Miss Meteor

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  I could get used to this. To not holding it up all alone.

  “And that makes our first-place winner—no surprises here, folks—Miss Kendra Kendall of Meteor, New Mexico!”

  Kendra bursts into tears that almost look real as the entire line of girls collapses around her, and her mother rushes onto the stage, and the applause around us is so thunderous that it feels inevitable. Of course she’s the one sliding into the sash, the one taking the crown, the one holding the ridiculous scepter and looking like she just stepped out of a formal dress catalog.

  We may have opened a few eyes this week, but Meteor is still Meteor. Beauty pageants are still beauty pageants. Maybe this is enough, though, for our first attempt at changing the world.

  “Here she comes,” Junior warns, as Lita comes drifting through the crowd we just fought our way to the front of, looking strangely untethered to the Earth. The gold antennae bob up and down, joyful and mourning all at once as she accepts congratulations, handshakes, even a hug or two, but there’s no doubt she’s heading straight for us.

  And then she stops, halfway there, and clutches her stomach with both shimmering arms, the spaces where her skin shines through, disappearing as the stardust reaches for itself across the suddenly fragile brown.

  Lita looks at me, once, her eyes startled open like she’s been hit, even though she’s all alone, and I’m already moving toward her when she turns and, fast as the Enterprise switching on the Warp Core, disappears into the crowd.

  “Hey!” Cole says, running up behind us, his eyes tired. “Did you see where Lita went? I wanted to say . . .” He stops cold at the look on my face. “Which way did she go?”

  I’m about to tell Junior we need to go after her, the cold goodbye feeling from before back with a vengeance, spreading through my chest, but he’s the one running ahead, urging us to hurry, leading us because Cole and I are too scared to do anything but grab each other’s hands and follow.

  “Chicky!” It’s Bruja Lupe, and I slow but don’t stop, hoping she’ll see the panic on my face. That she’ll know what to do.

  “I don’t know where she is!” I call, and I see something settling on her face.

  “I’ll check home,” she says. “Find her. Please.”

  As we try, I look to the stars just peeking out, asking them to keep Lita safe just a little while longer.

  Lita

  FIRST RUNNER-UP.

  It’s far, far more than I thought I’d get.

  But as I feel the stardust prickling over my body, claiming the rest of me, I know it’s not enough.

  I walk out into the desert dusk as the sky turns the blue of my dress bodice. Then it deepens until it matches the skirt hem.

  The cactuses greet me as I walk deeper into the desert. I bid farewell to Monsieur Cereus, Señora Strawberry, Herr Rainbow. I nod at each of them, my gold antennae bobbing on my head. And before I can help it, I am gasp-sobbing, because my fingers are covered in stardust, and my heart is so full it feels like it’s holding a whole galaxy.

  I feel the stardust crawling up my neck. When I pat my fingers to my cheeks, my tears come away like the shimmer of desert rock.

  My heart says goodbye to Meteor. To Buzz and Edna and the space rock that brought me here.

  To Dolores Ramirez, and everyone who clapped for me when I got to my feet in front of people who hated me.

  To Junior, and the Cortes family.

  To the Quintanillas.

  To Cole, the boy who gave me my first and only bike, and himself as a friend.

  To Chicky, and movie-star voices, and making spaceship sounds in craters, and everything we had and everything we missed.

  To Bruja Lupe, the closest I have to a mother.

  Bruja Lupe, my mother.

  I am emptied out, and crying so hard that I’m dripping shimmer onto my dress, but I am so proud of these people who are my family and so grateful I had them for my time on this tiny, spinning planet.

  I feel the inside of me going soft and flickery, not just my skin but my bones and heart turning to stardust. I crouch down, layers of skirt fluffing around me. I dig my nail into the fine desert dirt, and I start writing.

  Tonight or tomorrow, someone will probably find this dress out here, in the shadows of my cactus friends.

  I want them to know who to return it to.

