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

leg to heal. Most of her classmates chased the soccer ball with the energy she wished she had. Never had she felt so drained. Her only consolation was the sun.

The sun pounded warmly upon her back, toasting her in a way that was, to a degree, comforting. She had just wished the pain in her skull would dissolve entirely. Zormna closed her eyes and sighed. It was best to just concentrate on the heat and think of nothing else. Then perhaps her headache would dissipate.

But then the warmth against her skin abruptly stopped. A shadow blocked the light she saw through her closed eyelids. Opening her eyes, Zormna looked up.

“Zormna, where have you been?” spoke the shadow with a voice she hated.

“Go away, Jafarr.”

Risking the displeasure of the coach, ‘Jeff’ had descended the steps, breaking off from where the wrestling team was jogging up and down for strength training. “Why aren’t you out playing with the other sophomores?”

Only a trace of his usual sneer was in his voice.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Zormna turned fully away from him, rubbing her scalp and pressing her hands against her temples. The pain was coming back.

“Hey.” He lifted his hands up in self-defense, “I’m just concerned. You were missing for three days, and Jennifer was freaking out. Where did you run off to?”

Zormna averted her gaze.

“Rumor has it the FBI picked you up,” he said, his tone going lower.

Stiffening in silence, Zormna did not respond.

Then he whispered, leaning closer with true disquiet, “Zormna, you look sick.”

Zormna swung around on the bench. “What does it matter to you? You hate me, right? The crazy Irish military chick who humiliated you? I would think you would be dancing on my grave by now!”

Her chest heaved as she glared at him.

Rising with his hands lifted, his scowl returned. ‘Jeff’ retreated from her. His eyes flickered for a second to the field where undoubtedly they were being watched. “No matter how much I think you are still nothing but a snotty Irish chick, I don’t dance on people’s graves. Sorry for trying to be civil.”

And he stomped down the bleachers back to his class.

His coach cuffed him on the ear, citing something like ‘detention’ at him. But ‘Jeff’s pals surrounded him as soon as they could, asking what he had said to her to make her so mad. Todd especially glowered.

Al looked back once, taking up the tail end in a lap around the track, which ‘Jeff’ was forced to lead.

Zormna watched.

New questions entered her mind. Jennifer had asked about the ‘Streigle brothers’. So, clearly, she had figured out their true connection with her. But obviously ‘Jeff’ and Al continued to play the boys from Chicago angle instead of leaving town like they should have. Zormna wondered about that. If the FBI ever tried to follow up on that trail, would they find a convincing family in Chicago claiming to be related to them? If the FBI did, then that was one less worry she would have.

But the other question that had surfaced weighed her stomach down with a low, dreadful ache. Had they, like Todd, seen the mark on her shoulder? Certainly they would know what it meant. Though they were not high blood, it still frightened her, as she did not know how they would react.

Watching them, Zormna braced her head again with her hands, hunching over as the pain returned. Leaning on her knees with her elbows, she wrapped her arms around her head and closed her eyes.

*

At lunch hour, Todd and his pals helped Zormna to their table. But unlike usual, Jeff did not remove himself from the group.

It was unsettling, really. Both ‘Jeff’ and Al sat across from her with relentless, inspecting stares, like they were waiting for something. She tried to ignore them at first, wordlessly averting her eyes to the side as she ate her sandwich next to Todd and Brian. But that did not work. She could still feel them. Finally, Zormna leaned near Brian and said, “Tell them to stop staring at me. It is…creeping me out.”

Brian shrugged then lightly smacked ‘Jeff’ on the head. “Stop it.”

But the brothers only scooted out of arm’s reach.

Their stares were beginning to make her flesh crawl.

Finally Zormna saw Jennifer and Kevin cross the lawn to their bench under the tree.

She jumped up, quickly joining them—though her feet killed.

“Ah…” Mark, Jonathan, and Brian protested, rising up. 

This time Todd slapped ‘Jeff’ on the head and glared at him. “Look what you did! You guys, stop it!”

‘Jeff’s eyes followed her anyway, though Al averted his gaze with a frown this time. The brothers returned to whispering.

“How are you feeling, Zormna?” Kevin asked as soon as she sat down next to Jennifer.

“Hungry.” Zormna bit into the rest of her sandwich with intense relish.

Kevin smirked. “I can see that.”

Zormna nodded, feeling a whole lot better. The distance helped. So close to Al and ‘Jeff’, it was like being under a hot lamp.

That thought caused a sharp memory to insert into her temples. Zormna closed her eyes, breathing in and out to handle it.

“So, I really need to talk to you about what happened over the weekend. Maybe I can help unravel the mystery, help you remember….” Kevin’s voice was more like background noise as Zormna ate. She looked over the lawn at ‘Jeff’ and Al, watching them whisper for a while. Though eventually they left their table like they were on a secret mission, shooting her last looks before going to main building. Their friends watched them go then broke into jokes as always, sneaking Zormna glances since it was obvious they were talking about her again. Todd was saying something, but she couldn’t hear. Kevin’s voice droned over theirs so there was very little she could make out. “…things. Also we should…”

Her granola bar tasted incredibly good, as well as the baby carrots, and all the other snacks Jennifer and Todd had stuffed into her lunch sack. She had not quite realized how wonderful they really were. Zormna was about to say something to Jennifer before starting into the rest of her meal, but she blinked when she noticed Jennifer nodding to Kevin as his mouth just kept going.

