Chiquita, she said. And that was that.
I decided the rest for myself, by becoming as unlike a girl named Chiquita as I could. With my awkward, gangly limbs and my perpetual slouch, straight black hair that flops heavily into my eyes with or without my permission, I’m more likely to scowl than smile, more likely to stay up worrying than to drunkenly giggle at a boy around a desert fire in an oil can.
I like dark jeans, and sweatshirts with thumbholes in the sleeves, and when I’m older, I’m going to convince Mom to let me get a nose ring.
But until then I’m just Chicky, a tomboy at best, the least popular girl in Meteor Central High’s sophomore class. The girl who should have been as pretty as her sisters, but just isn’t. The girl who doesn’t have a single friend.
I had a friend once, who was bright where I was dull, who smiled where I scowled. I caught her like a falling star one night just after kindergarten let out for the summer, and I never dreamed I’d let her go.
My mom asked me once, what happened to Estrellita, the girl who saw worlds, and I mumbled something about growing up and growing apart.
It wasn’t the truth.
The truth is this: Bisabuela wasn’t wrong when she dreamed of the dancing girl on the surface, toes barely touching the earth. But she should have named me for the earth below her feet. The depths she never plunged. Because when people start to dig in, I run. There’s too much darkness down there.
Lita found that out the hard way, and we never quite recovered.
In a town this small, for girls like us, survival is based mostly on how well you can camouflage, not on dredging up the bloodred and sunshine yellow of your secrets and splattering them across your chest.
But if you read about warfare in any of the history books in the library you’ll ask yourself: Isn’t it that way for everyone?
Lita
MY FAVORITE PART of the morning used to be when I got on my bike and my fingers brushed the streamers. The slight movement of the tinsel strips and the desert sun, already bright early in the morning, would cast pink bands of light over the ground as I got the wheels started. It always felt like our nearest star’s way of winking at me.
Now the little flickers of light make me sick to my stomach. It reminds me how my body is dissolving, how I’m turning back to what I once was but can’t remember being.
I pack up my backpack.
“Still you go to school?” Bruja Lupe asks. “I’ll write you a note.”
I’ll write you a note. Like I have a cold.
Bruja Lupe’s thinks I should be out getting fresh air, talking to my cactuses, breathing in the world.
But I’m taking as much of Meteor into me as I can before I dissolve all the way.
Even Meteor Central High.
Math class is there. So are Cole Kendall and Junior Cortes.
“Buenos días, Señorita Opuntia.” I greet the cactuses as I fly by on my bike. “Bon matin, Monsieur Cereus. Good morning, Mr. Hedgehog Cactus.”
I stop my bike in front of the school.
“Looks like My Little Pony decided to show up.” I hear them whisper—the kind of whisper I’m meant to hear.
If the tinsel flashing in the sun used to be the best of my morning, this was my worst. These are the same girls who make fun of how I wear the powder-blue tights Bruja Lupe bought me, or how my lunch always comes in old plastic Tupperware instead of between slices of white bread.
I don’t look at them.
I never look at them. Because I already know how they look at me and my bike, which is clearly designed for someone half my age. But really, I’d like to see these girls try handling their beach cruisers with legs as short as mine.
“What is she even riding?” one of them asks.
Cole Kendall steps off the curb, and his shadow cools the back of my neck.
“My old bike,” he says.
That shuts them up.
How comfortable Cole is with himself often makes other people uncomfortable. I’ve heard him joke about borrowing his brother’s old clothes, which were usually several sizes too big. About how his habit of collecting earthworms as pets horrified his mother and sister. About how he doesn’t have the luxury of hating sparkles, because in a family that’s won three Miss Meteor pageant titles, he had to become immune to them sticking to his backpack and socks.
And now he makes a crack about this bike. A little girl’s bike, all shimmery pink varnish and those glittering streamers. I was there the day his grandmother, not yet understanding just how much of a boy Cole was, bought it for him for his seventh birthday, and Cole walked it around the neighborhood with a look of both pain and obligation.
I was six, and even though I barely knew him, I shouted across the street, “That’s the best bike in the world!”
Because it really was, and I thought he should know.
“You want it?” he asked, looking so much like a light had come on inside him that I couldn’t even open my mouth to ask if he was sure.
The one thing Cole never jokes about is the name he was given when he was born. Why would he? There’s nothing funny about being called something that’s wrong.
He’s Cole. He’s always been Cole, even before he told everyone. Not that it took him long. He was five.
“Personally,” Cole says now, “I think we should give that bike a round of applause for still running after a decade. Don’t you?”
Even with his back to me, I hear the undertone, his warning of “lay off her.” I’m one of many people Cole breaks out this tone for. Daniel Lamas, who sometimes dresses up as Amelia Earhart or Frida Kahlo for Halloween. Beth Cox, who got made fun of every day for having scoliosis until Cole and his older brother made clear that anyone who did would answer to them. Oliver Hedlesky, who probably never would have tried out for the soccer team if Cole’s presence didn’t make Royce a little less, well, Royce.
And when Cole Kendall uses his “lay off” voice, they do. Because Cole is not just one of the boys who anchors the soccer team (striker) and the baseball team (shortstop or second base, depending on the lineup). He is one of the boys carrying the weight of the cornhole team.
Yes, cornhole.
In seventh grade, they made us memorize a William Carlos Williams poem about how much depends on some chickens and some rain and a red wheelbarrow. And I didn’t understand it until I realized that the poem could have been about Meteor, because around here a lot depends on boys throwing beanbags into wooden boards with holes in them (boards that Junior Cortes almost undoubtedly painted).
This whole region has a circuit of teams who play each other. Cornhole officials debate the merits of nylon versus polyester. Boys shave their arms because they want their throws to be as aerodynamic as possible. Wooden boards and the holes set therein are inspected months in advance (I don’t know what you can do to sabotage a cornhole board, but around here, it’s treated with the gravity of state secrets).
Along with the pageant, the cornhole championship jams Meteor full of tourists, and we need every one of them. Our motels and restaurants and souvenir shops depend on it. Thanks in large part to Cole’s older brother, Meteor Central High School won last year. This year, Meteor wants a win even worse—not just to hold on to the title, but because this year even more tourists will be watching, ones with money in their wallets. This year is the fiftieth-annual Miss Meteor pageant, and they’re already expecting the biggest crowds this town has ever seen. Cole has been practicing his signature shot (“the airmail,” the one his brother taught him).