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

savage anxiety. The Billsburg and Harvest teams also looked worried. After all, it was a commonly known fact that Pennington usually had the superior cheer team—even before the arrival of super-ninja Zormna Clendar.

 The swirl of school tension was all over the cafeteria. And though Zormna seemed oblivious to it, Jeff had jumped back into the middle of it, talking with Brian about how they had been doing in their training sessions against Monroe. Zormna had noticed them as she took her seat next to Joy, watching his animated conversation with his pals who were laughing as usual. With a smirk, Zormna sighed. Even if he no longer had a solid alibi, he was set on living life as a local, and she had to accept that. Besides, his friends were still oblivious to what had happened that day. They had bought the story about Jeff having heat exhaustion.

As her eyes scanned the rest of the room, enjoying the feeling of being back among people, Zormna’s eyes rested on Maya. The woman had been watching from across the room, perhaps the entire time.

Zormna stopped smiling. She returned to her meal, glaring at her plate while struggling to suppress the angry seething words she wished to shout at the agent right then. Unlike Jeff, who had been constantly watched by Coach Brown, Zormna did not have to see Maya the entire week, and had been happy for it. Her insides tightened. She was never that good at pretending like Jeff was. And knowing that she would see Maya in closer quarters for gymnastics, she felt a little sick.

As usual, the lodge was cleaned up after lunch, and everyone separated to their activities. Michelle claimed Zormna for the first hour after lunch to go over their routine once more before letting her join the gymnastics team in the lodge—which was fine for Zormna. She was trying to mentally psyche herself up to a positive attitude when meeting the FBI woman again. When it was time, Zormna practically dragged her feet to the lodge then lingered in the doorway.

The girls inside were working on stretches and different acrobatic skills. Maya Brown was standing at the side, spotting where needed. Maya pretended not to see her at first.

“Zormna, don’t stand in the doorway. Come on in.” Coach Dayes walked over, reaching her hand out to her.

With sigh, Zormna walked in, feeling sulky.

Coach Dayes nodded, reading the girl’s feelings with a brief glance to Maya also. “You can pull up a mat over there and stretch. You ought to go over your floor routine also. This week, you ought to know, we are getting ready for evaluations. You missed the classes on choreographing a better floor routine. I hope you know it is part of the evaluation at the week’s end.”

With a cringe, Zormna nodded. “I heard.”

“Everyone today will be showing their routines, so you had better fine tune what you had been working on as you watch,” Coach Dayes said. She walked away, approaching a Billburg girl who was overextending herself. Zormna watched the instructor go. Her mind turned to the evaluations. The one thing she had missed in her isolation was the one thing she needed the most for gymnastics. All her earlier gymnastics training had combat reference and usually required other objects to rebound against, to hit, or to tackle. It wasn’t performance skill she had been trained for, after all. But already Zormna knew that combat strategies on the floor were not what Coach Dayes and the other judges were looking for. This was dance with gymnastics.

So, as the girls cleared their individual mats off of the floor, replacing it with the large square mat in the center, Zormna’s hands grew clammy. It did not pay, in this case, to be as competitive as she was. Zormna knew that today she was going to look like a fool. She was so unprepared.

Amy Fields began her floor routine first. She had flair, regality, and she perfectly executed her stunts with all the femininity her personality carried. It wasn’t at all Zormna’s style. But then most of the girls acted much more girly than she did. For the first time in her life she wondered if that was a bad thing. As a soldier, style was irrelevant. Getting the job done was.

When Amy bowed then walked off the mat, Coach Dayes patted Amy on the shoulder with high praise. Then Holly stepped out onto the mat.

Zormna watched. Holly’s routine had flair and style. It also had a few karate moves that Zormna recognized. Zormna smirked, peeking at Coach Dayes, and examining the woman’s concentrated stare. The instructor seemed interested, but not altogether pleased with Holly’s performance. When Holly finished with a bow, another girl took her place.

They watched the routines of the Harvest girls mostly, though they had time for a few from Billsburg. As Zormna watched, she inspected the responses Coach Dayes made to each girl, making a mental note in the back of her head the style Coach Dayes liked the most. So far, Coach Dayes loved perfection in execution, was happy with grace and perfect tempo with their pick of song (they had been given twelve choices, offering a fair range to choose from to cut up the monotony), and she also loved a more dancer-like style as if leaning towards ballet. Out of those, Zormna frowned to herself. Her own dancing style was not graceful but spunky, which would put her at a disadvantage.

Coach Dayes finished her assessment of floor routines for that day then nodded to Maya as she said, “Alright. We’ll pick this up next time. Now cool down and stretch for the remainder of the time. You can leave whenever you feel like it.”

Several of the girls cheered. That gave them an extra hour and a half of free time before dinner.

