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

Zormna pulled Michael away before his own raised fist could punch into Greg’s nose. “Ignore them. It is not if you lose that matters, it is how you lose.”

Someone on her team moaned. They all dragged their feet away to the next station.

“Everyone loses at one time or another.” Zormna added with a smirk, “You know, the difference between geeks and true athletes is how they take defeat. A geek panics and runs away. An athlete accepts it and does better the next time. Now let us get in there and do better.”

Her teammates drew in a breath together then squared their shoulders, nodding to themselves.

Jennifer’s class shared looks. And some took her advice, squaring their shoulders, determined to do better.

At the next competition they won.

Nearer to lunch, the Pennington Lamplight sent over a photographer and a reporter for the Lifestyles page. They went there to get an overview but ended up interviewing Becky from Zormna’s class who bragged about their unusual success that year. Jennifer groaned, overhearing it.

“But really, we all really have to thank our team captain, Zormna who… is…” Becky looked for her, but somehow Zormna had slipped from view. “Huh. Well, she was here a second ago. I guess she’s camera shy.”

Jennifer also noticed Darren stalking about Zormna’s class.

If the guy had any sense, he’d give up. But the guy didn’t ever let up, and he didn’t exactly stick with his homeroom like he ought to have. Then again, they were probably glad to get rid of him. Dressed in black cargo shorts and a black shirt as one of Nicholson’s Ninjas, he also carried a camera and took pictures. He had been lingering not far from where Zormna was competing, mostly. He claimed to be taking pictures for the yearbook, but no one believed him. Currently Zormna was running the hurdles.

“Look at that,” Darren murmured, leaning on a fence near where Jennifer’s class was resting. He lowered his camera and sighed. “She won again.”

Zormna’s team gathered around her at the finish line, whooping up cheers as the officiators beckoned her to the first-place spot. Mrs. Ryant hung yet another candy lei around Zormna’s neck, making six now. If she ate all that sugar she’d be crashing real heavily the next day.

“No fair,” Darren said. “They shouldn’t let Martian soldiers compete.”

Lucy rolled her eyes, casting Ingrid a dry look.

“Moron,” Ingrid muttered.

One of the photographers for the Lamplight shifted nearer, capturing a shot, and another, with a satisfied smile. With him stood a tubby man with a Handycam. Darren lifted his eyes towards the unfamiliar face, his video camera, and the large Coke he was drinking, and shifted away. The lanky geek glanced over at Jeff who had also paused during his game to stare at the tiny blonde. Of course, so did many of the other boys. Darren was probably thinking the same thing Jennifer was. And thinking it, Jennifer glanced to the FBI agents in the stands. Darren knew that they were all being watched.

Zormna grinned with glory, walking straight to the grass where several other girls were gathering for another race. She handed off her lei to a teammate. From there, Zormna stretched, preparing for yet another race.

“She’s doing them all,” Lucy muttered, also watching.

“Huh?” Jennifer turned, confused.

Lucy huffed and said, “Your ‘friend’ is doing all their races for the girls. And Jeremy Backslaughter is doing them all for the boys. That is so unfair. They should spread them out evenly and give everyone a chance.”

Looking back at Zormna as she stretched and rehydrated for the hundred-yard dash, and possibly for the future mile run, Jennifer slowly shook her head. “No. She would give no one a chance for an advantage against them.”

“I still say it is unfair,” Lucy muttered.

“It’s in the rules,” Ingrid replied, tired and turning away. “Come on. We still have more to do. Who’s prepping for the mile?”

But Jennifer continued to watch Zormna, her mind still on what she had said. Zormna was way too guarded to let anyone get the upper hand on her. With anything. She glanced back at Jeff. It finally clicked in her head why Jeff agitated Zormna so much. Because he had gotten the upper hand, if only for a short time. He had beaten her at her own game. And if it had not been for their inopportune ‘meeting’, Zormna probably still would not have known he was there. And that left Jennifer with a lot to think about.

“Calling for the hundred yard dash for boys!” the loud speaker announced.

“Men!” someone shouted back.

Everything halted for lunch.

Dividing into camps, the entire school settled on the lawn and bleachers, sharing war wounds. Zormna’s class celebrated together near the home goal post where they had spread out a blanket, sharing jokes, squirting each other with their neon-colored squirt guns. While Jennifer’s class lingered along the fence near the visitors’ stands. The teachers gathered mostly in the stadium, thumbing at their groups of kids with an assured sense of pride. Though, Mrs. Guyver’s class scowled her way as she yawned and looked to her watch. Mrs. Ryant wasn’t like that, they muttered to themselves for the thousandth time. Why couldn’t she have been their homeroom teacher?

Many watched Ryant’s Renegades with envy. They had not just become part of the festivities, they dominated it. Several heads looked at the pale foreigner who led them. But oblivious, or perhaps pretending to be, Zormna grinned to herself while she gnawed into a packaged hoagie, sitting cross-legged on the lawn. She was damp from the water they had been splashing on each other, and she had pulled off her candy leis along with the three medals she had already won, making a pile next to the class banner. Her squirt gun lay to the side, nearly spent after perfectly soaking Sparky and nailing another boy in their class right in the forehead.

“I’m done,” Zormna finally said, folding up the empty plastic wrap and dusting crumbs off her hands. She heaved herself to her feet, nodding to the cluster of teammates that still munched from their chip bags. “Excuse me while I go throw this away.”