“Zormna, meet me after school,” he concluded his spiel. “I think you should see the building for yourself.”

“The what?” Zormna asked, reaching into her bag for the last item.

Kevin shook his head with longsuffering. “Just meet me, and we’ll go to my house after school, ok?”

Zormna nodded, shrugging it off. She pulled the apple out of her lunch bag and took a bite. Kevin stood up and walked to the trashcans with his wrappers, continually shaking his head.

Letting her thoughts drift to avoid pain, Zormna sat, gnawing on her first piece of apple for a while as she stared at the fruit in her hand. She kept chewing, but paused between each bite, blinking as a thought surfaced. A dull ache rolled in between the two halves of her brain as an image came into her mind. Words floated in with it, almost in narration—words she must have heard while she was half-asleep. Snow white. Her head began to throb again.

Putting a hand to her forehead, she turned to Jennifer who was concentrating on her own lunch, yet chewing slowly so she could keep Zormna company. “Jennifer, do you know anything about a ‘snow white’?”

Glancing at Zormna with the apple, Jennifer chuckled. “What do you mean?”

Trying to figure that herself, Zormna attempted to rephrase the question. “I mean, what does ‘snow white’ mean?”

Jennifer shrugged, remaining bemused. “Snow White is a character in a fairy tale. Why?”

Zormna looked at the apple in her hands then said with a shrug, “I just remember something about Snow White and an apple with a bite out of it.”

An ironic laugh escaped from Jennifer. “What? You ran across seven little men, and you have been living with them for the past three days?”

Ugh. Being mocked while having a headache. Not a good combination. Zormna replied as civilly as possible, which took a heap of restraint, “No. It was something someone said when I had an apple. I do not even know that tale.”

“You don’t know the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?” Jennifer exclaimed with disbelief. “Every kid knows the story of Snow White!”

In a low flat whisper with all severity, Zormna replied, “You are forgetting that I was raised in a military school and NOT in the United States of America. Fairy stories were hardly part of a military curriculum.”

Still laughing, her face flushing deep red, Jennifer waved her hand at Zormna then glanced around to see if anyone was listening in. “Ok, ok. I forgot.”

Really? Zormna wondered how this girl could possibly forget that after hanging on to a smidgen of a peek into a private communique Home.

Yet with a dramatic clearing her throat, Jennifer spoke in with a hush as one who enjoyed telling stories to a captive audience. “I’ll give the story in brief. There once lived a very pretty girl who had a really jealous stepmother. She had black hair and really white skin with lips as red as blood, I think. She was so pretty that her stepmother wanted to her killed because she wanted to be the most beautiful woman in the land. Well, luckily for Snow White, she escaped to the woods and found a home where seven little men lived. But Snow White wasn’t safe for long because her evil stepmother found out that she was alive and planned to kill her. There are plenty of versions of how she tries, but the only one that succeeds is a poison apple. But to convince Snow White to eat it, her stepmother (who was in disguise as an old woman) took a bite of the apple where the poison wasn’t. I dunno how that works, but Snow White took the apple and fell dead after one bite. But she was so beautiful that the dwarfs didn’t bury her. Instead, they laid her in a glass coffin where everyone could see her. Later, a handsome prince rode by, saw her and thought she was so beautiful that he had to kiss her. When he kissed her, the piece of poisoned apple fell out of her mouth, and Snow White woke up. The prince took her away to his kingdom to be his bride and they lived happily ever after. I forget what happens to the queen.”

Jennifer could barely gather her breath when she finished.

That was a lot of information in one dump. A strange romantic story. Zormna exhaled with another glance at the apple in her hand. It was familiar. Scary familiar. She could almost see a face in her mind, but it wasn’t a woman’s. No evil stepmother, but a dark haired, fair skinned man in his early thirties. And his voice, it echoed like a song in her head, one that she wanted to forget but couldn’t because it had a catchy jingle. A searing hot sensation in her temples sliced off the rest of the memory.

 “Are you ok?” Jennifer leaned over, peering into Zormna’s face.

Still holding the uneaten apple in her hand, Zormna murmured as nausea surged up in her throat, “I’ll be fine. My head just begins to ache when I remember things.”

The taste of apple lingered in her mouth, making her feel quite sick. She had to get something to drink or she was going to throw up. Rising quickly, Zormna limped across the grass to the trashcan, dropping the uneaten fruit inside. It echoed against the bottom with a low, yet sufficient thump.

Then she went straight to the nearest water fountain. Zormna could feel all eyes watching her.

 

Meet him after school. Meet him after school…

Zormna had found a map within her papers, perhaps one Kevin had drawn while he had been lecturing at her during lunch. Had she listened she would have known what the map was for because she had been certain