Gemma and the Ultimate Standoff

by Ahmet Zappa

  “Well, girls, this is quite a momentous day, indeed,” Lady Stella began as they all settled into their chairs, which immediately adjusted to their respective heights and weights for optimum comfort. The headmistress raised her long, delicate glass. “I cannot begin to tell you how pleased I am with what you’ve each accomplished. Thanks to your hard work and diligence in completing your wish missions, there is now more positive wish energy on Starland than ever before!”

  The girls all exchanged excited glances, beaming with pride as they too raised their glasses and each took a sip. “Star salutations, Lady Stella!” they replied in almost perfect unison.

  “And to you,” Lady Stella said softly as she cut into the cake, serving each girl a generous slice and encouraging them to eat—which they were more than happy to do. After all, it was highly unusual for young Starlings to be permitted to have dessert before dinner!

  As the girls happily chatted, reminiscing about some of the best parts of their missions, Lady Stella glanced around the table at each one of them with a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” Tessa asked the headmistress between bites.

  Lady Stella pressed her bright red lips together before attempting a smile. But it was no use. She couldn’t pretend with them. “Star Darlings…” she said, inhaling deeply and closing her eyes for a moment, “we do have much to celebrate—but I suppose I should also tell you that even greater challenges may lie ahead for us all.”

  The celebratory mood in the air suddenly became thick with nervous energy. What was the headmistress referring to, exactly?

  “As you know, everyone at Starling Academy was completely deceived by Lady Cordial, who was our Director of Admissions. She was someone I trusted and valued as one of my closest confidantes.” Lady Stella sighed and shook her head as she stared down at the table. “I genuinely believed that she was our friend—but, in fact, she was not Lady Cordial at all. She was Rancora in disguise.”

  As soon as Lady Stella mentioned that dreaded name, the golden light in the Wish-Cavern flickered and dimmed ever so slightly, and the Star Darlings all felt an icy chill run down their spines. They frowned and nodded solemnly. Although they had managed to avoid discussing Lady Cordial for the past week, they of course knew that at some point her name—and the far more terrifying name of Rancora—would come up again. They had simply hoped it wouldn’t be quite so soon.

  “But she’s gone now,” Gemma pointed out, her wavy orange ponytail glimmering.

  “Well, yes, she has left Starling Academy—that’s true,” Lady Stella acknowledged. “However, we don’t know where she’s gone or what she might be planning to do next. So, although I’m hopeful that she’ll keep her distance and stay far, far away from the school grounds, I believe that she may be planning something bigger—something that will place Starland in even greater danger.”

  “Wh-what could be more dangerous than the negative energy she was releasing?” asked Cassie, who began trembling so much that she had to set down her fork.

  “Yeah—and how much more can she really do?” Vega wondered. “You said that there’s more positive wish energy on Starland than ever before—plus, we already defeated her, when we united our twelve power crystals. Won’t that be enough to stop Rancora again, even if she tries to do something else?”

  “That is my hope—but I’m still trying to find the missing page that I believe Rancora, or, rather, Lady Cordial, stole from the oracle,” Lady Stella replied, referring to the ancient text that foretold of the twelve girls and the role they would play in saving Starland in the first place. “While I spend the next few days continuing my search, I suggest that you all put this out of your minds and get some rest. You’ve been through so much and will be needing your energy—not only for your studies, but in the event that I require your assistance again. Of course, that will depend on what I’m able to find out.”

  While the girls quietly pondered everything Lady Stella had said, she tried to encourage them to continue their celebration, offering them more cake and juice. But Tessa was the only one who still had any sort of an appetite left.

  “I’m sorry, girls,” Lady Stella said with a frown. “I hadn’t intended to bring this up with you today—but it’s important for you to be aware of the potential challenges that may lie ahead. Try not to worry too much. I will come up with a solution.”

  “We know you will,” said Libby, her bright pink eyes gleaming with positive energy. “And we can help as soon as you need us!”

  “Yes!” agreed Clover, lightly tapping the rim of her purple fedora. “We’ll do whatever it takes. Right, Star Darlings?”

  “Right!” the girls all cheered.

  But as they got up from their comfy chairs and shuffled out of the Wish-House, the mood was anything but cheery.

  The next morning, every last one of the Star Darlings woke up early. In fact, most of them had hardly slept at all. Vega had been especially restless, plagued by nightmares about Rancora, with her piercing purple eyes and ashen skin and hair, the blazing pink collar of her long, tattered gray gown rising behind her head like the fiery flames of doom. Sitting up in bed, Vega leaned back against her headboard and began to record holo-notes on her Star-Zap about everything she had observed about Lady Cordial. She still couldn’t believe that the frumpy-dumpy director of admissions had been the evil Rancora in disguise all that time!

