A Parthan Summer by Julie Steimle (intellectual books to read TXT) 📕

“Ugh!” Zormna growled. “I told you! Stealing is stupid! I didn’t like it when people stole my clothes. And I most certainly won’t do it to someone else—even Damon Pikes.”

“Don’t get all self-righteous on us,” Michelle said. “I know it was you who thought up putting the Kool-Ade inside the showerheads.”

Zormna rolled her eyes. “That was a prank. Not theft. I wasn’t taking something that belonged to another person.”

“You got your clothes back.”

“I don’t steal.” And Zormna clenched her teeth. “Make it real dare, or don’t bother.”

“A real dare?” murmured Amanda, leaning back. “You think sneaking into a dangerous territory isn’t a real dare?”

Shaking her head, Zormna said, “Easy enough.”

“Oooh!” the girls all shared looks, chiming in. An idea seemed to pass between them.

“Don’t get cocky, Zormna,” Joy hissed. “They’ll think of something really bad.”

“I won’t be doing anything illegal,” Zormna replied to both Joy and those plotting.

But the girls were still grinning.

“I got one,” Stacey said, rising. “And it’s not stealing, so you can’t get mad.”

Zormna waited, folding her arms with a step back.

“Ok,” Stacey said, peeking to Michelle. “You have to sneak into Monroe territory, where I hear the football team has this big stuffed cougar and—”

“I’m not stealing it,” Zormna bit out.

“Of course not.” Stacey propped her hand onto her hip. “But you have to get the Monroe banners from the wrestling cabin and fashion a hangman’s noose…and hang the mountain lion from the tree in front of their cabin.”

“Ew!” Joy grabbed onto Zormna’s arm. “Don’t do it.”

“If she doesn’t, we’re gonna go back to daring people to skinny dip in the lake and reveal the most erotic dream they ever—”

Zormna tromped up to Stacey, glaring. “You have a serious mental problem.”

A couple girls broke into snickers. Stacey shot them dirty looks.

“But I’ll do it.”

“Zormna!” Joy stepped back. “Don’t let them bully you into it.”

“They’re not bullying me,” Zormna said, not taking her eye off Stacey. “I am going to show them what I will do to them if they continue with these petty, mortifying games—pretending they are fun.”

And with that, she tromped out of the cabin into the dark. She hadn’t changed from that morning, so she was still in her red Pennington shirt, which said: Pennington Pirates Swab Up! on it, and her black shorts. They could only see her in the dark due to her white legs.

“Let’s follow her,” hissed Michelle.

The pack of girls quickly shared looks, giggling in complete agreement. Almost the entire cabin followed her.

But they did not get much further than the shower cabin when Zormna turned around and said, “If you think I can’t hear you all following me, you are all idiots.”

Michelle and Amanda stepped out of hiding, Stacey right behind. “We just want to make sure you actually do it.”

Glaring at the lot of them, Zormna shook her head. “If you make noise and give me away, I am going crack raw eggs in your shoes—and other places when you least expect it.”

She then whipped around and continued on.

“Raw eggs?” murmured a couple of the girls.

“Where does she get ideas like that?”

But they followed quieter, and at a larger distance.

Zormna, they noticed, walked with incredibly light feet. And the closer they got to the boys’ side of camp, the quieter she went. They all halted at the lodge, smothering their whispers. One girl filmed Zormna’s procession the best she could, considering the dark. What they could see was like something out of a movie. When Zormna entered Monroe territory, she almost vanished from sight. And she moved not like a gymnast or a cheerleader, but as Jennifer McLenna had described her—a ninja.

Light-footed, Zormna climbed up the near tree and gently lighted onto the roof of the Monroe football cabin, where the girls saw her silhouette crouch on the ridgepole over the huge stuffed cougar and untied the ropes that secured it there. She did it so quickly, it was like she had been doing it all her life. They saw her carry the giant stuffed animal to the cabin edge, then toss it into the trees. It fell into a cluster of branches.

“Who’s there?” a boy stepped out of the cabin, looking around.

Zormna immediately flattened to the rooftop.

The watching girls suppressed squeals, waiting for when Zormna would get caught.

But that second the cabin got assaulted by a cadre of boys in black, carrying water balloons and super soakers. They hadn’t seen her at all. Zormna remained flat against the roof while the war below played out.

When it was over, Zormna slid down the side of the roof and scampered lightly up the hill to the wrestling cabin. All the banners were individually tied along the edge of the rooftop. The boys were awake still. The Pennington girls could barely see Zormna in the distance. But she climbed up to the roof as if she had been a squirrel—and one by one, she untied the banners from the roof edge. When she successfully slid off with the whole of them, Zormna hurried quietly back to the football cabin.

She scaled up the tree, strung the banners together and hung the cougar. It was barely enough for the girls to see it. And it was way too dark to make a recording, because they tried to playback what they had gotten—and it was less clear than a picture of Bigfoot.

“She won,” Jennifer McCabe murmured as they trudged back to their cabin. She glanced around, noticing that Joy was not with them.

“Not fair, really,” murmured another girl. “What did they teach her at that military school?”

