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

unmistakably weird.

Zormna still did not fight. But her eyes screamed ‘Help me!’ to Jennifer as if the FBI themselves had come to take her away under accusations of being an alien.

When her parents shut their bedroom door, Jennifer crawled up the stairs and sat at the foot of the door, listening.

“What have I done wrong?” Zormna asked in her shaky, Irish-trill.

And her father answered. “Nee neez’ova ovmnas zhmeka, nee za Tarrn?”

“You shouldn’t be using those words here,” Zormna said in a lower voice.

“Vechal’kai sha vo’pra!” Jennifer’s father shouted back.

Like gears in an old mechanical clock, old thoughts ticked and clicked into place inside Jennifer’s mind. That language. She had heard it only once before. Where was it again?

Zormna replied in English. “I have to keep the law.”

Jennifer heard something that sounded like a slap. Did her father just hit that girl?

Zormna’s voice stiffened to a militaristic name-rank-and-serial number tone as she answered him. “Shea za nee ooeev’om del’orn trii al’m?”

Her father replied something Jennifer just could not make out. It sounded like gibberish. And Zormna kept talking in her own dialect like she was speaking with that Kevin of hers. Her own dialect…

Jennifer’s stomach lurched. Acid rose up in her throat. The burning realization of what she was hearing settled on her. They were speaking Zormna’s language. Then again, they were all Irish, right?

But the gears in Jennifer’s mind clicked further, back to the thought she had had when she had overheard Zormna’s conversation with that boy Salvar the month before. That language was not Gaelic.

Somehow her head grew light. Jennifer dropped against the door for support. She could barely hear the conversation now, staring into space while growing numb. She tried everything to keep from vomiting on the carpet. Either they were speaking some weird lost Irish dialect or Jennifer had been right the first time. It was the language of some other place.

“Le em el oomtor’el shea nee el, em nas’op rein rel maisa’el neem!” her father shouted angrily.

The door flew open. It threw Jennifer against the wall.

Zormna rushed out of the room. Tears streaked down her terror-stricken face. She hurdled over the banister, landing light-footed to the bottom floor. Jennifer’s parents pursued only a few steps, screaming toxic language after the girl from the top of the stairs, whose words Jennifer did not understand except for tone.  

The front door slammed below, adding final punctuation to the argument.

Then silence.

Zormna was gone.

Jennifer stared up at her parents, dazed. Only one thing registered in her head. Her parents spoke Zormna’s alien lingo.

Both her father and mother turned together, huffing peevishly, yet with a degree of smug triumph. They turned to go back to their room, but then they saw Jennifer on the floor. And their eyes widened.

They knew that she knew the truth.

“You lied to me!” Jennifer got up. Still dizzy, she regained her footing with her indignation. “You lied to me all these years about being from Ireland! You even made me look like a fool when Zormna knocked me out and faked that accident. You played along!”

They went pale.

Her mother immediately reached out to her. “No! No, honey! It was an Irish spat. That’s all.”

Jennifer jerked away from her. “Don’t lie to me! Todd did that booth for the cultural festival last year. He had a Gaelic tape playing at the booth. I know what real Irish sounds like!”

Her mother drew in a breath. She quickly peeked to her husband.

“Lower your voice,” her father said, stiffly. “And for that matter, you don’t know what you are talking about. Ireland is older and richer than—”

“Save that crap for some other sucker!” Jennifer stormed off to her room. “I know what I overheard that day. I was not listening to a sci-fi TV show!”

They pursued, but Jennifer locked the door before they could get to it, pushing her back against it. She was so angry she could spit! The big fat liars! And they just watched as Zormna went about, as if she had not staged the whole ‘accident’. They knew! They knew Zormna was lying! They knew the truth the entire time! They must have also known the crazy lady of Hayes Street had not been crazy at all, but was…dare she say it? A Martian.

“Jennifer, it is not what you think,” her mother said through the door. But she sounded more matter-of-fact than repentant for lying.  

“Oh, no?” Jennifer heavily slumped against the door, hugging across her stomach. Tears ran down her cheeks. Everything, absolutely everything was wrong. If Darren was right, if Zormna really was from out of this world, then so were her parents. Then what did that make her? She looked at her hands and arms, searching for something not human about them. “And what was I suppose to think? It certainly explains why you took Zormna in so quickly. Fellow Irishman my eye! I almost believed you people, that I just hit my head and imagined it all. But I know what I saw and heard was real. Holy crap! Darren Asher was right. You’re a bunch of aliens!”

Her mother knocked.

“Honey, let us in.”

The doorknob jiggled.

“What for? So you can lie to me some more?” Jennifer bawled even harder. The sound of the foreign-words they had shouted repeated over and over in her mind. One word stuck out the most. It had been said in the overheard video conversation also. Tarrn. What was a Tarrn?

