Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “What are you doing here, freak?” Kendra asks, the titters of the girls around her making my face heat up. “Come to cheer for your little friend? Don’t worry, he’s mostly ornamental. Everyone knows my Roycey is the real hero.”

  I look at Kendra, bracing myself for the fear I’ve always felt when I look at her. But in this moment, I have more important things to worry about, and it makes her look a little smaller than I remembered.

  “Gentlemen,” says the town radio broadcaster, here to call the match. “To your marks.”

  Royce and Junior step up, three hundred pounds of high school boy with everything to prove. The fluttering feeling is back in my stomach, and I give Junior a weak thumbs-up, which he returns as Royce readies his first bag.

  To quell my nerves, I look at the boards. The swirls of Starry Night, like Van Gogh himself came back to Earth just to paint cornhole boards, and the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind, with the baby swimming for a dollar bill.

  Even if they don’t win this match, I think Junior is going places, while Royce has a one-way ticket to a job slinging used cars with a beer belly. A future where he spends his nights at the Meteor Saloon in his too-small MCH jacket telling stories to the ladies about his own glory days.

  If we’re very lucky, he’ll be telling them about today.

  The thought cheers me up just enough to stand beside Kendra as he takes his first shot.

  It goes right in, and the roar from the crowd is deafening.

  For the next eighteen minutes, I barely breathe. Junior and Royce are good, but the other team didn’t make it to the finals for nothing.

  “When is it over?” I ask Kendra as they sink another bag in the Nirvana board.

  She spares me a withering glare. “You actually don’t know cornhole is played until someone gets twenty-one points?” she asks. “Do you actually live under a rock?”

  “I actually do,” I retort, before I can overthink it. “I find it’s a good way to beat the desert heat.”

  She doesn’t speak to me again, but now at least I know what I’m waiting for. Junior and Royce have fourteen points, and the twins have twelve.

  The one with the slightly wider shoulders makes his next shot.

  Fifteen.

  Junior’s next shot slides across the board, stopping just short of going in, and there’s a collective groan from the spectators.

  Fifteen.

  Royce and the other twin sink their next two respective shots.

  “Three points?” I ask, without looking at Kendra.

  “Duh,” she replies.

  So they’re tied at eighteen.

  Junior is spiraling after missing his last shot. I can tell. His shoulders are too high, his chin ducked to his chest. I wish I could call out to him like I did at tryouts, tell him it’s just us on the field, but it would be a lie, and more than that it would be violating the treaty we made to get our friendship back, so I stay quiet, picturing ribbons of light like the ones that trail meteors extending from my chest to his.

  Maybe he feels them, because he looks up at me and smiles a little.

  If he makes this shot, Meteor will have twenty-one points, and the match will be over. If he misses, the twins will have a chance to win it.

  I’m a little angry about the fact that I know all this.

  “I can’t believe it’s him making the last shot,” Kendra pouts. “When did he even join the team, yesterday?”

  “I think it was after your boyfriend’s bullying caused the bike crash that maimed your brother,” I say, mock thoughtfully.

  “Oh, suck it, rug-muncher,” she says.

  I freeze for just a second, starting to shrink, looking for the quickest exit, wondering if anyone heard. But then I think about Junior, up there about to decide the outcome of the cornhole championship.

  And Lita. Without her bravery, none of us would even be here.

  And me, too, if I’m being honest. Haven’t I been brave, too?

  “Which is it, Kendra?” I ask, my voice only wobbling a little. “Munch or suck? You can’t do both at once, you know.”

  Her horrified face is just enough to get me through the endless moment before Junior takes the match’s final shot.

  The final shot. Because it goes in.

  It goes in.

  Junior Cortes has just won the cornhole championship, and Kendra’s shriek almost bursts my eardrum. Before I know it, we’re hugging, and I might be crying, and there’s so much noise everywhere that I feel like nothing is real, and that’s okay.

