “Stop catastrophizing,” Junior says, reading my thoughts as usual.

  Stupid psychologist mom.

  “I’m not,” I say, even though I totally am.

  He tosses his paint roller in the water bucket, pacing around the lot for at least a minute before turning to face me. His eyes are uncharacteristically intense, and he holds my gaze until my blood starts to buzz and I have to glance away.

  “You should go get a soda from inside,” he says, tossing me his key. “It’s on the house.”

  I should stay. Ask him what’s going on. Offer to help. But honestly, I’m a little afraid of him right now. I came here for chill, for unconditional, but it looks like neither of those things are on the menu tonight.

  Inside the museum, the lights are dim, barely showcasing the treasures of Meteor’s past. Here’s the newspaper article—Vice President Hubert Humphrey with his arm around a much younger Buzz, the crater on the edge of town blotting out the background, looking totally otherworldly.

  In the photo, there are two guys with hard hats from some obscure government agency, flashlights pointing into the darkest parts of the crater. Nineteen sixty-six was probably the last time anyone went down there. The story went that after one of the investigators disappeared, they roped it off with caution tape and forbade entrance until more tests could be done.

  But no one ever came back. At the south end of the crater there are still two stakes in the ground, a last piece of sun-bleached warning tape stretched between like a museum exhibit itself. A couple seniors when we were in eighth grade took pictures of it for the school newspaper, and the administration refused to print them on the grounds of disrupting an ongoing government investigation.

  “Ongoing,” I always thought, was an interesting way to put it.

  The museum’s soda machine has a special trick to it that only staff members—plus Lita and I, of course—are allowed to know. I punch in B65E4 and the lights flash festively, allowing me to press A6 twice for two ice-cold, old-fashioned Coca-Colas in glass bottles.

  Buzz imports them from Mexico. He says they make them with real sugar there, but I don’t know enough Spanish to read the ingredients, so I have to take his word for it.

  Normally I’d go straight back out to Junior and we’d drink them perched on the low wall enclosing the parking lot, talking about everything and nothing, but tonight isn’t normal, and I make an uncharacteristic detour.

  The room that houses the space rock is like a tiny amphitheater with no seats. The patchy velvet rope, the red curtains that haven’t been closed in so long they have permanent dust streaks, and then the rock itself, which at first glance just looks like any other giant, slightly metallic rock.

  Not that I’d ever admit this, but it’s kind of more than that. There’s this luster to it, like nothing you’ve ever seen before unless you’ve watched Lita’s eyes while she dances in a thunderstorm. And maybe, beneath that, a melody. Something beautiful but just a little lonely.

  It’s always been the sound, or the idea of it, anyway, that draws me in.

  I open my Coke and slide under the rope, turning my back to the Biggest Roadside Attraction Between Las Vegas and Santa Fe and letting it pull me back against it, like it’s inviting me to take a load off for once. I feel that weird song in my bones and close my eyes against the emotion it calls u
p, like I’ll never quite know where I fit, but maybe that’s okay.

  Like Royce Bradley and all his Meteor-sanctioned destruction are a million light-years away.

  After a few minutes of that, I’m ready to go back.

  In the shadowy alcove of the museum’s back door, I pause for a second, thinking about that fiery look in Junior’s eyes before he tossed me the keys. But then I see what’s happening outside.

  Into the finished Nirvana board, Junior Cortes is tossing cornhole bags. I wait for the thwacking sound as they hit the board beside the hole, or the skittering of gravel as they miss the mark completely, but I don’t hear a thing save the swish, swish, swish of beanbags passing through a perfectly sized hole.

  After the fourth, I step out from the shadows, wheels turning in my head.

  After the tenth, I’m actually smiling.

  Junior nearly jumps out of his skin when I approach. “What the hell, Chicky!”

  “What the hell, Chicky?” I ask, incredulous, still smiling. “What the hell, Junior! You’re amazing with those stupid things!”

  “So?” he asks, clearly embarrassed, which means he hasn’t yet seen the path forward that I’ve seen.

  “Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” I say, waving a hand, the Cokes forgotten on the counter inside. “Sure, it’s a sad hobby and everyone who does it is soulless, but man is this gonna come in handy for me right now.”

  In my mind’s eye, it’s all coming together perfectly. Junior can take Cole’s place. The town won’t hate us for ruining its chances at the cornhole championship. We’re saved.

  “I’m not doing it,” Junior says, before I’ve even explained what I want him to do.

  I shake my head like a wet dog, just to rid myself of the sound of him saying no. “Wait, what?”

  “I said I’m not doing it.”

  His eyebrows are drawn together, that normal, easy confidence in his face vanishing. He looks pissed, like I’ve let him down somehow by even thinking of it.

  “But, Junior,” I say, pushing through it because he so clearly doesn’t understand. “This . . . You . . . could fix it. Everything we ruined today. You could save Lita’s chances. You could help me.”

  He stops, looking right at me, that molten metal back in his eyes.

  It makes me want to run and not look back.

  “Chicky, I can’t do it. I can’t play cornhole with those jerks. Not after the way they’ve treated . . . everyone.” But his eyes say he’s talking about me. About Ring Pop.

  “But you always fix everything.” I think back to a lifetime of him saving me from group projects, inviting me over to his quiet house when my sisters are too much, going the long way around Lita’s house with me even though I didn’t ask him to.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I always do.” He takes a step toward me, the angles of his face their own work of art beneath the orange parking lot light. They’re softer now, and that line between his eyebrows has smoothed out. “But why do you think I always do?”

  Something is swelling between us. Something like the gas and space dust and ethereal whatever that combines to make its own, unique star. And I’m terrified of it.

  “Junior . . .” He waits, but I have nothing else to say. He’s closer than ever, but the distance feels like light-years. “Don’t.”

