“Your funeral,” says Royce, tossing Junior a mesh bag with ten beanbags inside.
“Or yours,” Junior says, throwing his first bag between Royce’s legs at the world’s most awkward angle and sinking it.
The rest of the team goes quiet, but Royce smirks. “So you’re really good at going between a dude’s legs,” he says. “Hardly something to brag about.”
“So, you get that that’s an offensive thing to say, right Royce?”
My heart sinks and soars at the same time. Cole seems to have graduated from distraction tactics when it comes to Royce, and despite the tense shoulders and clenched fists giving away his nervousness, he’s steady. Solid. And he’s sticking up for Junior.
“Not you, too, Kendall,” Royce says with an eye roll. “Can’t anyone take a fucking joke anymore? Everyone’s so sensitive!”
“I appreciate a good joke as much as anyone,” Cole says, his voice still mild. “But most of us have moved on from cruelty as their sole form of humor. Maybe you should try it.”
Royce is gaping like a fish, and Kendra is glaring at Cole in a “we’re gonna talk about this later” kind of way, and all I can think is that I wish it was me. Defending Junior. Putting Royce in his place. But I’m frozen, and Cole is here, and I feel grateful and guilty all at once.
I look at Cole, trying to communicate all this, and when we lock eyes I nod in solidarity, just a little.
He nods back.
Junior takes his place at the practice line, taking advantage of Royce’s shock over being confronted by another jock, and leaving Lita and me standing beside each other. I think if we could bottle how much we want Junior to succeed right now, how much we want Royce put in his place, Bruja Lupe could sell it by the vial.
The first ten shots are no trouble. One of the JV team members gathers the bags and returns the mesh sack to Junior, who’s rolling his shoulders, looking a little nervous for the first time.
I wish I could tell him how impressive he looks right now. Even to someone who doesn’t understand or care about cornhole, and probably never will.
The next ten are slower, with Junior pausing between shots to realign his stance. By now, some of the team actually looks curious.
Royce and Kendra, however, look murderous.
Junior stretches before the bag returns, his eyes scanning the crowd that’s gathering. I can tell by the way his jaw tenses that he’s realizing it for the first time—how different this is from the bags he threw in private at the museum when the tourists had gone home.
He hesitates for too long on his next shot, and it misses the mark, barely sliding in after hitting the board at an awkward angle.
Beanbag two in hand, he freezes, and I can already tell what’s next, but for once, I don’t just wait to see what’s going to happen. I don’t let the presence of Royce and all his lackies make me small and silent.
Because Junior deserves a friend right now, and I need this to work for more reasons than I have time to articulate. Even to myself.
“Hey,” I say, getting his attention, forcing him to lower his arm.
Keeping his eyes on me, I walk to the business end of the cornhole board, ignoring the stares of several jocks like I can’t feel them crawling all over my skin.
“It’s just you and me out here,” I say to both of us, and he smiles, the kind of smile that sends something warm and fizzy through my bloodstream.
The next three shots go in perfectly, his eyes on me the whole time. The fourth rims in, the fifth nearly bounces back out, but the sixth, seventh, and eighth could be taught in summer camps across the country.
Two beanbags left in his hand, Junior finds my eyes again and holds them. I don’t look away.
With one hand, he throws them at the same time. One arcs high, and the other low. They descend for what seems like an hour, the entire field holding its breath, before one drops neatly into the hole, the other following close behind.
The cheers are deafening, and that’s just Lita and me.
Junior Cortes has just made the cornhole team.
Lita
SPEAK LOUD, SPEAK clearly, and trust that you know what to say. (Cereza’s advice just before I go onstage for the first time.)
Breathe, and remember how many of us you have cheering for you. (Uva’s)
Annihilate those bitches. (Fresa’s)
I run through all three in my head. I’ll need them today and the next three days.
Yes, four more days. Not counting the one-day break for the cornhole championship.
To bring in more tourists for the festival, the Meteor Regional Pageant and Talent Competition Showcase only holds one event per day. Question and answer. Swimsuit. Talent. And, on the last day, evening gown.
If we make it that far without them booing me off the stage or throwing lemons at me. (They wouldn’t waste their tomatoes, which don’t grow as well here).
Today is the Q&A, and it’s Cereza’s advice that rings in my head.
Speak loud.
Speak clearly.
Trust that you know what to say.
But the other contestants, they’re all so beautiful. With every shade of hair and skin I’ve ever seen on this planet. And they all stand up straight. They smell like the perfume samples in Fresa’s magazines.
Their teeth all gleam as much as their polished nails, and their eyeshadow catches the sun in perfect rhythm with the translucent sequins on their sundresses.
Now I’m glad Fresa talked me into the glittery teal eyeshadow and blush that was nearly magenta. I know I can’t wear the wispy pinks the gringas wear because it doesn’t show up on my skin, but . . . magenta? And teal glitter? I was sure pageant week had made Fresa snap, but on this stage, now, I realize she just made me look like everyone else.
We all line up, and the pageant coordinators file us through the opening in the curtain to backstage. Behind there, it’s already a mess of makeup bags and extra underwear and the rubbery plastic slices they all call “chicken cutlets.” False eyelashes litter the ground like sun-stupored caterpillars. Body and face glitter speckles the concrete like the flecks in granite. Half the contestants are rubbing shimmer powder onto their chests or gluing their underwear to their asses. I adjust my bra (and the duct tape) without trying to hide it.
Any sense of modesty has been glitter-bombed.
The sight of Cole Kendall slipping through the curtain is so strange, so out of place, so distinctly masculine in this flurry of sequined shoes and lipstick cases, that for a second I think I’m dehydrated. Uva warned me about that.
I only know he’s there for sure when a girl spots him and calls out, “Hey! No dicks backstage!”
Cole looks right at her. “You have no idea what I do or don’t have in my pants.”
The girl pales.
“And unless you want to make sure this gets known as the beauty pageant no trans girl will ever feel safe entering, can we just not with talk like that?” Cole is the only boy I’ve ever met who can sound so angry and so measured at the same time. “Thanks.”
The girl steps back, nodding, her stare so wide I can’t see her eyeshadow.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he tells everyone, and they all sweep back into their flurry.
He looks around. “Good. She’s not here yet.”
“Who?” I ask.