The Millennial Box by Julie Steimle (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

put down his text. "The writer of the first poem wrote about unrequited love. Yes, unreturned love. He pines in the poem, and makes his offers. The second poem was written with a different viewpoint, which Miss Henderson points out quite well. The writer doesn't think his love is lasting and rejects his offers." He smiled at the class. "You have seen two sides of the coin. Like dating," he added with a laugh, "You often feel the pain of one side, but both sides have a legitimate point. The boy is trying to get the girl, and fails. The girl wants something a bit more substantial and rejects him."

The class waited. They knew he had a writing assignment planned, and he was leading up to it.

"I want you to write your own interpretation of these poems and relate it to your dating experience," their teacher pronounced at last.

The class moaned.

"I want you to write about your failures or successes. Whose view do you think is right? Hers or his? Are they both right? Or is only one right?" He then looked over at the lot of them, moving to sit in his chair for the remainder of the class. "I want at least an entire page on this one. No quick answers. Support your claims and quote from the poems. This paper will be worth two papers so make it good."

They all moaned again, but it really was no use to fight it. His students settled down and started to write.

Zormna glared at the text and thought, propping up her book on the back of the chair in front of her. She had already taken her side and knew what she was going to write. As she did this, Jeff looked at her and sighed. He glanced down at his own blank sheet of notebook paper and attempted to formulate his thoughts, but the thought of his sonnet still plagued him as he struggled to write.

Zormna's History teacher was wearing a tacky green jumper in class that day. It had a fur trimmed collar and fur along the cuffs, but it did look rather warm. Miss Bianchi had on a red knitted hat that had three jingle bells dangling from the end with a fake holly leaves attached to the tip with plastic berries.

Zormna sat down in her seat and watched her teacher write something on the chalkboard. She had pinned a beat-up butcher paper banner decorated with construction paper holly leaves and berries with large words emblazoned on it that said 'Christmas Around the World.' Miss Bianchi continued to write, not paying attention to the stares, jingling with each step. Jennifer McLenna gazed at the teacher also when she walked into the room and took the seat in front of Zormna. Their other friends joined them. Michelle Clay was still giving Zormna the eye and a smirk, but she gaped at her teacher and nudged Stacey. Jessica blinked at their teacher dazedly and sat in her chair.

"Just wait," she said, "She'll make us all be elves for the 'Christmas Around the World' and we'll have to serve food to all the parents that come."

Jennifer nodded with a slump in her chair. Their teacher was a crazy party planner.

Miss Bianchi turned around and smiled at them. Her eyes were shining, and her frizzy hair seemed especially festive. "Today is the day to sign up!" she declared, grinning like a Cheshire cat. "I hope you are all ready to do your part."

She walked to the front desk where she picked up a stack of papers from a manila folder and took the top sheet. Lifting it, she said, "I want all of you to sign up for something. You have to participate to get your final grade, and you can't pass on this one."

When she said this, she stared right at Zormna. With almost every class project to date, Zormna had protested. And for good reason. Most of what Miss Bianchi did was multi-cultural - but that meant Earth culture, which Zormna knew almost nothing about. And worse, the teacher always wanted them to share things from their own backgrounds - which in Zormna's case was a made-up alibi about her being from Ireland. Zormna hardly knew anything about Ireland. Besides, on top of that, they were all embarrassing. Zormna had to dress up like a leprechaun for the culture fair, representing Ireland. And she had to wear a German bar maid's uniform during Oktoberfest. So it was only too likely that Jessica was right, that she would be an elf for the Christmas Around the World celebration, and she would be made to greet people so she would be properly humiliated.

Zormna sulked in her seat. Her teacher really was utterly obnoxious.

"Now," Miss Bianchi announced, "Let's get to business. We just read about the Presidency of Andrew Jackson and what..."

"Honestly, Zormna, what did you expect?" Jennifer said, moving her pincers so she could pull back the skin on the frog they had been dissecting in Biology.

Zormna made a face and pinned the skin to the wax pan. "I was hoping that I could skip it because I have never celebrated Christmas."

Shaking her head and drawing what the frog intestine looked like, Jennifer replied, "Really Zormna, if you are going to stick with your story that you're Irish, shouldn't you at least pretend to be Catholic?"

Zormna peevishly shook her head. "No. First off, that's a lie. Secondly, I read that some Irish are Protestant - as you thought I was when we first met. Besides, I don't see why I have to claim either."

"You have to because it sounds better. That and it is part of your grade." Jennifer pulled out the liver and placed it on the side of the pinned down frog.

Cringing, Zormna extracted the fatty tissue from the sides with tweezers.

"I don't see why we have to cut up these things," Zormna muttered under her breath.

"Because their anatomy resembles that of humans. You should know that," Jennifer replied.

Zormna was turning a faint shade of green when she extracted and labeled the lungs. "Sick."

Jennifer nodded, smirking. Then she looked up at Zormna and wondered.

"Zormna, what kind of celebrations do you have?" Jennifer asked. "Since obviously you don't have Christmas. And you guys aren't Muslim or anything...am I right?"

Going greenish-white, Zormna swallowed and nodded assertively, trying not to get sick on the frog.

