Leona''s Unlucky Mission (5 page)

“Right…okay…for me…What are you having?” Leona asked Piper, eyeing the glossy emerald tendrils piled on her plate.

“Who, me? Oh, a starweed salad.”

Leona scrunched up her nose. “Hmn…I'll pass. What about you?” She turned to Gemma.

“Me? A druderwomp burger,” said Gemma, moving in for another bite.

“Ah! Now that's a vegetable I like! I think I'll have that, a druderwomp burger—well done—with extra mooncheese. I haven't had that before, have I?”

The Bot-Bot waiter scanned its memory to check. “No,” it replied decidedly. “Never with extra cheese.”

“Starmendous. Star salutations.” Leona thanked their server with a wave.
“Soooo?”
she went on, gazing around. “Where's everyone else?”

“Well, we know where Scarlet's
not
,” said Gemma as a glob of bright-orange mustardia-blossom sauce dribbled down her chin and onto her shirt. She glanced down, not sure where to wipe, since it was the same color as her top.

“Well,
that
I knew,” said Leona. “You do know she's moved out of my room?”

“Really!” said Gemma. “Already!”

Leona nodded. “Completely. Everything's gone. Not a speck of hot pink or black. It's like she was never there.” She smiled.

“Ah, but she was. Don't forget that,” said Piper.

“Uh, I wasn't going to. But star salutations.”

Piper tossed her pale green hair over her shoulder. “You're welcome,” she replied.

Cassie spoke up. “Well, Scarlet still has to eat. Even if she's not a Star Darling, she's still a student. Is she sitting with someone else?”

The dining room was so vast it was hard to identify each and every sparkling face. But Scarlet had always stood out in a crowd in her palette of hot pink and jet black. The four Star Darlings scanned the wavy rows of tables. One by one, each shook her head. If Scarlet had been in the café, they would have spotted her in the rainbow of students, without a doubt.

“It wouldn't be the first meal she ever skipped,” said Leona. “You know how antisocial she can be. Honestly, I never could see how Lady Stella ever sensed Star Darling potential in her, let alone see her granting wishes.”

“Well, don't tell Libby that,” Gemma warned. “She's really upset about the whole thing. And her stars get out of line so easily lately. You'd think a successful mission would have helped, but
nooooo
,” Gemma groaned. “Honestly, I don't know how much longer I can room with her.”

“Hey, here come Clover and Astra,” observed Piper, pointing with her chin.

Leona and the others turned, eager to find out what news the second-year roommates might have. If they did have any, though, it didn't look like it was very good.

“What's wrong?” Cassie asked as they reached the table.

Clover shrugged and nodded toward Astra. “Ask her.”

“No, ask her.” Astra slid her warm auburn eyes to Clover. “Seriously, what were we fighting about again?”

“Well…if I remember correctly, you were cheating.”

“But I wasn't.”

“But you were.”

“Oh, just admit it, Astra,” Gemma cut in. “Everyone knows you hate to lose.”

Astra glared down her nose at the ginger-haired Starling. Her own flame-red hair flickered indignantly. “That doesn't mean I'd cheat, Gemma. Who asked you, anyway?”

“Could somebody please start from the beginning?” said Cassie.

“It's no big deal,” said Clover, shrugging the whole episode away. She shook off her plum jacket and tossed it over the back of her chair. With a flick of her head, she shook her violet bangs out of her eyes and sank into her seat. “I'm not even mad…anymore….We were playing a friendly game of holo-cards in our room, and Astra cheated. The end.”

“But I didn't cheat,” groaned Astra. “I mean, what kind of Starling do you think I am? Besides, Clover, I didn't even need to cheat to win. You tried to shoot the moon when you knew I'd broken hearts.”

“Let's just forget about it,” said Clover, bowing her head.

“You know, I was kind of missing having a roommate,” said Leona, chuckling. “But not so much anymore.”

“It's not funny,” Piper said, leaning intently over her salad. “I don't know if you Starlings have noticed it, but lately I've been sensing a lot of tension in the air, including from my own roommate, Vega. She wasn't talking to me this morning when she left. In fact”—Piper frowned and slowly sat back—“I wonder if that's why she's not here, because she's still so mad…”

“Like Tessa and Adora!” exclaimed Cassie.

“What about Tessa?” Gemma's ears glistened at her sister's name.

By that time, though, a duo of Bot-Bot waiters had returned to take Clover's and Astra's orders and serve Leona's and Cassie's food.

“Mmm! Star salutations!” Leona licked her lips and used her wish energy manipulation skills to mentally flick open her napkin, a crisp cloth square, which she then laid across her lap. “Could we worry about all that stuff later and worry about eating right now?” she begged.

In the end,
there was no discussion of Star Darlings tension, because the rest of the girls soon arrived and the talk at the lunch table shifted quickly to Scarlet and her dismissal and, most important, what it meant. Did it really matter that there were only eleven of them now?

“I don't see why it would,” Leona said. “We'll just all go on more missions. We can pick up one Starling's slack. Especially a Starling like Scarlet. I never trusted her anyway.”

“Oh, Leona!” Libby's eyes flashed protectively across the table. “That's a terrible thing to say.”

“Star apologies,” muttered Leona. “But you didn't live with her….I'm just saying I wasn't surprised.”

