Those girls shuffle off.
I kiss Cole on the cheek to tell him thank you.
He used to pull away when I did this, pulling his palm across his cheek and saying something about girl-germs.
He doesn’t do that as much anymore.
I don’t think about how, once I turn back into stardust, I’ll never see Cole Kendall again. I make it a point not to. Because when I do, it gives me a hollow feeling, like the whole inside of me has already crumbled into dust.
Maybe it’s good that I already lost Chicky. We already got it over with. She’s not someone I’ll have to figure out how to say goodbye to.
I hand Cole the bag of galletas dulces I brought him, because I won’t be at lunch today.
I always bring him sugar cookies on the last days of school. Before winter break. Before summer. Before the break in the school calendar for the annual festival. It’s my continued thank you for this bike that keeps bringing me to and from Meteor Central High, and everywhere else in town.
“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll consider this fortification.”
“For what?” I ask.
He nods toward a banner getting hoisted up across the street.
We stand next to each other, reading the calligraphy-like blue script:
The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase
“It’s a beauty pageant,” Cole says. “Can we all just call it a beauty pageant?”
I glance at him.
“Sorry,” he says. “When I was born my mother expected me to take the title one day. I have strong feelings.” He opens the bag. “Especially this time of year.”
This time of year.
It’s not so much a break as the school’s way of acknowledging how many of our families need our help once the tourists flood in. Chicky Quintanilla, my once-friend, and her sisters will be trading off at the diner, and I will pretend my heart doesn’t pinch every time I pass Selena’s and see Chicky in the window. Evie Lewis will make sure her aunt’s souvenir shop never closes, so there’s no hour that tourists can’t buy Meteor town postcards or nebula scarves or tiny replicas of the space rock. Junior Cortes will have his hands full both with his hours at the museum and with painting. Thanks to his skill at turning famous works into cornhole boards, our practice field always looks like a gallery. Where else but Meteor can you find a board identical to Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, or one a perfect match to Edvard Munch’s The Scream? (The hole is the round O of the subject’s mouth.)
Junior is bound for some art school that’s so sophisticated I (and half of Meteor) have probably never heard of it.
“Kendra’s gearing up,” Cole says.
“What?” I ask. “Already?” Cole’s sister is in my grade. Almost no sophomores ever try for the crown. Since you can only enter Miss Meteor once, you only get one shot. You can take it whenever you want, but almost everyone who enters waits until they’re seventeen, the last time they’re eligible. “She’s not waiting until next year?”
“Yeah, apparently not,” Cole says. “It’s a whole thing.”
Of course Kendra’s not waiting. Why would she? While we’re all still waiting to grow into ourselves, she’s already the pale kind of beautiful I used to see on almost every page of Fresa Quintanilla’s magazines.
And this year’s the fiftieth. Why wouldn’t she go after the crown?
“I’m already bracing for the bathroom to be covered in eyeshadow and duct tape,” Cole says.
My head snaps toward him. “Duct tape?”
“Trust me,” he says. “You don’t wanna know.”
But I do.
I want to know everything about the pageant, even though it stings just to look at the banner. I even want to know whatever horrifying magic Kendra works with duct tape.
Right now, the thing I want most in the world is to stop turning back into stardust.
But once, the thing that I wanted, more than anything else, was to be Miss Meteor.
Chicky
PEOPLE SOMETIMES MAKE fun of me for eating lunch at home, but none of them live with the best cook in Meteor.
I’m already exhausted from half a day of school by the time I dump my shoulder bag on the floor inside the door, but the smell of bean tlacoyos revives me slightly, and I stagger into the kitchen with my mouth watering.
“Just in time, Banana.” Dad puts two of them on a plate and slides it down the weathered, farm-style kitchen table that used to belong to Bisabuela Gloriana.
“Thank you.” I grab one and take a huge bite despite the still sizzling oil on the outside.
Dad’s tlacoyos are so much more than stuffed tortillas. The gently spiced masa, the black beans he cooks for two days before mashing them in garlic oil. The slight crunch of the cilantro and onion he adds just before he fries it all together into a little pocket of heaven.
“Chicky!” Uva exclaims from the front door. “Stop leaving your bag on the floor! You know what Abuela says.”
“Abuela says a lot of weird stuff,” I mumble, my mouth still full.
“Don’t underestimate her,” Uva says, her green-gray eyes far too intense for the matter at hand. “Remember that time there was no purse hook at the restaurant we went to in Santa Fe?”
I stare at her blankly, finally swallowing. “No?”
“Chicky! I put my bag on the floor! And the very next day I got seventeen dollars stolen on the Rail Runner.”
When I don’t answer, she rolls her eyes, hanging my bag carefully on the back of my chair. “I’m just saying.”
“Give it a rest, Uva,” says Fresa, who’s slouched over a bowl at the end of the table. “Just because you’re prematurely ninety years old doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to suffer.” I’m about to agree, but she turns on me next. “Although, putting shit on the floor is gross, Flaca.”
Only Fresa can somehow disagree with two people who disagree with each other.
“Anyway,” I say, when Dad turns to the fridge to grab a pitcher of horchata. “It’s not like I have any money to lose.” Uva shushes me, but it’s true. I used to get twenty dollars a month allowance, but sometime last spring it just stopped showing up in the painted bowl on the hall table.
Cereza told us all not to complain, that Mom and Dad were doing their best, but I didn’t want to complain anyway. I was just worried.
“Nobody has any money in this junk heap,” Fresa mutters now, rocking the crooked-legged chair at the table loudly for emphasis. Uva tries to shush her, too, but this time she’s not quick enough. Dad hears her.
“I’ve been meaning to fix that chair,” he says. His voice is too bright, the tops of his ears turning purplish as he pours us each a glass, cinnamon flecks spinning around the ice cubes.
I can smell the orange blossom water he calls his “secret ingredient,” and I feel terrible for bringing up money. I should have known Fresa couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
“And . . .” He digs into his wallet and pulls out three crumpled five-dollar bills. “I forgot to put allowance in the bowl this week.”
“Dad, it’s fine,” I say, just as Uva says, “I’m too old for allowance, Papa.” Fresa, of course, pockets hers without looking up. Uva kicks her under the table.