“More than just gymnastics,” Amanda murmured. “That’s for sure.”

Michelle sighed, shaking her head. “She’s seriously freaky…”

“And such a prude,” Stacey added, grumbling.

“Prude is short for the word prudent,” Zormna said, suddenly behind her.

Stacey yipped, jumping and grabbing her chest. So had Michelle, Jennifer and several of the others. They hadn’t heard her.

“Which means wise.” Zormna then hiked past them, up the hill to their cabin. “Never make fun of people who are wise.”

“Man, is she a snob,” Michelle said.

A number of them nodded.

*

When the cougar was found hung the next morning, the cabin that had water-ballooned the football team had been blamed. And honestly, they wished they could have taken credit for it. But the Billsburg Football team really did not have much motivation, and so the Pennington Football team was blamed next. It didn’t matter, really—except they got lectured about tastefulness of their pranks.

 “It really was in bad taste,” Joy said, shaking her head at Zormna while they were wading along the lake shoreline after breakfast. They had a free hour before they had to return to the infirmary where they would get health and safety training for first aid certification. “Why did you let them bully you into it?”

Zormna peeked over at Maya who was acting as lifeguard that morning and shrugged. “I know it may look like I was bullied—but Joy, what would you have done if they continued to pressure you to play that dirty game?”

Joy smirked at her. “Oh…I would have left anyway.”

“Regardless of what they would say about you behind your back?”

Joy shrugged, looking back to the water. “They talk bad about me anyway. It’s old news. Besides, what matters is what you think about yourself.”

Nodding, Zormna sighed. “True. I completely agree. But Joy, some of those girls were not as brave as you. What’s-her-name—Lisa, was cornered. And I just couldn’t allow that.”

Staring at her, Joy leaned back. “Champion of the weak?”

Zormna stared at her, puzzled. “Of the week? You mean this week?”

Laughing, Joy shook her head. “I mean of those that aren’t strong. W-E-A-K. Weak.” She shook her head more. “It’s nice you watch out for people. But what you did was dangerous, and…honestly, why do you like pranks so much?”

Blinking, Zormna shrugged then smirked. “I don’t know. Harmless revenge, I guess. Because I feel so…helpless.”

Joy stared. She angled her head to see into Zormna’s face. She knew Zormna was not talking about Michelle or the cheerleaders, or even about Holly and Damon. It was about her helplessness as someone who had lost all her family.

Shaking it off, Zormna sighed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know about that,” Joy said. “But revenge really isn’t the best way, you know. My mom says the best revenge is forgiveness.”

Zormna stared. She stared especially because it was one of the few things she remembered her own mother saying.

“How?” Zormna asked.

“Because they can’t keep hurting you,” Joy said.

Confused, Zormna shook her head.

“What I mean is,” Joy sighed again. “Is that when you hold a grudge it is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. And revenge just perpetuates the cycle of pain. Those that try to hurt you don’t succeed if you rise above it.”

“Rise above it…” Zormna stared at the lake, thinking about that. “How do you do that?”

Joy shrugged. “I’m still working on it myself.”

And Zormna weakly laughed, shaking her head. “Yeah…great in theory….”

“Maybe more than that,” Joy replied, splashing her feet in the water. “Just…let it go. Or if you are going to play pranks, keep them less malicious. The Kool-Ade was funny, but it had lasting damage. And you could have hurt Holly with that laxative.”

Zormna cringed.

“Just think about it,” Joy said. And she continued to wade along the shore.

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them—Confucius—

The lake sparkled in the morning sun. Zormna had snuck out with a couple of friends to go canoeing before the sun rose. It was now dawn.

They sat in the canoe, splashing the water with their fingers and toes gently, floating on the glassy surface, and feeling the cool breeze over the water brushing their faces as if with a kiss. It was absolute heaven to Zormna.

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” quoted Joy as she lay in the stern of the canoe.

Zormna leaned up to stare at her friend quizzically. “You can drink this water, Joy.  This is a reservoir.”

Joy laughed. “I know. I was just imagining I was a survivor of a sinking ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”

“So?” replied Zormna, as usual, feeling clueless.

“So, you can’t drink sea water,” Joy said.

“Why not?” Zormna asked now sitting up with a rather perplexed expression on her face which annoyed and amused most people.

“Don’t be stupid. Everybody knows you can’t drink seawater. You’ll dehydrate. The salt,” interjected Michelle. 

Zormna blinked at her. Having lived on a parched world, she never considered that there were different kinds of water in the world.

“Sorry. I forgot,” she said, lying back down in the boat.

Across the lake they could hear the distant breakfast bell ring. It echoed on the wind amongst the trees. It barely settled onto their ears. Reluctantly, the cheerleaders sat up and as quietly as they could and paddled to the shore. When they scarcely touched land, Joy slipped into the water and pulled their canoe onto the sand. The other canoe followed and also beached. Quickly tying the boats to the short dock, the girls scrambled barefoot (except for Michelle who wore sandals) up the sandy slope to the grassy plateau and halted. Most of them grabbed their shoes along the way. They crouched low to the ground.