Starr Valentine

by Abigail Drake

  Astra read the letter slowly, her hand on her chest. She wore a white Vegonian dress I secretly named, “Astra in a Cloud.” I stared at her, trying to understand what had changed. I had to admit both she and my mother looked much prettier on Vega than they ever had on Earth, but I thought it was because of how odd the other women here looked. By comparison, my mom and sister weren’t bad.

  But if it were merely a matter of the other women being relatively unattractive, Maya and I should have been exponentially hotter. It hadn’t worked out that way, however. There was something more to it, but I couldn’t figure it out.

  Astra looked at me. “This is a sweet letter.” She folded it gently and put it back into the envelope. “I have met so many wonderful people since we arrived here. We’re fortunate, Starr.”

  “Yippee.” I twirled a lock of hair with one finger. “So are you going to go to the ball with Roman?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll go with friends. It’ll be more fun.”

  I stared at her in shock. “Astra, a boy has finally asked you to attend a dance with him. You should go.”

  She gave me a patient look. It reminded me a lot of our mother. “Everything is new to us here, and we’re all going through an adjustment period. I’d rather wait until I understand things a bit better before I make any promises or commitments to anyone. There are too many unknown factors at the moment. I could hurt someone’s feelings.”

  Adrian’s face flashed in front of my eyes as she spoke. An unknown factor, I guess, but he felt familiar, and dearer to me than anyone else I’d met on Vega. I suddenly missed him more than I’d ever missed anything in my life. I touched the chain around my neck as I did a hundred times a day. It comforted me.

  “But she who hesitates gets lost.” I gave her a meaningful look. “Or something along those lines. Don’t you think you're too cautious?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll go to the dance together, you and me. What do you say? We’ll have so much fun.”

  I raised one eyebrow but didn’t answer. I didn’t have the heart to tell Astra by the time the Moon Festival took place, I would be long gone.

  Seven

  “I’ll not budge an inch.” William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

  Getting onto the transport ship turned out to be much simpler than anticipated. I snuck out early in the morning, long before two clanks past weevik, hiding my disguise in a large shopping bag leftover from my trip to Saks Fifth Avenue. I put on the body padding, Vegonian dress, and dark wig in a public restroom, surprised to see how much I looked like my sister when I glanced in the mirror. I’d never realized we resembled each other before.

  Even with my ridiculous disguise, not a single man looked at me as I walked past the crowds assembled to see off the transport ship. I now looked exactly like my sister, and my sister got constant attention from men, but I still didn’t get a glance. It was beyond bizarre. I would be so happy to leave this stupid planet behind.

  I saw Julian standing on the edge of the crowd, his eyes scanning the people gathered there. Fortunately, he didn’t notice me. I slipped right past him, boarded the ship, and hid in a small closet inside the Royal Suite.

  No one worried about security on Vega. People didn’t lie, steal, or even cheat on their taxes. The only bad thing that had ever happened here was the war, which I guess had been pretty horrific. That violent and terrible era, however, had been an aberration in the perfect and peaceful history of Vega.

  At least the security thing worked to my advantage. It wasn’t long before the engines of the ship fired up, and I felt a sudden, pronounced, weightlessness as the giant transport vessel lifted into the sky. I hugged my knees to my chest and waited as a strange and unexpected sadness consumed me.

  I’d said goodbye to my parents and my sister by writing each of them lovely, personal letters. I’d sobbed as I’d written them. I adored my family, and would miss them horribly, but I could not spend another moment on Vega.

  My goodbye to Maya had been even worse since it was in person. We cried and hugged, and I told her she could have every item in my closet. I could tell this touched her, because she cried even harder. Also, we both knew I had a lot of really good things in my closet.

  I gave Maya a letter to pass on to Adrian if she ever saw him again. Writing his letter was the hardest thing of all. He’d asked me to wait for him, and I’d agreed, but then I’d jumped on the transport ship as fast as I could. It didn’t bode well for the future of our relationship, not that we could have had one with me hightailing it back to Earth, but I still felt terrible not being able to tell him in person about why I had to leave.

  Thinking about Adrian turned out to be the final straw, and I bawled. He represented all of the hopes and dreams I’d had for myself when I’d come to Vega, and he symbolized all the sadness and disappointment too. But I knew as I crouched on the floor of the closet and cried my heart out, I wasn’t only crying for him. I cried for my parents, my sister, my new friend Maya, for all of the clothes, purses, and shoes I’d left behind, and also because I suddenly realized I hadn’t formulated a plan for what I would do once I’d returned to Earth, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was doing the right thing anymore.

  Julian found me there a few hours later, with my wig askew and my body padding twisted inside my dress. I’d thought I’d finished crying, but as soon as he opened the door, I started sobbing again.

  Julian, remarkably, did not yell. He sat next to me in the closet and let me cry all over his pretty white uniform. When the sobs had dissolved into a few residual hiccups, he tilted my chin up with his fingers.

  “Thou art a real mess, Starr Valentine.”

  I wiped my nose with my hand. “Don’t I know it,” I said with a shaky little laugh.

