The Secret of Zormna Clendar by Julie Steimle (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

lips pressed thin, that slit-eyed glare of hers fixed on the boy.

“I thought you were some kind of ninja?” Jennifer protested, sharply nudging Jessica out of the way.

“Hey!” Jessica shoved back. But she was a wimp like always.

“Can’t you do martial arts?” Jennifer asked Zormna. “I saw you Saturday.”

The boys and girls around them sucked in dumbfounded breaths.

“I promised your mother I would try to blend in.” Zormna peeked at Brandon. Yet she had an appreciative smile.

“Oh my—” Jessica laughed. “You’re not serious?” She looked Zormna up and down to see if it was true.

“I am not a ninja.” Zormna leaned around Jennifer to Jessica. But then she walked ahead. “Yet I do know martial arts.” She stopped somewhere near the stairwell, looking back. “Class?”

The crowd that had gathered outside Mr. Keller’s classroom seemed to wake from a trance. Many of them had followed Zormna like an entourage. Jennifer held back and nodded. Zormna was that kind of girl. But Zormna still stared at her for direction, waiting.

Sighing, Jennifer said without looking at Jessica, “Go ahead. You take her.”

Jessica snorted. “Are you kidding? I have Art on the third floor next. I was just talking about it with her when you butted in and—as always—assumed it was all about you, Jenny-poo. You take her. You promised.”

That back-stabbing, conceited…. Jennifer ground her teeth.

But she quickly turned, rushing to Zormna’s side. Together, they hurried down the stairs.

“Good luck!” Jessica called after them. “Mr. Parker lacks a sense of humor.”

Jennifer restrained herself from marching back up to slap Jessica.

“What was that all about?” Zormna asked in another of her why-do-I-have-to-deal-with-these-children looks as the descended to the first floor again.

“Nothing.” Jennifer briskly turned into the next hall. “Jessica is just a jerk. That’s all.”

“She seemed nice,” Zormna murmured.

The boys from the other class remained close, listening in yet finally keeping their distance. Perhaps they wanted to see Zormna bust a ninja move. Admittedly, Jennifer would have thought it funny if Zormna had clobbered Brandon with one of her midair kick flips. It would have been classic. Then again, the girl had only bragged about it being a combat move. It could have easily been one of her million exaggerations.

“Room one-forty-three.” Jennifer pointed to the door. “That’s just down the hall over there. I gotta run or I’ll be late.”

“Yeah,” Brandon added, snorting. “Mr. Parker hates it when people are l—”

The harsh tinny clang of the tardy bell resounded over the loudspeakers.

Jennifer went white. “Oh crap!”

That argument had taken forever.

She left Zormna and her new fan club outside the hall, bounding over steps to get to the floor above.

*

It was embarrassing, their late arrival. Oddly enough, most of Mr. Parker’s math class had been in Mr. Keller’s Science class. So, the migration came with a thundering rumble.

The teacher stood at the front of the room—a stringy man with dark eyes and dark brown hair—pale with anger. He was so drab and moldy. Or perhaps that was just the pattern on his old argyle vest coupled with murky green slacks, and a green tie that made him look that way. He had a comb-over to cover his broad, sweaty bald spot—which didn’t improve anything.

“What—” He paused dramatically between words, apoplectic in disgust. “—are you—all—doing?!”

They hastily took their seats. Brandon tried to get Zormna to first sit in his lap—until she kneed him in the groin. Then he tried for the seat next to him. Shaking those boys off, she sat herself promptly in the front of the room, away from Brandon’s gang with an exhausted huff.

Mr. Parker’s furious eyes fixed on her. He stepped immediately in front of her desk. “And who might you be?”

Flicking up her folded schedule, Zormna held it for him. “Zormna Clendar, sir. Transfer student.”

“An Irish bug, eh?” Taking the schedule, he walked back to his desk.

Bug? Zormna stiffened.

He scribbled her name in his roll, saying to her in a bored voice, “Zormna Calendar, you are late. In this class, I require punctuality.”

“Clen-dar, sir,” Zormna corrected.

Mr. Parker frowned dirty. “This is my math class, and in this class I am God. If I say you are Paul Bunyan then you are Paul Bunyan, and if I say your name is Calendar, as it is spelled—then it is Calendar.”

“They spelled it wrong?” Distressed, Zormna’s voice shot up an octave.

Several in the class snickered.

“He’s just dyslexic,” someone called out.

“You. Detention.” Mr. Parker pointed at him.

He slapped her schedule back on her desk as the heckler moaned while clenching his face in his hands. Zormna lifted up the paper, peering at where her name was written. Now she really wished she had taken that reading course. There was no way she could tell if he was right or not.

And without another thought, Mr. Parker went straight into his math lesson, which turned out to be nothing more than basic algebra.

The boy to her right glanced over at her schedule and whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s spelled right. He just doesn’t like to be contradicted.”

Zormna nodded weakly. She hoped he was right.

“I’m Ryan.”

She drew in a deep breath, heaving it out again as she looked at the blushing, dark-haired boy. Was the entire day going to be like this? His eyes were already undressing her.

Despite Mr. Parker’s narcissistic tendency to talk down to the class, insulting the kids when he explained basic algebraic formulas by telling them they ‘would be lucky to finish high school with brains as small as theirs’, he did explain the equations clear enough. Zormna copied what he wrote on the board then added notes on the side to connect them to the algebraic method she grew up with. They were different. Her former mathematics teachers were brilliant and a heap load more patient with their students. This man was just so full of himself.

Mr. Parker then did the unexplainable. He hurled his chalk at the blackboard and stamped his foot, shouting, “Zelda! What do you think you’re doing?”

