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

rumor had become so large now that it seemed entirely funny to him. Jeff had overheard several versions of it, including that he, Zormna, and Sam were in one of those love triangles you find in sappy romance novels.

“No,” Jeff replied with a stern shake of the head, though he was still smirking.

Zormna said dryly to Sam, “We just know each other well.” Then with a glance at Jeff, she admitted, “We tend to think alike.”

Jeff glanced at her, startled that she admitted it. Fact was, they thought a lot alike, just not always at the same time. He found that they agreed more than they disagreed. It was only the timing that made it so they disagreed so often.

Still looking at them as if he didn’t believe, Sam asked, “And you’re not exes or anything?”

Zormna replied firmly. “Never happened. We’re just friends.”

Openly relieved, Sam nodded with a hopeful grin at Zormna, tucking one hand into his pocket as he rocked on his feet. “So the rumors aren’t true.”

“The suspicions aren’t true, yes,” Jeff replied. Changing the subject, he turned toward Zormna. “Shall we go to the mall?”

She laughed and nodded. “Sure.” Zormna turned and walked up the kitchen doorsteps. “Just let me inform the McLennas I’m going out.”

“And wash up,” Jeff called after her, chuckling. “You’re wearing the car oil.” He then looked back at Sam, though sharply.

Sam gazed after Zormna and sighed, his eyes a little dopey as if he were thinking a little oil from a car was super sexy. Seeing that, Jeff smirked and continued on his way back to his truck. He glanced down the street once he stood next to the driver’s side. Only then did he see Sam’s car.

Sam’s car was parked on the curb across the street on the far corner where the tall shrubs would have blocked their view from the carport. The image struck him, as there were plenty of spaces to park nearer to the house. In fact, while contemplating it, Jeff realized that he didn’t even hear Sam drive up or park. The neighborhood had also been quiet. It would have been impossible that he did not hear the car, unless possibly he had been too preoccupied with Zormna to notice it. Though, that wasn’t in his nature, not with the life he’d had. Not with the things he regularly watched out for.

A tremor ran through Jeff. He peeked back at Sam who was waiting near the kitchen door for Zormna. Jeff realized Sam could have been standing behind the hedge a long time before the guy finally walked up the driveway. And worse, he never noticed. Currently Sam looked like an eager love-struck boy who knew he had to play a certain way to get the attentions of this particular, impossibly unreachable girl. Sam was certainly the first successful one in getting this close, though Jeff doubted Zormna was planning on taking any relationship beyond ‘just friends’. Then again, Sam definitely had a way of putting Zormna off her guard.

Was his mind fooling with him? Jeff shook his head as he chided himself for thinking with Darren’s paranoid extremism.

And yet, a tremor of truth to Darren’s reasoning still nagged at Jeff underneath. The FBI was being too quiet. It was possible that he had been wrong. Could one of the new kids be a spy? Jeff had already guessed at a few agents on campus among the teachers’ aides. Maybe he had to check with Darren again to get the whole picture of what that guy may have noticed from his particular vantage point. Fact was, Darren did have a knack for recognizing truth, no matter how kooky it seemed to others.

Jeff opened his truck door thinking it over more. It was possible Sam could be a spy. And clearly he had to be more careful.

Zormna hopped out the kitchen door sharing a smile at Sam though she also searched around for Jeff. Her hair was damp and oil was gone—a quick Arrassian shower. Jeff waved from his truck window so she could see him. Zormna B-lined it to the truck with Sam on her heels, crossing the lawn.

 Zormna went to his window as Sam walked a few steps behind her already offering a ride in his car. She only smiled at Sam then turned toward Jeff. “We’ll see you there?” she asked him.

Thinking a moment, Jeff nodded. “Are you riding with me or Sam?”

Glancing at Sam and then back at him, Zormna shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her. Yet she said, “I figure I’ll go with Sam.”

Nodding, Jeff started his engine, wondering what was going on in her head. He doubted it was romance. “See you there.”

She met his gaze, almost reading it. There were times when she accused him of being psychic, but honestly she seemed to know what he was thinking from just a look. She peeked once at Sam as if to say, “Don’t worry about him just yet.” But her mouth said to Sam, “Shall we go?”

Sam grinned as he replied with a chivalrous gesture to his vehicle down the road, “After you.”

Jeff released his emergency brake and pulled into the street.

Her smile came truer toward Sam, and she walked to his car.

*

“No, you can’t have him!” the voluptuous Hollywood star, squeezed in a slightly too tight mini skirt and spaghetti strap tank top, cried while clinging to the large mechanized chunk of concocted weaponry. Sweatily pointing it at the drooling, many-clawed and spiny, humanoid monster in battle armor, she prepared to fire.

“You cannot stop us, woman,” the beast alien garbled out. A long dribble of snotty mucus gooped out of its mouth while bleeding a green pus-like substance on the metal floor. “Our kind is superior to yours. The universe belongs to us, and so does the Earth!”

Zormna moaned in disgust, sinking lower in the theater seat next to Sam and Brian. Though, Jeff was laughing continuously throughout the film. When the people around tried to hush him, he tried to stifle it by covering his mouth, attempting to keep the guffaws to chuckles. The film was dramatic, full of action and impossible pyrotechnics. Mark and Jonathan watched the film on the edges of their seats however, as Brian was chewing nervously on his popcorn. Adam actually sat in a fetal position, closing his eyes at all the slime and blood. He winced when the woman shot a booming basketball-sized hole through the alien’s chest, everything graphically displayed inside the gaping wound. 

