The Mars Project by Julie Steimle (i can read with my eyes shut TXT) 📕

And as the FBI listened, they hoped to learn something they could not get out from prior interrogations…for they had forcibly taken information from both Jeff and Zormna when they had no other recourse. So far, all they got today was that Jennifer’s father had refused to let Zormna into his tools so she could fix the car herself, which is why they had come to the auto shop on Pete’s Hill Drive. They could also tell that Jeff actually made Jennifer nervous. They just wished they knew why.

Jennifer hopped out from the car again, glancing once more to the road where the FBI had a good view of them all, trying to keep it casual. She didn’t know how much of the details they knew about Zormna or Jeff. She only hoped they did not know that her parents also came from the same world. So far, there had been no indication that the FBI were aware.

Zormna had walked alongside the car, ignoring the FBI watching them. Being under constant surveillance was awful. But letting it get to her always made it worse. And though she pretended that she was used to it, Zormna’s flesh crawled every time she saw them. Instead, she occupied her time by walking around the shop and poking at things. She had been in plenty of repair shops before, but this one was definitely a new experience. Especially since everyone tried to shoo her away from the machines, telling her she would get her nice clothes all greasy.

With a bored huff, sweeping back through the garage, Zormna popped alongside Jeff. She stuck her head under the Jeep’s hood next to his. “You know, I can save you a lot of time if you just let me use the tools here to fix my own car.”

Jeff shot her look as he laughed. “No. This is a work place. Not a play area.”

“Funny.” She delivered the dirtiest look. But on her face it only made heads turn. After all, Zormna was shockingly beautiful. “I’ll have you know that I am—”

“…not Home,” Jeff interrupted her, affixing a part so that would not move anymore.

Sulking, Zormna huffed. “You men get all sexist when you come here. I know more about machines than—”

“I worked at a repair shop with my dad for years,” Jeff hissed in an extremely low voice, hardly above a whisper. “Don’t you start comparing me to you. I’ve dealt with junk and made them good. You’ve had top of the line parts—”

“Which I have improved beyond their original engineering capabilities,” she snapped back. Then she shook her head. “I will allow that you are good at what you do. But don’t you dare say what I do is play. And I don’t want to sit back and watch—”

“Well you’re gonna have to, because this is an auto shop. And you are not an employee,” he said.

Zormna jerked back.

Irritated, Jeff replied under his arm, “Go sit somewhere. You’re crowding me.”

“Fine.” She whipped around, stomping over to the bench.

When she was gone, one of Jeff’s co-workers snickered as he said, “What a prima donna. Does she actually think she knows more than the mechanic?”

Jeff laughed, rubbing his forehead—because he knew she believed that she knew more than the mechanic. And though he had never had a chance to see if that was true, he did occasionally wonder if she was right. As he had said, she had grown up with the top of the line new machinery, while he had been working with junk. Truth was, they were a lot alike, even for fellow countrymen. Of course she craved to be useful again. She craved to dig her hands into machinery like she used to. But, no. She had to play the part of the innocent high-schooler. And innocent high-schoolers, especially blonde fourteen-year-old cheerleaders—her newfound role—never, never knew anything about complex machinery. She would have to sit and watch.

But it was nearly fifteen minutes before Jeff could even touch the old convertible. And by then Zormna had walked out of the garage and onto the street, leaving him alone with the car.

Seeing Zormna go, Jennifer hopped up from her seat and meandered over to where Jeff was finally opening the hood to inspect her vehicle.  “So… How’s it going with, uh, that protection thing?”

Jeff peeked once at the FBI car, knowing they were trying to get his verbal exchanges as much as Zormna’s. He hardly moved his head when he replied, “Not the time for that conversation.”

He kept working.

Leaning a little closer, Jennifer whispered, “You think they have listening devices in that car?”

Glancing at her wide-eyed naïveté, he smirked. “I said, not the time. Talk about something else if you have to talk to me at all.”

Jennifer leaned back from him, a little put out. Though she shrugged and said, “Ok. I was thinking you could help us redo the paint job.”

He lifted his head in a blink at her then glanced to where Zormna stood near the road. “What do you want? Racing stripes?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes, knowing he was only joking.

Yet as he watched her, Jeff rose to his full six feet to look at Jennifer more squarely. He knew from her older brother Todd that Jennifer was the family conniver.

“Fine, but it will cost you.”

He had expected Jennifer to groan, but she merely grinned wider with a glance at where Zormna was standing inside the garage doors. “I’m sure she’ll pay for it, since it is her car.”

It was impossible not to laugh. Jeff kept shaking his head as he said, “Jennifer, Zormna isn’t going to fork over money for every scheme you have.”

“Scheme?” Jennifer backed off innocently. “Me?”

Jeff laughed again, knowing Jennifer had been using Zormna for a great many conveniences that summer, from trips to the theater to buying ice cream at the mall and going paint-balling with a group of friends from her flag team.

“I know you want this car more than she does,” he said, delivering a chiding look. “How is she paying for it anyway?”  

