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

Tedd. He is ten years my senior, and it was just a crush. He was…just someone I could really talk to. Sometimes Salvar and I did not see eye to eye, whereas Arden and I really communicated.”

Brian lifted his eyebrows. Jennifer knew that look. It was hope. Zormna had not gushed over how cute either boy was. Nor did she say she had a current boyfriend.

“So…” Brian led out with a rolling gesture of his hand. “What did you do together?”

Smiling to herself, Zormna stared ahead. “Oh, we went to this drinks place together and just hung out. Salvar and I would watch these hand ball matches at the sports complex—sometimes play there. And I had this other friend named Dzhon whom I used to play cards with all the time. Funny guy, really. But I was his commanding officer. So, I’m not sure if he was just doing it because we were friends or if it was merely to gain my favor.”

Brian smiled. He patted her knee. “There. Do you feel better? Even for a little bit?”

Zormna chuckled, nodding. “Yeah….”

Yet she sighed, thinking more.

“Come on,” Brian said, gesturing with his head. “Come over to the red top, or the guys are gonna think you hate them.”

Zormna snorted. Yet she nodded and rose from her seat.

Jennifer wished she had that magic touch with Zormna. However, it was good that Brian did. Someone needed to straighten her out. Zormna set down her book on the table when she joined Todd and the rest. She smiled again, with the possibility of getting into their conversation. Currently it was about getting her to join the Mat Maids (the cheerleaders for wrestling). That, would be a feat.

*

Zormna walked home with Jennifer and Kevin that afternoon, despite how the first Mat Maid tryouts were that afternoon. Apparently the boys had not succeeded in convincing her as they had hoped. Kevin held Jennifer’s hand, their fingers intertwined. Jennifer was just explaining to Kevin that she had flag practice the next day, which meant she would not be walking home with him then.

“Maybe you could come,” Jennifer said as an aside to Zormna. “Try out. Flags is way better than Mat Maids.”

But Zormna only snorted.

Kevin gave her a look. “Not interested? You’d rather be a cheerleader?”

“No way!” Jennifer slapped him on the arm. “The cheerleaders are jerks!”

Almost coughing on a huff, Zormna replied in a slightly louder voice, “Thank you both, but no. I am not interested in enlisting into any of those afterschool clubs.”

“Why not?” Jennifer frowned. “You’ve gotta have some social life.”

Zormna only replied with an eye-roll and a moan.

So Jennifer finally said it, “Look, I just want to keep you safe.”

Halting in her steps, Zormna turned, blinking at her. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you told me,” Jennifer explained, peeking once at Kevin while keeping her voice down. “If people are hunting for you, then it would not be a good idea for you to be alone so much. You know, safety in numbers.”

Zormna’s eyes widened like a deer in headlights. The concept seemed to have winded her for a second.

“You brood too much when you are alone,” Jennifer added, continuing on, “You need to spend time with people, and not that stupid junk room.”

With another eye-rolling moan, Zormna huffed. “I don’t need socialization.”

“Yes, you do. Admit it,” Jennifer shot back. “First off, your English has improved since you’ve been hanging out with me. You talk less like a dictionary and more like a person. Secondly, you aren’t such a jerk when you spend more time with people—even with Todd’s meatheads.”

Zormna lifted her eyebrows, her eyes saying Jennifer was a jerk for calling them meatheads. But her mouth said: “Look. “I don’t want to make any promises that I cannot keep. I might end up leaving here after the school term finishes. So no extra-curricular anything.”

“You might leave?” Kevin looked surprised.

Jennifer lifted her eyebrows, as this was news. “Really? Did your school contact you?”

Zormna shook her head. “Not yet. But once they hear my great aunt is dead, I am sure they will come to take me home.”

A sinking disappointment grabbed all excitement from Jennifer’s chest, leaving a heavy feeling in her stomach. She could feel it settle among her kidneys like a stone. Of course, if those people had known that the fourteen-year-old girl would be all alone when they left her, they probably would not have gone, but would have taken her back with them.

“Are you planning on contacting them?” Jennifer asked.

“I’ll find a way,” Zormna said.

The rest of the walk home was in silence.

 

Everyone on the team had gathered in the football field with their flags ready on the following day after school. Jennifer waited, as did her teammates, but the coach did not come out to greet the hopefuls for the new tryouts or them.

“Do you think she’s sick?” one of Jennifer’s teammates whispered. Probably Ginger. It sounded like her.

“What do you mean?” another asked.

“Well, I heard that she might be pregnant,” Ginger said.

“No way!”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll go look for her,” Fiona, their team captain, announced and promptly hurried off the field.

Everyone else stayed, waiting.

Jennifer noticed Kevin in the stands. He waved, then shrugged, gesturing to where the team captain had gone.

Lifting her hands up in a shrug, Jennifer made a face.

It was several minutes before Fiona returned, announcing to the crowd, “No tryouts today. And practice has been cancelled.”

“What happened?”

The entire team converged on her while the hopefuls dragged their feet off the field to the parking lot.

Their captain explained to those who stayed, “I hunted her down and found her vomiting in the gym bathrooms. She’s got morning sickness.”

“Oooh!” squealed her teammate, Trisha. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Right now it is vomit we’re talking about.” Ginger elbowed her.

“Ow!”

Jennifer came in nearer, frowning. “How bad is she feeling?”

