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

in their group that has been getting information from a…dangerous source. I think this source is linked to whoever murdered Zormna’s great aunt.” Pausing, Jeff added, “I have already set up a plan on how we are going to deal with the FBI and that source of theirs. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Contacts have already been made.”

Uncle Orren placed his mature hand on Jeff’s shoulder, frowning down at him. “Are we at risk though? Should we relocate?”

Jeff bit his lip and hesitated before he said, “I might have to, but I think it won’t be necessary for you. The FBI still believes that I am a manipulative house guest to the Streigle family. But I don’t think we’ve quite convinced them that Eergvin and Asdrov are merely college boarders. They might have to bail if things get tight.”

“You’ll give us notice, right?” Aaron asked sternly. Eric was also frowning with disappointment that their beer purchase had not changed FBI opinion after all.

Nodding, Jeff said. “You can count on it. But… the good news is, I have some amusing information in my pocket that will probably save us all—or at least buy us some time.”

They all looked at him again.

“You don’t mean them?” Eric asked, immediately intrigued.

Jeff nodded, grinning.

*

Jeff asked Joy to Homecoming at the donut and cocoa window the following morning. Brian watched in surprise, though Joy was flushed with delight, saying yes a bit too much.

Zormna saw. And smiled.

Joy was downright pleasant when she came into class, grinning at everybody, including if not especially Zormna. Her eyes thanked Zormna a thousand times. Apparently she had figured out that Zormna had arranged it.

Though, when Mr. Humphries came in, Zormna whispered to her, “Calm down. It isn’t like he asked you to marry him.”

Brian overheard and chuckled.

Jeff purposely ignored it.

 

They finished reading the fourth act of Macbeth out loud, and Mr. Humphries stood up.

“That was a long reading. It was also perhaps disturbing for some of us.” Their teacher sat down on the edge of the desk. “To lose family and to grieve, a few of us have felt it. My question today is, how have you coped with adversity? Be honest.”

The students silently looked at each other and pulled out their notebook paper. It was getting tedious how often misfortune had been a topic of their papers. Zormna sat and wrote quickly. It didn’t take her long to write how she coped, or how she survived, and even Jeff wrote a quick paper about how he had coped. When they turned them in to the teacher at the end of class, Mr. Humphries glanced at them both as they passed through the door. He watched them with his usual concerned stare. And though they both saw his gaze, they pretended not to. They could tell Mr. Humphries was quickly catching onto their game.

In the middle of the fourth period, Zormna’s Chemistry teacher walked over to her and Darren, setting a pink hall pass on top of Zormna’s notebook.

“You have to go to the counseling office,” Mr. Zimmer said with masked irritation.

Zormna glanced up at him then picked up the pink paper. Both her guidance counselor and Mr. Humphries had signed the writing. Puzzled, she rose off her lab stool.

“You’ll have to take your books,” her teacher said. “You won’t be back by lunch.”

Nodding, she packed up her things and stuffed them into her stitched up bag. She glanced back at Darren, who shrugged. Was the FBI there? Did they figure out that she and Jeff knew what was going on with their spy? A tremor ran through her—so much that Zormna fought the instinct to run. The only thing that stopped her was the puzzled look on Sam’s face. He even mouthed, asking where she was going. Shrugging, she held up the hall pass.

Zormna strolled to the door to where a student counselor was waiting to escort her. The student counselor held a thin superior look about her face as she gazed down at the small foreign-born cheerleader. Her eyes critically examined Zormna. She opened the door wider and stepped out to let Zormna through. Zormna followed. Together they walked down the barren hall then the stairs to the counselor’s office in the lower part of the building.

When they stepped into the dim administrative hall, Zormna realized that the corridor was almost entirely vacant, except for Jeff. He sat alone on a bench across from the counselor’s doors. His head leaned back in boredom. The student aide gestured Zormna to those same benches then imperiously instructed her to sit down. Her superior expression hadn’t changed, except possibly to look smugger.

Sitting next to Jeff, who blinked back at her as if he had not quite expected the both of them there, Zormna glanced at him. She hunched near him and whispered. “What are we in for?”

Jeff shook his head. “Zormna, Mr. Humphries thinks—” But he couldn’t finish. That moment, Mr. Humphries and the school’s guidance counselor stepped out of the office. The counselor shook Mr. Humphries’s hand as he nodded gravely.

“Thank you for your concern,” the counselor said. He then turned his gaze to the two of them. “Come in.”

Jeff and Zormna both stood up. They both leaned their gaze on Mr. Humphries who approached them gravely.

“I think you need to listen to them.” Their English teacher then sighed and shook his head. He walked down the dim hall where Mrs. Ryant met him. Mrs. Ryant glanced back at Zormna with her characteristic concerned look.

“Come in, please,” the school counselor repeated.

“Oh, scrapes.” Zormna muttered to Jeff, gazing at him with wide eyes. “Do they think we are crazy?”

Jeff shook his head. “No. But I think we let on too much about the truth, and they think we’re both emotionally messed up.”

Zormna closed her eyes and grimaced.

