The Secret of Zormna Clendar by Julie Steimle (great reads .TXT) 📖

you stay out here.”

Quickly looking at her white arms, Zormna angled them to see if there was any redness. She was porcelain white still, though mildly pink at the cheeks. Maybe a little redness had formed along the crest of her nose. But with one careful glance at Kevin, Zormna shook her head.

“No thanks.”

Jennifer stiffened.

Brian and the others grinned.

Here we go, Todd thought.

“And why not?” Jennifer bit out, getting into one of her stupid tantrums.

Sighing heavily, Zormna replied, “I am comfortable here. Besides, I do not want to get in between you and your boyfriend.”

“But I invited you,” Jennifer said with bite. “So it is OK with me.”

Zormna raised her eyebrows then looked at Kevin. “Look, Jennifer. I am already eating lunch here. So you can take your little boy and go sit under a tree together and leave me alone.”

Todd’s pals busted up, though Brian stared. Kevin had turned bright red at being called a little boy.

Jennifer snapped. “You little b—!”

“Hey-ey!” Todd hopped up, putting his hands over Jennifer’s mouth. “Mom wouldn’t like that!”

“What are you? The language police?” Jennifer shouted at him next. Rolling her eyes, Jennifer stormed away, pulling Kevin with her. But Kevin did not need the urging. His cheesy grin was long gone. A dark look had replaced it, gazing on Zormna with a mixture of disappointment and growing dislike. 

Once they were gone, Brian slid next to Zormna and whispered, “It would be a good idea if you apologized to her.”

Zormna blinked over at him.

“What for?” Todd asked, exasperated at the idea. Jennifer was a nosy control freak. She needed a little telling off.

“Because you’re living with her, and it would be nice,” Brian said, looking at both Todd and Zormna. “I share a house with nine other people. I know something like an accidental insult could cause a lot of trouble.”

“Trouble?” Zormna blinked at him. “And what do you mean accidental insult?”

The boys stared at her.

Todd snorted. “You called her boyfriend a little boy—which considering all the things she could have said, that was nothing.”

Brian shrugged. “I’m just sayin’…”

But Zormna continued to stare at Brian.

“He is a bit of a weenie,” Mark said, chuckling. He scarfed down the rest of his sandwich straight after.

Zormna rolled her eyes.

“Not the point,” Brian said. He looked directly at Zormna. “You’d just better apologize, because Jennifer doesn’t seem the type of girl to forget things like that.”

Todd watched Zormna nod slowly, truly taking what Brian said to heart. But then Zormna shrugged, going back to eating her lunch.

“I was just trying to make her not so worried about how her boyfriend was staring at me,” she murmured. “So she knew I was not interested.”

Laughs on the red-top around them ebbed. Many more eavesdropped.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” Jonathan inched nearer, “What kind of guy are you interested in?”

Around them, the air almost entirely stilled.

Zormna sighed, lifted her head and said, “I had a crush on my commanding officer once. He was—and as far as I am concerned—still is the most admirable male in existence.”

Mark choked. “You mean, you like old men?”

Zormna laughed, shaking her head. “No. Arden is twenty-four, I believe.”

But everyone still stared.

“Lolita,” someone murmured nearby.

Girls snickered somewhere on the other side. Todd could feel the temperature change around them—cold eyes of the girls regarded Zormna with poisonous looks. Todd could tell Zormna was pretending not to be bothered by it. She breathed in and out like she was trying her best to maintain composure.

After lunch, Brian walked Zormna to her next class. It would have been Jennifer’s turn, but she was still in a huff about the insult to her boyfriend. But as he watched Zormna go with Brian, he felt a little envious. Zormna seemed to relax with Brian.

Halfway to class, Todd met Jeff on the stairs, going up. Water still dripped from Jeff’s dark hair down his forehead from a hasty shower after detention. Jeff hardly saw him at first. His brooding dark eyes were fixed on the steps as he marched upward—until Todd nudged him.

Jeff looked up, coming out of a deep thought.

“You and Alex missed an exciting lunch,” Todd said.

“I’ll bet,” Jeff said, shaking his head. “I heard from some other guys what that girl did to Darren. She sounds scary.”

Todd laughed. “No. Darren deserved it. She’s really great.”

“Whatever.”

They turned into the hall, tramped to their classroom, and took their seats. Their other classmates exchanging fist-bumps, waved as they dropped into their seats and opened their trigonometry texts. He pulled out his homework and leaned near Jeff’s desk with it.

“Did you finish already? Because I can’t get a couple of these problems,” Todd said.

Chuckling, Jeff opened his book and extracted his sheet of finished equations. “You really should stop asking for my help all the time…”

Why stop? Todd thought as he compared their answers. Despite being a troublemaker, Jeff was brilliant.

*

Brian was nice.

Zormna brooded during the last two class hours, thinking about what he had said—especially about apologizing to Jennifer. It was one thing to purposely commit a social faux pas to detract a hormonal boy from drooling over her while his girlfriend was present. And quite another to make that girl feel like her choice of boyfriend was inferior. That boy Kevin was not someone Zormna wanted to get to know. But Brian was right. She had to make up with Jennifer, or living with the girl would be torture.