Fiona said, “She’s called her husband to pick her up. So I don’t think there will be practice for the rest of the week.”

“Ah…” several of them moaned.  

But Fiona was right. With the coach feeling that sick, she wouldn’t want to do anything with a bunch of screaming teens.

Kevin bounded down the stadium steps, joining Jennifer on the field.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Practice is cancelled,” Jennifer said with a shrug.

He extended a hand. “Walk home with me then?”

Nodding, Jennifer smiled.

As they strolled home, hand in hand, fingers among fingers, making the time last long since Zormna was not with them—for once—Kevin seemed to be working himself up to tell Jennifer something. Finally he said it as they neared her home. “Jen, I can’t stay to study today.”

Jennifer looked surprised at him, but not much.

He said, “My parents have this meeting with the Birchstroms, and I’m supposed to entertain their kids until they get back. It’s some stupid big thing going on I’m not supposed to know about.”

Jennifer sighed, nodding. “I see.”  

His parents were into banking or something, and they always hosted these dinner parties. Kevin almost always got wrangled into them in some way.

“So, we’ll just study tomorrow, alright?” He peered at her face to make sure she wasn’t too disappointed. After all, since Zormna’s arrival, time alone had become rare.

Nodding again, Jennifer managed a smile for him. “Sure. I just have to find Zormna.”

“Can’t you just leave her to herself?” Kevin asked dismally.

Jennifer stared, scandalized. “I can’t. You know how she has been getting lately.”

He rolled his eyes.

“She’s turning into a hermit,” she said.

He waved it away then kissed Jennifer before going home.

Jennifer went home first, as it was closest. She rushed directly to the attic room, expecting to see the blonde sitting on her bed with a book.

But the bed was empty. The room was immaculate, except for a stack of encyclopedias next to the bed for so-called ‘light reading’. Leaning in the doorway, Jennifer wondered what did Zormna do when alone? All Jennifer imagined was reading. …Until the junk room at that old house popped into her head.

Of course. Zormna would be tinkering.

Jogging down the hall, then the steps, Jennifer hurried through the kitchen and living room straight to her father’s study where Zormna had once snuck in to use the internet. She peeked in just in case.

Her mother looked up from an email she was typing. “What is it, Jennifer? You could knock.”

Blushing, Jennifer backed out. “Oh, I was just looking for Zormna.”

Mrs. McLenna shook her head and went back to typing. “She hasn’t come home yet. Maybe she is at that other house.”

Nodding, Jennifer closed the door. She had guessed right. The other house, probably in that junk room.  

Jennifer jogged out the front door then headed towards Kennedy Street in a decided march. Girls in Zormna’s situation should never be left alone. People were after her for pity’s sake. Killers. No. Correct that. Anyone in Zormna’s situation should not be left without some kind of bodyguard.

When Jennifer got to the house, the front door was unlocked. Bad idea.

Gently pushing it open, Jennifer stepped in.

The house was now in a neat, mostly-clean, organized state—except for the living room. That looked like a warehouse for knickknacks and frilly things, preparing for the garage sale. Most of the flowery throw-pillows were bagged and tossed beyond the Victorian love seat near the window. Open boxes of shepherdess figurines covered the coffee table. The other couch had tablecloths and flouncy curtains draped over it. Oddly, though, she had not taken down one Arizona desert landscape painting from the walls. They didn’t even fit with the décor.

Also, the large wooden carving over the stairway was also still in its place. But then it was too heavy for one person to take down. It was probably too heavy for four people, though it looked like Zormna had tried on her own. It was crooked, hanging lopsided from the wire hooks on the wall.

Warily, Jennifer passed under it, tiptoeing up the stairs to the second floor.

The junk room door was open just a crack. A light emanated from it not unlike that scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind when the aliens tried to abduct that kid. But Jennifer shook that notion out of her head when she went in closer. Darren’s paranoia was rubbing off on her.

Going just up to the door instead of going into the room, Jennifer peered through the crack first. Zormna was always so defensive. Maybe just a peek to make sure she was ok was enough. It wasn’t spying. It was watching her back. That’s all. But Jennifer’s heart pounded when she grasped the doorknob to steady herself.

Inside the room, Zormna was arranging the junk stack, making room in front of the TV she had been messing with recently. The curtains covered the windows perfectly, so no Darren to spy in on her.

Yep. It was that same lame project again.

Jennifer was about to go when she noticed Zormna had positioned the other TV to the side. In the room there were actually three TVs. The current one she was messing with was a small thing set on a rolling cart. It had a DVD player attached. Jennifer never gave much thought about it. But Zormna turned it on and put in a copy of Firefly, which Zormna had borrowed from Brian after he had mentioned it at school. A one-season sci-fi weird show. Jennifer could never understand people who liked science fiction. It wasn’t real. And all that future stuff was entirely hokey.

But when Zormna put it in, she did not even bother to watch the TV show at all. She adjusted it, chose an episode, let it run, then put it on mute.

And she went back to the other TV with the color problem.

No. Above it.

Jennifer watched Zormna fiddle with a…was that a camera attachment for a computer? Was she going to Skype someone? Couldn’t she have Skyped her commanding officer at home instead of—?

But Jennifer checked herself. Of course she couldn’t. Her father didn’t like Zormna on his computer. Then again, he didn’t like anyone using his computer. He had caught Zormna using it