She forced a fake smile onto her face. “It doesn’t matter. I’m so glad to see you, bestie.”
She leaned over the seat and locked her pinkie with mine. Our best friends’ handshake, the one we’d invented in kindergarten.
“I’d take Duke Julian as my little souvenir from Vega,” Brittany said. Her eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and a jolt went through my body. What I saw in Brittany’s eyes was even scarier than what I’d seen in Mandy’s. I looked away.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Brittany.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get used to being back. I missed you guys so much.”
I didn’t want to mention Vega or my whole ugliness problem. I suddenly had a strong and visceral urge to get far away from both Mandy and Brittany, but forced myself to ignore it. They’d been my best friends forever. What I experienced had to be a bad case of reverse culture shock, or maybe I was still recovering from the excessive amounts of caffeine and sugar I’d ingested earlier.
Things improved when we got to school. The attendance secretary immediately forgave Mandy and Brittany for leaving school to rescue me, and all the teachers seemed genuinely happy to see me. They asked lots of questions about Vega and Astra. I could tell they missed her. She’d been a model student after all. I’d been a model, a cardboard cutout of a girl with no substance at all.
As soon as I had that thought, I wondered where it came from. I’d always been pretty happy until I’d gone to Vega and my life had been ruined. I forced myself to look around the school and absorb the details. I wanted to feel good again, and I had always felt good at this school. I tried and tried, but those old feelings wouldn’t come back. Instead, I seemed as out of place here as I had on Vega.
The boys stared at me, as they always had, but I realized now it made me uncomfortable. I suddenly didn’t want people looking at my rear end and making catcalls as I walked past them. My face burned, especially when I understood some of the male teachers looked at me the same way.
I’d always used my cuteness to my advantage. I’d never hesitated to pour on the charm and flirt with anyone, student or teacher, to get what I wanted. Now it seemed wrong. The math teacher shouldn’t have let me flirt my way into a B in his class when I deserved a C. The nerdy hall monitor should have given me slips for loitering in the hallways, but he never did. But, most importantly, I shouldn’t have tried to get away with those things in the first place. I knew better, or at least I did now.
I spent the whole afternoon trying to find my inner perkiness, but I wasn’t feeling it. The one thing that even remotely cheered me up was the idea of Julian searching for me and being unable to find me. Imagining his panic was the only thing bringing a smile to my face.
There was a home football game scheduled right after school, and the cheerleaders asked me to join them in cheering for the team one last time. One of the girls, Krista, offered to lend me her spare uniform. She had extra shoes too. I was sure spending an evening doing what I did best would be exactly the thing to boost my spirits.
As I waited on a bench outside of the girls’ locker room for Krista, Astra’s friend Bess showed up. She sat on the seat next to me.
“Hi, Starr,” she said softly. A big girl, she didn’t seem as big as I remembered. I wondered if she was on a diet or something.
“Hi, Bess. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her face breaking into a huge smile. When she smiled, she looked almost pretty. Her eyes were soft and brown, and she had deep dimples in her cheeks.
“Could you give Astra this for me?” She handed me a small package and an envelope.
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t bother telling Bess I might not ever see Astra again. It would be a long conversation, and I couldn’t find the words.
Bess got up to leave, but I stopped her. “The scrapbook you made for Astra was beautiful. She loved it.”
Bess’s eyes filled with tears. She sat next to me on the bench again. “I miss her so much.” A tear rolled slowly down her cheek, and she wiped it away with her hand.
“I do too.” I almost wanted to cry with her. For once, I wasn’t bothered about my waterproof mascara. I’d forgotten to put mascara on today.
Bess and I had known each other for years, but for the first time, we truly talked. She shared some funny stories about Astra I’d never heard before, and I told her about life on Vega. By the time Krista came, we were laughing and crying at the same time. Krista gave me a strange look before handing me her spare uniform and shoes.
“You’d better get dressed, Starr.” Her voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and her makeup was so thick she could hardly blink. She didn’t even acknowledge Bess.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I said as she flounced into the locker room. She'd pulled her dark hair into a ponytail so tight it made her look like she’d had a facelift, and she wore enough hairspray to poke a hole in the ozone layer.
I looked at Bess after she left. “Wow. Was I the same way?”
Bess bit her lip. “Well…”
“You can tell me the truth.”
“Okay. You were worse.” She covered her mouth with her hand like she wanted to take back what she’d said. She looked so distraught I hugged her.
“It’s fine. You’re right. I was awful.”
“But you aren’t anymore.”
I smiled at her. “Thanks for saying so. I’ll give this to Astra for you.” I held up the package as I waved goodbye.
Bessie was a lovely person. I couldn’t understand why I’d never seen it before. I also couldn’t understand why my best friends seemed evil all of a sudden, or how I hadn’t realized the boys at my school were all a bunch of creepers. Something profound had changed. My entire world had shifted on its axis while I’d been on Vega. I just had to move it back.
