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

Sighing, Jennifer leaned against the door frame. She folded her arms, watching Zormna fixate on her new project. And whenever she did that, Zormna spoke in curter, sharper sentences. It was like she had tunnel vision, or some kind of trance. Jennifer’s mother said Zormna could be borderline Asperger’s, but Jennifer dared not ask the girl if she were.

Then unexpectedly, Zormna got up and walked to the far window. She pulled the curtain closed. Right before the gap was entirely blocked, Jennifer caught a peek of Darren was watching from his bedroom window.  

Ugh. Jennifer groaned.

Stupid Darren Asher. The guy followed Zormna around school all the time now. He was like this predatory leech. Always with questions about aliens and Mars and Zormna’s military school. Thankfully, Zormna ignored it all. And though Jennifer had been amused to watch it at first, Jennifer had to admire how skilled Zormna was getting at giving Darren the slip. But the guy just would not give up. To be honest, he gave Jennifer the creeps.

The color was correct for a second then went off again. Zormna fiddled with it more.

“Ok, so you can fix it,” Jennifer grumbled. “Do you plan are selling this junk in the garage sale? Because I wouldn’t buy it.”

Turning slowly with a look as if Jennifer said another word she would shove her out the room, Zormna said, “Look. You don’t have to hang around here with me. It is my stuff. And I am going to have some fun with it.”

Fun? Jennifer rolled her eyes and dragged her feet back into the hallway. She went to the stairs and trudged down them. How could messing with junk be any kind of fun?

*

Martians were fascinating beings. Small in height. Strong, sturdy bones. And way too pretty.

Darren followed Zormna in PE as best as he could, hoping for another alien slip-up. So far she played either ignorant or did that stupid, stupid game of ‘I am so not going to answer you’. It was a thing she had going on.

Currently they were stuck doing circuit training. The wrestling team had given up the track to do weightlifting indoors, so Coach Baker had his class running laps while using the wrestling team’s circuit. The coach stood near the track, keeping watch on their progress. When he saw Zormna jog by for the third time—sweat glistening off her forehead, her fiery curls surging back from her face—the coach blinked at her, then vigorously shook his head as if banishing a very dirty thought. He averted his eyes to his clipboard.

Darren knew what the coach was thinking. It was what everyone was thinking. In the morning sun, Zormna was (as usual) stunning.

“Leave her alone, dimwit!” Steven Davidson slapped Darren on the back of the head. He ran past on the track. Darren had been trailing Zormna from station to station. He had to jog extra fast to keep up with her pace, though he skipped most of the exercises listed at each post to do it.

“Loony boy, she doesn’t like you!” Daniel Christensen called at him, jogging by with Steven.

“Loser!” others shouted.

“Martian Maniac!”

Thankfully for him, Zormna also ignored the jeers—the same as she ignored him—not joining in at all. She hurried to the next post, the chin-up bars, where others from the last lap were just clearing out.

The girls there shot her dirty looks. They always did. Girls were so catty.

Darren attempted to catch up before Zormna reached the bars, calling, breathlessly, “Hey, Zormna! Is it true that on Mars kids take a test to prove that they are an adult?”

She ignored him, of course.

“I heard Jennifer McLenna say that you claimed that you were already an adult when you got here and that you already graduated from school back where you’re from,” he said.

Zormna pressed her teeth tighter together, rolling her eyes. She shot him a dirty look. “Go away, Darren.”

She reached the line of chin-up bars then jumped to catch the highest bar. Her hands grasped it, her nimble fingers wrapping around it, and she pulled up with strength.

The boys already at that station stared hard. That leap was at least a foot higher than they thought they could jump. The taller ones tried it. Only one made it. And he struggled to pull up alongside the blonde. After two chin-ups he dropped to the sand. Most got out of Zormna’s way. Intimidated. Awed. She had that effect.

Zormna Clendar did a set of ten brisk chin-ups, then for good measure swung and flipped over the bar. Releasing with another flip, she landed without even a hop on the sand. Immediately she broke into a run toward the next station.

Darren chased after her. “Wow! You should go into gymnastics.”

She had a good head start.

The other boys at the exercise station swayed on their feet, left in the dust cloud.

It was difficult to keep up, but Darren strained against his aching muscles to do it. They passed along the fence toward the parallel bars where others were completing the arm-walk—or were trying to. To be honest, only a few in his class were able to complete more than one lap while doing all the exercises. Most partly did the exercises and gave up half way. But Zormna Clendar completed them all, and swiftly.

That was some military training. And it got Darren wondering about the intensity of the Martians’ military force as he chased after her. Acrobatic. Kung-fu-tastic. Strong. Athletic. In a war, her people would be deadly. He had once overheard Jennifer McLenna describe Zormna as an Irish ninja—which made him wonder what else was ninja-like about her and her people.

The wrestlers were beginning to exit the nearby weight room as Darren jogged along the fence. The crowd’s eyes turned toward the blonde. But she was already at the parallel bars, getting in line to walk them. As a rule, Darren avoided the wrestlers, just like he avoided the football players. None of them had any vision. And they most certainly thought he was an uber geek.

