“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” I manage to tell him.
As Cole unfolds it, the last of the sun winks off it. It’s speckled with translucent gold sequins that begin sparse on the bodice and thicken toward the bottom of the skirt. It’s like the stars coming out as the sky deepens.
“Where did this come from?” I ask.
Cole looks down at the dress, a little sad. “It was my grandmother’s.”
I try to catch his eye. “Cole.”
His grandmother. The first Miss Meteor, decades ago.
He’s lending me something that’s part of his family’s history, passed down and priceless.
Kendra really is going to kill him.
“You’re gonna need all of us to protect you once your sister finds out about this,” I say.
“It’s not Kendra’s.” He lifts his eyes to my face. “It’s mine.”
The sadness in him deepens.
“What?” I ask.
“My grandmother,” he says, “she died before she ever really got to know me. She thought maybe I’d grow out of being a boy and start being a girl. She even thought maybe I’d be Miss Meteor one day.” He tries to laugh, but it’s pained. “So she left this to me.”
The Cole in front of me is so much the Cole I’ve always known, that I wonder how anyone could have missed it.
“I’m sorry you lost her before she really saw you,” I say.
“Thanks.” He smiles like he’s shaking it off.
“Cole.”
He meets my eyes again.
“I can’t wear this.” I fold the dress back into the box. “It’s beautiful. What if I mess it up?”
“I don’t care.” He sets the fabric back in my hands. “It’s yours now.”
For a second, the sparkle off the dress leaves me dizzy.
“What?” I ask.
“I want you to have it,” he says. “Do you know how long this has been in my closet? And it doesn’t belong there. It’s part of a life I never belonged in.”
“Doesn’t Kendra want it?”
His laugh is slight and bitter. “She says it’s too old-fashioned.”
Too old-fashioned?
This is the kind of dress Grace Kelly would wear to a ball. It’s a gown Libertad Lamarque would wear while sitting on a flower-adorned swing.
“How is your family gonna take me going out there in this?” I ask.
“That’s not for them to say,” he says. “I’m giving it to you, and it’s yours now.”
I don’t know if it’s the light, but for the first time I catch the gloss on his eyes, the flicker of shine at the corners.
“But won’t seeing it”—I imagine him watching part of a past that was never his cross the stage on my body—“hurt you?”
“I think if I see it on you, it won’t feel like it was ever supposed to be mine.” He shakes his head at the box. “It’ll be a different dress. Because it’ll be on you.”
He is giving me part of a life he did not want.
I kiss him on the cheek, like I’ve done for years. “Thank you.”
“You’re gonna be great out there,” he says.
“What?” I ask. “No last-minute advice?”
As he gets back to standing, he nods to Uva. “I think you’ve got plenty.”
“Didn’t I say this whole time you should be in blue?” Uva asks.
I see her already thinking about how to style my soft curls, and which shade of rose-gold lip gloss to put on me.
Uva stops Cole as he leaves. “You did good, kid.”
Cole smiles. And it’s still a little sad, or maybe just tired. But there’s a peace, a kind of slow breath in it, that he didn’t have when he was still holding that box in his hands. “Thanks.”
A minute after Cole leaves, I notice for the first time how small the waist is cut.
It was made for Cole’s grandmother, who—I know from the photos—was both a tall woman and one with a full chest. But in all other respects, my body is softer, with more to it. The fact that I have smaller breasts will not make enough room for the way I do not have a slender, willowy rib cage or a waist that looks as though it’s been gathered tight with drawstrings.
There is a reason Bruja Lupe’s curandera friends call me little, but never skinny.
“Uva.” I lean close into the only Quintanilla sister I have right now. “I am never gonna fit in this.”
“You really think that didn’t occur to me?” Uva asks, “You think I didn’t plan for the fact that the Kendalls’ legacy of bony asses is a little different than ours?”
“Uva,” I say her name slower this time. “I will never fit into this dress.”
Or I will, and the zipper will crumble onstage, live in front of a crowd of cheering, blood-thirsty pageant enthusiasts.
They will be cheering on the zipper rather than me.
Uva reaches into her bag and holds up something that looks like a cross between a corset and a leotard. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
Uva looks around for where we can squeeze me into it, away from the other contestants.
I lift the dress out of its box again.
Strapless.
This fact sinks into my chest.
Strapless, as in, the shimmering patches covering my arms and crawling onto my collarbone will show.
“May I suggest an addition?”
A voice I’ve known my whole life on this planet warms me.
Like a fairy godmother, Bruja Lupe appears. I wonder how long she’s been watching.
Her ubiquitous bolsa isn’t on her shoulder. My guess is it’s on a chair in the audience, holding her place.
Even the tourists know better than to take a bruja’s purse.
Bruja Lupe takes the white lace mantilla from around her shoulders.
She sweeps it onto mine, the fine weave fluttering in the wind.
When it lands on me, it feels like her blessing for this whole stupid, messy thing I wanted to do before I left this planet.
Tears prick the corners of my eyes and well in my throat.
“What if I can’t win?” I ask, my voice breaking. “What if I can’t stay?”
Water glints at the corners of her eyes, and I see it, all the grief she’s been holding back because she didn’t want to set its weight on me.
Bruja Lupe sets her hands on my shoulders, the mantilla between her palms and my sleeves. “Then leave the way you want to leave.”
Chicky
I SMELL LIKE chilies and garlic, and Junior’s shirt is flecked with paint—of course this is our first real date.
The streets are strangely quiet as we move toward the town square—the site of the final pageant event. I’m strangely nervous when I think of wishing Lita luck. For better or worse, tonight is the night.
Junior and I pick through the debris of the street fair, and we’re quiet, but we don’t let go of each other’s hands. Not even when people pass and look.
“Isn’t that the one that just told the whole town she’s gay?” old Mrs. Leary, owner of Meteor’s only pet store, asks her daughter as she helps her up the street. “What’s she doing holding hands with a boy?”