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

parking lot. That fight was in the newspapers, and was the last presumed fight Jeff ever got in. Those that had gone to their summer sports camp new better. Some fights just never ended.

Mr. Humphries nodded. Jeff took this as a sign to sit down.

“Adam, you will read the part of Sampson, and Brian, you can read Gregory. Everyone else, follow along. While we read, imagine what they are saying in modern English.” He gazed across the room, everyone waiting. “Begin, Adam.”

Adam nodded and gazed down at his textbook.

“Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals.” Adam read, peering at the page in his textbook.

“No, for then we should be colliers,” Brian read. Smirking, “Does that mean we’ll be dogs?” he asked without standing.

*

“What a bunch of babble. Blah, blah, blah,” Zormna said the moment she was out of Mr. Humphries’s earshot outside the room.

Jeff smirked, following her into the hall. “You didn’t get any of it, did you?”

She shook her head. “That wasn’t the English I studied back in school. What was that nonsense?” With added mockery, she said, “I bite my thumb but I do not bite my thumb. What was that?”

Shrugging, Jeff replied, “Insults. One culture’s insults mean nothing to another.”

Zormna scowled at him. “People don’t bite thumbs at each other here. Good thing they quit that whole habit. Everybody would be thumbless.”

Chuckling more, Jeff enjoyed her ignorance. There were days she just seemed so conceited, as she had one of the best educations back Home and had graduated at the age of twelve.

“Maybe,” he said with a grin and a shrug.

“Well at least I didn’t have to read today. You sounded like a lovesick boy.” Mocking him, Zormna said, clutching her hands together, “Ay me! Sad hours seem long.”

She laughed.

“You’ll get yours soon enough,” Jeff laughed back at her, smirking.

As they parted ways, Brian going with Jeff. Joy skipping off to the third floor, and Zormna trekking toward History, Adam Arbor and Sam Perkins followed then happily caught up with Zormna. The boys attempted to engage her in conversation as they hurried along, but Zormna shot the janitor a sharp look as she passed by. And then she peered hard at another unfamiliar face among the student teachers who were aiding Mrs. Ryant, her English teacher from last year. When Jessica hurried up to her in the hall to join her in History, only then did Zormna’s expression lighten.

*

In seventh hour, Darren Asher stared at his slab of wood with a moan. They were picking projects, and his choice wasn’t much. He was making a telephone note pad with a roller, and that only required two pieces of wood, three dowels, and a slab of plastic. But as much as Jennifer had not expected it, her boyfriend Kevin Jacobson had actually chosen the course and was making an end table. He had pre-ordered the wood and had started on the top, sanding down and leveling the pieces. Darren just stared at his block and the sand paper, dreading the grade he knew he was going to get. He just hoped that Driver’s Training that year would be cancelled. No one should be in that class taking his seat while he was stuck in Wood Shop—especially with one of the Henderson twins, Ammon or Moroni. The freshman was doodling on his notebook, looking small surrounded by all those juniors and seniors, but he had a mischievous glint in his eye that reminded Darren of Brian when he was, well, not being the boy scout he was famous for, but a jock.

Darren stared across the room with agitated boredom, his eyes resting on Samuel Perkins, the new kid he had bumped into in the hall on the first day. The guy was searching through the discarded scrap pile for free wood. Apparently Sam’s parents decided not to fund a class they didn’t want him signed up for. Wood Shop was a mistake Sam couldn’t fix. Sam had been aiming to take Computers but the course was full. If he had switched that hour he’d be in Zormna’s class, which, by her standards, she thought was a joke—but no one else in the class would sacrifice their seat, and even Zormna wouldn’t give up the easy A. He had overheard Sam ask her when he and that guy Adam had stopped them on the way from Chemistry class to lunch.

But she had shaken her head and said, “No way. I really need a no effort class.”

Sam had offered her his space in shop class but she still had refused. Working with wood seemed the last thing she wanted to do. The reason, of course, was not so obvious to the boys who had just been teasing. Zormna loved working with her hands, but woodshop was not the same as auto shop, which she probably would have said ‘yes’ to. After all, all of her world was synthetic. The very idea of making a thing out of something that had once been alive, a tree no less, made her shake her head and sigh like they were all fools.

Bored, Darren watched Sam come back with a few long pieces from the scrap bin, and he started to take them to be cut to shape so he could glue them together. At least he was creative. And the Henderson boy was slapping together something from nothing as if he did it all the time. Darren felt like he was in the wrong place for his abilities.

Five minutes before the last bell would ring, the student teacher helping out called for them to pack up and make sure all the varnish cans were tightly sealed, all tools put away. He was a new guy, someone Darren had not seen before. But there were a lot of new faculty that school year, including the Computers teacher and one of the assistants to the Wrestling coach.   