  Not Cole. He doesn’t need it back in his closet.

  Bruja Lupe, because I could not look her in the face tonight and tell her goodbye.

  I could not let her watch this happen.

  “I found her,” a boy’s far-off voice sounds through the desert.

  I place it.

  Cole’s.

  “She’s over here,” calls another one.

  Junior’s.

  I hide behind Señorita Opuntia.

  I peer between Señorita Opuntia’s arms and spot the silhouettes of those two boys.

  Then the shape of Chicky on her lightning-storm-fast giraffe legs. She rushes forward between them, running.

  No.

  No.

  They cannot see this.

  It’s bad enough losing them.

  They can’t watch as I do.

  Chicky races toward Señorita Opuntia, the boys not far behind her.

  I try to make myself small enough to disappear behind Señorita Opuntia, but even if I could, my skirt sweeps out on either side.

  Chicky slows, and I know she’s seen me.

  Or at least my skirt.

  “Chicky, what are you doing here?” I keep ducking behind Señorita Opuntia, hoping she, and the dark, will hide me. “Shouldn’t you be at the diner?” It’s gonna be their busiest night of the year.

  “I’m exactly where I should be right now,” she says.

  The boys catch up to Chicky.

  “Uh, Lita?” Junior says. “Why are you hiding behind a cactus?”

  Three sets of eyes in the dark look at Señorita Opuntia so intently, I’m afraid they’re going to burn through her.

  I carefully lift my skirt off the ground and cringe out from behind Señorita Opuntia.

  Every part of me I can see, every part not covered by the dress, wavers with light.

  I am glowing, and sparkling, and falling apart.

  Their faces are half terror, half wonder.

  “I can’t stay,” I say, sniffling, my voice barely audible.

  As if by instinct, Cole takes off his jacket and drapes it on me as best he can with one arm.

  Chicky lets out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, Cole, she’s a little chilly, that’s clearly the problem here.”

  “Any other ideas?” Cole says. “The floor is yours.”

  Then I can’t help laughing, even though I’m still sniffling, and trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” I rasp out. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” I look at all of them, their shapes set against the darkening blue. I am glowing so much that it almost shows me the features on their faces. “And I didn’t want to make everything worse for you than I already have.”

  “Make things worse?” Junior asks. “Are you kidding?”

  “You helped me be ready to come out,” Chicky says.

  “You got me to finally give that dress away,” Cole says.

  “You convinced me to try out for the cornhole team,” Junior says, “and if that’s not a Meteor miracle, then what is?”

  With the way they look at me, something in me shifts. Like two planets colliding. Like a star becoming part of another star. Like a supernova bursting into a world of light.

  Maybe my bones and my heart are already stardust, but at this moment, it is holding together.

  It hasn’t just been one way. I haven’t just needed Bruja Lupe, and Chicky, and Cole, and Junior, and the Quintanilla sisters.

  Maybe, maybe, they’ve needed me.

  “I’m you,” I say out loud without meaning to, “but for you.”

  “What?” they all say at once.

  I shake my head to try to keep the thoughts from rattling
around too much. “What you are for me, I’m a little of that for all of you.” My heart feels like the burst of light off a planetary nebula. “You need me. I don’t just need you.”

  They all stare at me, at me, not just at the stardust, giving me a look like they’re saying, Obviously.

  In the next moment, I feel heavier and lighter at once, like a new gravity is holding me to the Earth, and like the weight of all the stars is lifting off me at the same time.

  It’s the pull of everyone I can’t let go of, and the knowledge that maybe they can’t let go of me either. Not just Bruja Lupe, but these three best friends in front of me.

  They are holding me here, like a star they don’t want to lose.

  When the stardust shrank on my body, it wasn’t because of things going right with the pageant.

  It was things going right with everyone I love.

  It was them helping me remember that there’s space on this planet for me.

  The tears in my eyes are so thick, I almost don’t see the stardust’s glow softening.

