That makes her relax enough to let me out into the hall.
Through one of the school windows, I can see that banner.
The Fiftieth-Annual Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase
Bruja Lupe knows that, a long time ago, I wanted to be Miss Meteor. I wanted to embody all the cosmic magic of this town, the same way the space rock does. I used to trip around in old Goodwill ballgowns with Chicky pretending to be my manager (back then, bids for Miss Meteor seemed like such a big deal to us that we thought they were like political campaigns).
But ever since what happened with Royce and his friends, I stopped talking about it, to anyone, including Bruja Lupe.
Now I stand in the hall, my brain toggling back and forth between wondering if Bruja Lupe might lend me her lipsticks and trying to come up with any talent I could do on a pageant stage.
Whenever I catch Cole at the edge of my vision, like I do right now, the things I notice are the things that have been the same since we were small. The cornhusk blond of his hair. His khakis that are cut like jeans. Collared shirts or plain T-shirts, never polos. He breaks from the uniform the rest of the cornhole team wears.
“Bye, Lita,” Cole says.
I register him there, but I’m thinking too hard to answer.
“Little out in space today?” Cole asks.
The words catch me, like my toe snagging on the edge of the carpet that’s peeling away in Bruja Lupe’s living room.
My attention snaps back. “What?”
“Are you okay?” Cole asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Are you?”
I say it out of instinct, like when someone asks “How are you?” and you say “Fine, and you?” without thinking. But there’s something sad flickering in his eyes.
“Cole,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Just thinking about practice. Coach has me working on this wrist-flick thing.”
I know what it is probably, even without knowing what it is. It’s all the little slights he lives with.
It’s how sometimes people are so busy congratulating themselves on being accepting that there’s no room in them for anything else. Including being accepting. Meteor(ite), New Mexico, may have a dozen gringos each Halloween dress up in flying-saucer-sized sombreros and fake mustaches, but point out the flaws in their costumes or opinions, and they’ll respond like you’ve told Martha Stewart her angel food cake is dry. It’s just not something they consider possible, that they are anything less than small-town neighborly. They act as though they’ve always embraced Cole Kendall as the guy he is. They don’t want to remember the ridiculous meetings debating whether he should be allowed in the boys’ locker room, or where to put him for sex ed. (That was how they phrased it too. Where do we put him?)
“Is your dad gonna make it home this week?” I ask.
Cole shakes his head. “Can’t.”
He holds his jaw tight, keeping his face from falling. Every time I ask Cole about his father, Mr. Kendall seems to be in a different city, giving a presentation or smoothing over a project in a different regional office. All of which seems to be more important than making it home for Cole’s games.
Even this week’s cornhole championship.
“He’s gonna have to stay in Buffalo.” Cole shrugs like it’s nothing. “Some kind of deal going through. It’s fine though. When I’m throwing, it’s not like I notice who’s there. Hubert Humphrey himself could stop by and I’d miss it.” He tries to laugh.
Hubert Humphrey. Everyone around here knows he was vice president when Meteor was founded. Everyone knows there’s a statue of him in the park. But Cole Kendall is probably the only one who remembers what number vice president he was. I definitely don’t know. Just like I don’t know why Cole still talks to me.
Probably because I am little (Bruja Lupe’s word) in a way that makes him look out for me, cute (Mrs. Quintanilla’s word) in a way that’s easy to feel sorry for, and made fun of enough that his conscience won’t let him forget me entirely.
You can’t really know what makes people keep caring or stop caring. I learned that from Chicky.
Right now, I catch a last glimpse of Chicky, watching Junior’s back as he goes.
And an idea hums through the desert, landing on me like a blown-loose party streamer. It’s bright as yellow-and-pink crepe paper, waving and fluttering to get my attention.
Fresa Quintanilla was second runner-up in last year’s Miss Meteor pageant. Before her, Uva and Cereza placed high, the crown almost in reach. And they did it while older versions of Kendra Kendall hid their talent ribbons and mascara wands.
Scheming is in the Quintanilla blood. I know that from Chicky. It was Chicky who figured out that putting out the right wind chime late at night would, to Bruja Lupe’s dreaming brain, sound like our laugh behind my bedroom door. It let us sneak out while Bruja Lupe stayed asleep.
When we wanted to make nopales, it was Chicky who managed to borrow Fresa’s tweezers for the spines and get them back before she noticed.
If anyone knows how to hatch a plan, it’s Chicky.
Chicky, my old campaign manager.
Maybe Chicky isn’t my friend anymore. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe there’s something I could offer her. The prize money? Me live-serenading her and Junior on their first (long overdue) official date? Whatever it is, she can have it.
“Earth to Estrellita Perez?” Cole says, a laugh in his voice.
“Huh?” I startle back to him. “What?”
“Okay, I’m starting to worry,” he says. “You’re way far out there. Even for you. Are you okay?”
I watch Chicky fleeing down the hall. I can’t ask her here. First, I have shorter legs than she does, I’ll never catch up.
Second, I still remember the last time I talked about being Miss Meteor at school, and I’m never making that mistake again.
“Yeah,” I tell Cole. “I just had an idea.”
Chicky
SELENA’S DINER IS one of those all-chrome anachronisms you see in fifties horror movies. You know, with a giant praying mantis standing over them, holding a screaming blond lady in a red evening gown?
On my way there, I take the only hill in town as fast as I can on my bike. The burning in my muscles won’t slow me down, because I am a girl on a mission. I fly past the low, drab buildings and the scrubby trees and the cactuses that grow like weeds.
I fly past out-of-date storefronts with bulbs burned out of their signs, benches that desperately need to be repainted, and so much cheesy space-inspired stuff it kind of makes me sick to my stomach.
Would it kill them to clean the place up a little? I wonder. Repaint some stuff? Make it look like something besides the dusty, nowhere town where every campy sci-fi movie starts?
The people in those movies never end up staying in the town once the threat has been neutralized.
I can take some comfort from that, at least.
When I stop, finally, I lean my bike up against the stack of pallets in the back, catching my reflection in the dingy, scratched surface of the diner. I don’t look any different than normal. There are the too-long legs that I call “stick brown” and my mom calls “sepia.” The black cutoffs I’ve been wearing since seventh grade. The striped T-shirt I wear when Fresa hides all my black tank tops and tells me to stop being so weird.