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

cup and blamed his misses on the wind and the lightness of the ammo. “Do you want another target?”

Blushing, Zormna ducked her head a smidgen between her shoulders. “Please?”

Laughing and nodded, Brian then quickly went about picking up pine cones and other things for her to shoot at. Once it was all set up, Zormna loaded the mini-weapon and fired, shooting and reloading one after the other. Pinecones fell. Cups and tin cans fell. She didn’t miss once.

“Huh.” Zormna smirked at her success, nodding to herself. She had not gotten rusty.

But the boys around her stared.

Shrugging, Zormna jogged over to the red pieces on the ground, fetching them. Brian recovered first and hurried over to find them also. Once they collected them all, Brian asked her—meekly—to show him how she did it.

“Sure.” Zormna matter-of-factly set the cross-bow into Brian’s hand. She then demonstrated for him each step and trick she used to keep aim. Out of three tries, Brian hit the target once perfectly.

“See!” Zormna grinned, squaring her shoulders with pride at him.

“Show me again,” Brian said, handing her back the crossbow. “I’ll set up the targets once more.”

As Brian was collecting the fallen pine cones and cups, Jeff strolled up and joined the cluster of boys who were watching. The crowd itself was growing and murmuring in whispers while watching Zormna.

“Holy… did you see that?” one guy said. “She never misses.”

“How is that possible?”

“That’s military school for you. You know she went to one, right?”

“Yeah…but, she’s a girl. I mean, not that girls can’t shoot, but it’s like she’s Laura Croft or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know?”

Jeff chuckled, shaking his head.

A couple of boys looked back at him, eyes widening in a stare.

But one boy continued to murmur without looking back, “Man…she is not someone you wanna get mad. Imagine if she goes postal.”

Jeff huffed this time. And all the boys stared.

“She wouldn’t,” Jeff said, his eyes on Zormna who was taking out a couple of pinecones on the posts. “When she gets angry, she doesn’t hold it in. Besides, she actually has a really soft heart.”

They stared more.

“What about your face?” one of the guys protested.

Brian also turned around, hearing Jeff and what he had said. Zormna was setting up a new collection of targets for Brian to try, as she had taken out the previous set in succession, perfectly and quickly.

Cringing, Jeff met Brian’s eye as he ducked his head a mite and said a lower voice, “It… Zormna didn’t do it on purpose. It had been an accident.”

Brian stared. Jeff had always blamed it on Zormna as a malicious and purposeful act, which he had vehemently defended since the day it had come out that he had known Zormna Clendar and had met her previously in “Ireland”.

“I was just so mad about it…” Jeff explained sheepishly, “…that I…saw it one way. My face hit the step to a vehicle I was trying to climb into when she tackled me to keep me from stealing it.”

Rubbing his forehead, Brian approached him. “So…”

“I should try forgiveness, I suppose.” Jeff shrugged. “I did see the look on her face afterwards, but I…blocked it out. She was sheet white, staring at my blood on her hands and…” He kept shaking his head, not saying any more.

“Your blood on her hands?” hissed back one of the boys.

“She broke my nose,” Jeff explained, but then saw Brian’s look. “That is, my nose got broken then, and I got a big cut.” He gestured to the scar on his face.

“Hey, let me try.”

A boy who had been watching on the opposite end of the group had come in closer to Zormna where she had finally repositioned herself for one more round of target practice. But she was now looking for Brian.

“It’s not mine,” Zormna said, lifting the crossbow out of reach. She searched around more for Brian whose back was to her and blended in with the crowd.

“Just a minute,” the boy protested, and reached higher than her hand for the crossbow.

Zormna ducked and moved faster so that he could not get it. She whipped around with a glare for him. “No. It is not mine. It’s Brian’s. I can’t just hand it off to a stranger.”

“You know me!” He put a hand to his chest, blinking innocently. “We see each other every day at flag raising.”

“Ugh.” Zormna turned her back on him again, searching once more for Brian. Brian had turned around at the sound of their bickering. When she saw him, she hurried over to hand back the crossbow.

“Just a second!” The boy chased after her. He grabbed the back of her collar.

At once her shirt yanked up to her throat, and so did the chain to the necklace she wore. It had been tucked just below the rim of the shirt, perfectly concealed. But the clips that held it to the straps of her bra popped off, and the medallion she so dutifully hid smacked her in the chin.

Immediately, Zormna seized his hand and her collar, ripping her collar from his grip. Her face was so red. She flipped him onto his back and jammed her heel into his throat.

“OH!” Everyone shouted, including the watching karate team.

Jeff pushed through the crowd to get to her the same moment she released the boy’s throat from her foot, while tucking her medallion back into her shirt. It had been hanging from her neck like a pendulum.

“Are you ok?” Jeff whispered to her, surreptitiously tucking in the edges of the chain so it did not show.

Zormna nodded wordlessly. “—took me by surprise.”

He chuckled once, not so sure of that.

