5
Starla
Gia’s hotel room looks just like Starla’s next door. There’s a single bed and a cot that folds out, a nightstand, a single dressing bench that used to pull out of the wall but is now permanently stuck open. The bathroom is down the hall, which Starla expected from the places she’d stayed with her parents out in Durga’s Belt but Gia has been complaining about.
Gia slumps onto the foot of her bed with a sigh; Starla rummages through Gia’s duffel for the med kit. A thousand questions are running through her mind, but she knows better than to ask. Gia’s not going to say a damn thing if she doesn’t want to — their weeks together have hardly been full of heart-to-hearts, and that’s even less likely now that Mona is sitting in the corner of the room.
Mona, though, has no such reserva