“Come on,” he muttered, then shoved Zormna lightly toward the doorway.

They both entered a narrow hall filled with doors right and left, each leading to individual counseling rooms, though they were more like closets. Some of the rooms were already occupied with known addicts and pregnant girls crying over what had happened to them. But the head of counseling escorted both Jeff and Zormna into a small room near the end. In the room waited a middle-aged woman with thin, fluffy brown hair. The woman smiled up at them through clear plastic glasses that were as big as coasters. She stood up pleasantly to greet them.

“Please, sit down,” the woman said, her voice as kind as her face.

Jeff shrugged and squeezed into the room, slipping through the snug space between the chairs. Then he sat, staring up at the ceiling. Zormna dragged herself in, plopping into her chair with a sulk. The woman noted their initial responses, still smiling kindly.

“I don’t suppose they told you why you were summoned here?” the woman asked.

Jeff smirked as he shook his head.

“I have a good idea,” Zormna said darkly.

The woman immediately glanced down at her file and nodded.

“You’re Zormna Clendar,” she read. Then looking at Jeff—mostly to make it equal—she read his paper. “And you are Jafarr Streigle, better known as Jeff.”

He nodded as he sat back, glad they had at least changed the files to match his alibi.

“I’m Ms. Harris,” the woman said, her voice like a sigh. She spoke gently so they could not miss her words. “Your teacher is concerned about you both. He feels that it is necessary someone talk to both of you.”

This time Zormna rose out of her seat, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I don’t need to be here. I am in perfect mental condition.”

The woman smiled and again motioned for Zormna to please sit down. “I understand that. You two have the highest test scores in the school. And many of your teachers say that you both don’t even try much.”

But as she spoke, so sweetly, so softly, a shiver ran down Jeff’s arms. Her manner reminded him of another teacher he had back home, one which actually had been an undercover spy of the People’s Military. And though he had never been suckered into spilling any secrets to that spy, his friends and classmates had. They had lost several rebels in that incident. Many good men and women had been imprisoned. Some were killed. Automatically, Jeff’s eyes narrowed on this woman. He wouldn’t put it past the FBI to throw every conceivable manipulation tactic at them.

“So what’s the problem?” Zormna didn’t sit down. She glared at the woman. “I don’t see why I am here if I am performing to acceptable levels.”

The woman sighed. She still motioned for Zormna to sit. “Mr. Humphries is concerned about both of your nightmares.”

Zormna automatically sat down. Her knees had given out.

Jeff still looked at the woman with unease. Mr. Humphries may have unwittingly played into the FBI’s desires, but he still had a job to do. He glanced at Zormna. Against his better judgment, he whispered in her ear in their own tongue as low as he could, “Za’kai shern’ever, an’e gen’op za’or ray sleevo’ra.[1]”

Zormna glanced quickly at him and replied in more than a whisper, “Nee oomal’orn fa?[2]”

He nodded.

The woman blinked unable to hear what they had said.

“Serr’kai ta flickmnee,[3]” he whispered.

Zormna nodded.

This time the woman heard him. “What are you saying?”

Jeff leaned in toward the desk as Zormna glanced about the room, feeling first under the edge of the desk though she gazed up at the lights.

“I just said that this sure takes the cake.” Jeff decided that he didn’t want to pretend that he didn’t feel threatened. “What do you really want?”

The counselor opened her mouth wider, her eyes blinking as if appalled at both of them. This was obviously not what she expected them to act like. Even as she attempted to form words to answer Jeff’s brisk words, Zormna had stood up again on her tiptoes to examine the intercom. Zormna wandered around the filing cabinet then the baseboards before turning back and shaking her head.

“There’s nothing, Jafarr,” she said. “This room’s clean.”

Jeff nodded though he still glanced back at the woman. She still looked confused, though she was mustering up a way to understand their irregular behavior. Either she was a legitimate school counselor or she was a really good spy. He wasn’t sure which filled him with more dismay.

Zormna returned to her seat with a pout. Clearly she also would rather be facing the FBI than a psychiatrist.

“There is nothing of what?” the woman asked him, peering to see if he had a tick or was seeing things that weren’t there.

He decided the truth was better than a lie. “Bugs. You see, Zormna here actually has a really screwed up life.”

Punching him in the arm first, Zormna then lifted up her seat and turned it away from him. “Roach.”

Smothering his smirk he rubbed his bruise and continued. “You see, when she got to the U.S. she found out the relative she was going to live with was murdered. Fact is, her entire family had been murdered—which is why she moved here. And if that wasn’t enough, the FBI has been following her everywhere claiming to protect her. But all they have been doing was put those electronic bugs her house.”

“And I like my privacy,” Zormna added, now knowing what he was playing at. Her back was still facing him though.

Yet the woman stared at the pair of them as if they were reciting the plot to a TV show rather than something real. She shook her head then picked up one of the files from off the desk. Some of the information, Jeff could see from reading it upside down, was in the file. Though, all the facts about the FBI were not included. The school guidance counselor peered narrowly at Jeff. “And how do you know this?” Her once calm friendly expression turned to that of sincere concern, though it still seemed to