Zormna stepped further back, straightening out her shirt.

As she did this, Jeff crouched down next to the guy who was staring up at Zormna wordlessly and entirely out of breath. He whispered, “Now, idiot, you have just learned a valuable lesson. Never mess with Zormna Clendar.”

He then grasped the boy’s hand and lifted him off the ground with a firm nod.

The boy nodded back, eyes shocked wide.

Many of those watching backed away, dispersing. However, as they did, Jeff said, conspicuously loud, “Well, here’s a girl who won’t put up with sexual harassment.”

Brian burst into laughter, reaching out for his mini-crossbow.

Zormna handed it over sheepishly. However, as she walked away to the craft cabin to do scrapbooking after all, she double-checked to make sure all of her necklace chain was safely tucked away again and her medallion was secure. The truth was, she was more in panic over the medallion getting grabbed than her shirt. Not that she wouldn’t have clobbered the boy for grabbing her shirt—as some of the boys thought it a funny gag to ‘accidentally’ rip off a girl’s shirt. It had happened twice that week to two different girls as a so-called prank.

Jeff lingered with Brian, sure Zormna could handle herself from there. Then he looked to the targets. Sheepishly, he asked, “Can I try?”

“Knock yourself out.” Brian handed over the bow then the red bolts.

They half-expected Jeff to hit each target as expertly as Zormna had, but Jeff missed about a third of them and blamed it on the wind.

The karate team from Harvest made a subtle retreat. They did not follow her to the craft cabin as they had originally planned. Instead, they regrouped to the beach, sharing looks of concern. All of them turned to face Holly who merely rolled her eyes.

“It was a basic move,” she said. “And he obviously wasn’t trained in karate.”

“But neither is she,” one of the others snapped. “And she could have crushed his throat if she didn’t have so much control.”

But Holly would not hear a word of it. Yet she said, “Fine. Be chicken. However, that egotistical little twerp is going down.”

Chapter Sixteen: Nearly Over

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is—Zig Ziglar—

 

The last full day of camp. Zormna awoke to the sound of the breakfast bell. She had slept though the flag raising and realized that if she didn’t run down to the lodge, she’d miss the hotter portion of the meal. Quickly tossing off her sleeping bag and letting it fly to the floor under her neighbor’s cot, Zormna hurriedly pulled a clean pair of shorts on, also throwing shoes, socks and scrambling for her bra. She swiftly slipped one side through the sleeve and hooked it in the back, adjusting the straps. Throwing off her nightgown Zormna started to adjust her necklace clips for her medallion. When Zormna reached around her neck to pull off the fiber chain, she kept reaching. There was nothing to grab.

Popping her eyes down to her chest, Zormna stared at the bare space. Panic swelled over her. Her medallion was gone.

Without even a word, she sprang to her discarded sleeping bag, lifted it up, and turned it inside out, shaking it.

Nothing. It was empty.

Dropping the sack on the floor Zormna searched through her pillowcase, her cot, her duffle bag and in the beds round about, all without success. Then Zormna peered at the floor, calculating all the places her medallion could be, including stuck in her own hair or down the cracks in the floorboards of which there were only a few. In the end she could come to no other solution than that it had been stolen as a prank.

With a heave, Zormna grabbed her tee shirt, jerked it on, and sprinted out the door. As her heart raced, her chest swelled with rage as she skidded and scrambled down the rocky slope, dodging trees, bushes and little rodents that crossed her path. She fixed her eyes on the crowd lining up outside the lodge going in to get breakfast. Directly, she rushed to push her way through the line.

Those ahead of her shoved her back. “Wait your turn! No cuts!”

“I’m not after the food! Let me in!” She elbowed past the others, making a break into the mob of people with a shove to the other side. Once there, she stood just beyond the lodge doors, scanning the crowds. Her group laughed together at the cheer table, joking as they usually did in the mornings. Nodding to herself, Zormna immediately marched in their direction with clenched fists.

She loomed over Michelle. “Where is it?”

“And a good morning to you too, sleepy head.” Michelle responded in a rather huffy way.

“My medallion, where is it?” Zormna snapped even louder.

Several heads turned. They saw the cause of commotion, and started to whisper about yet again another outburst from the Pennington Irish cheerleader.

Michelle blinked at her, frankly looking surprised. “Someone stole your necklace? Well it wasn’t me. That thing was ugly.”

Zormna scowled, but it had become easier to believe Michelle since Holly and Harvest team followers had strung out her clothes.

That thought struck her. Popping up her head, she looked across the crowd for the Harvest girl. Holly had already finished her meal was carrying her tray to the dish line where they piled up.

Leaving the Pennington table at once, Zormna and bee-lined it for the Harvest karate girl.

Stepping right into Holly’s space, Zormna took the next step. She grabbed Holly’s tray and slammed it into the trashcan.

The students around her jumped back.

Grabbing Holly by her shirt, Zormna then shoved her against the people behind her. “Give me back