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

mean?” With a petulant frown, Zormna watched him eat. Her fingers clenched at how casually he went about it. Kevin was still a soft-minded kid with no sense of gravity. Came from having a soft life, she figured.

Kevin took a large gulp of his milk. After swallowing, he gestured at her untouched glass. “Are you sure you don’t want any?”

Zormna shook her head. Her frown stiffened.

Shrugging, he said, “Suit yourself.”

But her stare deepened enough on him that Kevin stopped munching. He shrank back from her. “Look…what else do you want? I told you all I know. I just figured you wanted to see the building for yourself—that’s all.”

“But what do you mean by thrashed?”

Exhaling with a sigh, Kevin shrugged. “I dunno. You looked crazy, like you belonged there. Your hair was all sticking out weird, and you were in a hospital gown that kinda looked barfed on. Thrashed.” He took up one of the cookies, thinking as he twisted off the top, “And I could have sworn I heard a gunshot.”

“Gunshot?” Zormna stiffened, glancing down at her wounded leg.

“When I saw you, you were already lying in the grass.” Kevin licked out the cream center. Zormna watched him, feeling sick inside—not just from the faint memory of that event that brought her headache on again, but mostly from how flippantly he talked about it.

“Why didn’t you help me?”

Kevin stopped eating.

Lifting his eyes to the contortions of disgust, dismay, and complete wrought-out frustration that passed through her reddening face, he paled. Kevin dropped the rest of the uneaten cookie onto the counter. “Look, they had guns. What was I s’posed to do?”

Zormna stared at him for a second. Her green eyes blinked with dry reality at him before slumping back on the stool. Setting her head in her hands, she leaned forward on the counter. “Of course. You’re not a soldier. You are just a kid.”

“Kid?” Kevin lifted his eyebrows at her. “May I remind you that I’m two years older than you are?”

Raising her head to stare at him, Zormna sighed with a groan. A kid mentally, she meant. But she wasn’t going to say that out loud. He was still upset about being called a boy. And he really was useless. Grabbing a cookie, Zormna shoved it into her mouth. “Pass the milk.”

Kevin smiled, handing her the other glass.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two: Questions, Questions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If you can control your family, you have gone terribly wrong somewhere.”—My Family and Other Animals—

 

 

It was well into the afternoon when Zormna returned to the McLenna’s home. Kevin drove her there and waited with her in the car until Jennifer had returned from flag practice. When she arrived, jealousy surged over Jennifer as she watched her boyfriend help the blonde out of the car. In Zormna’s distress, the girl looked even more fantastically feminine. So much, that Jennifer was sure Kevin was struggling to keep his hands off.

But then the image of Zormna pinning Jeff into the mud popped into Jennifer’s mind, and she stopped worrying. After all, if Kevin ever did dare lay a finger on the tiny blonde ninja, the girl would have ripped his arm off.

Todd had also arrived home by then. All three prepared to stand by Zormna when Jennifer’s parents dictated their verdict of what would happen to their house guest.

But it did not go exactly as planned. Mr. and Mrs. McLenna first sent Kevin out of the house, telling him to go home and mind his own business. Then they attempted to drag Zormna into the study. —But Todd absolutely refused to allow it. He put himself in the way and ordered Zormna not to go with them. Zormna was too stunned to disobey him.

So their parents finally just said it in front of their children, “You can stay here for the duration. We are legally bound to you. And until you leave here, you are our responsibility.”

“But—” Zormna’s jaw dropped in exasperation. She had been sure she would finally get emancipation. It was all over her face.

Yet Jennifer and the parents exchanged looks.

“If you give us any grief, you will be sent to a foster home,” Mrs. McLenna said.

Zormna peeked at Jennifer, and for that matter, so did Todd who had observed the exchanged looks. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, though he wasn’t complaining. Zormna got to stay, after all. But the look in Zormna’s eyes changed into comprehension. With another peek at Jennifer, Zormna bowed like a karate champion, not taking her eye off either one of the parents, even when they allowed to her leave the room.

Todd nudged Jennifer in the arm after their parents had left. He whispered, “What was that?”

Sighing, Jennifer decided to tell a partial-truth. “They think the FBI also picked her up. And they believe the FBI will think it suspicious if they throw her out of the house right away.”

“Suspicious?” He glanced once at Zormna who already was heading up the stairs to her room.

Jennifer nodded. “Illegal immigration. I think they suspect Mom and Dad forged her documents.”

“Oh….” Todd looked woozy. He swayed, grabbing the back of the couch to steady himself. “Are they going to get in trouble?”

Jennifer shrugged. The lie worked. “Not if the FBI don’t find out about it.”

Unfortunately, grief came right away. Right before dinner, the doorbell rang. And when Andrew answered it, two FBI agents stood on the front step—the same two from before.

“Mom!” Andrew called in a panicked pitch, clenching the doorknob, though he backed away.