Sage, meanwhile, tugged on her lavender braids, thinking. “Remember what Lady Stella told us all when she met with us for the first time? If we didn't want to be part of this mission, she would find another Starling who did. What if she's finding another one right now to make us twelve again?”

“Maybe…” Vega nodded.

“Well, I'm going to miss her,” Libby said, “even if she did say more with her drums than she ever did with her mouth. I mean, she used to—”

“Wait! Hold your stars! What did you say?” Leona gasped. How in the universe had she gone so long without considering what losing Scarlet really and truly might mean?

“What are you talking about?” asked Libby.

“Drums!” Leona gulped. “Maybe our mission can succeed without Scarlet. But what about my band?”

Leona had hoped against hope that Scarlet would show up for their usual band practice, but she didn't, to no one's surprise. The rest of them—Sage on guitar, Vega on bass, Libby on keytar, and Leona on vocals—waited for a few starmins in their Lightning Lounge rehearsal room, tuning up and trading riffs.

Suddenly, a scowling face framed by blue bangs appeared in the doorway, which Leona had left open—for Scarlet, she had hoped. She regretted the mistake immediately and reached out the hand that wasn't holding her microphone to wave the rehearsal room door closed.

Unfortunately, because Vivica, the nosy Starling, was standing in its way, the door politely refused to close on her, which was how doors on Starland worked.

“We're busy,” Leona growled.

Her bandmates nodded.

Vivica was just about the only Starling at Starling Academy who no one liked having around.

“Busy doing what? Not making music, that's for sure,” Vivica said, laughing. She closed her eyes, enjoying her joke.

“What we need is a little privacy,” snapped Leona.

“We're rehearsing,” Libby explained. She even flashed Vivica a generous star-salutations-for-understanding-now-please-get-out-of-here grin.

Instead of backing out of the doorway, though, Vivica glided in.

“Oh…is this your little band?” She fired a look at each of them: Libby, Vega, Sage, and Leona. “I thought you had a drummer, too.”

“She's late.” “She quit.” “She's missing.” “We do.”

The whole band answered Vivica at the same time with four different replies.

“Huh?”

“We don't need a drummer, if that's what you're wondering,” said Leona.

Quickly, her bandmates agreed.

“We're good.”

“All good.”

“Thanks, though,” said Libby, who could never stop trying to please.

“I know how badly you wanted to be in the band,” Leona said, trying to sound sympathetic as she tossed her mic from hand to hand. “Sorry you didn't make it.” She shrugged. “But there's always starchoir, I guess.”

Vivica had tried out for the band, along with the hydrongs of other Starlings who had turned up.

Leona could still remember the knots that had formed in her stomach when Vivica stepped onto the band shell to audition—for lead vocals, Leona's own part, no less! Fortunately, the Ranker knew what it was doing and Leona made the band. She'd had to wait stardays for the results, though—the longest stardays of her life.

She could only imagine how disappointed Vivica had been.
She seems to be taking it pretty well now, though,
Leona thought, studying her.

“So, um, this practicing you're doing…when will it be over?” Vivica asked. “I'm wondering because my band needs the practice room today, too.”

“Your what?” Leona gasped.

“My band. What?” Vivica's sky-blue lashes fluttered innocently. The ice-blue eyes behind them were less naive. “You think you're the only Starling who can start one? I asked Professor Langtree if the Ranker could rank a second band from the auditions, and she said, ‘Sure, why not?'” Vivica's thin blue-lipped smile spread like a stain across her face until it almost reached her ears. “I decided to call it Vivica and the Visionaries. I'm the lead singer, of course, so it makes sense.”

Leona didn't turn to see the rest of the band's reaction to this. Her own shock and rage were too strong. “Vivica? And the Visionaries?”

“It's a little more catchy than Star Darlings, don't you think?”

No.
What Leona thought was that it was startlingly similar to the name she'd planned to give her own band before the Ranker had named them: Leona and the Luminaries. She'd even started a fan page for them on StarBook before she knew it wouldn't be used. She'd still had hope the band could change names at some point, but how could they now, when Vivica's band's name was almost the same?

She probably saw the page!
Leona thought suddenly.
She probably picked that name out of blue-hearted spite!

“Anyway,”
said Vivica, still smiling. “You know, right, that you can only have the rehearsal room for a starhour, max?”

Leona didn't.

“I knew that,” Vega said.

“And since it sounds like you can use all the practice time you can get, I guess we'll just come back in a starhour, then.”

And with that Vivica turned, her long pale blue hair swinging behind her back. Leona closed the door with a swipe of her arm, leaving sparks where her hand sliced the air.

“Starf!”
said Vega. “Two bands. After all these years with none.”

“
Grrr!
Can we just play some music,” Leona roared, grabbing the mic, “and not talk about other bands!”

Vega gave her bass a halfhearted twirl and started to pluck it, then looked around. “Who's going to count us in?” she asked.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Leona huffed, “I will. We'll do ‘Heart of a Glion'—on three. A-one, a-two…” She clapped, once, then twice….

On “three,” they began.

“Stop!” Leona yelled, half a verse in. “I can't sing to this. You're all over the place!”

“We need a backbeat,” Sage said, sighing.