  The brown of my skin starts at my fingertips. It spreads up to my wrists and then my arms, my collarbone, my neck.

  The terror on their faces fades, leaving more room for the wonder.

  The color of my skin settles, and then there’s just a faint shimmery dusting on the brown.

  My gasp, my own wonder, echoes off the wide sky.

  I lift my skirt, and the tulle and satin fluff in every direction.

  Junior laughs, shielding his eyes like a brother who’s just walked in on his sister changing. It almost starts me laughing.

  But I can’t. I can barely find the air to gasp again when I look at my legs.

  Brown. My legs are brown again, no stardust. Just that slight glimmer, barely a sheen.

  I let go of my skirt and a second later I am crying into my hands, as hard as I cried on the floor of the locker room, except this time I am also laughing. I am laughing and crying as hard as I ever have, but all at the same time.

  Because I am a girl worth the space I take up. I am a girl this world, this town, and most of all, the people who love me, will not let go of. Because I am a star they won’t let the sky take back.

  I hold out my brown, unstardusted arms to my three best friends in the world.

  Even though I can never know for certain, I am pretty sure what happens next is the best group hug that has ever happened in the history of this planet. And I, a girl with brown skin and a stardust heart, am part of it.

  Chicky

  WHEN WE GET back to the town square, we are different. And no one notices.

  That we’ve been to another world and back. That we’ve experienced something I’ll never, ever forget.

  As we pass the statue of Hubert Humphrey, Lita extricates herself from our protective, joyous circle, and I want to snatch her back into it just in case. But she’s smiling, and reaching for her headband, and before we know it Vice President Humphrey is just a little sparklier.

  “One small step for man,” says Junior, and Lita bumps him with her hip before letting us encircle her again.

  “Thank you all for being part of our pageant,” the emcee is saying. “We hope you’ll join us for refreshments and games and dancing to follow in the town square! Good night!”

  He hits a button, and above us a thousand twinkling lights blaze to life, music swelling from speakers placed somewhere in the trees.

  We’re alone in the center of it for now, Lita, Cole, Junior, and me, and Lita laughs and spins in a circle, and I try to see her like she is, and not huddled in on herself, bright white around the edges and about to come undone, about to shed what makes her human—what makes her ours—and let the sky take her back.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s dance!”

  I’m still just looking, remembering it all, my knees a little shaky, but Lita is so human in front of me. So small and round and brown and full of contagious joy.

  “You’re really back?” I ask her, even though I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the sky take the star-stuff back and leave Lita with us. With the people who love her.

  “Chicky,” she says, planting herself right in front of me and looking up into my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.” And then she laughs, a laugh so perfectly of a human girl it convinces me like nothing else has.

  Royce couldn’t take her from me. The sky itself couldn’t take her from us.

  And now, we really do have all the time in the world.

  She grabs my arm, and Junior’s, and I grab Cole’s, and we sway back and forth in a strange but perfect rectangle for a few minutes, laughing and nearly falling over, hearts lighter than they’ve been in longer than I can remember.

  My friends, I think as Cole’s elbow bumps my ribs and Junior sneakily shifts himself closer to me, his side pressed up against mine.

  Lita’s eyes snap to us then, like she can somehow feel it, the way my skin is fizzing like Coca-Cola in a glass bottle wherever he’s touching me. Like her finally cementing herself to this world, choosing us instead of the sky as her home, made it okay for me to feel all the rest of it too.

  “Cole, I think I just remembered I need cotton candy,” she says with an exaggerated wink, pulling him out of our tangle of limbs.

  “Lita, wait!” I say, because I want to be alone with Junior so, so much—this wild, otherworldly emotional rollercoaster was supposed to be our first date, after all—but I don’t want to let Lita out of my sight.

  “We’ll see you guys in a few minutes,” she says to both of us, and then quietly, just to me, “I promise.”

  Junior laughs, still standing with his arm around me as she leads Cole into the crowd. “That was subtle,” he says.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but subtlety is Lita’s specialty.”