That question solidified her thoughts. Lifting her head, thinking on that one point, Jennifer replayed the recent events again in her mind. Zormna had run out of the house, crying. She had jumped the banister to get away. And what had Zormna said earlier? That if she told her parents Zormna would be a dead woman?

Jennifer turned around and jerked the door open. “What did you say to Zormna?”

Mr. and Mrs. McLenna pulled back, aghast.

Her father’s face immediately tightened into that stern unrelenting expression she knew quite well. “Jennifer, you wouldn’t understand.”

But indignation swelled within Jennifer. “I wouldn’t understand? I understand just fine! You hate her because of that mark on her shoulder! You hate her because of some…Tarrn thing.”

 Her mother shot her father a look.

“I have no idea what it means,” Jennifer snapped back to prevent another argument, “But heard it back at that house before she knocked me out.”

“What has she said to you about that?” her father growled.

“Nothing!” Jennifer bit back. “She won’t tell me anything!” Pausing to get control of her temper, Jennifer added, “Zormna said that there were people that hated her family and wanted to hurt them, but I didn’t think that it would be you.”

With that, Jennifer pushed past her parents and ran down the stairs.

“Jennifer, wait!” Her parents stampeded after her. “Where are you going?”

But Jennifer was already out the kitchen door.

 

Chapter Seventeen: Rain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The larger the rainstorm, the happier you are to see the sun.”—anon—

 

 

Overhead, the once clear day sky rumbled, darkening with clouds. It matched perfectly the gloom that overshadowed Zormna’s thoughts as she escaped from the McLenna’s home. She cast one habitual peek to where the FBI car should be. But for the first time, it was not there. It had been there the moment she and Jennifer had walked into the kitchen, but now it was gone.

That was bad.

How much had the FBI overheard? Whom would it affect? Her thoughts haunted her as she fled down the road.

Zormna had tried to be so careful. The McLennas had been perfectly diligent up until that moment, but apparently hate overwhelmed reason. And currently, for Zormna, fear was overwhelming her.

Her heart raced. She felt sick. But where could she go?

One place, of course, was open. But how safe would it be? And for how long? She had to inform the Kevin and let him know of the change in her situation. Hopefully he had not removed her communication codes.

What a fool she had been! She should have never volunteered to swim in that race! Why had she let her ego get in the way? Why did she have to prove that she was as good as Jafarr? He had adapted so well. So perfectly. And she had let herself get jealous.

So stupid! She should have never let her guard down!

And now she was in danger.

Jogging more slowly, Zormna emotional state caught up with her, wrapping its heavy despair around her body so that soon her feet felt heavy. Everything she had grown to trust in those past few months had crumbled to dust. Though she had never been so naïve as to believe that the McLennas were merely kind natives to that peculiar country, she had hoped they would never find out the truth about her family. Many families from Home who emigrated had trouble. It was the reason why they emigrated most of the time. So, she had figured they would not delve deeper to know the particulars of her family. It had been a gamble, living with them. After all, she hadn’t known their past history either. She hadn’t known why they had left Home, though she had guessed from what part of society they were. And they most certainly did not want to talk about it even in closed quarters with a soldier-in-the-know. And since they had not been involved in her great aunt’s death—which was obvious—she had thought she was safe.

Yet, that nagging, wretched feeling she had gotten that first day in Pennington now shouted at her. She should have left when she heard about her great aunt’s death. She should have known to get out of the neighborhood and strike it out alone before she left trace of her whereabouts.

 Darting down the street, tears fell off her cheeks as the clouds above threatened to rain likewise.

She should have known.

She had failed to recognize danger in her own desperation for normality.

She had been trained to notice these things.

Zormna felt like kicking herself.

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, Zormna realized that being with concern-free Jennifer had made it easy to become careless about her safety. Even under the watch of the FBI (who were a joke), she had not conceived that the adult McLennas were as dangerous as they were. But she should have known. The McLenna parents had, after all, followed the law to the letter and never talked of their origins to their children. Perfect little Irish immigrants. And it was so easy to convince Jennifer that she had imagined what she had overheard that day because of it. 

Zormna looked at her hands. They were shaking.

So stupid.

So many mistakes.

She should have told her class she could hardly swim. She had plenty of proof of it, for pity’s sake.

The clouds overhead covered the sky completely now. There would be no sunset. Shadows hung everywhere as the street lamps fought to light up. It was just too early, but they had solar-powered triggers. Zormna’s feet could hardly lift off the asphalt now, heavy as concrete. Her heart sunk towards her stomach. Her arms trembled as she contemplated the possibility that the Kevin wouldn’t take her back. He had been so cold the last time they had talked.

What then? Where could she go? Freedom and safety were nonexistent. That house of hers would only work as a refuge for a brief