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

Friend.

That word lingered in her head like a magic spell.

Indeed. She had made friends. Real ones. Admittedly, Zormna knew she could count her true friends on one hand. But she was hoping to start counting them on two. Especially now. She needed them.

And allies.

Thinking about that, Zormna’s mind turned to that more difficult problem. As much as Jennifer and Todd were both real friends, they were not the sort of allies that could help her with the dangerous things. She needed more able allies.

The Kevin had been one. Or at least she had thought he was one. But she no longer had access to his help. Thinking he was saving her life, he had left her in this place. He thought he was protecting her. It was unfortunate that she could not convince him otherwise during her call home. And though his son Salvar was her friend, Salvar listened to his father too much. Truthfully, her only real ally had been Alea Arden.

Arden had listened to her. Supported her. And even though he did not know her secret, and there was a ten-year age gap between them, he trusted her judgement. And she trusted his. Right now, Zormna missed him the most.

Thing was, years ago, Alea Arden had suggested to the Kevin that Surface Patrol ought to join the rebellion against the government. At the time, Zormna was all for it. Arden being the leader of Alpha and she being the leader of Zeta, she had hoped the Kevin would listen with deep consideration. They were, after all, his two top officers—and their government was lousy. Brutal. Most of the people were miserable. Many were struggling to escape the world rather than stay to fight. And orphans were flooding into the Patrol almost daily. They needed a change.

But the Kevin had nixed the idea immediately. In fact, he was adamantly against it. He had called it treason—which, technically, it was.

So they dropped the subject—or at least Zormna had. Arden had still hinted at it from time to time. But that was his undercity upbringing.

To his credit, the Kevin kept that discussion secret and had not turned them in for speaking such thoughts. Then again, the Kevin was not blind to the government’s brutality. He hated it also. But the Kevin was all about maintaining stability. Social upheaval was something he abhorred.

So he really hated the rebels.

Thing was, Zormna believed the rebels were right.

Which was why she really didn’t hate Jafarr. It was just easier to say that to Jessica to stop her from saying such embarrassing things like they should ‘hook up’. Truth was, she understood him. They were alike. And she had felt sorry for him.

At school, ‘Jeff’ had watched her long before he knew she was a Tarrn. And she knew why. He was scared. He was scared of her influence within the Surface Patrol. He was also scared because she had exposed him to the FBI. Though, she noticed the FBI had eventually left him alone—like they had decided he was from Chicago after all.

Considering how thorough she knew such an organization was, the FBI must have followed up on the information they had on Jafarr. And that got her thinking…Jafarr must have had connections on this world that moved fast and efficiently. Possibly even a network similar to the one her government ran for the protection of immigrants. These would be people who would look and act ordinary, with documentation, legal proof and lots of physical evidence that they were of this world and not someplace else. Until now, she had always thought the rebellion was only within the walls of their own world. It had never occurred to her that it had spread into this world as well.

But it must have.

However, unlike ‘Jeff’, she did not have the same resources as she had had back Home. She barely had internet access. It was pathetic. How could she possibly investigate Jafarr’s network and gain allies without approaching that boy herself?

The idea made her shudder.

Jafarr didn’t just fear her, after all. He hated her. That hadn’t been a lie to Jessica. And now that he knew she was a Tarrn, she didn’t know what he was planning.

The others in his group were probably not so hostile to her, though her reputation would make it difficult for them to trust her at all. Who would trust a disenfranchised Zeta leader of the Surface Patrol? Even she wouldn’t. Rebels tended to be angry and unpredictable. Most likely, they relied on Jafarr’s personal experience with her. And there was no way Jafarr would ever forgive her for impeding his escape all that time. So they could be biased against her.

She would have to connect with one of his other allies instead. The problem was finding them.

“Are you ok?” Joy asked, peering into Zormna’s face. They were walking from the gym with their new red-and-black varsity cheer uniforms still wrapped in plastic bags. “You’ve been really distracted this morning.”

Blinking at another person she could count as a friend, already starting on the other hand, Zormna sighed. “No. I’m fine. Just thinking.”

“What about?”

Sighing, Zormna knew she could not burden this friend with more of her troubles. So she shrugged. “Nothing much. The school year is ending. Summer…”

Joy chuckled, nudging Zormna. “Don’t worry. We’ll hang out. Besides, there’s cheer camp, and you can always come to church stuff with me. We have tons of activities every week.”

That made Zormna laugh sincerely. Joy was always trying to get her to come her church things. She was half inclined, except she knew Jafarr sometimes accepted the Hendersons’ invitations.

“See you after school?” Joy said, reminding Zormna of their first official cheer practice.

Zormna nodded. “See you then.”

They went to class.

As the day progressed from one mundane lesson to the next, Zormna formulated the best way she could learn of Jafarr’s outside contacts. Problem was, she would have to execute her plan immediately. And it required that she go alone into the neighborhood more.