  “You couldn’t sleep, either?” Piper asked in a soft ethereal voice from her side of the room as she pushed off her cozy aqua comforter and pulled her long seafoam-green hair up into a high ponytail.

  “No.” Vega rubbed her blue eyes and shook her head. Her chin-length cobalt bob looked perfect as ever, in spite of the fact that she was still in bed. “I can’t stop thinking about Lady Cordial—or, you know, Rancora. I should have realized that she might still be plotting something terrible.”

  “I know.” Piper slid on her fluffy slippers, closed her eyes, and took several deep, cleansing breaths. “I’ve been having visions ever since Lady Stella mentioned her name yesterday.”

  Vega wrinkled her nose. Sometimes Piper’s visions could be kind of out there—but other times they had proven to be right on target. “What kind of visions?”

  “Well…” Piper took a few more deep breaths. “It’s kind of scary.”

  “Tell me!” Vega demanded.

  “All right. I saw Rancora in a big dark cloud—but she kept changing into Lady Cordial and then back into herself,” Piper recounted. “Every time she changed into Rancora, she tried to pull us into the cloud, too, and she kept saying she wanted us to join forces with her.”

  “Us—who is us?” Vega’s eyes darkened with worry.

  “All twelve of us—the Star Darlings,” Piper said.

  “Oh, my stars!” Vega jumped out of bed and began pacing around the room. “What if you’re right? What if she tries to turn us into her negative energy minions? Her toxic trainees! We need to figure out exactly what Rancora is planning and find a way to stop her—like, now.”

  Piper widened her eyes, mystified by Vega’s words. “But Lady Stella said she was going to search for the missing page from the oracle and then figure out what needs to be done. She told us we needed to wait to hear from her. She said we needed to rest up so we could get our energy back.”

  “I know,” Vega said tersely. “But I don’t want to sit around waiting—or resting—when we could be helping. We don’t want to be caught off guard, right? The more prepared we are the better!”

  Piper shrugged and sat back in bed while Vega raced around her side of the room, grabbing her toothlight and rushing out to take a sparkle shower. Within minutes, she was back and getting dressed in a shiny blue blazer over a matching tunic, with sparkly tights and ankle boots.

  “What are you going to do?” Piper asked.

  “We need to go to the Illumination Library!” Vega informed her.

  “The library? Why?” Piper looked blankly at her roommate.

>   “So we can try to figure out exactly where Rancora came from,” Vega explained. “There’s got to be a holo-book there that will point us in the right direction! Hurry up and get ready. I’ll holo-text everyone to meet us there!”

  “Okay,” Piper agreed reluctantly.

  A few of the Star Darlings were already out in front of the Illumination Library when Vega and Piper showed up, some looking more awake than others.

  “What’s this all about?” asked Adora, who was flawlessly styled, as usual, in shimmering indigo leggings with knee-high boots and a chic fitted dress, her pale blue hair piled high in a fashionably messy updo.

  “Yeah, what’s happening?” echoed Adora’s roommate, Tessa, stifling a yawn as she popped the last bite of a glorange-spice muffin into her mouth.

  “I’ll tell you when the others get here,” Vega replied, tapping her foot as she stared impatiently across the Star Quad. Finally, she could see the rest of the girls moving toward the library on the Cosmic Transporter.

  “What’s up?” Libby asked when she arrived. “We got here as fast as we could!”

  “Piper and I were up all night, thinking about the whole Lady Cordial—or Rancora—situation,” Vega explained as the others all gathered round. “Piper had a vision that Lady Cordial kept turning into Rancora and was trying to pull us into some sort of dark cloud, insisting she wanted us to join forces with her or something.”

  “Seriously?” Scarlet crossed her arms in frustration. “You called us all the way here to tell us that?”

  “No.” Vega glared at Scarlet, whose short fuchsia hair was slightly messy from sleep. “I called you here because obviously there’s a lot more to Rancora than any of us realize, and we need to know more about her if we’re going to figure out what she might be planning to do to us—or to Starland—next. Lady Stella may be doing her own research, but I think we should start doing a bit of our own, too!”

  “What kind of research?” asked Libby, always eager to help in any way she could.

  “Well, for starters, we should see what we can find out about Lady Cordial, since that’s who Rancora was in disguise,” Vega proposed.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Sage noted. “There’s got to be some information about her in the faculty pages of the school staryearbooks.”

  “Exactly!” Vega agreed.

  “I don’t see how that’s going to help,” Scarlet protested. “What are the staryearbooks going to tell us that we—and especially Lady Stella—don’t already know?”

