The rock hums under my hands.
“Should I do it?” I ask. “Before I . . .” I can’t say it, even to this rock, especially to this rock. I can’t say that I will turn to stardust, and there will be nothing left of the girl I am now. “Before I go?”
You can enter Miss Meteor up until you turn eighteen, and most girls wait until their last possible year.
Almost no one enters as a sophomore.
But this is probably the last chance I’ll get.
A vein of silver flashes through the rock. It could be some trick of the light, but I know better. The rock is telling me what I already know.
I have nothing to lose. And if the sky’s going to take me back, I’m going out as a girl who goes after what she wants.
Chicky
AT SCHOOL, I’M even more invisible than usual. You’d think it would be hard to go unnoticed when you’re about four inches taller than every other girl in your class, stomp around in combat boots, and perpetually smell a little like diner grease, but the kids in my class are very talented at erasing me.
Plus, it’s Friday, the last day before the entire town takes two weeks off for the annual suck-up-to-tourists-fest known as the Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase.
Some schools get homecoming, we get this. And as usual, I seem to be the only one in town who sees what a joke it is.
To some of the people at this school, it’s about town unity, or a break from school, or a ridiculous dress and world peace. To some of them, it’s about the glittering hope that for one night, they’ll transcend their small-town mediocrity and brush up against greatness.
You can already see it in the halls. Long, fake nails painted sparkly blue and orange (Meteor Central High colors), fake eyelashes fluttering. The only salon in town is booked weeks in advance, so the girls without an in have to be careful with their manicures.
Mine, of course, are bitten ragged and unpainted as usual.
No one notices.
In the air, there’s the futile hope that Kendra Kendall and Royce Bradley won’t fulfill their genetic destiny to be Miss Meteor and Cornhole MVP respectively, golden and chosen, lip-locking over the spiked punch bowl before one of them inevitably pukes electric red on the other’s super-shiny shoes.
And before Kendra Kendall, who already lives in one of the nicest houses in town, walks away with a check for ten thousand dollars.
What I wouldn’t give.
“Listen up, I know you all have pageant week on the brain, but there are still ten more minutes of school, and we’re gonna make them count, okay! Look alive!” Mr. Hamilton hasn’t had his spirit crushed by the profound disinterest of Meteor Central High’s sophomore class yet. He’s the kind of teacher who cares so much, he can make you not care just to compensate.
Also, he makes history puns about his own name, which is just humiliating.
“With all this extra time over the break, I want you guys to do a little . . .” He actually gives himself a drumroll on the edge of Amelia Perkins’s desk. “Partner project!”
An audible groan goes up from the crowd, but I don’t bother joining in. It’s survival time. My eyes dart around the room until I find the familiar dark, glossy curtain of hair atop Junior Cortes’s head. Junior’s different than the rest of the people here, in that he’s not altogether horrible. At least, as other people go.
Case-in-point: He’s already looking at me when I find him, eyebrows raised in silent solidarity. He doesn’t have to do this anymore. Hide. He could be sitting with them back there if he wanted to, but instead he sticks with me. We were both awkward in middle school, so it made sense to band together, but while my body doubled down on it, growing taller and more gangly by the second, his sprouted a jawline and muscles in all the right places to give him “potential.”
On me, five-nine looks like a circus sideshow, but on him, even another two inches looks effortless. It’s deeply unfair.
In a town the weather-beaten color of the desert, a sandy brown like mine blends right in. But Junior’s is darker, like the stones of the seventeenth-century Spanish ruins we visited on a field trip when we were twelve. His skin is warm, even under these torturous fluorescent lights.
People notice him these days. I notice them noticing. But if Junior knows it, he hasn’t changed to fit the mold. That’s what makes him the one I look to when I’m forced to leave my invisible bubble.
Unfortunately, it’s not up to us today.
“I can already see you all partnering up with your eyes out there,” says Mr. Hamilton, “but we’re gonna do things a little differently this time . . .”
It’s all I can do not to slam my head against my graffitied desk. Like he’s the first teacher in history to ever assign partners. Like it’s so different and quirky and cool. Like if he picks just right, he’ll be responsible for the total upending of a decades-old, rigid high school hierarchy.
I should already see where he’s going with this, but somehow, I’m still surprised when he calls my name.
“Chicky Quintanilla?” He goes overboard on the accent, why does that embarrass me? “Why don’t you try . . . Kendra Kendall?”
My mute horror must show on my face, because Junior shoots me a pitying look. He might be the closest thing to a friend I have in this town, but he’s definitely not the only one who knows Kendra and I have been mortal enemies since fourth grade. The whole class snickers, looking between Kendra and me like the air might catch fire.
To his credit, Junior doesn’t look away until Mr. Hamilton pairs him with Kendra’s brother, Cole Kendall, who’s just leaning back in his chair with that half smile he always wears, like he knows something we don’t.
Meteor’s so small we’ve had blended classes since second grade, so even though Cole is a grade ahead of us he’s still subject to Mr. Hamilton’s bad fourth period puns.
My secret is this: As much as I loathe his sister, I’ve always secretly envied Cole. We’ve never spoken a word to each other, but it’s clear just from proximity that he knows who he wants to be, and he’s brave enough to be it out loud.
Case-in-point: He was the only one who ever tried to stop his friends from going after me in middle school, when the lunch room was my daily torture. The only one who nodded or said “hey” in the hallways when everyone else was pretending I didn’t exist.
I wasn’t the only one he stuck up for, either. Royce calls him the patron saint of losers because he’s always talking them down from their latest bullying escapade, but he just takes it in stride.
Well, unless they started teasing him. Then he clams up just as fast as I do.
I always wished I could return the favor, but I’ve never had the guts to even talk to him, not really. I mean, besides the occasional mumbled “thanks” when he distracts Royce with something and lets me escape to the bathroom to eat in peace.
But sometimes I wonder if we could have been friends. You know, in another life.
In this one, I’m too busy trying to sink into the floor as Mr. Hamilton moves on to pair up some other unfortunate social misfits with their cool-kid counterparts, I pray that I’ll disappear as Kendra rolls her eyes at the girls around her. She doesn’t even bother to glare at me.