“What are you doing?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. “I have a list of possible talents upstairs and literally none of these things are on it.”
When we were younger, the talent portion of our pretend pageants usually involved both of us singing karaoke into cactus flowers until we collapsed into giggles on the ground.
Let’s just say it was a good thing none of our audience members were human. Or in possession of working eardrums.
“Like I told Lita,” says Cereza, the same intense gleam in her eye that she gets when she’s talking about scalpels and contagious skin rashes. “I know other talents might seem showier, but I think you’ll agree that Shakespeare”—she thumps the heavily dog-eared volume for emphasis—“never goes out of style.”
Fresa tosses her hair, narrowly missing Uva’s face. “Spoken like someone who didn’t even make the top five . . . how long ago was it, Reza, ten years?”
Uva backs away slowly. It’s the best idea she’s had all week.
“Excuse me,” Cereza says, Lita forgotten as she rounds on Fresa. “I graduated six years ago, and you know that.”
Fresa shrugs in that infuriating way of hers, like nothing you say can possibly get under her skin. “If that’s your story.”
“Oh, you did not!” Cereza, nursing student, five-time Meteor Monthly best service industry professional, lunges at her little sister like they’re roosters in a ring, going for the only thing Fresa Quintanilla truly cares about.
Her hair.
“Okay, seriously? ENOUGH!” I yell, stomping across the heat-withered grass in my bare feet.
They don’t even hear me. Fresa is quitting, and Cereza is firing her somehow, and even Uva is yelling. I know they’ll get over it eventually, they always do, but that’s not what I’m worried about right now.
Lita is still standing against Mr. Miller’s van, twisting the end of her braid and biting her lip like she’s physically forcing herself not to apologize. And suddenly I remember, one night during our last pretend pageant together, when I found twelve-year-old Lita crying at the base of Herr Rainbow, clutching a copy of the newspaper, which was running a retrospective on all the past Miss Meteors.
All the tall, leggy, blond, past Miss Meteors.
She’d been sure she could never fit in, the pretend pageant clashing with the real one in her mind, her dreams seeming out of reach.
Lita looks just like that now, and I find my friend-muscles aren’t so out of shape after all. I sidestep the sister cyclone and grab her arm.
Junior’s words from yesterday are in my ear, painting the picture of Lita and me as friends again like he painted a perfect Frida on last year’s championship cornhole board. But this isn’t that, I tell myself. This isn’t friendship. This is just protecting the asset.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask her, trying not to add to the overload.
She turns to me with wide, grateful eyes that look almost on the edge of tearful, and nods. It’s enough for me.
I go inside and shove my feet into the first shoes I lay eyes on. The pajama pants and oversized T-shirt that I’m wearing will have to do. Lita’s already standing by the door when I get back to the porch.
“Wait,” she says when I take the stairs two at a time. “I need to get my bike. What if someone steals it?”
I don’t have the heart to tell her that scuffed, scratched, fifty-times-repaired bike with ten-year-old streamers isn’t the least bit valuable to anyone but her.
We walk without a destination in mind, just a little space from my sisters while I think of a pep talk worthy of a real pageant contestant, but I shouldn’t be surprised when we end up outside the Meteor/Meteorite museum.
I sigh, leaning on the wall outside the rock room, trying not to notice the peeling paint, the billboard with the missing letters, the velvet rope that was probably really plush, like, thirty years ago.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Her smile is sad, but it’s a smile. “Your sisters are all just so . . . determined. They’re proud of their talents. But I’m not sure any of them are really me. And I want to be me in this pageant. I . . . have to be. One last time.”
I know she’s talking about the one-time entry rule, but there’s something strange about her voice. I’m about to ask when she turns to me, eyes blazing like twin stars. “I want to make your sisters proud after all they’ve done for me. I want the town to see not only the Kendra Kendalls of the world deserve this. I want to get that money for your parents. And I want Meteor to . . .”
She trails off here, looking away, like she’s not saying something so big it’s actually stuck in her throat. But I barely notice, because my face is heating up.
“Wait, what do my parents have to do with this?”
Her eyes are as round as an owl’s, brown and kind of fathomless, as she looks at me. “They need the money.” She says this like it’s obvious, and it is, but I didn’t know it was obvious to everyone.
“We’re fine,” I mutter, scuffing my shoes. “I mean, I figured we’d split the prize, but for like, normal stuff, you know? College or whatever.”
It’s a feeble argument, and Lita’s eyes say she knows it. “Sure,” she says. “I didn’t mean to say . . .”
I’m dreading what she’ll say next, the pity already seeping in around her eyes. But her expression is replaced by wild delight before I can find a way to escape.
“What?” I ask, hoping for nothing more than a radical subject change.
“I think I just had an amazing idea! Get excited!”
She’s got color in her cheeks again, life back in her eyes. I always thought I was imagining it, the way she got shinier the closer we came to the rock, but right now she’s almost . . . glowing . . .
“I can’t tell you what it is right now,” she’s saying, grabbing the sparkly pink bike and throwing her leg over it. “There’s something I have to do, but I’ll tell you everything this afternoon! On the practice field! At three o’clock sharp! And bring your sisters!”
I know better than to try to stop her now. She pushes into wobbly motion on the bike, and I’m sure she’s going to fall, but at the last second, she rights herself and makes it across the parking lot unscathed.
“This terrifies me!” I call after her.
“It’s gonna be great,” she calls back. “Three o’clock! Trust me!”
I want to, but it doesn’t help that a neighborhood cat runs screeching out of her irregular path the moment the words have left her lips.
Lita
THE QUINTANILLA SISTERS all mostly want me to do the same things. Smile. Smile bigger. Stand up straighter. Let them pull at my hair and poke at my face until they turn me into a pretty enough version of myself that they’ll let me onstage.
Then they tried to agree on a talent for me.
Cereza says if I perform Juliet’s death monologue right, I’ll have all the judges and half the audience reaching for their tissue packs. Uva insists that if I can manage a unicycle, I’ll charm them all into adoring me. And Fresa is sure that her shimmery white ribbon wand will not only look perfect against the brown of my skin but will mesmerize the audience like they’re all fish watching a shiny object.