Bones in the Sand, Julie Steimle [best books to read for students .TXT] 📗

laid back, but not forgetful. In fact, everybody knew he was an on-his-feet kind of thinker - witty. Those who really knew him knew he was brilliant. So of course Brian and Adam both stared at him. But Zormna continued to smirk. She was the only one who got amused when Jeff was less than on-top-of-things. It was a childish rivalry which she never quite let go.

Tiredly, Mr. Humphries repeated the question once more. "What do you think about Oliver's falling in with Fagan and his gang? Miss Carter, I believe, was implying that you might know something about falling in with gangsters."

Jeff sighed and nodded, starting to go red in the ears. "I thought so."

The class laughed again, but Mr. Humphries stopped the noise.

"What do I think?" Jeff asked aloud, looking at the ceiling. He shrugged and decided it wasn't worth it to even make up a lie. He was too exhausted. There was no point in playing along for the sake of shy Jill Carter, even if she did look pitifully hopeful staring at him. With an uncharacteristic apathy, he replied, "I don't think about it."

He sat immediately down.

Even Mr. Humphries gaped at him. Zormna abruptly laughed, and immediately clamped her mouth shut, with hands over it once she realized she was the only one laughing. Of course that brought stares her way. She flushed and sank in her seat.

After a few minutes of silence, Mr. Humphries shook his head and let out a loud sigh. "Ok, if no one has anything to say on this one, we'll go on to the next question. Do you think you could handle being in Oliver's position, alone and put upon? And what do you think about those that are looking for him, those that wish him harm and those that wish to help him?"

Eyes whipped over to Zormna immediately. She was the only known orphan in the room. No one besides Zormna knew that Jeff's parents were also dead. Everyone thought his parents were alive and well, living in Chicago.

Zormna sank deeper into her seat.

 

Walking from the classroom once the bell rang, Zormna shook her head in annoyance. Jeff was in a similar posture, though he was thinking darker thoughts, like why did they have to read books that made everyone at school stare at them? As it was, Jeff and Zormna parted without another word to each other.

Brian followed after Jeff, taking in their postures with increased curiosity.

Zormna walked away, with Adam following at her heels, to History class. After shooting one of the janitors a dirty look, they turned the corner and soon were out of sight. Her cheeks were still flushed, and her pace was irritably brisk. That was usual for Zormna when she was irritated.

However, Jeff walked with his head turned down. He stared into space, as if he were trying to remember something...or analyzing something just out of his reach - an expression he rarely held. When he had first arrived at Pennington, he had been high-strung, always looking over his shoulder. But he had calmed down since, to the point that most of the time he was at ease, talking about things that made him laugh or about the most recent music he was into. Jeff usually laughed a lot at life around him. Fact was, Jeff often had a look of calm mastery on his face. Brian could tell he never struggled in class, even when he pretended to - and it turned out he pretended a lot. In fact, had come to Brian's attention that Jeff frequently lied with straight face - and that was a major disappointment.

Brian valued honesty. And though he had never thought Jeff was an out and out liar, he had known that Jeff had concealed all the nasty things of his life in Chicago to spare his friends the ugly bits. But that last November he had learned that Jeff might have lied to him about more than just nasty bits. When Zormna had moved into town, he had learned so many new things about his beaten-down friend - the first being the true source of the scar on Jeff's face. Zormna had caused it. The thing was, Brian couldn't tell what was true and what was a lie anymore. After all, Jeff was always ready with a story or an explanation.

"Thinking about something?" Brian finally asked him as they walked to their Calculus class.

Jeff blinked then looked back at his friend, remembering he was there. He shrugged. "Just spacing it. I'm tired."

Brian nodded. Though Jeff did look tired, he knew that part was also a lie. He sighed and continued on to class before the next bell rang.

Miss Bianchi wore a peculiar multicolored dress that day with a matching turban. As she entered the room, Zormna heard Michelle Clay moan. She hastily took her seat near Jennifer McLenna and her other friend Jessica. Having no desire to meet Michelle's haughty stares, Zormna quickly opened her folder to reread her homework and double-check the grammar for mistakes.  Unfortunately it was impossible to ignore the whispers between Michelle and her 'acolyte', Stacey Price. Stacey was, without a doubt, such a sycophantic little suck up. And Michelle basked the attention.

"How tacky," Michelle said loud enough to be overheard by those around her, but not so loud that it carried to the front of the room to the ears of her teacher. To Miss Bianchi's face, she grinned like a model student.

"What's Miss Bianchi up to now?" Zormna whispered to her friend in front of her.