All through History class she tried to think of a way to make amends without creating an open invitation for Jennifer’s Kevin to become familiar. She came up with nothing.

Kevin.

Zormna chuckled to herself, now sitting in Home Economics.

Why did Jennifer have to have a boyfriend named Kevin, of all things? Back home it was like naming a kid Lieutenant or Captain, or in the case of the meaning of his name in her language, General.

Sighing, Zormna tried to take her mind off of it. It was better to deal with her problem when it arose. Currently, her problem was the food list that the Home Ec teacher had handed her. Though it had pictures of their final creations next to the recipes, she still had no luck making out the words from the letters on the page.

Lay – zay – guh – nay.

She didn’t know anything called lay-zay-guh-nay.

And cuh-hi-lie. What was that? Or maybe it is said cuh-hil-lih.

Zormna shook her head. She was going to fail this class, and all the others—except quite possibly Physical Education.

She chuckled weakly, thinking on that. But it was really the only way she could keep from crying. Everything depended on her being able to read English—the one thing she had not studied back home. She felt like such an idiot.

And that thought, along with the stack of homework from all her classes, weighed heavily on her when she left the school that afternoon.

 

Todd stayed at the school for wrestling practice. He explained almost mournfully (his other three buddies nodding just as sorrowfully) that as much as he wanted her to hang out with them after school, the coach would not allow spectators. So she was stuck walking home with Jennifer and her boyfriend. Privately, Zormna wished Jennifer had been angry enough to head home without her. But she had no such luck. Jennifer, towering over her with righteous indignation, insisted that if they didn’t go together Zormna would get lost and her parents would be mad at her.

They trudged on in silence for about a block before Jennifer finally snapped with a: “You need to be nicer.”

Zormna looked the other way.

So had Kevin who had been avoiding direct eye contact with the blonde. His cheeks were still flushed from the earlier insult.

“No one has to help you, you know,” Jennifer added, her nose tilted slightly upward.

Zormna halted. “Then stop ‘helping’.”

Kevin glanced once at Jennifer, inching back to keep out of their argument.

“Fine.” Jennifer growled. “I will, you jerk.”

And she marched on ahead, dragging Kevin with her.

Zormna let them go ahead. She was glad to be alone. She never really got on with girls anyway. It was always the same old deal ever since she hit puberty. Girls were so petty.

But Jennifer’s final words stung, sinking in after she had gone farther ahead.

Jerk. Zormna had hear that word a number of times that day. It had to be slang. And apparently it did not follow the literal sense of a tug or sharp pull. It had to have meant something else—something derogatory and insulting. Zormna was not so sure she wanted to know the meaning of jerk if that was the case. All she cared is that it meant Jennifer was angry with her.

Could she live with that? Would Jennifer just leave her alone after this, or would she make war like some girls did?

You could not make war with the people you lived with.

Brian really was right. And so was Jennifer. She had to be ‘nicer’. It wasn’t the same thing as being kind. Nice meant playing the social game whereas kind meant doing good even if the methods are a little painful. Zormna had thought she was being kind when she had attempted to allay Jennifer’s feelings about her boyfriend. But she hadn’t been nice about it.

Time to change tack.

Time to play ‘nice’.

She looked at the stacks of homework in her arms and sighed.

And time to learn to read English.

Chapter Eight: Reading English

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought”—Warren Buffett—

 

 

Her arms clenched around her knees. The darkness in that cramped space smothered all memory of light and air. Zormna listened to the muffled noises beyond the metal barricade that kept her hiding place from being discovered. It was difficult to breathe. Not that she wanted to breathe loud. Her mother had said those people would be able to hear it. Then they would be able to find her. But the terror strangled her.

Then she heard her mother scream.

Zormna tried not to.

Out there, her father shouted.

Zormna held in sobs.

Then, within a sharp shriek, they were silenced.

And the pounding began.

Far away at first. Then closer. And closer. And louder. And louder. And that was all she heard from then on. The pounding, pounding, pounding in her ears – and the shouting of the invaders trying to frighten her into making noise.

They would find her. And then they would kill her.

She clenched the edge of her skirt in her teeth, holding in a million screams as the pounding and shouting came nearer and near. It thundered in her ears like a booming giant heart.

Bang! The metal that divided her from the outside rattled. Already pressed so far from it, she could not jump farther. They would open it. They would drag her out!

But then the banging moved away. Banging and banging farther and farther from her dark hiding hole. Zormna swallowed her sobs.

Then came silence.

A blinding light flashed hot from the opening.

Found!

A grinning face stared in. And he reached for her.

 

Zormna lurched up from her bed. Breathing hard, she stared at the dark, dusty attic. For a moment she did not recognize her surroundings at all. But then it all came back to her. She was in the U.S., guest to the generous hospitality of the McLenna family.

She fell back