As if being white and rich and a boy makes up for being a monster.
I’m almost to the highway, the houses giving way to empty desert, before I turn my sneakers back toward town. Honestly, I don’t even know where they’re taking me until I see the Meteor Meteorite Museum looming in the distance, and by then I’m already resigned to it.
No matter how much I hate this place, I always seem to be drawn back to it—and to the people who love it.
Junior is out back as usual, deeply concentrated on painting the final cornhole boards for the match next week. He’s already done Starry Night, the famous Warhol soup can, and the cover of Nirvana’s Nevermind flawlessly. Like the artists themselves were painting through him.
It’s a little mesmerizing, I’ll admit it. Even if he won’t.
Tonight he’s priming, which I know he loves. Turning a splintery, unusable surface into something ready to shine.
For the second time in a week, I feel guilty for not giving him the diner wall.
“Hey,” he says, without looking up.
“Hey.”
It’s something I’ve always liked about Junior, the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to fill every silence with chatter. After a lifetime as a Quintanilla, you really start to value silence.
Well, if you can still imagine what it must be like.
When the last brush strokes have been applied and the board is a uniform, gleaming white, Junior meets my eyes for the first time.
“So, funny story . . . ,” I begin, trying to be casual even as my traitorous voice catches in my throat.
“I, uh . . . ,” he begins, rubbing the back of his neck. “I heard.”
“Already?” I ask, getting to my feet and pacing, like it’ll dull the next blow.
Junior stands, too, but he shifts on his feet. “You know how it is, Chicky. It’s a small town. People talk.”
“Who told you?” I ask. “What did they say?”
He looks right at me, while I try to look anywhere else. “Do you really want me to tell you?”
I deflate at his words. He’s right. Who cares who it was or what they said? It’s not like it wasn’t always gonna be all over town before the start of the evening news. Hell, with what passes for content in Meteor, it probably is the evening news.
I can hear the intro now: “Local Pageant Underdog Maims Town’s Favorite Athlete in Freak Shakespeare/Ribbon/Antique Cycle Accident—TONIGHT on Meteor News!”
“Stop catastrophizing,” Junior says, reading my thoughts as usual.
Stupid psychologist mom.
“I’m not,” I say, even though I totally am.
He tosses his paint roller in the water bucket, pacing around the lot for at least a minute before turning to face me. His eyes are uncharacteristically intense, and he holds my gaze until my blood starts to buzz and I have to glance away.
“You should go get a soda from inside,” he says, tossing me his key. “It’s on the house.”
I should stay. Ask him what’s going on. Offer to help. But honestly, I’m a little afraid of him right now. I came here for chill, for unconditional, but it looks like neither of those things are on the menu tonight.
Inside the museum, the lights are dim, barely showcasing the treasures of Meteor’s past. Here’s the newspaper article—Vice President Hubert Humphrey with his arm around a much younger Buzz, the crater on the edge of town blotting out the background, looking totally otherworldly.
In the photo, there are two guys with hard hats from some obscure government agency, flashlights pointing into the darkest parts of the crater. Nineteen sixty-six was probably the last time anyone went down there. The story went that after one of the investigators disappeared, they roped it off with caution tape and forbade entrance until more tests could be done.
But no one ever came back. At the south end of the crater there are still two stakes in the ground, a last piece of sun-bleached warning tape stretched between like a museum exhibit itself. A couple seniors when we were in eighth grade took pictures of it for the school newspaper, and the administration refused to print them on the grounds of disrupting an ongoing government investigation.
“Ongoing,” I always thought, was an interesting way to put it.
The museum’s soda machine has a special trick to it that only staff members—plus Lita and I, of course—are allowed to know. I punch in B65E4 and the lights flash festively, allowing me to press A6 twice for two ice-cold, old-fashioned Coca-Colas in glass bottles.
Buzz imports them from Mexico. He says they make them with real sugar there, but I don’t know enough Spanish to read the ingredients, so I have to take his word for it.
Normally I’d go straight back out to Junior and we’d drink them perched on the low wall enclosing the parking lot, talking about everything and nothing, but tonight isn’t normal, and I make an uncharacteristic detour.
The room that houses the space rock is like a tiny amphitheater with no seats. The patchy velvet rope, the red curtains that haven’t been closed in so long they have permanent dust streaks, and then the rock itself, which at first glance just looks like any other giant, slightly metallic rock.
Not that I’d ever admit this, but it’s kind of more than that. There’s this luster to it, like nothing you’ve ever seen before unless you’ve watched Lita’s eyes while she dances in a thunderstorm. And maybe, beneath that, a melody. Something beautiful but just a little lonely.
It’s always been the sound, or the idea of it, anyway, that draws me in.
I open my Coke and slide under the rope, turning my back to the Biggest Roadside Attraction Between Las Vegas and Santa Fe and letting it pull me back against it, like it’s inviting me to take a load off for once. I feel that weird song in my bones and close my eyes against the emotion it calls up, like I’ll never quite know where I fit, but maybe that’s okay.
Like Royce Bradley and all his Meteor-sanctioned destruction are a million light-years away.
After a few minutes of that, I’m ready to go back.
In the shadowy alcove of the museum’s back door, I pause for a second, thinking about that fiery look in Junior’s eyes before he tossed me the keys. But then I see what’s happening outside.
Into the finished Nirvana board, Junior Cortes is tossing cornhole bags. I wait for the thwacking sound as they hit the board beside the hole, or the skittering of gravel as they miss the mark completely, but I don’t hear a thing save the swish, swish, swish of beanbags passing through a perfectly sized hole.
After the fourth, I step out from the shadows, wheels turning in my head.
After the tenth, I’m actually smiling.
Junior nearly jumps out of his skin when I approach. “What the hell, Chicky!”
“What the hell, Chicky?” I ask, incredulous, still smiling. “What the hell, Junior! You’re amazing with those stupid things!”
“So?” he asks, clearly embarrassed, which means he hasn’t yet seen the path forward that I’ve seen.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” I say, waving a hand, the Cokes forgotten on the counter inside. “Sure, it’s a sad hobby and everyone who does it is soulless, but man is this gonna come in handy for me right now.”
In my mind’s eye, it’s all coming together perfectly. Junior can take Cole’s place. The town won’t hate us for ruining its chances at the cornhole championship. We’re saved.