“And that makes our first-place winner—no surprises here, folks—Miss Kendra Kendall of Meteor, New Mexico!”
Kendra bursts into tears that almost look real as the entire line of girls collapses around her, and her mother rushes onto the stage, and the applause around us is so thunderous that it feels inevitable. Of course she’s the one sliding into the sash, the one taking the crown, the one holding the ridiculous scepter and looking like she just stepped out of a formal dress catalog.
We may have opened a few eyes this week, but Meteor is still Meteor. Beauty pageants are still beauty pageants. Maybe this is enough, though, for our first attempt at changing the world.
“Here she comes,” Junior warns, as Lita comes drifting through the crowd we just fought our way to the front of, looking strangely untethered to the Earth. The gold antennae bob up and down, joyful and mourning all at once as she accepts congratulations, handshakes, even a hug or two, but there’s no doubt she’s heading straight for us.
And then she stops, halfway there, and clutches her stomach with both shimmering arms, the spaces where her skin shines through, disappearing as the stardust reaches for itself across the suddenly fragile brown.
Lita looks at me, once, her eyes startled open like she’s been hit, even though she’s all alone, and I’m already moving toward her when she turns and, fast as the Enterprise switching on the Warp Core, disappears into the crowd.
“Hey!” Cole says, running up behind us, his eyes tired. “Did you see where Lita went? I wanted to say . . .” He stops cold at the look on my face. “Which way did she go?”
I’m about to tell Junior we need to go after her, the cold goodbye feeling from before back with a vengeance, spreading through my chest, but he’s the one running ahead, urging us to hurry, leading us because Cole and I are too scared to do anything but grab each other’s hands and follow.
“Chicky!” It’s Bruja Lupe, and I slow but don’t stop, hoping she’ll see the panic on my face. That she’ll know what to do.
“I don’t know where she is!” I call, and I see something settling on her face.
“I’ll check home,” she says. “Find her. Please.”
As we try, I look to the stars just peeking out, asking them to keep Lita safe just a little while longer.
Lita
FIRST RUNNER-UP.
It’s far, far more than I thought I’d get.
But as I feel the stardust prickling over my body, claiming the rest of me, I know it’s not enough.
I walk out into the desert dusk as the sky turns the blue of my dress bodice. Then it deepens until it matches the skirt hem.
The cactuses greet me as I walk deeper into the desert. I bid farewell to Monsieur Cereus, Señora Strawberry, Herr Rainbow. I nod at each of them, my gold antennae bobbing on my head. And before I can help it, I am gasp-sobbing, because my fingers are covered in stardust, and my heart is so full it feels like it’s holding a whole galaxy.
I feel the stardust crawling up my neck. When I pat my fingers to my cheeks, my tears come away like the shimmer of desert rock.
My heart says goodbye to Meteor. To Buzz and Edna and the space rock that brought me here.
To Dolores Ramirez, and everyone who clapped for me when I got to my feet in front of people who hated me.
To Junior, and the Cortes family.
To the Quintanillas.
To Cole, the boy who gave me my first and only bike, and himself as a friend.
To Chicky, and movie-star voices, and making spaceship sounds in craters, and everything we had and everything we missed.
To Bruja Lupe, the closest I have to a mother.
Bruja Lupe, my mother.
I am emptied out, and crying so hard that I’m dripping shimmer onto my dress, but I am so proud of these people who are my family and so grateful I had them for my time on this tiny, spinning planet.
I feel the inside of me going soft and flickery, not just my skin but my bones and heart turning to stardust. I crouch down, layers of skirt fluffing around me. I dig my nail into the fine desert dirt, and I start writing.
Tonight or tomorrow, someone will probably find this dress out here, in the shadows of my cactus friends.
I want them to know who to return it to.
Not Cole. He doesn’t need it back in his closet.
Bruja Lupe, because I could not look her in the face tonight and tell her goodbye.
I could not let her watch this happen.
“I found her,” a boy’s far-off voice sounds through the desert.
I place it.
Cole’s.
“She’s over here,” calls another one.
Junior’s.
I hide behind Señorita Opuntia.
I peer between Señorita Opuntia’s arms and spot the silhouettes of those two boys.
Then the shape of Chicky on her lightning-storm-fast giraffe legs. She rushes forward between them, running.
No.
No.
They cannot see this.
It’s bad enough losing them.
They can’t watch as I do.
Chicky races toward Señorita Opuntia, the boys not far behind her.
I try to make myself small enough to disappear behind Señorita Opuntia, but even if I could, my skirt sweeps out on either side.
Chicky slows, and I know she’s seen me.
Or at least my skirt.
“Chicky, what are you doing here?” I keep ducking behind Señorita Opuntia, hoping she, and the dark, will hide me. “Shouldn’t you be at the diner?” It’s gonna be their busiest night of the year.
“I’m exactly where I should be right now,” she says.
The boys catch up to Chicky.
“Uh, Lita?” Junior says. “Why are you hiding behind a cactus?”
Three sets of eyes in the dark look at Señorita Opuntia so intently, I’m afraid they’re going to burn through her.
I carefully lift my skirt off the ground and cringe out from behind Señorita Opuntia.
Every part of me I can see, every part not covered by the dress, wavers with light.
I am glowing, and sparkling, and falling apart.
Their faces are half terror, half wonder.
“I can’t stay,” I say, sniffling, my voice barely audible.
As if by instinct, Cole takes off his jacket and drapes it on me as best he can with one arm.
Chicky lets out a nervous laugh. “Yeah, Cole, she’s a little chilly, that’s clearly the problem here.”
“Any other ideas?” Cole says. “The floor is yours.”
Then I can’t help laughing, even though I’m still sniffling, and trembling.
“I’m sorry,” I rasp out. “I didn’t know how to tell you.” I look at all of them, their shapes set against the darkening blue. I am glowing so much that it almost shows me the features on their faces. “And I didn’t want to make everything worse for you than I already have.”
“Make things worse?” Junior asks. “Are you kidding?”
“You helped me be ready to come out,” Chicky says.
“You got me to finally give that dress away,” Cole says.
“You convinced me to try out for the cornhole team,” Junior says, “and if that’s not a Meteor miracle, then what is?”
With the way they look at me, something in me shifts. Like two planets colliding. Like a star becoming part of another star. Like a supernova bursting into a world of light.