A Parthan Summer by Julie Steimle (best books for 8th graders TXT) 📖

without looking to his seat.

They remained in silence.

The director stared at the two sitting across from his desk. Jeff’s dark eyes, now glaring at the floor in disgust, just seemed so extremely alien, and truly dangerous. Zormna only looked bored. But she had always made him nervous. 

The office door opened after a brisk knock. Coach Brown and Maya Brown stepped in. The couple didn’t need to say a word to find out if an amends had been reached. They could tell they would get no apology. Zormna and Jeff glared at them with equal dislike. They were the enemy.

Standing up, Zormna marched up Mr. Hardt desk. “Can I go?”

Mr. Hardt pounded his fist on the desktop. “You are not released yet. We aren’t finished.”

“There is nothing left to discuss,” Zormna replied briskly. “You have given your sentence. I’ve accepted it. I’ll stay in my cabin. I’ll work K.P. until my knuckles are sore—but I won’t apologize to those people!”

The agent couple exchanged weary looks.

Jeff remained in his chair, tapping his fingers on the armrest with impatience, glaring darkly into space.

Mr. Hardt was about to say something, but then he gave up. The point was, she knew she was on probation. He waved her out.  “Go.”

“I’d like to leave too,” Jeff said, standing up.

Agent Brown shot Mr. Hardt a reproving look. Jeff noticed it with a frown.

“I still need to talk to you,” Coach Brown said to Jeff.

“I’m sure you do,” Jeff responded flatly, rocking on his heels. He sat back down with a big flop. “So what do you want to discuss? Politics, racial tensions, the depleting ozone layer….”

“That Irish military academy and where you came from,” Coach Brown replied.

Jeff moaned, clenching his head. “Oh, for pity’s sake…I told you all I know about that stupid school. Leave me alone.”

“Fine,” Coach Brown said. He then took out a tape recorder and played it. The recording was voice of the woman who had been pretending to be Jeff’s mother. He recognized it immediately. She was in the middle of answering a question. “…sad, you know? He only had one outfit. That jacket that he always wears, and this green shirt and some old jeans. And that scar on his face, it looked like someone hit him really hard with something sh—” Coach Browne clicked off the recording. He lifted his eyes to Jeff’s. “Now, you said Zormna gave you that scar. But you had that scar before you went to Ireland. So, where did you really meet Zormna Clendar?”

Jeff closed his eyes. One small mistake in plan B. They hadn’t remembered to blame the scar on the invented stint in Ireland.

“Now, the school in Ireland remembers you and that Zormna,” Agent Brown said. “—unlike those at your other high schools. So, for the last time, who are you? And where are you really from?”

“Look,” Jeff muttered. “I’m just a kid. I know you think I’m, I’m connected to something bigger. Something underground like the mafia, but…I’m just a guy trying to get through life.”

Coach Brown sat next to Jeff.

Jeff leaned away, though the FBI agent leaned in closer as he spoke. “Just a kid? A kid that leaps out of trees? That has a collection of scars that rivals a prisoner of war? A kid who wrestles heavy weight class but doesn’t look that heavy? You are either a freak, or you are what we think you are.”

Jeff smirked dry and said, “A Marxist?”

The FBI agent frowned darkly and continued.

“We have copies of your health records from your last sports examination,” Coach Brown said.

Jeff froze then narrowed his eyes. He closed his mouth, folded his arms, waiting to hear it.

“You have an extremely low heart beat and a higher body temperature in comparison to most people,” Coach Brown said. Jeff’s eyes continued to darken as the man pointed out the characteristics that distinguished his people from those on earth, without using any specific alien related terms. But Jeff knew it was implied. “Did you know your body mass is ten percent denser than an average boy your age?”

Jeff did not reply. He now knew it was too late. Plan B would save his friends and comrades, but he was caught.

“Your eyes are abnormally dark, and they seem to change in darkness and depth, which is…” Agent Brown shook his head. “And I have never seen a boy as white as you. I bet you are whiter than paper. Need I go on?”

Chuckling, amused now that he was doomed, Jeff tossed out a hand towards Mr. Hardt who was still there. “Sure, why not! If you feel you are on to something go on and plow right ahead.”

They didn’t even look to the director, perhaps misinterpreting the gesture. But Mr. Hardt’s brow wrinkled, growing increasingly puzzled over the track of the questions.

“These anomalies are identical to the girl, Zormna,” Agent Brown continued. “We know what she is. Who are you?”

Rolling his eyes, Jeff snorted. “I. Am. Not. Irish.”

Agent Brown glared at him. “Stop playing stupid.”

But Jeff only huffed. He peeked to Mr. Hardt who was looking entirely confused now, yet was keeping out of the way.

“I grew up in Missouri,” Jeff said.

Agent Cameron Brown sighed, glancing to Maya. She nodded, stepping to the door and dialing up a number on her cell phone. It was strange that she had reception.

Jeff folded his arms. “What? Are you bringing your sodium pentothal now? Why don’t you just drill it out of me? Waterboard me.”

Mr. Brown ground his teeth. “We are trying to make this easy for both you and Zormna.”

Jeff threw his head back and laughed. He turned to face the director, who sat on the edge of his desk with his hand across his mouth. “Do you believe this guy?”

Coach Brown looked back at Director Hardt, a little flustered, now recalling that the man was there.

