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

All people are the same; only their habits differ—Confucius—

The week’s confinement was, of course, entirely unfair. But both captives took it pretty well. Zormna spent her week rejoicing that she missed the camp-wide dance—thrilled especially that she avoided the overabundance of juvenile boy hormones and the need to wear a dress. She spent most of her time filling out crossword puzzles, doing difficult Sudoku, writing to Jennifer and Todd McLenna, and attending to K.P. duty with militaristic vigor. People said they saw the soldier in her then. Each day a camp counselor accompanied her to the bathroom, then they took her to the kitchens for K.P. Zormna resented having an escort. She glowered at each one when they took their turn. But most of the time she remained under the eye of the new cook’s helper—the first FBI agent they had discovered. He kept her busy with peeling potatoes, though they never let her use a knife.

Jeff handled the confinement with less intense dislike. He spent most of his hours in his cabin reading. Brian had lent him his library of books, and Jonathan had lent him his comic books. When he wasn’t reading, he was making throwing stars out of popsicle-sticks and chucking them across the cabin at the wall, or playing random tunes on his mostly-sanded ukulele. Coach Brown himself guarded Jeff. But unlike Zormna whose savage sense of independence bristled against being watched all the time, Jeff only smirked and shook his head at the agent, hoping the man was bored to tears.

He was also stuck peeling potatoes with Zormna during K.P., but he tended to sing—or hum—to alleviate his boredom. Once he brought along his ukulele. Zormna laughed when he plucked out a tune familiar to the both of them. But he never sang the words.

And she started calling him ‘Elvis’.

*

On the Monday morning when confinement was over, Zormna stretched and yawned, pushing slowly out from her sleeping bag. Her thoughts still in a dream-state muddle, but once she gathered her bearings, she immediately climbed out of her cot to the window near the door, peeking out to see if the usual camp escort was there.

She was not there.

So much relief swelled in her chest. And in enjoying that, Zormna drew in a breath of free air.

At once, with a skip and leap, she grabbed her clothes to get dressed for the day. Many of the others in the cabin were still struggling to wake, lying in their sleeping bags, some covering their heads to keep out the light. But Zormna threw open the cabin door as soon as she was ready and happily skipped down the hill to the bathroom building, dashing inside with a brief jig before she leapt into line for a shower.

“Where’s your prison guard?” sneered the girl standing in front of her.

Zormna blinked as she realized that it was Holly Joyce, waiting in line for a shower stall. Frowning, a degree of glee from that morning fading, Zormna tossed her curls back with a retort. “I’ve been freed.”

“To run amok, no doubt,” Holly added snidely, eyeing Zormna from her pajamas to the silver-like chain that hung around her neck, tucked inside.

Several girls snickered.

Stuffing her hands in her robe pockets, Zormna replied, “Perhaps.”

A few of the girls were taken aback. A handful inched away. Zormna’s reputation as being entirely crazy was now all over camp.

“Are you going to attack any other counselors, or are you going to be a good parolee from now on?” Holly asked with a particularly upturned-nose sneer. She shifting her personal belongings in her arms as if afraid Zormna would take them.

But Zormna only smiled, her eyes glittering in a way that made people worry. “I only have a week left. Who knows?”

Holly glared back at her, then turned to look for a free stall. The line had advanced so much that she was just one person from the front now. With a drawn breath, she peeked back at Zormna once more. The line moved. She was now next to take a stall. Zormna merely blinked back at her, waiting for her to say something.

When the line went forward so that a shower was free, Holly turned to face Zormna. “You are just as bad as before. Don’t think I don’t know the way you are looking at me. I’m warning you—no monkey business while I am in the shower, shorty.”

With that, Holly turned and stomped into her stall, slamming the door shut.

Zormna rolled her eyes but merely waited for another stall to open. The one next to Holly’s opened not two minutes after. The Harvest karate girl was mid shampooing when Zormna entered, stripped and turned on the water for herself. Despite that Holly had gotten into the shower before Zormna, Zormna emerged finished and clean much before Holly Joyce even conditioned her hair. Walking out, dressed and grinning, she tramped in flip-flops to the mirrors to comb out her wet curls.

“Does any one have a dime?” a desperate-looking girl asked while standing next to the tampon machine.

Zormna stuffed her hands into her pockets again. They were jeans she had worn earlier that week, so it was possible she had not emptied the pockets. She found a handful of change: mostly pennies, a quarter, and two dimes. She walked over, holding it out with a nod.

“Thanks,” the girl said, dropping the dime into the machine right away and twisted the knob.

“Hurry up, Holly! You’re hogging all the hot water!” One of her teammates from the karate team pounded on the stall door.

Zormna glanced back. She narrowed her eyes, a faint grin spreading across her lips. She walked across the room to the front of the line with a small nod to the girl pounding on the door. 