Darren arrived at the edge of the next exercise post, grabbing his side, and painfully gasping for breath. Zormna mounted onto the parallel bars without so much as a look back. She walked the bars with her hands, looking almost bored. Darren rushed alongside, just below her.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to me,” he called up, rubbing the stitch in his side.

“Oh, yes it would,” Zormna muttered.

Reaching the end, she hopped down and ran toward the next station.

He tried to run after her, but it was way too exhausting. His lungs hurt. He had to give up. Well…at least for the day. In the distance, he could see her limber figure arrive at yet another set of exercises at the low balance beam.

Darren staggered weak-legged to the nearest place to sit. He heaved a heavy sigh. There were others there also, resting, though he did not pay attention to who. It didn’t matter. He was too preoccupied with the awesome athletics of that alien girl. Beautifully cruel, that one.

He murmured to himself, while nudging the guy next to him. “Pretty amazing girl, huh?”

The guy next to him snorted.

He looked toward his fellow watcher to reply, grinning to himself.

Yet staring back at him was the state champ wrestler—that dark-haired, dark-eyed, vampire-pale guy with that nasty scar across nose and right cheek. Jeff Streigle gazed dryly back.

Darren immediately jumped up to his feet, lurching away.

On Jeff’s other side sat Brian Henderson, along with Mark and the rest of the meat-head gang. Apparently they had gathered to watch their favorite gal. Todd was rolling his eyes at him.

Darren inched back a little farther.

Though that Henderson boy and Alex Streigle were decent enough not to pick on him, Todd McLenna and his pal Mark were always mean. They never let him alone even if they could help it. Jonathan Baker wasn’t a total jerk. But Jeff…he was downright scary.

“Uh…” Taking in a breath of courage as he could see that these thugs were not going to harass him, Darren said, “You…you know why she is that amazing, don’t you?”

“Save it, dufus.” Jeff shook his head with a wan expression. “We’re not interested in your Mars babble.”

Darren flinched. He had half-expected the Chicago-born thug to backhand him.

But Alex merely sighed, gesturing to Jeff to get up with that blond head. “Let’s go.”

Jeff nodded, getting up.

Salt and pepper, those two. Good thing Alex usually kept his brother Jeff in check. As they departed, Zormna already had begun returning toward their end of the stadium.

Both boys left the field and headed back to the locker room.

Taking that as a cue to leave also (as Brian was not enough to keep the rest of his gang from jumping into bully mode), Darren broke into a jog toward the next exercise station.

*

Something was wrong with Zormna. She was looking thinner in the face. She frequently stared off into space, doing nothing. And she was not longer trying to engage people in conversation—even to humor Todd’s friends. Instead, she focused on her schoolwork. All. The. Time. It bothered Jennifer.

Currently she was morbidly devouring the book Heart of Darkness for Mrs. Ryant’s class, or had been. But for the last fifteen minutes she had been staring at the same page. Before this, Jennifer would have assumed it was because she was struggling with new words. Heart of Darkness was a difficult book. However, Jennifer had heard from Todd that Zormna was now reading on a junior-year level, and had been asking for extra homework from all her teachers.

“Hey, Zormna!” Mark Wheley waved from their group’s picnic table. He had been shoving straws up his nose, making faces for the past few minutes.  

Zormna lifted her head from the page and sighed, long-suffering like.

Jennifer frowned. Was the girl that bored? Usually the blonde snickered at the antics of Todd’s friends even if she thought they were stupid. Todd and Brian were gesturing for her to come join them. But Zormna just put her face back into the book, turning the page.

Then Brian rose up and walked over to their lunch tree. “Hey. What’s wrong? Why won’t you come over?”

Sighing heavily, Zormna dragged her eyes once more from the page and said, “I have to finish this book.”

He smirked. “Really?”

Zormna blushed. She closed her eyes then shook her head. “No.”

It amazed Jennifer how Brian could get Zormna to lower her defenses. Carefully, Jennifer watched out of the corner of her eye, listening. Kevin ignored Brian, or pretended to.

“So what’s wrong?”

Shrugging, Zormna sighed again and gazed off across the campus.  “I… I just miss Home.”

“Do they send you letters?” Brian asked while Jonathan plucked a straw from Mark’s nose to make him stop.

Todd grabbed the rest of the straws, shaking his head at Mark. Zormna didn’t even laugh when she saw. She just shook her head and said, “No letters. I’m not supposed to communicate with them at all.”

Brian frowned on her behalf. “That sucks.”

Zormna nodded.

Sitting down next to her, Brian said, “You know, what might help, since you are far away from home and can’t contact them, is to…I dunno, talk about them. You don’t say much about your friends or school. Tell us about them. You might feel better.

Tilting her head, Zormna looked amused. An improvement.

“You don’t want to hear about my old friends.”

“I do,” Brian said. “Tell us. Who was your best friend? What did you do together? What was your favorite hangout? What did you do for fun?”

She chuckled this time.

Lowering her head, Zormna thought slightly longer than was comfortable. Finally, she said, “My best friend’s name was Salvar. He was the son of the head of our military school. He was a year older than me, and we did everything together.”

“What about that older guy you said you liked?” Brian cast her a sly sidelong glance.

She laughed this time. “Alea Arden?”

“His name was Alea?” Brian blinked in shock.

She shook her head. “No. No. That was his rank. His name was Arden