Bones in the Sand by Julie Steimle (books to read to get smarter txt) 📕

Brian nodded. "Cool speech."

Immediately, Zormna smiled at him and opened her carton of milk, cheering up.

Jennifer McLenna smirked, chuckling. "If you say so. I'm only glad it kept Zormna from bickering with Mr. Zeigler about evolution. He was discussing mammals today."

Jeff and Darren nodded simultaneously.

Brian lifted his eyebrows, as he had not really known Zormna's stance on evolution. They avoided sticky topics, as most at their table were opinionated about subjects such as that. Jonathan and Mark shared looks as they noticed Jeff's and Darren's matching reaction. That also didn't happen much.

A laugh broke out across the cafeteria - but what they were laughing at was not all that clear. Mark and Jonathan craned their necks to see. Adam stood up on the bench, then he sat back down directly, smirking.

"Only Joseph," he said, opening his bag of chips.

Brian peered over, frowning.

"Joseph?" Jennifer asked, looking up. When she saw she also sat down. "Oh, Pearson Pimple."

Mark and Adam snickered.

Jonathan shrugged and continued to eat his lunch.

"Pearson pimple?" Zormna muttered, wondering at the phrase. Then she looked over the crowd. Across the room Zormna saw the tall gangly figure of the boy who had read in English class that morning. He was near the double doors of the cafeteria entrance into the main hall of the school building. A couple football jocks had shoved a pair of red P.E. shorts on his head and were pushing him around. Her jaw dropped in disgust.

"Of all the juvenile..." she muttered. Shaking her head, she hopped from the bench onto the linoleum-covered floor, and started toward the crowd. Before she could get far, Darren grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back.

"Are you crazy? That's Bradley Hershott and Deacon Wilks the Whomper over there. They'll kill you."

Zormna rolled her eyes at him. "Are you kidding me right now?"

Blinking at her, Darren let go. He ducked his head, blushing. Apparently he had forgotten that she was a famous 'super ninja' who had on a number of occasions flattened him when he had annoyed her too much, never mind that she had also tackled Jeff last year in the tug-of-war pit during the school Olympics, or that she had thrown Bradley Hershott once before already for grabbing her.

She marched away through the crammed aisles between the filled tables to get to the boys.

When Jeff saw her walk past him, his mind preoccupied up until then, he looked up. He hadn't even noticed the noise on the far end of the room, so distracted by the ominous feeing in his chest. As he followed her with his eyes, he turned to Darren. "Where is she going?"

Darren shrugged feebly. "She's going to liberate a geek from the football jocks, I guess."

Jeff stared at Darren. "This, coming from you?"

His face deepening in red, Darren hunched lower into his shoulders.

Brian and the others listening in chuckled. It was true though. Darren was also a 'geek' that had been rescued by Zormna who (not by their own will, but hers) was accepted into their group. They all believed that they put up with a lot for Zormna's sake - including space-crazed loony boys who believed in aliens.

Jeff peered over the crowd again to see where Zormna had gone, grinning while wondering what would happen. But when his eyes rested on Joseph Pearson the grin fell off and his face went ashen.

"Joseph!" Jeff jumped out of his seat. He ran straight through the tables to where Bradley and Deacon were standing. Zormna had only just arrived there herself.

Zormna had barely pulled Joseph aside and was working to take the shorts off of his head. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!"

The jocks chuckled, nudging each other, especially at how their five-foot-tall foreign-born cheerleader was rescuing the gangly geek.

Bradley snorted, tossing back his head, chin high. "Come on Zormna. It's only a little fun. Little Joey's not hurt, are you baby boy?" He plucked at Joseph's red face and chin while speaking with a baby-talk lisp.  

"Knock it off, Bradley." Zormna scowled at him, batting away his hands. "Or I'll knock you off!"

Bradley Hershott stepped forward, bringing up his overlarge chest so it stuck out in a strut to show off. "Bring it on, Baby. It would be fun to knock it off with you."

That was the wrong thing to say - especially when Jeff had arrived to hear it. Jeff swung one punch, bashing Bradley square on the nose and knocking him to the floor.

"Don't you ever talk to Zormna like that again!" Jeff's face was entirely flushed.

Those around them gasped. Everybody knew that no one smart person ever made a suggestive comment about Zormna - not in her earshot, but more especially not in Jeff's. He had become fiercely protective of Zormna within the past semester - something no one would have predicted the year before when both Zormna and Jeff were at each other's throats.

"Cool it, man!" Deacon lifted his hands in surrender, backing away.

Jeff tightened his fists, glared up at the jock who was a half a foot taller than him. With a scowl that was almost a clone of Zormna's killer glares, Jeff then turned from the two jocks and looked to Zormna and Joseph. "They didn't touch you, did they?"

Zormna shook her head, shrugging it off. Then she turned toward Joseph who was blinking back tears that he believed to be rather unmanly. She asked him, "Are you ok?"  

Joseph retreated back from the two, hot and embarrassed at needing to be saved. He grabbed his lunch tray, which had lost most of its food to the floor, and he snatched the shorts that had been shoved onto his head. They had his name on them. The boy pushed his way out of the cafeteria and back outside. Zormna and Jeff watched him escape, exchanging looks.

