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

It was getting hot in her coat and scarf, and she was anxious to get into her own bed.

"Leaving so soon?" Mr. Asher lifted his head from behind a recliner chair that was sitting in front of the TV in the living room. Zormna hadn't noticed him there. She blushed even more, feeling even hotter in her coat.

"It's late, and I have to be getting home," she said again, struggling to make her blush vanish.

Mr. Asher nodded, leaning forward. "I see. Well, don't leave until Annie gives you what she's prepared. She has something for you."

Zormna blinked at him, then looked back to where she heard noises in the kitchen. Gripping the doorknob, she said again, "It's really getting late and I - "

Mrs. Asher bustled across the living room, holding out a checkered tablecloth-wrapped package. "You can keep the Tupperware, dear. Who knows, you could need it." She pressed the package into Zormna's hands, and smiled. Then she turned to the recliner and said, "Stephen, dear, could you walk this young lady to her front door, make sure she gets there safely?"

"But it's just - " Zormna thumbed over her shoulder, thinking things had gone absurd as her house was literally just over the fence.

But the tired man that was Darren's father stood up and winked at Zormna. He kissed his wife on the cheek and said, "I'd be happy to."

Zormna watched, dumbfounded. Mr. Asher trotted to the entryway and dutifully pulled on his worn overcoat then opened the door for Zormna as if he knew she was of royal blood. There wasn't anything Zormna could do but take this kind gesture and walk through the open door to the outside. Mr. Asher joined her on the frigid front step then walked her around the corner across the icy sidewalk, going up to her front door just a few yards away. It so stunned Zormna's sensibilities that she even let him open her own front door for her. After going inside and securing the locks tight, she gazed at him from her front window, watching him walk back to his house next door. His eyes had turned sharply to the FBI car before he went into his own house. Apparently he knew exactly who they were. How Darren kept parents like that a secret, she never knew. But in that moment the world seemed a little kinder.

Professor Pratte's redheaded archaeology student stood back, watching his professor gently pry off the plaster cast and place it aside on the table. Kyle removed the other half from the skull and breathed a sigh of relief.

"You're not actually making a copy of that skull for the FBI are you?" the college senior asked.

Professor Pratte nodded. "Of course I am. They're helping us with the dig. I'm going to be famous!"

Kyle shook his head. "But doesn't this seem fishy?"

His professor looked up at him. "No. Why should it? They're the FBI. Wouldn't they be interested in interplanetary contact?"

"Well, yeah, but why did they come here? I mean, we published in a tabloid. Who reads tabloids? And believes them?" The young man folded his arms and frowned. "Besides, most people get their news from the internet these days."

Professor Pratte shrugged. "Perhaps there are details they keep their eyes peeled for. Maybe something about the helmet. Hmm?"

That didn't ease the young man's mind at all. "My point exactly. What is so special about that helmet that would bring the FBI all the way down here to our dig in po-dunk-ville?"

His professor laughed. "Kyle...Mr. Smith...I think you are thinking about this way too much. Why don't you go out and take a break? It will ease your mind."

Though Kyle did as his professor bade, he remained unsettled. Yet he knew there was no point arguing. Professor Pratte was about as stubborn as he was full of himself. Perhaps Professor Dumas would be easier to convince.

Kyle walked up to the trailer and knocked on the door.

"Enter," the voice of the tubby professor called from inside.

He opened the thin aluminum door and stepped inside.

"Ah! Young Mr. Smith. What brings you to my miserable den?" Professor Dumas said. He had been calling the camper his miserable den since they had discovered the spaceship, and he had taken to sulking in there.

"It's about the plaster cast and all the rest, Professor," Kyle said, rubbing his hands as if he wanted to wring necks.

The professor nodded. "Yes, but there is no point in fighting it, my young friend. The FBI are already here. And if we don't cooperate with them, they'll just take over the whole thing and leave nothing for us at all."

"You read my mind," Kyle muttered. He sat on the empty space near the camp table.

The professor smirked, peering down at him. "It isn't hard, since you are the fifth person to come to me about this. Amy Pierce already visited me and said that Professor Pratte was being unreasonable. She also said that the FBI agent, what's-his-name, Palmer, hit on her. She's calling it a micro-aggression. And when she reported it to his superior he just laughed at her."