Jennifer shrugged. "I dunno."

"Martin Luther King Jr. Day," Jessica said, leaning over the aisle while ignoring Jennifer. She was wearing one of her Megadeath tee shirts, but she had long stopped wearing her gothic makeup.

"What?" Zormna replied, blinking at Jessica and then at Miss Bianchi.

Jennifer started to nod with a weary sigh. Turning around, she said, "It's Civil Rights Day soon."

This still didn't make a dent in Zormna's understanding at all. She still was not all that familiar with all the holidays in the United States, and she was getting tired of how many there were. With every holiday, Miss Bianchi wanted to dress her up like a toy doll.

Someone derisively laughed behind them.

Zormna turned back and caught Michelle's smug gaze. The head cheerleader had apparently switched seats with someone. She tossed her caramel streaked hair with a smirk at Zormna who quickly turned back around in her seat before Michelle took any eye contact as an invitation to talk to her. Recently Michelle was downright annoying in her remarks. It was lucky too that Miss Bianchi cleared her throat and began to start class, cutting off the comment Michelle was about to make.

"Settle down, class."

They all looked to the front of the room. The general murmur died among the students. Miss Bianchi held up a worn poster that looked ready to be retired. It was obvious that she had been using that poster many years now, like nearly every display in class. The image on the poster was of a middle-aged black man in a suit and tie, seen from his chest up. He was in the posture of giving a speech, his mouth open.

"Martin Luther King," their teacher said. "Some people knew him as a troublemaker. Others knew him as a peacemaker. He was a man of great words and even greater action."

Zormna blinked and stared at the picture harder. She didn't recognize him. But that did not mean much. Her people only learned to recognize the faces of national leaders.

"Though we are not yet in this section of our history books, I think that it is important to go over the part he played in the history of our nation today, in deference to the holiday coming up," Miss Bianchi said. "He fought for freedom. He fought for justice. And he fought for the equal rights of the oppressed, specifically his people: the black community."

The predominantly white student-filled room murmured a little. This lesson usually made such upper-middle class white students squirmy in an uncomfortable second-hand guilt sort of way, as if somehow they could help being born to monetary advantage or change the behavior of people that preceded them two generations before. They all knew in their heads that treating people of other races, genders, and religions with cruelty, or even dislike, was wrong - that discrimination was wrong. It had been pounded into their brains since they had started school. And many people truly believed in the equality of the human race. But the underlying fact was they still lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, and they had rarely if ever met a black man, let alone a Hispanic one. They rarely met Asians or Native Americans. They just never had the opportunity to discriminate even if they had wanted to.

Of course Zormna had no such feelings at all. She had not grown up in America. Her people had their own form of discrimination - which had little to do with skin color and more to do with the caste system in which she grew up in. She felt no guilt as she listened to this lesson. Rather, she felt curious. The only two black individuals she had ever met were the two FBI agents that had had come undercover to camp that summer, and they looked the least underprivileged. In fact, she never understood the word 'black' when describing a people. They didn't look black to her. Dark brown, yes. But then red hair wasn't really red either. It was in Miss Bianchi's class that she had heard about slavery of the African people - something that had horrified her. It had not been covered in her History class back Home as it had been irrelevant to her people. And when Miss Bianchi taught about the American Civil war, Zormna took it in as a common sense reaction to a horrible problem. And now when her teacher lectured to the class as everyone else squirmed in their seats, Zormna merely blinked and nodded, accepting what happened as an understandable step toward a common and good end.

"...What Reverend King was most famous for was a speech he gave on August 28th 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. Maria, would you please pass out the papers?" Miss Bianchi handed Maria Forte a stack of papers stapled together.

The girl did as asked, and soon Zormna had in her hands a typed essay from the Internet, the website still intact on the bottom of the page, entitled, I Have a Dream Speech, by Martin Luther King.

Miss Bianchi then began to read.

"'Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity....'"

Zormna listened, following the words on the page carefully. Her eyes widened as she read the words, stopping every so often and almost gaping at what she saw.

She heard the words, "...promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...." These words had an effect upon her that no other words had before. Her mind fell not upon the plight of the American 'black person' that it described, but upon her own people. The words "...demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice..." echoed with thoughts about the injustice her people had had put upon them because of their rank and caste. Zormna listened, but the message she heard was not of one the teacher was reading. It was of one about her own oppression, her own hiding, and her own cause she had to fight. Zormna hadn't noticed it until she saw the wet spots on her paper and the blurred letters created by the dampness that she had been crying.

"'Now is the time to lift our