"So?" Jennifer waited.

Swallowing and blinking back from the stench of formaldehyde, Zormna said, "I'm really not at liberty to discuss this sort of thing. The FBI could still be listening in, you know."

Jennifer nodded, making a face.

Yet Zormna whispered, "Well, actually I was born on a holiday. It is the biggest holiday of the year. It celebrates the Summer Solstice." Zormna placed down the tweezers she had been holding and picked up her pencil to jot down her notes. "We eat cakes and give flowers on that day. It starts a month of celebration."

"Wow," Jennifer murmured. "It sounds almost pagan."

Zormna shrugged. "Maybe the pagan stuff came from it. We have one other holiday - Name Day. On that day we take on a fake name and wear masks, pretending to be someone else. And we have a big celebration with lots of dancing and eating."

Jennifer stared. "Two holidays?"

Zormna nodded then cringed.

"Just two?" Jennifer stared more.

Shrugging, Zormna sighed, "It's worse than that. It is two holidays in a calendar that is almost two of your years, as the calendar from Home is six hundred and eighty-seven days long. We used to have more, but those aren't official holidays, and people celebrate them at their own risk as the current regime isn't too fond of what some of the old holidays celebrated."

An uncomfortable feeling swelled within Jennifer's stomach. It was not a thought Jennifer had entertained before, but Zormna lived such a different life. Void of all the familiar holidays, even the ones she had didn't sound all that great. For the first time, Jennifer wondered what Zormna thought when she celebrated Jennifer's holidays for the first time.

"Wow. You guys really miss out," Jennifer said.

Zormna lifted her eyes at her and smirked. Her expression clearly said, 'Whatever.' She then stabbed the frog heart with one of the T pins and scribbled in her notes.

"How's this sound..." Jeff stood up and read aloud inside the cafeteria. It had gotten too cold to eat outside on the red top. Because if that, Brian's group (along with Jennifer, Kevin, Darren, and Zormna) sat in the far end of the increasingly crowded room. The truth was, very few students liked eating in the cafeteria. It was smelly, noisy and cramped with not enough space. They avoided it whenever possible.

 

"Shall I compare thee to a piece of pizza?

Thou art more yummy and more spicy:

Rough hands do mold thee on my tray,

And your looks aren't ugly but nicey..."

 

"Nicey?" Brian cocked his head to the side, smirking at him.

Jeff shrugged, setting the paper down. "I was going to use the word date, like in the poem, only it doesn't rhyme with spicy."

"But tray doesn't rhyme with pizza. Why don't you rewrite it? Say... 'And you are so tasty that I'd like a date,'" Brian suggested.

"Honestly...talking about girls as if they are food," Jennifer grumbled at them, making a face.

Her boyfriend Kevin averted his eyes while biting back a laugh so it would not get past his lips. Jennifer heard his snicker, though, and glared at him.

"I don't see why not," Brian retorted, but then he noticed Zormna's stare. "For the sake of the poem that is. I mean, who wouldn't want a girl that was spicy?"

Jennifer's mouth popped open to snap back, but Zormna stopped her. "Forget it. All boys think of is food. It's the only thing that they can come up with as a compliment when they are hungry."

"That's right," Brian agreed smiling.

"Besides," Zormna continued, ignoring him. "It's not like they can think until they are fed anyway."

Brian's mouth gaped open with a laugh, as up until then Zormna had never been blatantly feminist. Jeff shook his head at her with disapproval.

"Also," she continued, "They can't turn that poem in to Mr. Humphries anyway."

"Why not?" Brian asked, glancing to it.

Jeff also turned around in protest. "Yeah, why?"

Dramatically, Zormna slouched against the table with a groan. "Because, if you have forgotten, it has to be," quoting Mr. Humphries, "'an original personal moving piece about something we feel strongly about.'"

Adam closed his eyes in pain. "Don't remind me."

Jeff shrugged and crumpled up the paper with the sonnet on it. He was about to toss it, but Brian snatched it, pulling it out of his hands.

"Don't do that! That's art," Brian said. With peevish looks he smoothed out the wrinkles across his knee. He placed it in his textbook. "If you won't finish it, I will."

Smirking, Jeff bit into his pizza and chewed, thinking 'There goes another idea.'

       It had been one of those days.

Most of the boys avoided saying anything about Zormna to Jeff during Jeff's PE hour, even though it was on everyone's minds whenever they saw him. It was lucky for Jeff since he really was not in a mood to land into another fight. That and Mr. Vicksler had made it clear that if he was caught fighting again he would be suspended from school. All in all, the day ended quite nicely, so much so that Jeff felt that school was settling back down again, and he might manage a normal life.

School let out at two-thirty.

Zormna walked with Jeff to the parking lot to ride home together, as Jennifer had dance team practice and Wrestling would not start until after the beginning of the next year. Passing their friends as well as the watching eyes of their classmates, it really did feel like every eye was on them. It had never really felt like that before, even when all the boys had stared at her for being head-turningly beautiful. But the pair never reached Jeff's motorcycle.

Sitting in the lot next to Jeff's smaller