Nine
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” William Shakespeare’s As You Like It
I felt marginally better after putting on the cheer uniform. Standard cheer wear, in navy blue and white, it consisted of a short skirt, and a sleeveless top with a big, white letter ‘M’ for Middleton High on the front. I’d helped choose the design, working with the uniform company to create something custom made and super cute. No matter what others might say, wearing a cheer skirt and spotless white sneakers was good for the soul.
The cheer boosters provided meals before games. Because so many of the girls on the squad were always on some kind of diet or another, we usually had plenty of extra food. It wasn’t a problem for me to join them for dinner.
I scarfed down my hoagie and chips before realizing the entire squad was staring at me as I ate. Most of the girls nibbled delicately on their food, but I’d ingested my whole sandwich in two bites. I wiped some Italian dressing off my face and dusted away the crumbs which had landed on the front of my uniform.
When I looked up, they were still watching me. “What?” I asked.
“You’re different,” said Mandy. A few of the other girls murmured in agreement.
“Look, we know you’re a princess,” said Brittany, tossing a lock of hair over her shoulder. “You don’t have to act weird.”
“What am I doing wrong?” I found a brownie at the bottom of my dinner bag and opened it as I spoke.
“That,” said Krista, pointing at the brownie. “You used to at least pretend to be on a diet.”
“You guys knew I was pretending?” I asked, my mouth full of brownie. “I’d thought I’d been so sneaky.”
“Of course, we knew,” Krista said. “We saw the chocolate wrappers in your locker, dummy.”
“Isn’t it strange you’re all so obsessed with food? You think about it way too much, and it’s unhealthy. Aren’t your parents worried?”
Krista glared at me. “My mother encourages me to watch my weight. I wouldn’t want to end up like Bessie the Cow out there.”
“Bessie is a nice girl,” I said, remembering how I’d c
alled her Bessie the Cow many, many times.
“Bessie is fat and not one of us,” said Mandy. “The old you would have realized that.”
I looked around at the girls assembled in front of me, so miserable and trapped in roles they thought they had to play. They were all thin and perfect and pretty, like me, and utterly clueless, like I had been. I saw no point in trying to reason with them. They wouldn’t understand.
“Thank you for being so worried about me,” I said as I searched for a diplomatic way to handle this situation. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m adjusting to being back. I love you guys.”
It worked. The whole cheer squad gathered me into a suffocating group hug. It lasted several seconds too long. As soon as they released me, the girls set to work, fixing my hair and makeup. It was like a form of group therapy. By the time they finished, I resembled Streetwalker Barbie but didn’t complain. It was their way of showing me kindness, sort of like how some monkeys in the jungle through poo at each other. I learned about it in a book on comparative zoology between the Earth and Vega I’d found on the transport ship. In this situation, the makeup was their poo.
We waited outside, pompoms in hand, as the football players went into the locker room after warming up. The girls immediately stuck out their chests and put on their brightest smiles. The boys barely acknowledged them. They played roles too, by acting cool and aloof.
Chad came up to me after most of the boys had already filed into the locker room. “Hi, Starr,” he said, and paused, looking flustered, before following his team. In an instant, I figured out Chad wasn’t strong and silent. He was dumb and silent.
“He is a bonehead,” I murmured to myself. “I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. He was never going to be my orthodontist.”
“Orthodontist?” asked Brittany with an evil little laugh. She’d noticed the attention Chad had given me and didn’t like it one bit. “Why would he want to be an orthodontist? He’s going to run his father’s used car dealership someday. It’s the biggest in the county. His family has money, which is why they think they’re better than anyone else. I learned all about it at homecoming.”
“Oh. I forgot. Homecoming was last weekend. Did you have fun?” I asked, surprised Brittany hadn’t mentioned it until now.
She gave me a nasty look and walked away. Julie, one of the quieter girls on the squad, came up to me and whispered in my ear. “Brittany got trashed, and Chad broke up with her in front of the whole school. It got ugly. We aren’t allowed to mention it ever again.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I whispered back.
The rest of the evening had a slightly surreal quality to it. Brittany, still angry with me, relished her new position as head cheerleader and decided to teach me a lesson. She pushed me off to the side, making me cheer with the freshmen while she stood in the middle and led the group, giving me snarky looks as she shook her pompoms and wiggled her bottom, but I couldn’t have cared less. I was happy to be relegated to the back. They’d already changed so many of the cheers; I felt lost. For the first time I could remember, I was grateful not to be in front.
I looked around and noticed most of the cheerleaders seemed bored. Between cheers, they stared at their nails and chatted amongst themselves. When I’d cheered, I’d thought it was so much fun, but now I wondered if I’d looked bored most of the time too. Also, I didn’t see any of them watching the game, although it may have been a good thing. The Middleton Badgers were losing terribly.
The noise of the crowd deafened me, and I felt strange, with so many eyes glued to my legs and my breasts. People didn’t even try to be subtle. They stared without any shame. And once they realized I wasn’t only Starr, pretty blonde cheerleader but also Starr, Princess from Vega, things got even worse, and a little scary. The crowd pressed forward, blocking me into the small area reserved for cheerleaders near the football field. We stood behind a waist-high fence, but I knew it would offer little protection if anyone in the crowd tried to get to me. When I heard someone call my name, I decided I’d better sneak away before the word got out and the evening news showed up. I saw our mascot, the Middleton Badger, dancing on the sidelines, and had a flash of inspiration.
