And even though Lita’s plan is falling to pieces around me, I can’t look away.
Lita
EVERYONE IS STARING at me.
Not because I injured the star thrower of Meteor Central High’s cornhole team.
Not because half of Meteor thinks I’m the sad fifth member of some Quintanilla-sister motorcycle gang.
Not even because my boobs are held up with six strips of duct tape and my nipples are currently reinforced with two halves of a Hot Tamales candy (“Trust me,” Fresa said when she made me hoist up my breasts so she could cross the sticky silver under and between them. “Everyone does it, so you’ll just look the same as the other contestants.”)
No.
They’re all staring because I just knocked over an enormous flower arrangement, and between my heels and the wet floor, it takes two Quintanilla sisters to get me steady.
Everyone is staring for a reason that has nothing to do with Cole or Selena’s.
So I might as well make it count.
Once Fresa has pushed me back onto my feet, and Cereza has dusted me off, I give a grand curtsy, sweeping my hand in front of me like a princess.
An encouraging laugh rises from one side of the room, followed by the start of applause.
Anyone else might ignore the fact that most of the brown citizens of Meteor in this room are the ones serving the food and the drinks, or staffing the car dealership. They’re restocking the buffet table, or circulating with trays, or polishing where oblivious guests leave fingerprints on the windows, because the Bradleys cannot stand a smudge on their establishment—not today, not even for a minute.
These are the Meteor residents Bruja Lupe gives real cures to. Cures for fever, and susto, and the pain of old bone breaks.
These are the Meteor residents who laugh first and applaud first.
Then everyone from out of town, the ones who don’t know me as the girl who mowed down Cole Kendall with an antique bicycle, join in. Even the contestants.
With each rise of the clapping, the Meteor residents who hate us, who whisper about us, look a little more uncomfortable. They realize, with each second, how unfeeling, how stodgy and humorless, they will look if they don’t participate.
So, however begrudgingly, they join in.
Even Kendra.
Even Royce.
Even his parents.
They all have to applaud me, or look like spoilsports.
It’s sweeter than the strawberry lip gloss Fresa put on top of my lipstick.
It only lasts a few seconds, but that laugh—with me, for once, not at me—and their applause keep me on my feet. They keep me smiling my pageant smile as I shake hands with other contestants (though most of them are not actually shaking, just presenting the upturned backs of their hands like I’m supposed to kiss them). It keeps me standing up straight as Mayor Badii tells me what a nice shade of purple my top is and wishes me luck like she thinks I might actually have a chance. It keeps me as gracious as Cereza when a woman stirring a tiny ramekin of potato salad looks me over and says, “Pants. What an interesting choice.”
And it gives me the impulse to catch Junior Cortes topping off his soda, the first minute he’s been away from the girl with hair so fine and shiny it looks like she polishes it.
He nods his thanks to Dolores Ramirez, who fills his glass all the way up to the brim. It’s the kind of perfect pour Bruja Lupe has been trying to teach me for years, catching it so the fizz just rounds over the top without bubbling over.
Dolores gives me an encouraging smile that I swear looks laced with “get those putas” before she goes back to the caterers’ makeshift bar.
“What are you doing?” I ask Junior.
“Taking advantage of eating on the Bradleys’ tab.” He picks up a foil macaroni cup. “I hope by the time I’m done with them they have to stock their dealership fridge with”—he fake gasps—“generic bottled water.”
I can’t help laughing. The Bradleys make a big show of their single-use plastic water bottles with their custom dealership labels. Royce even carries them around school, forgoing the reusable bottles Cole has been begging him to switch over to. (“You are single-handedly killing the Earth, man,” I have heard Cole lament more than once as they were heading to practice.)
“I meant what are you doing with a girl who’s not Chicky?” I can’t help glancing over at the blond girl. But I try to give her a smile to show I’m harmless.
Junior groans. “Not this again.”
A contestant in a sweater set and flared skirt smiles and nods at me as she goes by. I do the same.
I turn back to Junior. “Why do you want to be one of those guys?”
I try to figure out how to explain, because the next question he’s going to ask will be “One of what guys?”
But what he asks instead is, “Why wouldn’t I want to be?”
I stick a lime wedge on the rim of his cup. “Because you’re not one of those guys.”
He looks a little guilty, but more than that, he looks a little sad. He drops the first-date posture he’s been wearing since he walked in. His eyes are tracking around the room, and I realize he’s not looking where the blond girl just was standing.
He’s looking for Chicky.
And he’s opening his mouth and taking a breath in to say something, something true, when an almost-yelling voice startles us both.
A member of the pageant board projects over the crowd that it’s time for the group photo.
All the contestants shuffle toward the indoor fountain, its tidy shoots of water gurgling at evenly spaced intervals. Dresses rustle against each other. My pants whisk alongside skirts. Royal blue and deep magenta mix with pastels.
Kendra, in her peach sundress that’s a perfect lightening of Meteor Central High’s orange, edges to the first row. She does it with a genial smile that almost hides how much she’s throwing her elbows.
I understand immediately what this game is. We are all trying to seem generous and polite and compliant, unconcerned with our own position, while all wanting to be as front-and-center as possible.
I step off to the side and back. I am too small, and too unsteady on my heels to fight for prime position. And I don’t need any more enemies anyway.
A brown hand lands on my shoulder.
“You’re in front, pequeña.” Another contestant, one of the few with brown skin like mine, shoves me forward. “They’re never gonna see you if you hide back here.”
I am so shocked by another contestant willingly putting me in front of her that it takes me a second to realize I have landed next to Kendra Kendall.
“Eww,” Kendra says, “can you lay off the perfume? I’m literally choking on how cheap you smell.”
I sigh and straighten my shoulders as the photographer lines up her camera.
“You might want to turn sideways,” Kendra says, preening in advance for the lens. “You’re taking up a lot of the frame.”
“Say . . . PAGEANT QUEEN!” the photographer yells.
We all obey.
Except me. I just say the “queen” part. Fresa warned me about this. The word “pageant” contorts your mouth into positions unflattering for photography.
“I hope you’re happy,” Kendra says through smiling teeth. “Cole didn’t even want to show up today.”