“I think that girl will be done soon,” Zormna said, pointing two stalls to the left of Holly’s.

“Thanks!” and the Harvest girl hopped directly to that stall.

The moment the girl turned away, Zormna crammed the pennies from her pocket into the crack of Holly’s shower stall door, compacting them in a stack so that they fit snugly. Then without another word, though she looked pleased with herself, she walked back to the mirrors, picking up her things. Without another word, Zormna marched out of the shower building back to her cabin. It wasn’t until she reemerged and was walking down the hill toward the flagpole with Joy that she heard Holly scream.

“What was that?” Joy asked, looking around.

Zormna shrugged innocently. “Probably some wild animal.”

At flag raising, Holly was quick to point fingers at Zormna. Surprisingly, many girls came to Zormna’s defense—the first being that girl she had lent the dime to.

“You were so long in that shower, it could have been anybody—you water hog,” she said.

Holly fumed, clenching her fists. Her eyes shot daggers at Zormna. Zormna smirked silently with a glance at the crowd. Acquitted by so many witnesses, it was beyond amusing, especially since many (like Zormna) felt Holly deserved what she got.

Then came breakfast. As everyone filed in line to receive their eggs, bacon, and pancakes from the Monroe football team, Zormna took her place with relief that she would eat with her friends again and not be stuck in the back of the kitchen under the nose of that spy anymore.

Yet, despite this, she uneasily searched around for Jeff. It took about two minutes to find him, but she spotted him walking in from the gravel lot. He was laughing with his friends who were entirely glad to have him back in their midst. His eyes lifted in search of her. For a minute, their gaze connected.

He nodded, and she smiled.  

With a sigh, now feeling completely assured, Zormna joined Joy and Jennifer, collecting her fried eggs and toast.

But it was after lunch was over that things truly settled back into the old routine. And the reason it took that long was because Michelle Clay had grown ornerier because she had lost Zormna for an entire week. So, she was exceptionally snappish with her.

“This week we have to refine our routine for the competition. And without you this last week, everything was all messed up. So you have to work double time, since we only have this week left!” Michelle set her hands on her hips as she berated Zormna.

Zormna refrained from rolling her eyes at the team captain.

The other girls scrambled around, showing Zormna her part to the new routine Stacey and Michelle had come up with—based off the Meghan Trainor’s song No the day Zormna had clobbered Maya. It was rather difficult. Most of the girls were anxious for Zormna to catch up as much as Michelle. After all, it took them about a week for them to coordinate it well. The majority were still shaky with it.

With a nod to Michelle as the routine was explained again and they ran through it once, Zormna executed her part as it was given to her. They went through it three times at a slower pace while Zormna memorized her part. Then Michelle sped up the pace. Zormna executed her part perfectly. 

“Oh my gosh!” someone muttered.

“Not fair.”

“Everything is so easy for her,” one of the varsity cheerleaders whispered to Stacey once they finished the routine. “It took me five days to learn what she learned in just an hour.”

Stacey nodded and sighed. “Yeah, lucky.”

“Lucky?” Jennifer hissed back in gossip. “The girl hardly sleeps at night, has murdered family, and has the FBI following her.”

“That’s not what I meant,” the girl replied, blushing.

“Yeah,” Stacey chimed in.

Joy snickered, leaning next to Jennifer with a hiss while Michelle was showing Zormna the last bit to the routine. “Well, she can’t sing.”

All the girls moaned around her.

“Only you care about singing, Joy,” Jennifer said, rolling her eyes.

“Jeff sings,” Joy replied with a shrug and blushing. “He’s got a great voice.”

The girls moaned again. By this time they all knew Joy had a major crush on Jeff. Bigger than Michelle’s confessed crush. Truthfully, Michelle was more into football players than wrestlers.

“He’s Elvis with a ukulele,” Zormna cut in, having overheard enough. Then she beckoned them to join her so they could do the routine together.

Joy busted into laughter, nodding with a skip to Zormna’s side. “That he is. But you should hear him play the guitar. He’s a natural.”

The other girls followed along, grudgingly.

However, despite the raging jealousy among the Pennington girls, all of them were actually grateful that Zormna was a quick learner. That meant they were not as far behind the other cheer teams in the camp as they had previously thought. So, by lunch, the Pennington cheer team was laughing as if they had already won the cheer competition. They were talking confidently (and rather smugly) so all around could hear how assured they were.

Yet, Zormna just trotted along as if she didn’t care….because honestly, she really didn’t. With the FBI around, the reality of her life had come smacking her in the face and it was hard to be enthusiastic about petty little things.

But the air around her had grown competitive. The fun of camp was practically over. Rivalry swelled up again. As the Monroe team had been watching her and her team’s practice, they glanced at one another with