Jennifer stared up at the ceiling while trying to avoid his gaze, but it didn’t work. “Ok… So I want the car. Mom and Dad won’t buy me one, and Zormna is a sucker for a good idea—anything that will give her more freedom.”

He chuckled, shaking his head.

“I think she’s just sulking because they refuse to let her completely own it. It has to be in my name too,” Jennifer said. “Or we can’t keep it.”

“Yeah,” Jeff laughed with some pain, asking, “But what about the money?”

“Oh, that.” Jennifer looked skyward again, blushing. “Her great aunt left her a bundle….”

“Yeah, but that will run out,” he said. “Doesn’t Zormna know that?”

“Sure I know that.” Zormna walked into the garage up to the pair of them. “I got myself a job, and Jennifer is paying me back in gas money.”

Jennifer flinched, remembering the promise she had made the night before. She had hoped Zormna had forgotten about it. But Jeff, knowing better, peeked at Jennifer crookedly while hardly hiding his ‘I-told-you-so’ smile.

Despite that, as he stood up from the guts of the engine with a cockeyed glance at Zormna, he said, “You got a job?”

Zormna nodded once. “Yesterday. Which is why I have to go now.” Turning to Jennifer, she said, “You have the keys. I want them back when you are done here.”

But Jeff cringed as if she had given him a headache. As she walked out the garage back to the street, he followed her.

“What do you mean you got a job? Where? We didn’t discuss this!”

Zormna turned back around, squinting through the afternoon sun to the darkened garage, looking a bit too much like visitor from that glowing orb. “I don’t have to discuss it with you. You have a job. I should have one too.”

“Where, Zormna?” Jeff marched straight to her. He stood a foot taller than her, like a dark shadow of night resisting the day.

Going backward, she merely sighed, still heading to the curb. “Roller Burger on Davis Street, if you must know.”

Then she crossed the street, barely looking at the sparse traffic.

“Zormna!” Jeff shouted after her, but unable to leave his workplace.

Zormna merely waved with a laugh. “See you in school!”

And she turned away, quickly escaping into the side streets where he figured Zormna would ditch her FBI tail. He was glad she knew how to do it, but it made him uneasy to see her go without an escort, especially considering who she was.

His FBI car was still there.

Tromping back inside the shop, he growled to himself. “How am I supposed to keep an eye on her if she goes on keeping secrets like that?”

Jennifer shrugged guiltily.

Delving back into the engine he had been working on, Jeff grumbled under his breath. He slipped once and dropped a wrench inside the machine.

“Skavee!”

He rarely cursed in his native tongue—so meticulous about keeping his secret. But Zormna often drove him to madness.

“What kind of person just does that?” he muttered.

Jennifer gritted her teeth, getting a little nervous listening to his peevish growling. Jeff was usually good-natured and easy-going, or had become such over the past year. But Zormna tended to bring back his old, edgy nature, sometimes bringing out the worst in him.

“That little….” He griped. Then looking up a Jennifer’s pained face, he asked, “How am I supposed to protect her if she does this all the time? Jennifer, I know she doesn’t tell you everything, but where does this wacko idea of…” He stared at her. A pained smirk and a clearer glare rested in his eyes as he fixed them on Jennifer. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

But instead of exploding at her, as he might have at Zormna, he just shook his head. He rubbed his oil and callous-covered hands.

Ducking with an apologetic smile, Jennifer said, “I didn’t think it would hurt. It might help her ego or something. She thinks she is so perfect. And now that she knows she’s a princess, I think it has gone to her head.”

Jeff rolled his eyes with exasperation, though he looked around to see if anyone heard their conversation.

“No, Jennifer. She’s always been a bit of a prima donna. I guess she is just becoming more comfortable here—enough to be herself.” In disgust, Jeff sat down with glare at the car. “Thank you,” he peevishly added.

“Sorry,” Jennifer whined. “I told you I didn’t know it would cause you problems.” Then thinking a moment, she added, “Don’t worry, when school starts she’ll be running from gymnastics to cheer practice to football games to work. She won’t have time to get into trouble. She said it herself: if she is at places where people expect her then it won’t be a problem to keep an eye on her.”

Jeff nodded. “Of course, the FBI will be thinking the same thing.”

“But they can’t pick her up either,” Jennifer said, earnestly. “Not like last time.”

He nodded resignedly. “True.”

“Don’t worry, Jeff,” Jennifer said, stepping back so she could also leave. “We have a whole new school year. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be too busy to even care what the FBI is thinking.”

And she walked out into the warm afternoon summer sun feeling lighter in her heart than in a long while.

Jeff shook his head as she went off. “I’ve never been that busy.”

He went quickly back to his work.

And though the FBI car remained to watch Jeff as he took apart and examined the pieces of the white mustang convertible, they would not get much. In fact, since the day at camp when they had discovered that he was most likely from the same place as Zormna Clendar, he had given no other proof that their assumption was true.

They had watched his house.

They had attempted to bug it, though without success as Jeff was just as adept at destroying electronic bugs as Zormna Clendar. That, and no one ever left that home