  He shook his head and gave me a handkerchief made of fine, soft linen with a fancy “J” embroidered on it. I blew my nose loudly before handing it back to him, which may not have been a very princess-y thing to do, but he didn’t even flinch.

  “So, we are going to Earth?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And I guess you understand I am duty-bound by your father to bring you back to Vega.”

  “I guess you are.”

  I knew Julian might try, but that didn’t mean I would cooperate. Seeing no reason to bring it up now, however, I kept my mouth shut.

  “Good. Now wash your face and get out of your ridiculous outfit. I have to tell Captain Augustus thou art found.”

  Captain Augustus was not happy to see me. He gave me a stern look and immediately radioed my parents to let them know I was okay. I guess they’d found my letters sooner than I expected and had been frantic with worry. Their worry quickly morphed into anger once they discovered I was safe, and although they didn’t want to tie up Captain Augustus’ radio, they let me know in exact and minute detail how much trouble I was currently in because of my actions.

  “Did my father tell you to find me?” I asked Julian later. We’d eaten dinner with the crew and now sat in the ship’s library. I had on my coziest yoga pants and a cardigan, one of only three outfits I’d been able to bring with me. I’d had limited space in my Saks’ bag. I didn’t know how I would survive the next two weeks.

  Julian shook his head. He’d taken off his military jacket and wore the Vegonian equivalent of a t-shirt and sweats. Not how he usually dressed, but it did show off his extremely well-sculpted body to its best advantage.

  “I suspected you were going to try something. You seemed a bit too curious about Captain Augustus’ departure time.”

  I should have been a little subtler. Julian was obviously not as stupid as I’d thought.

  “I went to your room this morning to check on you. When you weren’t there, I figured it out. I knew you were on this ship somewhere. We didn’t have time for a thorough search before takeoff, so I decided to accompany you on your little adventure.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said and meant it.

  “It’s okay,” h
e said. I looked at him doubtfully. “Seriously. I’ve always wanted to see Earth. This excursion is a good opportunity for me, as well.”

  “So it’s a win-win,” I said with a little smile.

  He smiled back, and the effect it had on me was startling. My heart did a flip-flop in my chest, and my throat was tight. Either Julian's smile had an odd effect on me, or I was in the grip of an allergy attack.

  I pushed my hair behind my ears and tried to cover my embarrassment. I felt drained, emotionally, and physically, and didn’t know what to do anymore. Julian compounded those feelings.

  “What are we going to do for the next few weeks, just the two of us, all alone on this ship?” I asked, and realized it sounded weird. My cheeks got hot, and I stuttered. “I mean, it’s a long trip, and like I said, it’s only the two of us, and…oh, crap…”

  Julian laughed, a warm, husky sound. He leaned way back in his seat, long legs stretched out in front of him, elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin resting on his hand. The epitome of the casual male entirely at ease. I, on the other hand, felt wound up tighter than a top.

  “Thou art going to study.”

  I hadn’t expected his response. “Study?”

  “Thou art a royal princess of Vega, and yet you know nothing about your planet or your people.”

  I had to admit it was true. “I guess not.”

  “I will teach you about Vega, and you will teach me about Earth.” He rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Starting tomorrow.”

  To my surprise, I slept well, and it felt oddly comforting to know Julian slept in the room right next door to me. We were in the royal suite, which was elegant compared to the rest of the ship, but I’d gotten used to the gold and marble splendor of the palace at Celesta. The vessel seemed even duller and dingier by comparison than it had on the way here.

  The next morning, we ate breakfast with the crew. Captain Augustus refused to talk to me, although I apologized to him repeatedly and sincerely. The rest of the crew either treated me with mild curiosity or ignored me. Sort of the typical reaction I had come to expect from Vegonians in general, especially Vegonian men.

  Julian and I met in the library right after breakfast and got to work. He was amazingly knowledgeable about Vega’s history and made learning about it interesting.

  “The first Vegonians arrived on Earth thousands of years ago,” he said. I looked up at him in surprise. I’d been checking out a book about the mating habits of marmesou, which I found bizarre and yet fascinating.

  “What? How is that possible?”

  He handed me a book with a lot of old drawings and paintings inside. “Explorers from Vega crash-landed there and found it was a lovely planet with an environment similar to our own. They decided to settle there.”

  “What about the people already on Earth?” I flipped through the book, looking at paintings of Vegonians constructing pyramids in Egypt and South America, of Vegonians lecturing in Greek style robes, and of Vegonians signing the Declaration of Independence. The last one was a bit of a shock. I never suspected Ben Franklin was Vegonian.

  “They were primitive people. We helped them develop. We taught them about art and science and medicine. Even the English language is based on Vegonian, although it is no longer spoken in its truest form back on Earth. Traditional Vegonian is much closer at times to old English than to modern English,” he said.

  “Which explains why people use thou and thee and thine all the time.”

  “I am adjusting my Vegonian to make it easier for you to comprehend. The actual language would be more difficult.” I could tell he was trying to be patient. “Much like attempting to read a Shakespearean play.”

  “Thanks. I read King Lear in my English class last year. I would never have survived if it hadn’t been for SparkNotes.”