Kyle chuckled, thinking Amy was an idiot. Then shaking his head, he asked, "But don't you think we should do something to preserve this archaeological find? I don't want this project taken and stuffed in a box. It will get marked top secret, then stashed away until the bones all rot into oblivion. I came here to study them, for heaven's sake."

The professor nodded. "Well then, I guess we'll just have to pray for divine intervention."

Kyle smirked with an eye-roll. "Yeah, right."

"I got it," Darren announced, handing Zormna a printout right before school. They were going up the stairs, a safe spot where no janitor could linger without appearing suspicious. By this time they had counted the undercover agents still around the school to be about five. One was a janitor who frequently showed up near where Zormna or Jeff went to class in an attempt to listen in on conversations. The others were 'student teachers', an assistant coach, and one of the new security guards.

Zormna glanced down at the printed sheet. It was the email from Green Meanie.

"Does he know?" she asked, peeking to where the janitor usually showed up when she lingered on the stairway too long.

Darren frowned and shook his head. "Read the email, Zormna." He walked away.

Zormna stuffed the print out of the email in her book bag instead. It was a rather bad time to be reading emails about Martians and bones, especially after being seen with Darren. It just didn't look good. No one would understand except for the FBI.

She entered her English class and sat in her seat at the far left of the classroom. Jeff was already sitting with Brian, explaining for the nth time that he was fine and would not faint between classes. Joy looked especially worried, having heard the rumor around campus.

"Maybe you just aren't getting your vitamins," she suggested, peeking once at Zormna when she saw her.

Jeff wearily shook his head. "I'm getting them fine. I eat my vegetables, ok?"

"Well, maybe you need to take supplements?" Joy continued anxiously.

Zormna almost laughed, but snuffed it as she sat down.

"Good morning, Zormna," Jeff said, gazing up at her expectantly.

She glanced back. "It is a good morning."

Jeff smiled. He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes a he knew that Darren had come through. But it wasn't the place to talk further as the room was probably bugged.

Mr. Humphries came in with long strides and grinned broadly at the class. He picked up his copy of War of the Worlds and just started to read aloud. They all were supposed to have read the first chapter of the book, something Zormna had forgotten since the other day due to the discovery of the tabloid article with the picture of a real helmet from Home. Zormna had completely forgotten how she was dreading reading this book.

"'No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own;'" her teacher read.

Hearing him, Zormna groaned as her head dropped to her desktop.

Mr. Humphries smirked down at her, not quite comprehending her grief.

He continued to read, "'that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a prop of water.'"

Resigning that she would have to hear and read this nonsense, Zormna sighed - putting up with it like she would have to put up with her Biology class that day just to avoid an argument - and pretend that she didn't mind it all as much as she did.

"'...Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.'" Mr. Humphries put down the book and grinned at them.

"I hope you read the first chapter because today we are going to discuss it," he said.

The entire class made noises like they all had stomach aches.

Chapter Eight: Minor Details

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Had the Martians aimed only at destruction, they might on Monday have annihilated the entire population of London, as it spread itself slowly through the home counties." p. 82

 

It was easy getting airline tickets over the Internet. They let Darren do all the work - with forged IDs for them. Zormna and Jeff had decided that it was better to give Darren something to do. He liked helping...and by giving him small tasks to do, it kept him out of the stickier, more dangerous details. And though Jeff could have broken into the airline computers and gotten the tickets for free, he realized with the FBI was watching him so closely that it was better to leave things up for others outside his household, just in case the FBI found a way to track his computer activities. He could tell they were waiting for any suspicious activity on his part. And he knew that his blackouts had been reported to the higher ups.

Jeff hadn't blacked out since that day. The dark feeling that had been haunting him for the last month had gone as if it had done its duty. But whenever he closed his eyes to think, he could still see those bones and the desert clearly in his mind.

Their plane tickets were set for a Saturday. They were one-way tickets. Jeff didn't know how long they would be in the desert before their job was complete or what he had to do. In fact, Jeff still didn't have a clue why these particular bones and that particular helmet in the tabloid were linked, but he did guess that the FBI were involved and somehow that was why the visions came so urgently. He recalled now that his greatest vision didn't come until Zormna touched him in the school cafeteria. Somehow she had triggered it, and somehow she brought him