Bradley got up with a snarl at Jeff, yet dabbing his bloody nose as he backed away. He knew better than to fight Jeff. Everyone knew Jeff had once broken the leg of a Monroe wrestler who had jumped him in a parking lot with his entire team after a match over two years ago - a wrestling match that Jeff had won easily. And the rumor about the Chicago gang always remained in the back of everyone's mind. Besides, the scars across Jeff's face were enough to make people scared of him.

Jeff shook his head and turned to leave.

"What did you expect?" Deacon asked, steading Bradley on his feet. "Joseph to say, 'Oh my hero'?"

With the dirtiest look, Jeff returned to his lunch table. No one would report that fight. Neither boy wanted to be expelled. Both of their records were not very good.

Zormna didn't follow Jeff back to the table, though. In fact, when Jeff had returned, expecting Zormna to go back to her book bag and lunch, he saw that she had entirely vanished from the room.

He moaned and shook his head. He knew her mind. She was probably hunting down Joseph.

"She really has a thing for geeks, doesn't she?" Adam murmured.

Darren's face flushed. He pretending that he didn't hear it.

Jeff shook his head again and sighed, finishing his lunch. It wasn't geeks that she had a thing for. It was her indomitable need to right wrongs and fight for the little guy... which in most cases he liked because it meant she was good ally in the rebellion. But in high school, it just made things complicated.

Zormna didn't return to lunch until the end. She looked dejected and cold when she came back. Jennifer waited with Jeff, holding both of their book bags and lunch trays at the door. Zormna took her book bag from Jennifer's hand and grabbed the rest of her meal with her other hand. She shook her head peevishly. "I couldn't find him."

Jeff shrugged. "And you expected to? Zormna, no guy is going to like a girl rescuing him. You should know that by now."

With a terse glare at him, she grumbled, "I know it, Jafarr. I just wanted to talk to him. That's all." She let out another sigh. "I just thought I might offer him a way to fight back."

Jeff smirked at her naïveté. "You were going to offer him self-defense lessons? Zormna, you don't actually think he'd accept them from you. I've seen his type. He'd rather wallow in his geekdom than accept help from a girl."

She grit her teeth, her eyes darkening as she clearly thought the people in their neighborhood were backward thinkers.

"You'll see I'm right," he added, walking away.

Rolling her eyes, Zormna replied, "But that's pathetic. I don't see why ego has to get in the way of learning a new skill."

Jennifer walked with her, shaking her head as she whispered to her, "But not everybody thinks like you, Zormna."

<<Agent Hayworth, do you have anything to report?>>

The FBI agent inside the sedan parked across from the high school gazed at the parking lot where he had been watching Zormna and her 'bodyguard' Jeff, a.k.a. Jafarr Zeldar, coming across to Jeff's motorcycle. They had not come out alone, though Jeff would drive her home, as was their new routine. Their friends were laughing and talking. Jeff looked a little mentally preoccupied. Zormna also seemed distracted, but by the goings-on in the parking lot. In most particular, Zormna tugged on Jeff's jacket sleeve and pointed toward a tall lanky boy who was getting into a beat up station wagon on the curb. Jeff just shook his head at her and continued on toward his motorbike as if it was part of a conversation that had gone between them before. Zormna didn't follow Jeff. She walked the opposite direction toward the station wagon instead.

"Hold on one second," Agent Hayworth said, watching her step out of the norm.

The boy stopped only briefly and then flushed and ducked into the car like he was avoiding her. Jeff had stopped and turned around to watch her. He then walked toward her as she watched the station wagon drive away.

<<What is it, Hayworth?>>

The agent shook his head and replied, "It's nothing. I thought for a minute something was up. Just local teen drama. Nothing at all."

The person on the other end didn't seem too sure. <<You had better be sure, Hayworth. We need to keep this operation under our hats. Is there any sign at all that they suspect something?>>

Hayworth shook his head again, following Jeff and Zormna's march back to the motorcycle. "Not on this end. The boy has been pensive lately, but that's about it."

There was silence for a while.

<<I see. Pensive.... Beware of that. Keep me informed if anything changes. We're halfway through over here, and we don't need their interference. Call me if you see anything suspicious.>>

The person on the other end hung up. Agent Hayworth pressed the off button to his cell phone and looked over at his partner.

"Well, Simms, we'd better be off," he said.

The other agent nodded and started the engine to their car.

"Hollow, Sir!" one of the agents yelled across the desert.

"What's that?" Agent Palmer, one of Sicamore's right-hand men, called out.

"We found a hollow mound sir! We think it might be the crashed ship." The agent climbed down the rocky hill and pointed to the dusty mound where three other men were standing. It was about a hundred yards from the site where they found the helmeted skeleton, and after several days of searching for the so-called crashed ship, they at last had a lead.

Professor Pratte was grinning with excitement, smugly glancing back at Professor Dumas, who up until then maintained stubborn incredulous glares on his portly face. He was not glaring now. After he had heard the news, his expression fell to one of shock.

Professor Pratte was enjoying every minute of it.

"I told you so! I told you," he kept repeating, glancing back and forth from the hollow mound and his colleague.

Professor Dumas just shook his head and grunted. "So."

Agents Sicamore and Powell were joining