Relieved to be done for the day, Darren got up to clean up. His classmates packed up their goods and stashing them in the individual storage shelves that were on the west wall. Honestly, to be in a class with Metal Heads, Greasers, Goths and typical slackers—being the one geek—did not make his time go well. All those with him in the class stared at him like they were planning to make a medieval rack to stretch him on. After all, he was still crowned the school weirdo. Very few forgot his previous obsession with Mars, even though now he mentioned nothing about it—as he had promised both Zormna and Jeff he would get a new obsession. He just hadn’t intended it to be wood working. Darren tossed his slightly sanded board and sandpaper on the shelf then grabbed his backpack.

Then the bell rang.

 Free, he hurried out the door and down into the crowded corridors with his fellow classmates, ignoring Kevin as much as Kevin was ignoring him though they bumped elbows as they passed through the door. It was freedom for a half an hour at least before he had to return home and study. And, truthfully, his favorite pastime really had not changed. He still enjoyed watching Zormna, the one resident Martian who (finally) tolerated him. However, he was doing it all more tactfully, as he also understood the FBI were watching everything he was doing and probably recording everything he said.

Fact was, they had approached him during the summer several times, asking him about anything new he had learned about Zormna, and then later they asked about Jeff. Darren was startled when they had questioned him about Jeff, because that guy had a truly solid alibi. So his answers to the FBI had been fairly simple rejections of: “Zormna told me to stay away from him. And so I am staying away from him. He’s scary.” Which wasn’t a lie. She had said that—never mind that Darren knew a great deal about where Jeff was from, who he worked with and why he was there in Pennington. Good thing was, the FBI believed him, as Darren mostly stayed far away from Jeff.

Because Jeff really was scary.

But Darren had no intention of leaving Zormna alone, as she was fascinating—and she had finally stopped looking at him like he had a fungus growing on him. She even talked to him in public, which made heads turn, especially in Chemistry when they sat next to each other. And more when he walked with her to lunch, though he skived off from sitting with the wrestlers on the red top where Zormna usually ate. Brian and his gang still stared at him as if he were wearing a clown outfit to school.

Currently, Darren exited the main building and crossed to the gym, taking the shortcut across the school grounds. Once the football team had entered the locker room, Darren passed by the gym door to the outside exit. He knew it was dangerous for him to be spotted at that hour near those doors by any jock, and the football players had never been merciful to him before, mocking him as the ‘space crazed loony boy from Pluto’. But he risked it. He dashed to the outside before anyone could spot him. There, he faced the asphalt and the green lawns that led to the football stadium. Across the way, the varsity cheer team and the junior varsity cheer team gathered on the grass and track for their first practice that semester, which is where he figured he would find Zormna. She had gotten into the whole cheerleading thing to create a situation where people kept an eye out for her and would miss her if she was gone. It was the same reason she had joined the gymnastics’ team. But since that Friday was a game, she would definitely be at cheer practice.

Darren sprinted across the lawn to the fence that divided the soccer fields from the football fields. His eyes searched among the red-and-white pompoms and short skirts and big hair hoping to see the Martian-military-officer-turned-cheerleader in the crowd. When he recognized her fiery blonde hair in the mix, he smiled. As always, she stood out like the sun. Zormna sat on the grass adjusting her shoelaces though also reading from a thick text. She seemed to be memorizing more than reading. Occasionally she looked up to keep the words from her sight to see if she had learned them.

“Zormna!” he called over the fence.

She looked up at the sound of her name. Gazing around the field a moment, she spotted him standing there with the cluster of spectators. She heaved a tired sigh and waved. It wasn’t enthusiastic, but then she never was enthusiastic at seeing him. Darren knew she only tolerated him so he would keep his mouth shut. But that was better than what she had done last year, which was ignore him or (painfully) throw him to the ground and put him in an arm lock.

He walked along the edge of the fence to the gate in hopes to get inside to watch the practice. As he did, both squads separated to opposite sides of the stadium, forcing Zormna to stand and pick up her textbook.

“Mitochondria are the powerhouse to the cell. They are very small and reside outside the nucleus in the cytoplasm,” she recited under her breath as she walked.

Darren followed her along the other side of the fence, smiling. He called to her: “You know, I took Biology last year, Zormna. I could help you study.”

Zormna glanced over at him, giving him a petulant glare. “Thanks Darren, but I already know the content. I just need to memorize your terms.”

He nodded and stepped back from the fence, walking a little slower. She was in that kind of mood, which meant it was best to give her space. Of course, she had always been touchy when it came to her education. And conceited. Zormna often tactlessly reminded people that she was merely translating, as she had a superior education