As if I can help it.
I might look the same on the outside, but on the inside I’ve been totally rearranged. Today, I’m the meteor, hurtling forward on a collision course. Only this time it’s not a ramshackle town in danger, it’s a long-legged blonde with her nose in the air.
Because at the end of next week, Kendra Kendall will be watching someone else don the Miss Meteor crown with a frozen smile on her face. For me. For Cole. For the absence of Lita. For everyone who has ever felt like a demoted dwarf planet in the presence of her sun.
And I’m gonna be the one to make it happen.
So far, I’ve thought of itching powder in her strapless bra, blue Kool-Aid in her shampoo, foot cream in her expensive moisturizer, but I know that’s kid stuff compared to what I need.
Luckily, my sister Fresa is working today, and no one can scheme for nefarious purposes quite like she can.
Trust me, I learned that the hard way when she caught me borrowing her purple high tops in sixth grade without asking. Revenge came low and slow, and my left eyebrow never grew back the same.
I walk into Selena’s filled with righteous fire, but when I push through the back doors, my heart sinks down to join my stomach. I can tell from the kitchen window there are no customers here. Not even old Buzz, who sometimes drinks coffee at the counter all day long when the museum is closed. It’s too late in the day to hope for an after-school rush, so we just have to cross our fingers for dinner. Again.
“Chicky! Good thing you’re here. We need all the help we can get!”
My dad approaches from the empty grill, and the sinking feeling just gets worse. Dad’s doing the same thing he did at home during lunch, pretending everything is all fine and well. I wish that, for once, my parents would just be honest with me.
Selena’s is a family business, which means my parents run it most of the time, and the four of us help out after school and on weekends. Five women, and yet my dad is the one prancing around the kitchen, singing “Como La Flor” into a spatula.
“Pero, aaaaaaayyyy, como me duele . . . ,” he serenades me. “Aaaaaay, como me duele! Come on, sing with me!”
But the sinking feeling is too heavy, I can’t even smile. How can he be dancing around back here like nothing’s wrong when even the lights being on in this room is like throwing money into the gutter?
“Sorry, Dad,” I mutter. “Just looking for Fresa.”
He stops singing, turning the music down. “You okay, Mija?” he asks, concern putting a crease in his unibrow. My dad is so handsome, he could have been in movies, but instead he’s stuck back here, in an empty kitchen, singing a dead girl’s songs to no one.
“Just thought there’d be more people here,” I mumble, before I can help myself.
My dad’s too-bright smile falters. “You know pageant week’s coming up,” he says. “We’ll get plenty of business. We’re okay, Mijita.”
But the question lingers between us: Will pageant week be enough to make up for a year’s worth of empty lunch tables?
“Yeah, okay,” I say, not meeting his eyes. “Um, Fresa?”
“Uh-oh, what’d she do now?” he asks, obviously trying to cover up the worry thick in the fryer-smelling air between us, but I can’t even answer around the lump in my throat.
“In the alley breaking down cardboard,” he says when I don’t reply.
“Fat chance,” I say, cracking half a smile. An offering.
Dad rolls his eyes affectionately, taking it. “Okay, okay. More like convincing the dishwashers from next door to break down cardboard for her,” he amends.
I try to widen my smile, but on my way through the diner there are tears pricking the backs of my eyes. “What are you looking at?” I ask Selena’s life-size cutout by the counter. She doesn’t answer; she just keeps smiling.
There’s a flickering neon moon on the sign outside, a thinly veiled attempt to fit in with the space craze this town is famous for, but the Tejana queen reigns supreme inside. Signed photos, cutouts, and album covers are all over the walls.
In other parts of the country, nostalgic places like this one pay homage to Elvis, but we don’t kneel for kings in here. Only for La Reina. “Don’t you know?” my dad asks tourists with Meteor T-shirts from Buzz’s gift shop. “Selena is a moon-goddess’s name, and all the Quintanillas are blessed by proxy.”
No one has the heart to tell him we’re not those Quintanillas, and we pretend we don’t see him combing genealogy free trials at night when everyone else is asleep.
Through the side door, Fresa examines a nail haughtily while sure enough, two dishwasher boys from the Milky Way Ice Cream Parlor across the street break down a stack of Selena’s cardboard boxes and toss them in the shared dumpster.
“Fres,” I say, and she looks up. “I need your help.”
She sizes me up for a second, taking in my cooling cheeks and my eyes that must still be reflecting all my destructive urges.
“Fine, I was getting bored anyway.” She turns imperiously to the boys sweating over her afternoon task. “Shoo,” she says, waving a hand, and they do it. Just like that. Scamper back off to their soft serve like she has the authority to physically move them through space. Like she’s not just an almost-nineteen-year-old girl who spends an absurd amount of time on her hair.
This, more than anything so far, convinces me I’ve come to the right place.
“Okay,” she says when they’re gone. “Let’s talk while you help me clear tables.”
“I need to make Kendra Kendall lose Miss Meteor,” I blurt out before she can go inside. The effort of not saying it since the hallway is finally too much. “With, like, as much suffering as I can inflict along the way.”
Fresa raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “I’m not even gonna ask why,” she says, and I know she means it. She doesn’t care. I probably had her at “suffering.”
She considers me again, something else gleaming in her eye this time. It says maybe I’m not just the useless weirdo that sleeps across the hall, after all. That maybe I do share an iota of her DNA after she’s spent years trying to prove I was adopted.
She’s still thinking when the bell rings, and I hate myself for the hope that jumps into my throat. Maybe it’s a group of old ladies after book club, or a bus trip to Santa Fe that stopped off to see the rock . . .
I run to the counter even though I’m not technically working today, ready to put on my best “you want to eat here” smile, but it’s only Lita, her wide eyes taking the place in like she’s never seen it before. Like she didn’t practically grow up across from Bruja Lupe in the third booth on the left—the one you can see the moon sign from. Back when she was working her way through the menu from top to bottom, looking for something that felt like home.
The distance between us tugs at my chest, just like always, the piles of words left unsaid not enough to fill the hole our friendship left when it faded like a comet’s tail in the sky.
“Hey,” I say, like I’d say it to anyone.
“Hey,” she says back, imitating my casual nod.
Don’t be awkward, I tell myself, right before I say: “So, the weather, it’s . . . uh . . . tater tot nachos. The special is tater tot nachos.”