  Disgusted, Kendra drops her arms the moment the din dies down. “That never happened,” she says. “So, like, don’t get any weird lesbian ideas.”

  This time, I don’t shrink. In fact, before I know it I’m saying, “Oh, Kendra, I’m so sorry . . . you’re just really not my type!”

  “Oh my God, gross!” she whines, running off toward Royce.

  Once I stop laughing, I almost follow, but that’s when I notice that Junior is surrounded. The team, the crowd that’s pouring in from the bleachers, the radio announcer that’s asking for an interview. His face is flushed, and he’s smiling, and I think it’s not fair that he’s been hiding himself from the world all these years.

  But there are the girls from tryouts, with their tiny tank tops and their long hair and their perfectly applied lipstick, and it doesn’t matter that things didn’t work out with the Hair Pony, because there’s a stable full of them out here, and one of them is touching his arm, and there’s something alive and clawing in my chest, there must be, because I can barely breathe.

  It hits me then, as I stand on the side of the field, as everyone else takes their turn congratulating the boy who has made my life livable for the past five years:

  I lost my best friend all those years ago because I was hiding. Because I didn’t think there was another way.

  And I’m about to lose Junior too.

  I don’t think any more after that, I just charge into the crowd, pushing aside shoulders and backs and arms until I reach him. One of the guys from the team is approaching, too, but I don’t care. I grab Junior’s elbow, and I turn him toward me, and his eyes widen a little as I throw myself into his arms, hugging him like I never want to let go.

  After a moment of shock, he hugs me back. Hard. Like he doesn’t want to let go either.

  “Don’t go with them,” I say, as Royce jumps up on top of the Starry Night board to accept the adulation of the masses.

  “Go where?” he asks, his lips twitching upward.

  “To whatever meatheads and waifs party they’re about to invite you to.”

  “Why not?” he asks, and I can’t quite tell if he’s being sarcastic. “It sounds so fun.”

  I take a deep breath. “Because I don’t want you to.”

  His eyes get more focused somehow, like he’s just tuned out everything besides the answer to this question. No pressure. “Why not?”

  “Because I have an idea?” I say, and it’s true. One is just occurring to me, in the wide-open space where my fear is fleeing the scene. But it’s a not good enough reason, and I knew it wouldn’t be. “Because,” I clarify. “I want you to come with me instead.”

  His smile is ten winning cornhole shots. It’s tacos al pastor with just the right amount of lime juice squeezed on top. It’s everything.

  “You got it,” he says, and when he takes my hand I don’t let go.

  “There’s just one thing,” I say, and his smile gets more familiar.

  “Of course,” he says. “We’ll pick up Lita on the way.”

  “Did I hear someone planning an adventure?” comes a voice from behind us.

  It’s Cole Kendall, his arm in a sling, and he’s smiling too.

  “Don’t you have plans?” I ask, and we all turn as one to see Royce stage dive off the cornhole board into a crowd not quite big enough to catch him.

  “Oh, all this?” he asks with a smirk. “I think I can handle missing one night.”

  Leaving be
hind the crowd, now chanting Royce’s name like he made the winning shot, the three of us walk back to the parking lot, to the root-beer-brown Pontiac Junior’s mom let him borrow for the game. As Cole slides into the back seat and I get in beside Junior, I get that weird fluttery feeling again.

  The kind that tells me this is gonna be quite a night.

  Lita

  THE DAY AFTER the talent competition, I ask Bruja Lupe to tell my friends I’m not home, or that I’m sick, or anything to make them hang up or go away.

  I don’t think any of them will try talking to me, not after what happened, but just in case.

  That night, the sun is barely down when I put on my favorite pajamas, one more thing I’ll miss (along with the hundred-washes-soft tank top I have on underneath). They’re patterned with shooting stars arcing across a cotton-candy-pink background like they’re comets, rainbows in place of their tails.

