“Did she just tell them a total lie?” I hear Junior whisper.
Chicky smiles at him, and they sink back into that place where they always meet each other.
But not before she touches the purple star I embroidered on her new jean shorts. The first birthday gift I’ve had a chance to give her in years.
At the end of the tour, Cole slides up next to me. “There’s a rumor about that, huh?” he asks.
“What?” I say. “There is. I just started it.”
“You really made all that up, didn’t you?” he asks.
“Yes, I did,” I whisper, nudging his healing arm with my shoulder. “And if you ever wanna get lucky again, you won’t breathe a word of it.”
“Word of what?” he asks.
“Exactly.”
“‘Maple Street, USA,” Chicky calls across the diner, not caring who hears. “‘At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 p.m.’”
Something in me twists back to life at these words, a quote from our favorite episode of The Twilight Zone, one Bruja Lupe used to let us watch over and over if it wasn’t too close to bedtime.
“‘Meteors can do crazy things, you know,’” I quote back.
She grins, because even though these are borrowed words from an old TV show, we both know them to be true.
By now, the radio waves of that first broadcast of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” have probably gone as far as Wolf 1055, and Pegasus, and Vega, and so many other stars we have named because we are not close enough to ask them their names. Every movie and song stretches out into the universe like that. Everything travels out and eventually reaches the stars.
So maybe the part about the astronomical discoveries is something I made up. But our universe is full of so many more unlikely things. Many of them found us here, just in the last few weeks.
A diner about to close became a place that holds a hundred voices all at once.
A town believed all the possibilities held in swirls of crater rocks.
Four friends made those swirls of crater rocks, sharing the same desert night.
A girl spoke the truth of herself so loud a whole town heard her.
Another girl came back from stardust.
So maybe it’s not exactly true, about astronomers getting their big ideas at a diner in a tiny desert town.
But it could have happened.
A lot of things happen here.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who helped make this story of Selena, stardust, and small towns into a book, including (but certainly not limited to): our agents, Taylor Martindale Kean and Jim McCarthy; Claudia Gabel, Camille Kellogg, Stephanie Guerdan, and everyone at HarperTeen; Lily Anderson, Candice Montgomery, Aiden Thomas, and Lindsay Eagar; and everyone who supported us on Chicky and Lita’s journey.
About the Authors
Photo by Christina Grout
ANNA-MARIE McLEMORE was taught by their family to hear la llorona in the Santa Ana winds, and may or may not be made of stardust. They are the Stonewall Honor author of The Weight of Feathers; When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award; Wild Beauty; Blanca & Roja; Dark and Deepest Red; and the forthcoming The Mirror Season.
Photo by Tia Reagan Photo
TEHLOR KAY MEJIA is an Oregon native in love with the wild forests and alpine meadows of her home state, where she lives with her daughter, two small dogs, and several rescued houseplants. She is the author of the YA fantasy novels We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm and the middle grade novel Paola Santiago and the River of Tears.
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Books by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore
Books by Tehlor Kay Mejia
We Set the Dark on Fire
We Unleash the Merciless Storm
Books by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore
Miss Meteor
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MISS METEOR. Copyright © 2020 by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover art © 2020 Jen Oaks
Cover design by Corina Lupp
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-286993-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286991-3
2021222324PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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