  “What if I want to?” He takes one more step, the one that makes the heat coming off him my responsibility. And there it is, the feeling I’ve always felt. That I just don’t fit.

  “What if I don’t?” I whisper.

  “Chicky,” he says, and the way he says my name is like connecting the dots in one of those kids’ coloring books. “What if you do?”

  There’s a small flutter between my fourth and fifth ribs on the left side, but it stops when he reaches out and touches my face. I can’t help it, I step back.

  “Please,” I say, my voice cracking. “I just . . . I need you to . . .”

  But he’s already turning away. “No,” he says. “You don’t need me. You’ve made that totally clear.”

  Here lies Chicky, I think for the second time tonight as Junior lingers, not looking but not leaving. Waiting for me to prove him wrong. She was a horrible friend.

  And then I run.

  Again.

  Lita

  WHEN COLE KENDALL walks into his own family’s kitchen the next day, I’m not sure who jumps higher. Him when he sees me checking the temperature on the oven. Or me when I realize he has no idea I was coming over. I thought for sure his sister would warn him.

  “What are you doing in my house?” He’s yelling it, but not in an angry way. He’s coming down from the shock.

  I probably should have announced myself when I crawled in the open window. His hair is after-shower wet, and I feel like I’ve just walked into his bedroom.

  “Look, Lita.” Cole readjusts his posture, like he’s still getting used to the sling. “I’m good with you coming over anytime. But you do not wanna run into Kendra right now. And I do not wanna see what’ll happen to you if you do. Also I’m hoping you don’t show up randomly in other people’s kitchens, but we’re gonna leave that conversation for another time.”

  “I called Kendra. She said it was okay.”

  “She what?” Cole asks.

  “She said, ‘Yeah, sure, why don’t you just move in while you’re at it?’”

  “Do we need to have a discussion about sarcasm?”

  “I know what sarcasm is. But she shouldn’t have said it if she didn’t mean it. People shouldn’t say things they don’t mean.”

  I reach for the cellophane-and-brown-paper-wrapped bouquet on the counter. The early-morning light softens the edges of the flowers. I hold them out to him, a fluffy mix of delphinium and larkspur, the only really blue flowers Kari keeps stocked at Cosmos, Meteor’s one and only flower shop. “Is blue still your favorite color?”

  “You brought me flowers?”

  “That’s what you do when you want someone to get better, right?” I ask.

  Behind the amused look, I catch something else, like this means something to him.

  “Give me two minutes,” he says. “I can’t talk to you looking like I just got out of bed.”

  The kitchen table is covered in library books he’s probably gotten out for the social studies project he and Junior Cortes are partnered on. “You look like you’ve been up for a while.”

  “Still.” He pulls down the same kind of glass jar Bruja Lupe saves from spaghetti sauce. “This is probably really rude, but I’m down a wing, so I’m gonna ask you to do this part.”

  He is a boy, so he doesn’t think of the fact that I need scissors. Most boys just stuff flowers into vases without cutting them.

  “You’re lucky Kendra’s not home,” he says.

  “Not lucky. Just listening. She’s not quiet about her voice lessons.”

  “Ah, yes. The rousing rendition of the musical classic I’ve had to hear her practice for the last three months.”

  “Should I ask?”

  “You’re the competition.” His voice is more teasing than suspicious. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  Then he’s out of the kitchen and down the hall toward his room.

  “In case you missed it,” I call after him. “I have no talent. I don’t think I’m the competition anymore.”

  When I hear his door close, I open the junk drawer where I remember the Kendalls keeping their scissors and spare nails and tape measures.

  But it’s not scissors inside.

  There’s a layer of paper. As soon as I see the envelopes with the words PAST DUE highlighted in red, I close the drawer. These are not for me to see.

  But I’ve already seen enough. It casts the whole house in a different hue, like a camera filter.

  How the weathering on the shutters might not be because Mrs. Kendall wants them that way, it might be because she can’t get them repainted.

  How a cracked window that looks out over the backyard hasn’t been fixed, or
the lower door gasket of the refrigerator, masking tape sealing the accordion of plastic.

  These are small things. Mrs. Kendall still keeps a neat house, with recently washed flowered curtains and pictures in tidy frames on every dusted surface.

  They are things I would not have noticed if the red letters had not made me look again.

  These are things that, to Bruja Lupe and me, just mean our landlord hasn’t returned our phone calls. But to families who own their houses, it means they can’t afford to fix a place that is theirs.

  I don’t look for scissors after that. I put the flowers in the glass jar without cutting the stems, adding a penny to the water like Kari told me to.

  Cole comes back with his hair combed, and I can’t tell if he changed his shirt or if it’s the one he was wearing before. The blue almost matches the lightest shade of the larkspur flowers.

  He’s still buttoning the last buttons with one hand when he says, “Sorry about how hot it is in here. And loud.”

  I hadn’t caught it before. But he means all the fans blowing, one or two set up in every room. All the windows open, even this early in the day. Another thing I would not have noticed because Bruja Lupe and I do the same thing all the time. Families who can afford it just leave their air-conditioning running.

  “We don’t really turn on the AC unless it’s over a hundred,” Cole says, and I hear the nervousness, the self-consciousness under the words. “Saves energy. Good for the environment.”

  I never thought that Kendra Kendall might be showing me the sharp edges of her French-manicured nails for any reason but that she wanted a crown and a title.

  “I’m really sorry, Cole,” I say, and I don’t know if I’m talking just about plowing into him with a piece of museum memorabilia or the fact that his family has a drawer full of red-lettered bills.

  His glance at his arm is involuntary. “You have to know that wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was at least a lot my fault,” I say.

  “It was a little your fault. Let’s save the ‘lot’ for where it’s deserved.”