  “I say we give it a try,” Leona chimed in, giving her shiny golden curls a confident pat. “If we do find out something useful, Lady Stella will think we’re even bigger stars than we already are.”

  “I agree,” said Sage.

  “Me too.” Tessa nodded.

  “Ugh. Fine.” Scarlet rolled her eyes, giving in only after all the others had voiced their support.

  “Excellent,” Vega said with a smile, leading the way into the library.

  With most of the Starling Academy campus still asleep, it was even quieter inside than usual. The twelve girls made their way through the vast stacks of holo-books and up the winding staircase to the section where the staryearbooks were located. The tomes contained holo-images of every student and faculty member who had ever been at Starling Academy, along with detailed records of everything that had happened during each school staryear since the very first class had enrolled.

  “So what are we looking for, exactly?” asked Gemma, accessing the holo-pages of a recent staryearbook as she sat down on a plush orange couch and began scanning through them. “This says Lady Cordial has been at Starling Academy for two years and she’s helped to make the school what it is today.”

  “Ha—only because nothing’s been written about us yet!” Leona grinned proudly while Vega sat down next to Gemma and tapped on the image of Lady Cordial, eager to see if anything more useful might pop up.

  Alas, all she saw was the director of admissions shuffling from her office to Lady Stella’s office, then back to her office, with an occasional moment where she spilled something or tripped. That was helping to make the school what it was today?

  “There has to be more information about her than this,” Vega said with a frown, taking the book from Gemma and scrolling through it some more.

  “I’m kind of with Scarlet—even if we found more information about Lady Cordial, what would it really tell us?” asked Adora, sitting down next to Vega. “Isn’t Rancora the one we need to investigate?”

  “Yes, but they’re one and the same,” Vega pointed out as she continued to scroll through the pages, moving farther and farther back in time.

  “True, but we might find something more informative—something she was hiding—if we go to her office, or maybe even her old residence in Prof Row,” Adora pointed out.

  “Adora’s probably right,” Sage agreed.

  “She’s totally right!” Scarlet said.

  “Oh, my stars!” Piper suddenly called out. She had wandered off and found a much older staryearbook, which she was now gazing at in wide-eyed wonder.

  “What?” Vega asked, leaping up from the couch and racing over to grab the holo-book from her roommate before returning to the couch with it.

  “What is it, Vega?” Sage asked, positioning herself behind Vega so she could get a better view.

  “It’s…it’s…Lady Stella!” Vega gasped as she glanced over at Piper. “Right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Piper nodded.

  “So?” Scarlet huffed.

  “No—I mean, it’s Lady Stella when she was our age,” Vega elaborated. “When she was just…student Stella.”

  That was enough to distract everyone from the task at hand, at least for the moment.

  “Oooh! I want to see!” Gemma grabbed the book from Vega and studied the holo-page intently.

  Even Scarlet leaned in a little closer to see the photo of two teenage girls with their hands clasped. The tall sophisticated one with long golden-pink hair and a Bright Day crown on her head was most certainly a younger version of their headmistress.

  “Holy stars,” exclaimed Adora, reaching over to grab the book from Gemma. “Look how super celestial that dress is! And those boots! She was so beautiful, even back then.”

  “She and her friend look so happy,” Gemma noticed.

  “C’mon, guys,” Scarlet said. “Looking at old holo-photos of Lady Stella won’t help us figure out anything about Lady Cordial or Rancora or whatever you want to call her.”

  “I’m actually getting a strange feeling this staryearbook is really important,” murmured Piper.

  “Piper thinks this is important. Let’s take a quick look,” Adora urged. “Then we can go check out Lady Cordial’s office. It’s not like we have to be in class for a while, anyway.”

  “Actually, I think we should do more than take a quick look,” Vega said. “As long as we’re going into this old staryearbook, I might as well holo-hack into it. That way, it’ll automatically link us to any important info from any other relevant holo-document, like a journal or letter.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool, Vega,” said Cassie, impressed with Vega’s tech skills.

  So, as the girls all gathered around, Vega tapped on the image of young Stella, and a holographic video detailing her time at Starling Academy—long before she became headmistress—began to play before their eyes….

  Shana Muldoon Zappa is a jewelry designer and writer who was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has an endless imagination and a passion to inspire positivity through her many artistic endeavors. She and her husband, Ahmet Zappa, collaborated on Star Darlings especially for their magical little girl and biggest inspiration, Halo Violetta Zappa.

  Ahmet Zappa is the New York Times best-selling author of Because I’m Your Dad and The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless. He writes and produces films and television shows and loves pancakes, unicorns, and making funny faces for Halo and Shana.

   

  Ahmet Zappa, Gemma and the Ultimate Standoff