The Queen’s Ball is held in the community center. Auntie Bernadette is there, and Teresita’s auntie and uncle. I’m surprised to see Roman there as well. I guess he showed up for the drawing at the end of the ball.

People gather around Teresita, congratulating her. She hugs them all, lets the men kiss her on the cheek, and tells everyone, “Thank you. Thank you for buying my tickets.” Her mother sits across the room, smiling and watching Teresita and her admirers. She hardly looks like the woman staggering around Teresita’s yard a few years ago.

Auntie Bernadette acts like a proud momma when the women go on and on about the dress. “It was nothing,” she says. “So simple to make. You hardly notice the dress with Teresita’s beauty.”

I’m relieved a lot of people surround Teresita because I won’t have to say anything to her.

Mary Kelly throws me a bewildered expression. “I thought you said Teresita was a cockfighter.”

I shake my head. “That’s not Teresita. I don’t know that girl.”

Cha-cha

Every Chamorro knows the cha-cha. We learn it in our mother’s womb.

Teresita dances with her uncle and the royal court dances with their fathers. Even Olivia dances with the younger kids. I think of Tata, who could do the cha-cha better than anyone. He moved the floor when he danced. I look around the room for him, but he’s nowhere to be found.

Roman heads in my direction and I’m ready to tell him no. I raise my chin and squint at him. But he holds out his hands to Mary Kelly and Mary Kelly says yes. I’m beginning to wonder if I know my friends at all.

The Great Escape

At one o’clock the men disappear from the room. The cockfight begins in thirty minutes and bets must be made.

Teresita comes over. “You have to sneak me out of here, Isabel.”

Two minutes ago, I’d figured out what I was going to tell her. I’d planned to say, “You sure seem to enjoy yourself as queen, Teresita. You’re eating it up like ice cream, slurping down every drop.”

But now with her facing me, she looks silly. The tiara is sliding off her head; the blue dress suddenly looks like a cheap Halloween costume. I grab her hand. “Come on.”

We slip through the kitchen and out the back door. As we near the church, Mary Kelly and Roman catch up with us. “Isabel,” Roman says, “I won second prize! A thousand dollars!”

Cockfight

We follow Teresita as she tears through the crowd, making her way to the pit. People are still placing bets, their fingers flying in the air. At the Dededo dome fingers point down, meaning thousands of dollars, fingers to the side, hundreds, but at fiesta fights fingers are straight up, small-time bets. That’s why the old people like fiesta cockfights best.

Lorenzo stands in the center, holding Teresita’s prize chicken. He startles when he sees Teresita step forward.