 “You are just trying to make it easier for yourselves.” Jeff stood up and walked up to Mr. Hardt.

“So what did they tell you? That I killed somebody?” Jeff asked. “I’m a threat to national security? Or did they just say that about Zormna?”

Mr. Hardt pulled his hand down, though he was speechless. Clearly, they had told him very little. Though whatever it had been, had been convincing enough for him to allow them free reign.

“Well?” Jeff asked, staring at the man.

Agent Maya Brown nodded to her husband.

“So what are you going to do?” Jeff snapped back at ‘Coach’ Brown. “Shoot me and drag me off to an insane asylum like you did Zormna? No one would hear me screaming there, right?”

“How did you—?”

“Kevin Jacobson saw you guys dragging Zormna back into the building. It was in his neighborhood,” Jeff snapped. “And he told his girlfriend, whom Zormna lives with.”

Mr. Hardt paled, looking from Jeff to the FBI agents.

“We don’t have to let it get that far,” Agent Brown finally said. “Just tell us the truth.”

“About what?” Jeff rolled his eyes, petulantly folding his arms. 

“Let’s start with your name,” the man said.

Glaring, the boy replied, “Jeff Streigle.”

The agent spoke louder. “Your real name!”

Jeff closed his mouth and turned to the director. “I’d like to leave now.” 

But Mr. Hardt just stared at Jeff, sneaking glances at the agents as if begging permission. They did not return the approval, so he held silent.

The coach stepped closer to Jeff. “He can’t dismiss you. You are in the custody of the U.S. government.”

Jeff felt sick. He turned to face the man to see him for who he was. Feeling his situation keenly now, Jeff breathed hard. He knew he couldn’t run. That was not an option. He had to stay to protect Zormna. He had realized it on the dock, ironically, when she had pushed him into the water. It was his sworn duty. He had promised his ancestor, Zeldar. He could not, and would not, abandon her. If it had just been him alone, Jeff knew he could relocate and redirect the Arrassian resistance from somewhere else—but he couldn’t do that anymore. He knew that if he abandoned Zormna to save his own hide, he would also be condemning his people to a life under High Class rule because she would be unprotected. And he couldn’t just grab her and run as he had briefly imagined. He had to stand his ground with all that entailed.

“I have nothing to say to you. I am an American citizen, and I am appealing to the Fifth Amendment.” Jeff promptly sat down in one of the chairs.

Coach Brown shook his head and walked over to Maya. “That’s it. Call them in.”

The oppressive feeling in the room changed at once. Agent Maya Brown immediately ushered the camp director out of the cabin.

Director Hardt flustered as he resisted the pushes of the operative, glancing at Jeff with pangs of concern. Jeff just sat in his chair feeling drained, knowing he was more than trapped. He was utterly cornered, and it terrified him.

 

Mr. Hardt found himself standing outside the lodge. Three dark sedans drove into the parking lot as if they had been waiting just around the bend in the forest road. They parked right up against the lodge. Out of them, came several men in dark suits with black sunglasses and uniform facial expressions. One by one, they passed him to his office. Several of them carried ominous metal suitcases.

The boy inside reacted immediately to the newcomers, protesting in his trademark facetious manner. “Hey! My uncle is going to ask questions! I have a family you know!” He then shouted, “Watch it with that needle! Is that sterile?”

The agents closed the door. The head of the camp stood outside, feeling wretched. He wondered if he had done the right thing.

“Locked out, huh?” a high Irish-like voice said from above as if from a bird.

Mr. Hardt looked around, searching for the source.

“They don’t like civilians seeing their handiwork, do they?”

Mr. Hardt’s eyes stopped on the figure sitting on the roof of the lodge. Zormna stared back at him with her frightening green eyes, as if she was actually an Irish faerie.

She slid down to the edge of the roof then flipped off, landing beside him.

The director jumped back.

“I’m not in there being interrogated, I guess, because they got all they wanted from me,” she murmured. She then looked up at him and asked, “Do you believe me now?” 

Timidly, Mr. Hardt nodded.

Jeff’s protests had stopped. 

Zormna stepped up to listen at the door.

“No!” the director shouted, reaching to pull her back.

But she side-stepped and hissed at him in a low voice. “Quiet! I can barely make it out.”

But the director dragged Zormna from the door anyway. Because his hands were trembling, Zormna went with him with a sulky huff.

After eyeing the closed door again, Zormna glowered at him. “What did they tell you?”

Shaking his head, his fingers still shaking, his body still trembling, Mr. Hardt shuddered. “They said that boy might be the missing link to your relatives’ deaths. But then they talked about blood pressure or something, and his freaky eyes….” He stared her. “Who are you?”

Zormna looked down at the gravel underneath her feet. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

*

Though Jeff strained and fought as the agents held him to the floor, he didn’t attempt to break anyone’s legs and run off into the forest as they had expected. But it took five men to keep him from thrashing when they took out all their freakishly shiny equipment. And even then he fought their questions after being injected with the thiopental serum.

“What is your name?” they asked him first.

“John-Jacob-Jingle-Heimer-Schmidt” was all he would yell for the first five minutes. He sang the song over again until his voice gave out. His second answer to the question led to five croaking rounds of I’m Henry the Eighth I am, a verse of I’m a Lumberjack and I’m Ok It took another shot of sodium pentothal before he would answer anything seriously—which the agents noted was a lot like how it had been for Zormna.

“What is