“Eat this,” the starlet said, standing sexily over the huge alien’s bleeding, green, pus-oozing body. She riddled the already dead and flailing corpse with bullets, sending chunks of the metal-like set up into the steam-filled air for greater effect. The graphics department had outdone itself.

“Ew.” Adam gasped, closing his eyes.

Brian’s fingers scraped the bottom of the empty popcorn container. It was their second. He glanced back at the exit, wondering if he should get more.

Out of the smoky recesses of the ship, other humans emerged from hiding to witness the corpse of the last of the aliens on board their ship.

“It isn’t over yet,” Mark mouthed the lines of the woman on the screen. “There is a whole other Darkan star cruiser out there fixed to destroy the Earth. We have to stop them.”

Zormna moaned again. Glancing over at Jeff on the other end of the row she saw he was still laughing. That last line had made him burst out again. She smirked then chucked, lifting her hand over her mouth. He did have a point. It was kind of funny. Still, the whole thing sort of gave her a headache. The words, take over the Earth, thumped in her skull like a bad memory, though it felt more like a hammer against her temples.

“Thrusters on full!” the sexy female lead ordered. “Gunner, do you have cosmic torpedoes ready to fire at that thing?”

A burly man with a Russian accent replied, “Ve only have von, major.”

The nearly undressed woman replied, pressing her hands down on the armrests of her comfy-looking captain’s chair to lean forward so the audience could see more cleavage. “Well, make sure that one counts.”

Mark and Jonathan cheered. And that made Jeff laugh harder.

“Shhhhh! You moron! Shut up!” A man from the row in front of them hissed, turning around. All three boys whispered ‘sorry,’ but continued to watch the film in their own way—just quieter.

“Fire!” the woman on the screen ordered.

The audience watched the crew brace in the crumbling set as the missile flew through the space, over the digitally enhanced graphic view of Earth to the giant sweet-potato-like lump that had elongated windows and pipes and guns hanging out of it with weird menacing parts. The metal creation exploded on the screen, showering the recovering post-apocalyptic Earth below. Everyone in the film cheered, including the audience watching.

Zormna sat, shaking her head.

*

“You didn’t like it?” Brian exclaimed at her with such dismay that she felt sorry for him. “That was a great film!”

They walked together out of the theater into the mall, squinting as their eyes adjusted to the afternoon sun. Mark and Jonathan were laughing and quoting parts. They only stopped when they heard that Zormna didn’t like the film at all.

“It was stupid. You have a bunch of unlikely people running around a spaceship fighting an improbable creature, which just had to be evil, and they beat them in impossible odds.” Zormna looked like she wanted to puke.

“But that’s what makes it so great! Unbeatable odds! Terrible monsters! Good versus evil! A battle to the death!” Brian declared excitedly. “What’s there not to like?”

Zormna rolled her eyes. “It was unrealistic.”

“It was gross,” Adam added.

Mark and Jonathan turned to look at him.

“It was cool!” Jonathan exclaimed. Turning to Mark, he said. “Did you see that hole? It was this big!” He demonstrated for them all to see.

Adam turned away and covered his mouth, making a nauseated face.

“I thought it was cool,” Sam chimed in. “The effects were great.”

Zormna rolled her eyes. “The effects were overdone. It was entirely unrealistic. That gun that woman had was too big for anyone to carry, and there was no believable kickback.”

Brian shook his head. “But what about the action? I mean you have got to have at least appreciated the action.”

She didn’t. It was all over her wan face.

“What is the point of action if you spend your time watching people die? What’s so entertaining about that?”

“It was cool,” Brian insisted, looking severely put out. “We kicked butt.”

 “I find nothing amusing about seeing people die. Nothing at all,” Zormna said again.

Sam shook his head, agreeing with Brian. “They were monsters, aliens trying to take over the world. They deserved it.”

Zormna scowled darkly. “That was the worst part of the movie. What a ridiculous plot hole! It is so cliché. I wish I left when it started.”

Brian stared at her as he said, “You’re kidding.”

Not kidding about this, she replied, “Think about it. Humans are more destructive than any other animal on this planet. We destroy just by living here, and yet we have to make up something more destructive just to feel good about ourselves. The fact that we allow ourselves to entertain our destructive habits, I find it all sick.”

Adam nodded. “I agree.”

Zormna smiled at him, lifting her chin.

“Jeff? No comment at all? You’ve been quiet.” Brian looked at Jeff who was walking silently behind the rest, listening to the argument with a smirk.

Jeff shrugged. “I personally found the film to be very funny.”

Mark and Jonathan rolled their eyes. Brian’s expression fell.

Zormna smirked, turned her head and started to chuckle.

Mumbling, Brian said, “Next time we go out, we’re seeing a chick flick.” Brian stuffed his hands in his pockets with a sigh of disgust, marching on.

“Chick flick?” Zormna asked, glancing at him, though she quickened her pace to keep up.

“Girl movie,” Jeff said from the back. “It’s slang.”

Glancing at him incredulously, she asked, “What do you mean? I didn’t know movies were segregated.”

“Romance