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

There was an uncomfortable pause.

<<Five agents have been killed.>>

Jeff sat back, gripping the edge of the chair he had been sitting in. "Wh - what?"

M let out a sigh.

<<Five agents. Killed.>> He paused. <<They think you did it.>>

Jeff rested his forehead on the table, moaning. Quickly sitting upright again, he asked, "Wait a second. Why do they think it was me? What happened?"

M spoke in a lower hush. <<They found something. I don't know what it was myself. Sicamore has been keeping this place tight since you-know-when, and everyone is being closely checked over and watched. I don't think that we should even be talking now.>> He then let out another disgruntled sigh. <<They found this...box-like thing in space, or rather NASA did. They were shipping it over here to Sicamore's set because apparently it has something to do with us. But the convoy was hijacked.>>

"Hijacked?" Jeff stood up, thinking hard.

<<Yeah. All five agents shipping the item were killed - shot in the head. That's all I know,>> M said.

Jeff pinched the ridge of his nose, thinking. Something related to them. Shot in the head. Five men.

"Were all of them shot in the head?" Jeff asked suddenly, pressing his brows harder.

M hesitated. <<I'm not sure. They didn't say.>>

"Where in the head?" Jeff pressed further.

M was still hesitant. <<I couldn't tell you. What are you guessing at?>>

Jeff sighed and did not answer. Thinking a moment, he replied, "Ok, M...I think we'd better not be in contact for a good while. Lose your cell, and we'll send you a new one."

<<Big Z? What do you think it was?>>

Jeff shook his head, not pinching his forehead anymore, but now biting the inner part of his lip.

"I think I'd better not say...save you some trouble if ever you were brought under inspection. See what you can do on your end, and I'll contact you if I can." Jeff turned off his phone quickly, ending that conversation before M could ask anything else.

He sat down on the couch and thought, still furrowing his brow. The others had been watching him silently. They said nothing, though they waited even longer to see what their boy leader had found.

"Well...?" Asdrov, the blonde college-aged boarder known as Aaron asked, starting to lose patience. But then, he had always been an impatient prick.

Jeff looked up. "I think we'd better use Zormna's link with NASA."

Alex laughed in incredulity and shook his head. "Zormna's link with NASA is going to tell us why the FBI had you arrested today?"

Jeff nodded. "Yeah."

Eergvin, their redheaded 'college boarder' who was known as Eric, looked to Uncle Orren (whose real name was Orrlar) and rolled his eyes.

"Spill it," 'Eric' said.

Jeff grimaced. None of them were going to like this.

Friday morning, Jeff arrived back in class as if nothing had happened the day before. Not that people hadn't tried to find out what he was arrested for.... Brian had been pestering him since he met Jeff on the grounds near the cafeteria where they were selling sugared doughnuts and breakfast in little boxes for those that came early. He was there with his sister Joy and his two freshmen brothers Ammon and Moroni who had come to school after their church's early morning seminary class. While the twins Ammon and Moroni were inventing creative ways to eat their donuts, Brian's friends, Jonathan and Mark, watched and waited with a quieter worry, expecting Brian to succeed with Jeff. Brian had, after all, a closer relationship with the roguish pale wrestler. Jeff even occasionally hung out with the Henderson family. But all they got from Jeff was a shrug and, "I dunno. They dropped the charges without telling me what I did." Which was the truth, except for the part about him not knowing. But Jeff didn't want to get his friends involved in his otherworldly matters. He liked them too much.

"Come on, man! You've got to give us more than that. What happened?" Brian continued to prod as they walked to their first hour English class, leaving the two freshmen brothers behind. Joy followed the boys, watching Jeff intently.  

Jeff shrugged, trying not to let the strain show. "I told you. They just took me in, locked me up, and then sat me in an interrogation room blowing smoke in my face. They didn't say anything, didn't show me anything - nothing." He huffed in disgust. "I wish I did know what I was taken in for so I could at least defend myself."

He said this for the benefit of watching undercover FBI agents who were not far - spying and listening to everything they said as far as Jeff knew. There were a number around campus - janitors, security guards, T.A.s, student teachers - there initially to watch Zormna though now intensely interested in Jeff's goings on.

They entered their classroom, parting from Jonathan and Mark at the door who both waved with frowns of concern. Brian kept glancing at Jeff, wondering if Jeff was just lying. He closed his mouth and sighed resignedly.

Zormna came into the room not long after. She sat in her seat, glancing once at Jeff as she opened her notebook, but none of her thoughts were revealed in her face. Her eyes were clear, and she was awake, which meant that she did not get lectured the night before for playing hooky. Apparently Mrs. McLenna had felt that the one lecture was enough. Her punishment that Saturday was firmly affixed by the school, sufficient to do the job right without their need to chastise more.

Adam came in soon after, taking a seat near them.  