Agent Hayworth nodded politely the moment Mrs. McLenna arrived at the door with her husband standing right behind. “Hello, Mrs. McLenna. Mr. McLenna. May we please come in? It is urgent that we speak with your ward, and if possible, your family.”

Agent Simms put away the identification badge that had made Andrew so nervous.

Mrs. McLenna glanced to her husband then nodded. Their father opened the door, eyeing both men in a way not to look hostile, but still guarded. He shot one glance at Zormna as she cowered near the banister right behind Jennifer. She and Jennifer had been doing homework up until then at the kitchen counter.

“I hope this won’t take long,” their father said. “We were about to have dinner.”

“We will try to make our visit brief. But, you must know of our concerns, Mr. McLenna,” Agent Hayworth said as he watched Mrs. McLenna beckon her children into the living room. She called for Todd to come downstairs. The children gathered on the sofa with Zormna squeezed between Todd and Jennifer for protection. Their parents provided two chairs from the kitchen table for the FBI agents.

The two agents went directly to business. They asked the same questions Zormna’s classmates had asked her at school the entire day: Where did she go? What happened? Why did she run from the house that night? And they weren’t just asking Zormna. As Zormna answered each question as truthfully as she could under the circumstances—mostly saying: “I don’t know,”—she stared at her own knees, unable to look up. Also, with each answer she made, Jennifer and Todd’s parents had something to say.

“Yes, we had an argument,” their father replied dryly when Zormna told the agents why she had run off yet, without going into detail. “We discovered Zormna was associated with some unscrupulous characters. We found out she has a cult mark on her arm. We don’t approve of such things.”

Zormna stared at her knees more, though her face color deepened. Todd’s face also turned redder and redder. He kept his mouth clamped shut as he glared furiously at his parents, waiting for the right time to speak. Jennifer pursed her lips, knowing the blonde sitting on her couch was counting on her to keep her silence.

“Do you know what cult group she was involved with?” Agent Simms asked the parents. “What that mark on her shoulder means?”

Jennifer took in breath and waited for what lie they would make up.

“She didn’t say,” Mr. McLenna replied darkly, glancing at Zormna.

Zormna closed her eyes.

Agent Simms looked to her and asked, “Tell us where you went, Zormna. We need to know where you went.”

Lifting her head, Zormna glared, so much distrust and pain on her face. “I told you. I don’t know! I don’t remember! Why can’t you accept that?”

Agent Hayworth cynically laughed and leaned back. “You don’t remember, or you choose not to remember?”

Zormna gritted her teeth with a scowl that said she wanted to strangle him. Yet she remained in her seat as though she had been nailed there.

“I don’t remember,” she said again.

“Zormna has a headache,” Jennifer butted in. “Do you mind?”

The two agents turned their attention on Jennifer. “What about you? We heard you went looking for her. Did you find any clue to her whereabouts that would be helpful to us?”

Jennifer noticed the calculating look in his eyes. He was testing her. She peeked up to her parents, who also watched her expression, wondering about the answer themselves. Had Jennifer found proof the FBI had taken Zormna? Everyone waited on her answer except for Zormna, who held herself like a condemned prisoner waiting execution.

Then Jennifer looked back at the agents. These were government men who had taken a girl off the street, hurt her, and then dumped her back in an alley. What she said would affect everyone.

“I told you, my boyfriend and I found her in an alleyway not far from here. She was alone and hurt. That’s all I know.”

The agents remained dissatisfied. Their eyes examined her critically.

So Jennifer added, “But for the record, everyone thinks you did it. Everyone at school. And I definitely do.”

“Jennifer!” Her mother gasped, panic on her face.

Zormna peered up at the agents, retreating closer to Todd.

The other agent whistled low. He jotted down some notes, shaking his head slightly. But neither man seemed like he had not heard the rumor that had spread all over Pennington High by that afternoon.

Agent Simms smirked. “Young lady, if she had been with us, would we be here?”

“Yes,” Jennifer bit back.

He looked surprised.

“To make yourselves not look guilty,” she said. “It’s the perfect act.”

The agents lifted their eyebrows, smirking as if thinking: ‘kids these days….’

 “I think that is enough,” Mr. McLenna said, rising. “We have told you everything we know, and we need you to leave. You are upsetting our children.”

Both FBI agents stared at the parents now, surveying their postures. Mr. McLenna’s shoulders were back, his chin lifted with his jaw set. Their mother was rising from her seat, ushering Mindy and Andrew to the kitchen table, urging the older ones also to do the same.

“We still have a few questions,” Agent Hayworth said.

But their father cut him off with a firm glare. “No. You have already disrupted my house and frightened my children. I am asking you to leave.”

Zormna also stood up. She glanced around the room then back at the agents as they rose from their seats. She looked to Jennifer’s parents, pursing her lips with a renewed pensive expression. She watched Jennifer’s father most especially as he handle the two men too firmly to be friendly.

Finally Agent Simms and Agent Hayworth took the hint. They glanced at Zormna as they walked through the front room to the door. Zormna followed, stopping at the wall that divided the two rooms. She