“Nobody’s perfect,” I say. “Just . . . don’t become one of those guys, okay?” And it hits me then, that it’s what I’ve been most worried about since the day Junior started getting cool-guy looks at school. That he’ll change. That he’ll leave me behind.
“I won’t,” he says, and his eyes are so sincere I don’t even recognize the guy from last night in them. “I promise.”
“Come with me,” I say impulsively, before I can chicken out.
“Where?”
“No questions,” I say, shoving my feet into my sneakers and striding out the door.
“So what are we doing here?” he asks when we stop in front of Selena’s. “I thought the diner was closed today.”
“Only if you don’t have the keys,” I say, dangling them in front of him and opening the door.
Inside, the mood is strange, like it’s a relic of a place instead of a living, breathing one. I fight the urge to turn on “Baila Esta Cumbia” just to make it seem less empty.
“I know it’s not mac and cheese day, so . . .”
“Shh,” I say. “Just trust me.”
“Chicky, you’re being weird,” he says, and it occurs to me that I love the way he says my name. Not like strangers, who think it’s a weird thing to be called, not like my parents, who’ve said it so many times it sounds worn and boring, but like someone who’s rediscovering it every time and keeps liking what he finds.
Of course, I would notice this one day after it’s too late to notice things like that.
“Sorry, I know, but it’s gonna get slightly weirder when I ask you to close your eyes.”
The eyes in question widen at the request, and I grab a clean dish towel from a table and hold it up apologetically.
He raises his eyebrows but closes his eyes.
Behind him, I reach up to cover them with the square of fabric, which suddenly seems much more awkward than I anticipated. My fingertips tangle in the sleek strands of his hair, once or twice bumping his ears and brushing the back of his sun-darkened neck as I tie the knot.
My stomach flips more than once, and I silently curse myself for not putting on music, or making him cover his own damn eyes, or letting this idea fade away like a fever dream before saying anything out loud.
“Okay, can you see?” I ask, my voice weird and soft, like I’m breathing too much around every word. The white towel against his skin makes it glow a little, sun behind amber, and I wish I could tell him. Just for a second.
“Can’t see a thing,” he says, his own voice deep and a little croaky, like when he wakes up from a nap he shouldn’t have been taking in class and has to answer a question about geography.
“Okay, walk to the left,” I say, and he goes more forward than left. “No, wait, like, straight to the left.” This time it’s closer, but he’s still facing the wrong way, and we’re gonna be here all day at this rate, so I sigh and stand behind him again.
“What?”
“Just . . . okay.” I put my hands on his shoulders, way too warm through possibly the world’s softest green T-shirt, and steer him, pushing when he needs to walk, guiding when he needs to turn. He goes wherever I steer him.
Not that I’m thinking about it what that means. More than a normal amount, anyway.
“Okay,” I say at last, letting go, my hands feeling cold without the warmth of his skin beneath them, even though it’s easily ninety degrees in the diner. “We made it.”
“Can I take this off?” he asks, and maybe I’m terrible, but I do it for him, bumping, brushing fingers and all.
When he’s unmasked, we’re both facing a blank wall. The paint is peeling along the baseboard, and there’s a crack running through the left side from where a pipe burst when I was in seventh grade. Across its surface, squares of discoloration are obvious, sun damage around the borders of magazine articles my dad taped up when we couldn’t afford real art.
It’s a hideous wall. An ugly wall. A totally unworthy gift. But Junior is looking at it like it’s the lost city of Atlantis.
“Chicky . . . ,” he says, that heavy deepness still in his voice. “Do you mean it?”
“Look,” I say, unable to look at his face. “I’m not always good at this either, but I . . .” I take a deep breath. “No, you. You’re the cipher that makes the weird code of high school and this town and just . . . life . . . make sense.”
I’m butchering this, but he’s looking at me like he looks at that dumb wall, like there’s something magic in both of us that he sees clearly even when no one else can.
He bumps my shoulder with his.
“I believe in you, Junior,” I say. “And no matter what happens, I never want to not know you.”
Is it my imagination, or is there something glinting in one of his eyes?
“If I help you prime it, will you paint this wall, Junior Cortes? Will you show this town and every weird, Klingon-speaking yahoo that you’re part of this family, too?”
He steps closer to take the dish towel from my hand, but he doesn’t step away once he has it, and there’s something magnetic happening in his eyes, there has to be, because I can’t look away.
“Why, Chiquita Quintanilla,” he says. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Lita
JUNIOR CORTES IS actively trying not to smile as he unlocks the Meteor Meteorite Museum.
He’s smiling in a way that can only be about Chicky. It’s brighter than the morning flaring behind him.
“I . . . ,” I stammer. I came here to try to convince him to show up somewhere Chicky will be, but from the look on his face, they already figured all that out.
Which makes me feel both happy and even more useless than before.
Junior goes in and holds the door open behind him. “How’s your pursuit of the crown going?”
I try to laugh. It comes out hoarse and sad. “Nonexistent. I’m not doing the pageant anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” I ask. “Are you serious? Have you not witnessed the disaster I’ve made of the last few days?”
“Don’t take all the credit.” He turns on the overhead lobby lights. “You didn’t make a mess of everything alone. You had the help of the Four Sisters of the Apocalypse.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” He clicks on the ancient air-conditioning unit, which will take a full hour to work up to cooling this place. “You also had the help of possibly the worst human being at Meteor Central High, who managed to take out you, his own teammate, and a priceless artifact of town history.” He points to the display case where the sadly dented bicycle now leans against a wall.
This is one more thing I like about Junior Cortes: he thought about the bicycle.
Buzz was too nice to ask, and nobody else even bothered.
“You’re really gonna let those jerks scare you off?” Junior asks.
“Um, yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I am.”
Junior turns on the flickering spotlight over the rock, another part of the museum that needs warming up before open hours.