The first task was to lose those people who were guarding her to keep them out of her troubles.

The second was to lose the FBI in a way that would not draw their attention to any future allies.

Straight after the final hour, Zormna joined the cheerleaders in the locker room. Jennifer stopped by to make sure Joy would walk home with Zormna after practice. They dressed into their PE clothes, then marched out into the playing fields.

After an hour of drills and exercises, the girls went back to the locker room to clean up—though many were trying on their new uniforms to make sure they fit.

“Hey, Joy?” Zormna leaned over, after adjusting the skirt to her outfit, not too happy with how short it was, but glad she was not required to wear the sleeveless top if she didn’t want to. “Todd’s picking me up, so you don’t have to walk with me.”

Joy blinked at her, detecting the lie. “Are you sure?”

Zormna nodded. “Don’t worry about me.”

Sighing, Joy shrugged. “Ok… Just be careful.”

Briskly nodding, Zormna said, “I will.”

Then she pulled on sweat pants and a hoodie. Lifting the hood up to cover her hair, she snuck across the open hallway to the boys’ locker room, and hurried through it to the outside doors. She jogged out across the playing fields to the far fence. Few noticed her. Zormna climbed over the fence and was gone before the FBI could realize that she had not come out of the locker room with the other girls.

Zormna took a roundabout way to the eastern side of town, acting as if she were nothing but a jogger on the street. She had memorized her route. But one eye was always open for any FBI agents or their cars.  

She jogged past the streets that led into Kevin’s neighborhood, and entered a hillier, yet more industrial community. It was about as different from Kevin’s area as a garden was to a sidewalk. There were no trashcan alleys here. Only hills with roads lined with shaggy oleander.

The majority of the buildings were cinderblock boxes. Some of the buildings were rundown. A few of them even were boarded up, with remains of police tape across windows. The businesses in the neighborhood sold things like tires and lumber, though Zormna also passed a shabby little shop that sold groceries.

She turned a corner onto Pete’s Hill Drive. Going by a tattoo parlor, she looked in the window, glancing at the pictures while climbing the steep grade to a flatter spot on the hill. Then she came upon a travel place that could send a person to Cancun. Halting with a gaze across the street to the top of the hill, she eyed the sign that marked the painted cinder block building across from it. Dave’s Auto Pit. Just where Jessica had said it would be. Hopefully her targets were there.  

But Zormna wavered where she was, taking in her surroundings.

Everything around her was bare, including the cloudless sky. She had no cover for several yards. Just stark brick walls, sidewalk, and bleached road. She couldn’t just walk up the hill and inquire within the shop about the ‘brothers’. That would be suicide—especially if Jafarr’s work associates were from Home. And as she thought on that, Zormna paled. It could have been they who had killed her great aunt.

This was dangerous. What had she been thinking? Though Jafarr clearly had not yet said anything to anyone who would strike at her, that didn’t mean his associates would not recognize a fellow Arrassian if she stuck her head inside. Her identity was pretty obvious.

Rethinking her strategy, Zormna passed the corner to the side opposite of the auto garage, crossing the road a block away. Then she backtracked to the store on the corner.

Zormna slipped into the alley meant for back-door deliveries and trash disposal. Going behind the doughnut shop first, she kept an eye on the auto repair place across the street. Once inside, she searched the alley for any workers.

One man stepped out the moment she walked in.

Zormna ducked behind a dumpster.

A pile of cardboard boxes and trash obscured most of her view, but she peered over at the lanky, pimple-faced man a few years out of high school—one of those kind who dressed like a washed-out rock star. He lit up a cigarette and started to smoke in the dark doorway. It was open. The back door to the doughnut shop was too dark to see in. The worker took in long drags for a full five minutes, blowing out the smoke with pure sighing enjoyment. The stink of it made her stomach turn.

Zormna just could not understand the logic of smoking. It was like choosing to drink sewer water. The stuff was scientifically proven toxic. It was smoke for pity’s sake. Carbon in its dirtiest form. What were these idiots thinking? She covered her mouth and nose to keep from inhaling. Besides, coughing would draw attention.

Someone from inside called out, and the man hastily dropped then snuffed the cigarette, turning with a shove of the trash into the garbage can.

“Alright! I was only taking out the trash!”

He marched back in. The door shut behind him.

Zormna snuck quickly past the doorway, still trying not breathe his air pollution. She glanced back only once to make sure no one had followed.

The alley led to the back of another shop, where it ended at a fence with green plastic slats woven in between the metal chain link for privacy.

Looking left, then right, Zormna scaled that obstruction with little difficulty then landed in a drive-thru lot of a Kwik-E Burger—right next to a station wagon where one frazzled mother was yelling at a handful of kids to shut up or they could not get any curly fries.

One of the kids stared at Zormna through the glass then pointed. “Mommy! That girl—”

“Shut up, and order something!”

Zormna popped down as the mother leaned back toward the intercom, groaning