Mr. Humphries entered the room importantly, carrying an armload of folders and his briefcase to the desk. He casually peered over the class as he set them down. When his eyes rested on Jeff sitting pleasantly in his seat, he blinked for a moment. And though Jeff looked tired, he did not appear overly disturbed by what had happened, which for some reason unsettle the teacher. Mr. Humphries furrowed his brow and shifted the papers and briefcase more to the center of the desk, letting out a breath. Jeff glanced up with the rest of the class as their teacher settled. Mr. Humphries looked like he wanted to say something to clear the murmurs from yesterday, but he kept stopping himself and sighing. At last, he straightened up and just pulled out the text.

"Open your books to page two hundred and four." Their teacher stared out into the class with a clearer expression, as if to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Jeff grinned.

"Shakespeare's sonnets," Mr. Humphries said with the familiar baritone. "Works of art. Look at the first." Glancing up, he asked, "Adam, would you read?"

The fair haired senior nodded and read. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake...."

"What I don't understand is why they just let you go," Zormna finally admitted during lunch. She was sitting on the grass near the big tree next to the red top - a popular eating ground of the Pennington high school 'cool kids'. Brian's group of friends had collected at their usual picnic table there, just near the edge. With them were a few others, all of which ate there because Zormna did. All of them were shivering a little from the cold air that was now blowing into town.

Jeff shook his head. His three wrestling friends were currently engaged in a vigorous game of hacky-sack and would not be listening in for the moment. "That is curious. I mean, why take me in at all, except..." He thought out loud. "Could they possibly have other suspects?"

Zormna shrugged.

The tall lanky junior with dark brown hair and wearing an X-files tee shirt known as Darren Asher placed his sandwich down onto his tray, clearing his throat from a bite and swallowed. "Who could they possibly suspect besides you? No offense, Jeff," he added, seeing Jeff's annoyed glance at him. "But you are kind of scary, and you did threaten them."

Jeff sighed with a weary look. Darren was the next-door-neighbor to Zormna's great aunt and had known her when the woman was alive. He had the reputation as a well-known space-crazed loony boy. That last year hardly left Zormna alone when she had moved into town. He practically harassed Zormna with 'Martian questions' no matter how much Zormna insisted she was from Ireland - the story everyone else around Pennington believed. Zormna had a similar accent after all. Darren was in on their 'alien' secret from the beginning mostly because he could not be deterred from nosing in on their business. In fact, it was the only way to shut him up. However, the last few months he had saved their skin by identifying an undercover FBI agent pretending to be a student at the school. And they were now in his debt.

Jennifer McLenna, who also sat under the tree with her boyfriend Kevin (who did not know the alien details but believed that Jeff and Zormna were foreigners from a small European country), blinked and thought aloud. "Who else?"

Zormna looked directly at Jeff with a thought. He could almost see the connection forming in Zormna's mind through her eyes. She whispered. "Shot in the head, you said?"

 Jeff nodded.

She cringed knowingly. "We definitely have to check this out. If the FBI doesn't find the culprits, they just might peg this on us anyway, even if we were here all week. And if it is who I think it is, then - "

"Then we're really in trouble." Jeff stood up, seeing his friends come over. Their game was worn out.

"In trouble?" Brian asked, flopping onto the picnic table bench for a breather.

Jonathan, who was a dark-haired blue-eyed Jewish boy, sat alongside him with a happy grin. But Mark threw himself onto the grass near the tree, casting Darren disparaging looks while Adam inched away to sit on Zormna's other side. All three considered Darren this annoying weirdo. They only tolerated him because Zormna told them to lay off the guy. And they obeyed only because (besides Zormna being strikingly beautiful and they wanted to stay on her good side) she'd break their necks. Everyone knew Zormna had been raised in a military school, and they had seen her skills in martial arts a number of times before. In fact, they jokingly called her 'super ninja'. But that didn't mean they were always nice to Darren.

"Aren't you supposed to be dissecting something?" Mark asked the tall lanky boy.

Darren clenched his teeth and pulled himself off the grass. "I gotta go to the..." He sighed and peered at those that would be his friends if it were not for his reputation. "...to the...."

Zormna stood up briskly. "I'll go with you."

A grateful smile spread across Darren's face.

Zormna picked up her book bag and glanced back at Jeff with a smirk. "See you after school."

Jeff nodded with a chuckle. He always thought it weird that Zormna had befriended the very guy who had annoyed her to death the year before.

The two marched over to the library, steered over there by Zormna, who apparently had others things planned besides being kind to the school weirdo - whose only fault, she believed, was his dogged persistence to tell the truth and his tactless thoughtlessness when the truth told him to shut up.

Jeff then looked back at his friends. He sat back down.

"You know, Mark, you could cut Darren some slack," Jeff said, picking up his lunch.

Mark peered at Jeff as if he had just said the unthinkable. "That nut job? Since when did you defend Martian-obsessed psychos?"

Brian laughed in his milk. Jonathan just stared at Jeff. So did Adam, though cautiously. Adam then slipped off, waving to some of his other friends with the desire to get out of the weird part of their group dynamics.

Jeff just rolled his eyes and leaned back. "He's Zormna's friend, and he stopped all that Mars babble besides."

Jennifer looked the other