Me either. But I hear it doesn’t end well.
“Look,” I say, but Cereza holds up a hand.
“Don’t even,” she says. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you think there’s any chance she’s coming back?” Uva asks.
“She’ll be back,” I say confidently. We’ve come this far, and after last night I know she wouldn’t abandon this. “Just . . . I’m not sure when . . . or in what state?” I try to smile. Fresa grabs my hand and pulls me, my boy boxers, and last night’s tank top to my feet.
“Before we start torturing you,” Cereza says. “We heard about your performance at the party last night. What you said to Royce and Kendra and everyone.”
I take a deep breath. “And?”
“And we’re proud of you, hermanita.”
“We hate you for this,” Fresa clarifies, gesturing around at the current state of things. “But that was pretty rad.”
Uva steps forward and hugs me, and I honestly think this must be a dream until Mom and Dad walk in.
“Oh, are we talking about your sister schooling the town bully and planting a rainbow flag in the nearly barren soil of rural New Mexico?”
“Dad, don’t say ‘schooling’ please.” Fresa rolls her eyes. “But yes,” she adds.
I look at my parents with something between terror and hopefulness, but the terror doesn’t turn out to be necessary. “We love you, Mija,” my mom says, pulling me into a hug. While I’m there, Dad ruffles my already-beyond-hope hair.
“You guys aren’t, like, mad? You don’t think I’m a weirdo?”
“Honey, we’re not even surprised,” Dad says, and Mom lets go of me to whack his arm. “I mean, at first I didn’t know what the word meant. I thought maybe we’d left you alone in the kitchen to wash the skillets too many times and . . .”
“Dad!” Cereza yelps, horrified, but I’m laughing. One of those deep, belly things that starts low and builds and lasts for an hour. It’s relief and it’s love and it’s everything I couldn’t admit to myself I needed.
“Chicky,” my mom is saying now, tears in her eyes, “you’ve never been one to truly hide how you feel, no matter how hard you try. You’ve just been getting braver, and you finally felt ready to trust yourself. That’s an important thing, and you should be so proud.”
“Plus,” says Fresa, “being pan was never what made you a weirdo.”
She smiles, though, and we’re all together, and they’re looking at me with all their different kinds of love, and I remember Lita shouting love is love is love out the window last night, and I think things probably couldn’t get any better.
Except maybe if Cereza would wear less perfume, because the smell of it is making my head hurt.
It’s a mark of our first family moment in ages that I don’t tell her this.
“Anyway,” Mom says, wiping at her eyes. “No work today. Your father and I have some things to get ready for tonight, but here . . .” She pulls three twenty-dollar bills out of her wallet and hands them to me. “This is for you girls. Go down to the street fair and have some fun today, just be at the diner by six for the dinner rush. I think it’s gonna be a little hectic tonight . . .” She smiles in an enigmatic way before she and Dad leave the room together.
“Oh, and stick together,” Dad clarifies. “Or we’re taking the money back.”
We all pretend to be annoyed, but I know my sisters well enough to know they’re not dreading this. And surprisingly, neither am I.
“Wait,” I say as we leave the house. “What did she mean it’s gonna be a little hectic tonight?”
“Oh, you’ll see . . . ,” Cereza says, and her smile looks exactly like Mom’s.
And I do.
The streets of downtown Meteor are absolutely packed, like, way more than I would have expected even for the final day of the pageant. “What’s going on?” I ask, wide-eyed gawking at the news crews, and the crowds, and yes, all the tinfoil hats.
“Oh right, you were sleeping it off,” Cereza says with a smirk.
“Yes,” I interrupt. “Sleeping off my water. For two hours. Until six o’clock in the morning.”
“Anyway,” she says, waving a hand to stop me. “A ridiculous rock formation showed up in the crater last night. They’re calling it the Second Miracle of Meteor.”
Something jolts in my stomach as I remember the four of us, Junior’s design that we burned with a Bic lighter as soon as we finished it, Lita and I making otherworldly sounds until the tourists believed in the beyond and all its inhabitants.
“What?” I say, hoping my fake surprise isn’t too overdone. “When?”
“Probably around the time your best friend was getting drunk enough to ruin our pageant hopes, and you were playing beer pong with the cornhole champion,” Uva says. “Or thereabouts.”
“Right,” I say, a little sheepish. “So, what’s up with all this?”
“A local news station picked it up this morning when someone who lives out there called in a tip, and it’s just sort of snowballed from there,” Cereza says, shaking her head.
“Probably just some bored idiots who weren’t invited to the party,” Fresa says, yawning.
“But what if it wasn’t?” I ask. “What if it’s for real?”
“What, like you think actual aliens showed up last night and gave us a little geological heads up that they were here?” Uva asks.
“Yeah,” I say, shrugging. “Why not?”
But regardless of what anyone believes or doesn’t, there’s one cold, hard fact that can’t be refuted: There are hundreds of new tourists in Meteor, and they’re all gonna need somewhere to eat tonight. And even though our parents gave us pageant award day off for the first time in history, after an hour of pretending otherwise we know there’s nowhere we’d rather be.
A feeling that’s only magnified when we show up at Selena’s around lunchtime to see a line out the door.
“We need to find Lita, get her dressed,” Cereza says. “But you guys stay?” She’s looking at me and Fresa. “Help Mom and Dad out?”
“I’m her manager!” I say, indignant. “I should be there!”
“You’re her best friend,” Uva says, smiling. “And I want you to be surprised. Trust us, just this once.”
And that’s how I, Chicky Quintanilla, pageant manager, end up in an apron on the day of the evening gown competition.
But just when I think the day can’t surprise me any more, I see a familiar tall, long-haired figure approaching the kitchen door just after the dinnertime rush.
“Got a second?” Junior catches me leaning against the back dining room’s wall between tickets, things slowing down now that the evening gown competition is fast approaching.
“Exactly one,” I say, smiling.
He takes my hand, and it doesn’t even feel strange anymore, just good. Like coming home. A feeling that only intensifies when he stands me in front of the sheet-covered wall I gave him as a make-up present when I thought I had lost him for good.