“Hurry back,” one of her classmates called after her, waving with a grin.

Zormna strode towards the fence. The watching boys braced themselves up, preparing to be seen as they smiled at her. She ignored them all, passing the various stares from classes her team had mercilessly beaten, with a proudly raised chin.

When she got closer to Guyver’s class, Jennifer noticed Zormna’s eyes rake in the frilly pink of their shirts and the lacy parasols. A flicker of relief and pleasure that she did not have to dress like that entered Zormna’s crooked smile.

Lucy spotted Zormna passing by and sneered.

But Jennifer smiled, turning toward her. She tucked her parasol under her arm. “Wow, you really shaped that class up! We all expected Ryant’s class to be called Ryant’s Radioactive Rodents, or some intellectual term.”

Zormna blushed with a modest nod—a first for her. “It was nothing that I did. They came up with their own ideas. They just needed a little organization and confidence.”

Jennifer shook her head. She knew too well how hard Zormna made that class practice.

“Well, a good leader makes a great team,” Jennifer said, trying to let Zormna know she was being sincere. Besides, she wanted to repair the hostility that still lingered between them.

Jennifer’s teammate leaned back with a roll of her eyes.

Gazing narrowly at Jennifer, Zormna smirked. “A team is only as good as its members.”

She then moved on, clearly not ready to be open with Jennifer yet.

“Then that settles it,” Lucy called after her, flipping back her thick blond hair in disgust. “You are still a bunch of geeks.”

Zormna halted.

Jennifer cringed. She had noticed that Zormna had in many ways become protective of her classmates over the course of the day, a sincere loyalty Jennifer had not seen before.

Turning icily toward Lucy who still sneered, Zormna’s green eyes narrowed. Yet, her smile twisted up smugly. “Well then, if a ‘bunch of geeks’ are beating you then what does that make you?”

Lucy’s mouth popped open. She was about to snap back.

Jennifer quickly stepped in between them, hissing in a low voice. “Hey! Lucy happens to be my teammate. What you said to her applies to me as well.” But Jennifer’s eyes said, ‘Are you seriously going to start a fight? You are being watched.’ Jennifer could see the danger in Zormna’s gaze. The Irish-ninja was never afraid to remind people she was raised a soldier.

Taking a step back, getting the message, Zormna merely smirked. She cast a pitying glance to Jennifer before heading off again to wherever it was she was going.

“Smart mouth!” Lucy called after her then whipped towards Jennifer. “Jen, be careful. You shouldn’t spend too much time with the enemy.”

And disgusted, Lucy stomped in the other direction as if she had gotten the better in the conversation. But she was flustered. Perhaps she also had remembered that Zormna was a super-ninja.

Jennifer jogged after Zormna.

Catching up at the trash cans where Zormna dropped in her plastic wrap, Jennifer exclaimed, “For pity’s sake, you could at least not try to make enemies. Don’t you know half the girls in the school think you are a snotty prima donna? And what you said was just plain rude. Why were you goading her?”

But Zormna merely returned a dry look. “Why are you still following me?”

Hanging back, feeling sheepish, Jennifer said, “Look, I still wanna be friends. And I want to help you make friends. And, you know, fit in better. Isn’t that what you need?”

Need, perhaps, said Zormna’s eyes. But the rest of her expression remained skeptical, her mouth thinning into line. No trust.

“Look,” Jennifer whispered, “I know the FBI are just watching you. They’re not watching the area, but what you are doing in it. I’ve watched enough TV to know that something else is going on that you’re not telling me. But I can help you if you confide in me.”

Flinching, Zormna closed her eyes. “You are never going to give up, are you?”

Jennifer shook her head, lifting her eyebrows hopefully.

Sighing, Zormna took a casual look towards the stadium, marking every agent in her view that had been watching her that day. She bit her lip and shook her head just slightly. “Come with me to wash my hands.”

Trying not to look also, Jennifer followed Zormna across the field toward the stadium bathroom where they could see a longish line extending around the front.

The journey took them past the tug-of-war pit where most of the wrestling team had clustered together, gathering inside and around the pit, goofing off. Some were knee deep in mud since the mud itself had diminished from a mud fight someone had started. And of course, Todd and his friends were clumped together on one side. They were practically inseparable despite the different shirts that showed they were from separate homerooms. It had a sort of World Peace feel to it that made Jennifer smirk. Her brother was only half mud-splattered. Mark and Jonathan were the most coated, though Alex had three-fourths of his face smeared with the brown muck, matching Brian’s right side. Jeff sat among them, ankle deep in the pit with mud smeared up his legs and covering the bottom half of his shorts. He cackled with his friends like he had nothing else on his mind. Of course, when he saw Zormna walk by, a mischievous grin curled on his lips.

He called out. “Hey, Zormna!”

All five of his buddies looked up. So did the other guys there, eagerly searching for her.

Zormna halted with a tired wobble. She dryly turned to stare at him. “What?”

 “C’mere! I want to wrestle you on fair grounds.” Jeff waved her over with a flick of his hand. “Just you and me, in the pit.”

Jeff’s friends’ mouths popped open at him, clearly thinking he had lost his mind. Jennifer was certain he had. Alex swatted his brother on the