  I think about missing them, because it’s too big to think about everything else I’ll miss, everyone else I’ll miss.

  The stardust hasn’t burst onto my arms. Not yet. But it’s all over my legs. From my thighs to my ankles it looks as silvery and glimmery as a mermaid’s tail.

  My arms are next. I can already feel the buzzing feeling under my skin.

  Alien. Alien. Alien.

  The word spreads out in my brain like a coyote’s call through the desert.

  When I come back to my room after brushing my teeth, Cole Kendall is leaning against my open window.

  “Why are you in my room?” I yell.

  He must catch that I’m more startled than annoyed, because he smiles.

  I look at his sling. “How did you even get in here?”

  “First-story window?” Cole asks. “Easy. Do you know how many times Kendra and I have snuck in at two a.m. after a party? If I can get my drunk, belligerent sister in a window, I can get myself in with one hand tied behind my back.” He glances down at the sling. “So to speak.”

  “Belligerent,” I say. “Nice word.”

  “Adjective,” he says as though reciting from a dictionary. “Definition: My sister after her third Jell-O shot.”

  I laugh. “What are you doing here?”

  “You just kinda bolted after the talent thing,” he says. “I thought I’d give you space, but when none of us heard from you, I got worried. Then when you didn’t show up for the championship, I really got worried.”

  Junior. I say a little prayer that God let the stars in the sky give Junior a little extra luck today.

  Missing it gave me a sad, hollow feeling that still hasn’t gone away. But showing my face at the championship right after I bailed on the talent portion, for no reason the audience could see, felt as impossible as Chicky and me being friends again.

  “Did he win?” I ask.

  “If you wanna know that,” Cole says. “You’re coming out with me.”

  I cross my arms, pajama flannel scritching over pajama flannel. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not letting you mope in here all night.”

  “I’m not moping. I am brooding.”

  “You can brood any other night. But sorry, not tonight.”

  “Why are you even here?” I ask. “Did you not see the fiasco I was onstage?”

  Fiasco. That’s another good word. I wish I could take more joy in it right now.

  “I don’t remember any fiasco,” Cole says.

  “Are you kidding?” I ask. “If Miss Meteor pageant had a talentless competition, I’d take first place.”

  “You handled an asshole as well as anyone could’ve.”

  I stare up at my star mobile as though there is not a boy standing in my room. “Thanks for checking on me, but I’m staying in tonight.”

  “Fine,” Cole says. “But your friends are gonna be really disappointed.”

  Friends?

  Plural?

  Cole lifts his hand, showing me his palm. “I can tell you no more. I am merely a messenger.”

  He’s given me just enough to make me curious.

  And he knows it.

  I call out to Bruja Lupe in the living room.

  “Yes?” she answers back.

  “Cole Kendall’s in my room, and I’m gonna go out the window with him.”

  “Why don’t you both just use the door?”

  When we get outside, Junior is standing in front of his mother’s car.

  I can tell how everything turned out from the look on his face.

  “You won?” I ask.

  Junior doesn’t bother to answer; his proud smile says everything. And I don’t wait for an answer before I jump up and down shrieking, because this, at least this, has gone right.

  Chicky steps out from the other side of the car.

  The sight of her stops me cold.

  Chicky, the friend who became a not-friend, is here at my house. In front of Cole Kendall, the boy this town loves so much I cannot believe he’ll even be seen with me. In front of Junior, Meteor town hero of tonight and probably forever. There will be years of stories about the brilliant artist whose long-secret talent for cornhole saved Meteor’s chance at the championship title.

  “We are going on a caper,” Chicky says, a note of intrigue in her voice.

  I bristle at the word. This is not us.

  We don’t do this anymore.

  “I’m not in the mood,” I say.

  “You haven’t even heard about the caper.”

  “I don’t want to go on a caper.”

  “Will you let me at least describe the caper?”

  “Stop saying caper!”

  “You just said it too!”

