“I’d kick you in the balls right now, or punch you,” I say. “But my friends already took care of that.”
With a hair flip that would make Cereza proud, I cross the room to join said friends, who look more than ready to leave this alien landscape and head for home.
“Come on, babe,” Royce says to Kendra, who’s perched on the counter, her eyes darting from Cole to Royce and back again. “We’re champions. We don’t need this shit.”
I want to say Royce isn’t the real champion, but enough people’s eyes slide Junior’s way that I realize I don’t have to. That legend is already making itself.
And Kendra still hasn’t moved.
“Babe, come on,” Royce says, louder now, his face going purple and splotchy.
But Kendra doesn’t obey the command. She sets down her red cup on the counter and pushes past us into the night alone, without even looking at him.
“You okay?” Cole asks her back, and she waves a hand. One of her girlfriends—the one who inadvertently told me about Lita’s scuba suit, I think—follows her out, and Cole grabs her arm.
“She doesn’t drive, got it?”
“Duh,” the girl says with an eye roll, and disappears after Kendra yelling, “Bitch, wait up!” as her heels sink into the Bradley lawn.
We all laugh, even Cole, as we turn the other way, supporting Lita as we head for our space shuttle, and home.
When we get there, Lita is still giggling, but she reaches for my hand and squeezes, letting Junior’s arm fall. “You okay?” she asks, and it’s so cute that she sounds just like Cole.
“Actually, yeah.” I smile and squeeze her hand back.
When she lets go, Cole nods in that calm way of his, extending his bruised fist, which I bump lightly with my own.
I take a breath before turning to Junior, whose eyes are wide, and I wonder for half a second if this changes anything for him, if it’ll make him feel differently about me.
About us.
But before the feeling can even take root, he grabs me in a hug so tight my feet actually come off the ground.
“I am so proud of you,” he says into my hair. I’m glad no one can see my face, because I honestly tear up a little.
When we break apart, Lita is unbuttoning the rainbow buttons of her pajama top to reveal a matching tank top, and bands of shifting, shining sparkle wrapping around her arms.
It looks like part of her, otherworldly and somehow still grounded to Earth. They look like her eyes when a comet streaks by, or the rock when it reflects her rainbow shoelaces. And I’m remembering so many things, so many little things adding up over a lifetime. Things I didn’t look too closely at because I was afraid to make us bigger freaks than this town already thought we were.
But maybe I’ve known for a long time that there was more to that story of a meteor hitting the Earth fifty years ago than just history. That Lita wasn’t just a prop in Bruja Lupe’s curas. Maybe if I’d let myself understand us sooner, let myself believe in us, we could have had one less secret between us.
Tonight, though, we’re done with secrets. Lita isn’t hiding any more than I am. She’s trusting us with this. With her. With all of her.
“Does anyone actually know how she got drunk?” I ask, coming back to earth.
Because tomorrow is the biggest day of this pageant—maybe of our lives—and Lita is going to be as hungover as Uva after Fresa gave her strawberry wine on a camping trip last year. We’re not all triumph and starshine. We’re also in very big trouble.
And even though Royce and Kendra are (figuratively and literally) in the rearview mirror, I have never wanted to win this pageant more. It’s time to move past the secrets and the fear. It’s time to let this town see who we really are.
Cole sticks his head out the window from where he’s climbed in beside Lita and is carefully brushing her disheveled hair off her face. “All she’ll say is that telling me would be betraying a sacred covenant.”
“Of course,” I mumble, wondering if we’ll ever get the real story. “Covenants seem to be a theme of the evening.”
I wonder if we should get her coffee, or water, or one of the greasy things Cereza eats with her sunglasses on after a night out with her nursing school friends, but it’s no use. What she really needs is about twenty-four straight hours of water and sleep—which, considering she needs to be in an evening gown on a stage in about fifteen hours from right now, doesn’t seem likely.
“Take us to my house,” I say, smiling at her. “Bruja Lupe’s probably still awake, and if you think my sisters are scary . . .”
Sitting shotgun as Junior starts the car, I feel different. Lita is my friend again, my real friend. The kind we should have been to each other all along. Junior is smiling at me, his hand inches away from mine, and even though I don’t grab it, I could. And I think I’ll be ready to soon.
More than that, this town knows who the real Chicky Quintanilla is at last, and my friends know, and I’m okay with whatever comes next.
Lita sticks her rainbow pajama top out the window as we drive away, past the party and all the kids still drinking on the lawn. As it catches the wind, she waves it like a flag, the orange streetlights of South Meteor reflecting and refracting off her star-stuff as she shouts love is love is love is love over and over until it starts to sound like a song.
I’m not sure, because I don’t have a ton of experience with protracted bouts of smiling, but I think my smile is actually big enough to get stuck like this.
Lita
MY EYELASHES HURT.
I feel it before I open my eyes, like a thousand tiny lightning strikes stabbing into my brain. But it’s an ache I can revel in, because it means I’m still here, a girl on this planet.
And it means last night happened. Even if the sky takes me back, last night happened.
I shift my weight and feel the poke of Chicky’s knee. We’re in her and Uva’s bedroom, sharing her bed like we used to during sleepovers. She’d show me Junior’s latest drawings. We’d make microwave popcorn, then make it better with chili powder and garlic. We’d eat too much of the Halloween candy we stockpiled each October.
But the sugar headaches Chicky and I got after eating too much sour candy didn’t even come close to this.
My whole forehead throbs as I open my eyes.
It throbs worse when I realize all three of Chicky’s sisters are standing over us.
I gently elbow Chicky. She groans halfway awake.
She opens her eyes, sees Cereza, Uva, and Fresa craned over us with their hands on their hips, and she startles the rest of the way awake.
Fresa almost wrings her hands. “What have you done?”
Uva studies me, concerned. “Has she ever had a drink before?”
“Did you get enough water into her last night?” Cereza pulls on my eyelids to get a better look at my eyes.
I whimper.
“Both of you”—Fresa pulls us out of bed—“shower. Lita first. We need all the time with her we can get.”
“It’s six in the morning.” Chicky double-checks the orange-and-yellow sunrise in the window. “Do you really need all day to get her ready?”
“You tell me.” Fresa points at me, and I can feel in the roots of my hair how I must look. Hair fluffed out not from teasing but from being slept on. Lips and teeth that haven’t seen Vaseline in thirty-six hours (I think I even have a toothpaste smudge on my cheek from sloppily brushing my teeth last night). And wrinkled pajamas; even the shooting stars probably look a little sleepy.