“Timmy,” I shouted into the Badger’s mouth, the only way the boy in the suit could hear anything. He suffered from complete sensory deprivation while inside the mascot costume.
“Hi, Starr.” I could barely hear his muffled response. Timmy and I went way back. I’d saved his life once when he’d wandered onto the football field when the ball was in play. He’d owed me ever since.
“Could you do me a favor?” I explained what I needed, and he immediately agreed.
During the confusion at halftime, I slipped behind the snack shack with Timmy. He took off the mascot suit, grimacing as he handed it over. “Sorry if it smells. It was hot tonight.” The t-shirt and shorts he wore dripped with sweat.
“No problem.” I slipped the mascot suit on over my cheer uniform, disguising myself as a giant badger in a Middleton football jersey. “You’re saving my life, Timmy.”
“I owed you one,” he said with a grin. I smiled back at him before putting on the big, badger head.
I’d been right to be concerned. As soon as I stepped out from behind the snack shack, I saw news crews from as far away as Cleveland hanging out on the sidelines, looking for me. I knew it wouldn’t be long before Julian figured it out and came to get me, so I snuck away as quickly as I could. Fortunately, no one paid attention when the mascot snuck out of the stadium. They were all searching for Princess Starr.
The town seemed deserted as I strolled around in my giant badger uniform, since most of the citizens of Middleton remained at the game. The mascot suit smelled funny, and I had zero peripheral vision, but I didn’t care. I was despondent, a new emotion for me.
I walked for what seemed like hours, but it must not have been quite so long because the game had just finished when I found myself standing on the sidewalk, staring at my house through the eyeholes in the mouth of the Middleton Badger. I could hear people approaching, so I snuck into the backyard and sat on the big wooden swing, the same swing I’d sat on with Astra the night before we left for Vega.
“And those are the same stars,” I murmured. Of course, I couldn’t see them well with the giant badger head on, but I knew they were the same. They hadn’t changed, but I now saw them through different eyes.
I heard Julian come up to the swing before I saw him. I didn’t say anything. I continued rocking back and forth. He sank down next to me, and we sat on the swing in silence for a long time before he spoke.
“Dressing as a woodland creature to evade me,” he said, his voice deep and rich in the darkness. “Thou art clever.”
“I art,” I said, taking off the badger head. I stood up and removed the furry badger body as well before sitting on the swing next to him. My hair was a disaster, and my makeup was a mess too. Bits of badger fuzz stuck to my sweaty skin. I tried to pick them off.
“I am sorry, Princess Starr Valentine,” Julian said softly.
I looked at him in surprise. I thought I would be the one apologizing. It seemed to be my new hobby.
“For what?”
“I hurt you, and insulted you, and acted in a way not befitting a gentleman,” he said.
“Why did you?” I asked, not looking at him.
As long as I kept my eyes on the stars and continued rocking, I knew I wouldn’t cry. Things hadn’t worked out as I’d planned, and my life felt like a sandcastle on the beach. It crumbled away in my fingers, and nothing I could do would hold it together.
“I do not like the way the men look at you here. It…bothers me,” he said.
That struck me as strange, but I decided not to pursue it. Julian apologized. I’d had all the surprises I could handle today.
“Can I tell you something?” I glanced at Julian out of the corner of my eye, and he nodded. “You asked once why I was so unhappy on Vega. Well, I want you to know.�
�
“You don’t have to tell me this, Starr. It was wrong of me to ask.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I leaned back against the swing and stared up at the sky. The moon shone full and bright tonight, gorgeous and glowing, but it looked kind of lonely after the three moons of Vega. “When I lived here on Earth, people thought I was beautiful. On Vega, people don’t feel the same way.”
It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to admit. Even harder was the silence following my confession. Julian cleared his throat before speaking.
“Have your parents ever explained the gift of Vegonian Vision?” he asked.
I shook my head. Vegonian Vision sounded like an eyewear store. “My parents never tell me anything. They’re so used to keeping secrets they don’t know when to stop.”
Julian turned and faced me, his body only inches from mine. His eyes looked as dark as the night sky above as he spoke.
“On Vega, we’re given a remarkable gift. The ability to see people as they truly are,” he said, “and the better a person is, the kinder and the wiser, the better they look to us.”
“What do you mean?”
Julian thought for a moment. “Here on Earth, you have to get to know someone before you can tell if they are kind or cruel, honest or a liar. Isn’t that true?”
“Yes, it is.” I had no idea where this was going.
“It isn’t the same way on Vega. We know as soon as we see someone what their character is like, as easily as we can see their hair color or eye color,” he said. “The better a person is on the inside, the better they look on the outside.”
I stared at him in shock. I was in some serious trouble if this were true. “Do all Vegonians have this gift? Because with the way my luck is going, I bet I have a birth defect. I’m the only Vegonian in existence without this Vegonian Vision thing.”
Starr Valentine Page 8