  The sound of our bickering, how ridiculous we are, makes us both crack a smile.

  I can’t help it.

  She can’t help it.

  If the amount of unstardusted skin I have left is any indication, if how it’s speeding down my legs is any indication, I probably only have a handful of nights left in my girl body.

  I don’t want to spend this one putting distance between me and Chicky Quintanilla.

  “Fine.” I cross my arms. “What kind of caper?”

  Chicky looks at the three of us. “We’re gonna make sure all those tourists and conspiracy theorists really have something to talk about.”

  Junior pulls a yellow legal pad out of the front seat. “I’ve already drawn up a design.”

  He shows me a page of intricate flower-like arcs and curves.

  It’s a pattern I recognize.

  It’s one I flashed at Kendra Kendall and half the town.

  “Is that . . . from my bra?” I ask.

  Junior points a thumb at Cole. “He remembered it perfectly. He described it in detail.”

  Cole looks down at his shoes. “Thanks for that.”

  “Anytime,” Junior says.

  “We’ve decided to give everyone definitive proof of life elsewhere in the universe,” Chicky says. “For once, we decide what the rumor mill says.”

  I look at Chicky, searching for some sign that she feels obligated to be nice to me. I search her face for some pinch in her smile that tells me she wishes she weren’t with me in front of two of the boys who matter most in this town.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Chicky asks in her best mafia don voice. “You in or out?”

  The impression is so perfect, such a precise copy of a fine-suited man in a 1940s restaurant corner booth, that I say, “I’m in,” before I can think about it.

  All of us climb into the car, and Junior drives away from the lights of Meteor, New Mexico.

  I’m glad I’m in the back seat. It gives me a better view of Junior as he drives and Chicky as she sits in the front passenger seat next to him, both of them laughing as they argue about which static-fuzzed radio station to tune into.

  They’re both realizing something their hearts have known for a long time.

  I’m still thinking about them, what it must feel like to discover that feeling between you and someone else. Which is why I
’m not expecting it when Junior glances in the rearview, catches my eye, and says, “So what’s with all the glitter?”

  “Junior!” Chicky and Cole both say at the same time.

  “What?” He shrugs at them both, without apology. “Like you both weren’t wondering too.”

  I sink down in the seat thinking about how often they’ve noticed bands of stardust winking between my shirt and my jeans. Or if they can see it now, through my pajamas.

  Chicky and Cole are actively trying not to look at me. So actively that it somehow feels more intense than if they were staring.

  Junior keeps driving, patient that I’ll answer eventually.

  So I do the only kind of lying I know how to do.

  Lying without really lying.

  “It’s been in me forever,” I say. “I just used to be better at hiding it.”

  “Does it mean something bad?” Chicky asks.

  Junior glances over at her. “Can we rephrase that to sound less judgmental?”

  “Can you forget your mom’s articles about communication for one minute?” Even saying this, she sounds like she’s flirting with him. For a second, it lets me think about them again instead of the stardust.

  But only for a second.

  Now Cole looks at me. “Are you okay?”

  My heart contracts. My skin feels hot, like the stardust on me wants me to explain it. But I can’t. Not right now. Because Junior has just won the Cornhole Championship for Meteor. Because Chicky and I are almost friends. Because whenever Chicky looks at Junior she can’t help smiling. Because Cole seems like he can actually be himself around the three of us, instead of whoever Royce and his friends and this whole town decide he has to be.

  There is something perfect about the four of us in this car together, right now, on this night. And maybe it’s selfish, but I want to take it with me, exactly like it is. I don’t want to ruin it with explaining.

  I look at Cole, knowing I have to tell the biggest lie I’ll ever tell this boy.

  And I have to say it in front of my once best friend and the boy she’s just figuring out has her heart.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m okay. Just weird.”

  I don’t know if I’m talking about me or the stardust, but before I can figure it out, Junior says, “We like you weird.”