The class recoiled in their seats.

Zormna peeked back, wondering who this Zelda was and what awful thing he or she had done.

The teacher tromped over to Zormna’s desk and ripped the notebook she was writing in out from under her pencil.

“Hey!” Zormna jumped up for it.

He held it back, behind him. “Writing notes in my class?”

“Taking notes,” Zormna snapped. “Give it back.”

“What kind of moron—” But Mr. Parker finally examined the page. His eyes flickered over the equations then the actual writing. He squinted at it and frowned. Then he tilted the notebook sideways.

“What is this?” He slapped the notebook onto his desk. “Chinese?” 

Rolling her eyes, Zormna said, “We do math differently where I come from.”

“Scotland has different math?” He sounded skeptical.

Zormna moaned.

“She’s from Ireland,” one of her classmates said. “Remember?”

He pointed at him. “Detention! At lunch.”

“That’s not legal,” someone else muttered. Lucky for him, Mr. Parker could not figure out who said it. So he turned on Zormna. “Detention. After school.”

Zormna lifted her eyebrows. “For what?”

He stepped nearer. “For being a smart-aleck.”

Smart, she understood. But aleck? Wasn’t that a boy’s name?

“Now sit—”

The end-of-the-period bell rang.

Everyone burst from their desks.

Zormna took that immediate opportunity and snatched back her notebook. She collected one of the free textbooks from the shelf on her way out the door.

“Hey!” Mr. Parker went after her.

But Zormna was already into the hall and at her locker when he reached her.

“You do not walk away from a teacher when he is speaking to you,” Mr. Parker growled.

“Gunnfliishak,” Zormna muttered.

“What did you say to me?” He angled nearer, his face blood red.

“Shea za nooj’ra. Leet’or al’s gepee. Gunnfliishak,” she said, to his face.

Of course he did not understand it. And she had no intention of translating it.

“Speak English,” he said through his teeth. “They do speak English in Ireland, don’t they?”

She drew in a breath, thinking up a few choice English words to call him.

 “Zormna!” Todd McLenna eagerly marched up, grinning breathlessly. “Ready to go?”

The teacher turned toward the redheaded senior, his gaze equally scathing.

“What’s going on?” Todd asked with an apprehensive look to the teacher.

“I don’t have time for this,” Mr. Parker grumbled. The room was already filling. However, he did point directly at her. “You. Remember, detention. After school.”

He stormed off.

Todd only chuckled. “Wow. Detention on the first day.” But then he turned to go, pausing only to make sure Zormna had closed the locker and checked the lock. He waved her over. “Coming?” 

With a weak smile, Zormna dragged her feet after him.

Todd put an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry. Mr. Parker won’t be in detention. And the monitor knows what a detention freak Mr. Parker is, so he’ll probably just let you off with a warning.”

They went up to the fourth floor.

Todd pointed out the room, wished her luck, then rushed off to his Civics class, which he said he was already late for. It seemed to her that everyone was late or at least believed they were. Ten minutes apparently was not enough time for some when going from class to class.

Zormna ventured into the room, peeking first.

This room was unlike the other two.

Shelves full of books covered the walls, and the floor was carpeted. Instead of rows of desks, there were round tables with four or five chairs per table. Most of the students sat around the tables whispering to one another, but a few sat near the back of the room in isolation booths doing their homework. In the back, she saw a frosted glass door which probably led to an office. Smiley face stickers dotted the wire-reinforced glass like it had been attacked by a frenzied child with a large collection.

The teacher looked up at Zormna as she approached the desk. Her lipstick-smeared mouth spread into an open and honest smile. Her blue eyes sparkled. “You must be Zorma. I’m Mrs. Ryant.”

“Zorm-na,” Zormna corrected, blushing. She hoped this teacher would not also react badly to being found wrong.

Mrs. Ryant looked back at the paper. Poking it, she nodded. “Oh. I see. N. Zorm-na. My mistake. Such an unusual name. Does it mean anything?”

Blushing more, Zormna said, “I means dusk. Well…directly translated it means sundown, as in the time when the sun is setting on the horizon rather than the time after that, which really is dusk.”

The teacher blinked then looked back at the paper, reading it. Lifting her eyes to Zormna again, she said, “I feel like I have been getting my wires crossed this entire time. You know, mixed messages. This paper here says you are not a native English speaker, and yet you seem fluent. Is this right?”

Zormna sighed. She had been dreading this very moment—the moment when she had to explain her illiteracy as well as her fluency.

“I…” Zormna lowered her eyes. “Look, I come from an isolated place in Ireland. Remote, really. English is my second language.”

Mrs. Ryant listened attentively.

Sighing again, Zormna continued. “I studied spoken English since I was a child. But I never exactly studied the written word.”

“How—?”

“Actually, to be accurate, I cannot read a word of English,” Zormna said. She shrugged. “I can make out some of the letters. But when it comes to sounding out what I see, none of it makes sense.”

Her teacher rested a hand over her mouth. She had to be shocked. That was the only way to interpret the wide-eyed expansion of her gaze.

“Please,” Zormna said, “I just need a little time—”

Mrs. Ryant put her hand on Zormna’s arm, shaking her head. “It’s all right. Find a seat, and I’ll set up a lesson for you to work on.”

Zormna nodded with another sigh.

What else was there to do?

Her feet scraped the carpet when she turned. And Zormna dragged her feet to an open seat in the back of the room, dropping heavily down. Though she noticed two familiar faces from her Math and Science class trying to catch her eye, everything felt dismal. Would this woman really be able to help her? Zormna slumped against the table, doubting it.

And class started.

It wasn’t like the other classes at all. Mrs. Ryant did not