  “We can go with them,” Junior says, just a tiny bit of reluctance in his voice despite his obvious and heroic attempt to keep it out. “If you don’t want to stay . . .”

  “You heard the lady,” I say, letting the fear go, letting myself be here in this moment. “She’ll see us in a few minutes.” And this time, I think I really believe it.

  Junior tightens his hold on me, and I’m ready to see what this first date stuff is really about, when I hear the last voice in Meteor—in the world, in the galaxy—that I want to hear right now.

  “Oh, I get it,” says Royce Bradley. “Pansexualism is like a weird orgy of freaks.” He’s smirking, watching Lita and Cole walk away in a way that tells me he saw every moment of our four-way dance.

  Junior stiffens beside me, and I know he’s worried I’m going to let Royce ruin this moment. But I’ve never cared less what Royce Bradley thinks. My friends and I conquered the will of the stars tonight. Royce is barely an ant under my shoe compared to that.

  I squeeze Junior’s hand before dropping it, bringing my rainbow Ring Pop to my mouth slowly, making sure Royce sees.

  “Yup, you found us out,” I say, offering a lick to Junior. “Now that the whole town knows I’m pan, I’m dating everyone.”

  Royce’s dull eyes widen, confusion warring with anger at the fact that I’ve confused him. He has no idea if I’m serious or not, and it feels so good to see behind the curtain, to see how small he is without the power our fear gave him.

  “And I should say thank you,” I say, leaning toward him with a wink. “For being so pathetic that your girlfriend dumped you. I finally have a shot with Kendra now, and you know I have a thing for champions.” Kendra Kendall is nowhere in sight, but I wink and wave over his shoulder anyway, causing him to turn in circles like a dog.

  “Have fun tonight,” Junior says, clearly dismissing him. “And Bradley? Stay away from my friends. Seems like I’m the only one who hasn’t had a chance to get a hit in, and I’m starting to feel left out.”

  “Fuck you guys,” Royce says halfheartedly, and then, at long last, he leaves us alone.

  Junior shifts in front of me, pulling me close. “Dance with me?” he asks,
just as the song shifts to something slow and dreamy.

  “Why, Junior Cortes,” I say. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Lita

  “SUBTLE,” COLE SAYS as we walk away.

  “When people are your friends, you don’t always need to be subtle,” I say.

  “Then how about it?” Cole holds out his hand to me.

  I notice the diamond white of his sister’s column dress.

  “Just a minute.” I clasp his hand to tell him I’ll be right back.

  “Kendra,” I call out.

  She turns, her curls sweeping her shoulders.

  “Congratulations,” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says with a small, regal bow of her head.

  I’m grateful she doesn’t add “you too.” Kendra isn’t one for polite gestures, at least not with girls like me. Everything she says to me, she means, so at least I know she means the “thank you” part.

  There is meanness in Kendra. So much of it. But there is fear there too. I think about all the things she did to me, and somehow I cannot unhitch them from the memory of those red letters in that kitchen drawer.

  Now the Kendalls can get their bills current, and Selena’s will still survive.

  More than survive. With all the traffic coming to see the extraterrestrial rock formations, Selena’s has a new wave of tourists discovering their tostada burgers.

  “Oh,” I say, “and congratulations again.”

  Confusion spreads over Kendra’s face. “What?”

  “On dumping a Royce-Bradley-worth of dead weight.”

  It might be the first real smile I have ever seen out of Kendra Kendall. More than when she’s laughing at me. Even more than when she was crowned the newest Miss Meteor.

  I decide not to press my luck. So I nod my goodbye and turn to leave Kendra to her public.

  “You know, my grandmother would have been proud,” Kendra says.

  I turn around and give her a smile I mean, for Cole if not for her.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She would.”

  “No, I mean of you.” Her eyes stay on me, flashing to Cole a few paces behind me just for a second. “You did her dress justice.”