  “The point is we helped to make Earth into what it is today. We went back and forth between Vega and Earth for thousands of years. We had to be more discreet in the last century due to the creation of so many rockets and satellites and advanced radar systems on Earth, but we managed. The people of Earth never knew of our existence until fifteen years ago when we requested asylum for our refugees.”

  “How did it all happen?” I asked, still holding the book on my lap. This information was almost as exciting as the mating habits of marmesou.

  “Vegonians, who had been secretly living on Earth, approached various governments and also the United Nations. The officials there agreed our refugees, including your family, could stay there until it was safe to return. We thought it would be in the best interests of all involved if both parties remained quiet about it until the war ended and the Vegonians could leave. We didn’t want to risk anything happening to our queen or any of our citizens.”

  “That was nice of the Earth people.”

  “They insisted on one condition, however. We promised once the refugees returned to Vega, we would not return to Earth until Earth developed comparable technology. They were afraid we might try to take over if they granted us free access. They didn’t understand we are a peaceful people, and our visits to Earth were as much for the benefit of the people there as they were for our fellow Vegonians.”

  “Which is why this is the last ship to Earth.”

  “For now, at least. We have agreed to share a great deal of our technology with the scientists of Earth. Our assistance should help them catch up more quickly. Of course, we will have to monitor their progress from afar, but we will help if we can.”

  “Are there any Vegonians who will stay on Earth?” I asked, playing with the hem of my shirt. I had on my favorite skinny jeans and the cutest T-shirt showing a night sky with sequins for stars. I asked one of the crew members about washing my clothes this morning. He’d handed me a pile of Vegonian ladies’ clothing leftover from the last trip. I would rather wear nothing but my jeans for the next two weeks than put on any of those things. It was a matter of principle.

  Julian gave me a hard stare. “There are Vegonians who have lived on Earth a long time and will stay. Others are either part or half Vegonian who have no idea about their heritage. They will remain as well. You, however, are a royal princess of Vega. Thou art coming home.”

  I scowled at him and picked up my book on marmesous, trying to ignore Julian. He wouldn’t let me.

  “Why do you hate it so much?” he asked.

  I looked at the floor. I certainly wasn’t going to tell Julian I couldn’t stand being ugly. He would never understand.

  My English teacher back home in Middleton once told us we all have a defining characteristic. To help us understand fiction, she had the students in my class write what they thought of as their defining characteristic. She also made us write what we thought was the defining characteristic for the others in the class, to see if they were the same.

  Each of my classmates wrote the word “pretty” for me. At first, I thought it was great, but the more I considered it, the more I got worried, even though I’d chosen the same word to describe myself.

  When Astra had done the project the year before, her classmates had written many different things about her, words like kind, gentle, sweet, helpful, and intelligent. Truth be told, Astra had always had more redeeming qualities than me, but I’d never realized it until now.

  I’d always thought of beauty as the most important thing a person could possess. I knew I would get old eventually and have to work harder to maintain it, but I remained committed, proud because when people looked at me, they saw someone beautiful. Sadly, it turned out people noticed my beauty and not anything else. I’d become simply another pretty face, and on Vega, I wasn’t even cute. I’d turned into nothing, a big zero. Of course, I did not plan to share this with Julian.

  I turned back to my book. “I want my life back. I want to go home.”

  Julian yanked the book out of my hands and replaced it with another one. “Maybe you need to figure out where home truly is,” he said, his mouth a tight, straight line.

  I gla
nced at the cover of the book. All about the war on Vega, it seemed relatively new. When I looked up to tell Julian he wasn’t the boss of me and I would read whatever I wanted to read, he’d already left the room.

  I’d planned to put the awful book right back up on the shelf to spite Julian, but something made me open to the first page. Although the messed up Vegonian English was tricky at first, once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I sat in the library for hours and snuck into the cafeteria to grab a sandwich only after the others had left. I carried the book back to my room with me and read until dinnertime.

  The war on Vega had commenced because a man named Wayland Marcel had fallen in love with my mother. When my father, Marcus Valentine, won her affections, Wayland Marcel went back to his homeland in disgrace, vowing to destroy the Valentine family. It took him years to gather support, but soon he turned a spurned romance into a civil war. My frumpy, sweet, little mother was the Helen of Troy of Vegonian history.

  Wayland, a military man, eventually married Tarquinia Fortis, the daughter of a commanding general and landowner. He managed to convince the leaders of the Vegonian army my family was a threat. He falsified evidence to make it seem like my parents were destroying the peace and serenity of Vega.

  “We were all deceived by his words, and none of us understood his true nature until it was far too late,”

  I read aloud, thinking about how easy it would be to pull something over on the honest and trusting Vegonians. Because Vegonians never lied and had no experience with liars, they fell for Wayland’s tricks. Before long, only Celesta was safe. When Wayland’s army attacked, my parents decided it would be best for all Vegonians if they left. They boarded a refugee ship and came to Earth, disguised as average Vegonian citizens. They thought if they weren’t there, the terrible war would end and Vegonians would live in peace. They were wrong.

  Once they were gone, Wayland Marcel showed his true colors. He became so insane and unpredictable it was rumored his wife disguised herself and fled the planet on a refugee ship with their infant son to escape him.