Everyone parted. Holly marched off with her teammates to stretch her muscles while Zormna wandered back to the other corner of the room. She peered over the large pieces of gymnastic equipment she had not yet gotten around to using. One of them was the vault, shunted to the side for later use. Zormna glanced at the lodge ceiling to see if it was high enough for the vault. The rafters were at least another story up, the building made to accommodate such things. The balance beam stood on a mat with plenty of space around it for practice. Obviously they had been using it more during the week of her confinement.

Angling her head to look at it, Zormna then lighted onto the beam while the others continued to stretch.

Coach Dayes lifted her eyes to where Zormna had jumped. She watched her carefully though she was still gathering things to clean up. Zormna did not seem aware of her audience as she walked the beam first with the perfect balance she had been taught for flight training as a child.

With a gentle touch and a bend backward, Zormna flipped and balanced herself on one hand as if her body were as light as a feather. With a light push, she executed another flip then a swing along the beam that made it look as if she were rolling along it. But then she pushed up, performed yet another flip, landing in a handstand with a twist that spun her not in any way her gymnastics instructors had given her, but something she learned from a game she used to play at home requiring her also to hit a ball at the same time. Without the ball, except imaginary in her head, Zormna landed lightly on the balance beam, righted herself, then twisted again in a combination of a one handed cartwheel and a flying kick, touching the ball of her foot on the balance beam again. With another flip she lighted off the beam in a pert dismount. She landed on the mat perfectly.

Zormna heard clapping, so she turned.

Maya Brown nodded as she continued to clap, not at all hiding her amazement. “Goodness. You’ve improved.”

With a loud huff, Zormna stomped back over to where she had left her towel, starting into her stretches. Several of her teammates stared at her. Most of the girls had gone already, though some had stayed to watch her. Holly had gone off with a roll of her eyes quite a while ago, sure Zormna was just showing off again.

“I never would have thought a week in isolation would bring this out in you,” Maya said.

Picking up her towel and dabbing the sweat off of her neck, Zormna replied curtly. “Don’t patronize me.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” Maya nodded to the girls that now slipped past, all of them eager to get out of the way of another fight. “Patronizing you? I was merely making an observation.”

Snorting, Zormna finished dabbing off her sweat, deciding to skip the rest of her stretches this time around so she could get away quickly. She maneuvered to leave, glancing once at Coach Dayes who watched them but kept her distance. Everyone knew of the incident at the lake. It was probably even possible that Coach Dayes knew that Maya was FBI.

“Zormna,” Maya said, reaching out to stop her, bumping into Zormna to forcibly hold her if necessary. Though remembering the last encounter, she did not dare actually set a hand on her.

Zormna retreated with a look around to see if anyone would interfere on her behalf.

Coach Dayes averted her eyes.

Those cleaning up the mats rushed a bit faster at their task. No one would interfere.

Zormna clenched her towel as if she had the urge to wring something more like a neck. “Don’t touch me. I have nothing to say to you.”

Maya frowned, but stepped back.

Glaring, Zormna stomped out of the lodge, hiking not towards her cabin but in the direction of the lake as if to join her cheer team again.

Agent Maya Brown watched Zormna with her thoughts going over and over in her own head about what she had to do. She had been taken into this project with the understanding that she was there to keep an eye on Zormna rather than handle her, though she had foolishly crossed that line. Her superiors had briefed her on everything pertaining to the girl that they knew, But the from the first day she set eyes on Zormna Clendar she had found it impossible to believe that this tiny, frightened, and lost girl was a threat to national security. But that was before Zormna had thrown her to the ground and nearly choked her.

Alien? Perhaps her strength was. Unusual. Most definitely. Never before among all the people she worked with had she seen a gymnast that moved like a predator. In fact, Zormna seemed to be a walking paradox. Zormna was….

Maya felt her jacket pocket and realized that her gun was gone. Zormna was a pickpocket!

Maya dashed out of the lodge, darting across the gravel lot to where she saw Zormna’s silhouette on the grassy hill. The bright setting sun haloed her in a way that her hair look like it was on fire. Zormna lifted up the gun.

“Stop!” Maya shouted out, running as fast as her feet could carry her.

Zormna turned her head, looking down the hill at her. A naughty smile cracked across Zormna’s face just before the girl turned her back on the agent and slid down the other side of the grassy knoll to the lake’s edge. Maya ran after her. Cresting the hill, she scurried down. Her feet slid on the loose sand and rocks. Her eyes fixed on the loaded weapon in Zormna’s hands, going wider as the girl unexpectedly flung it out over the water into the lake.

Skidding over the last rocks to the shore, Maya almost tumbled to the water’s edge. “I thought you were…you were….”

“What? Going to shoot you?” Zormna broke into a cynical laugh. “Be serious. Do you actually think in my position I can afford to shoot anyone right now? I just