My Life as a Ninja

by Janet Tashjian

  One of the officers waves us past as Matt and I crane our necks to see what’s going on.

  The front of the high school is covered with a Minotaur mural.

  Things Get Serious

  Here are the facts:

  •  There are three murals around town featuring the mythological beast.

  •  They’ve all been created at night.

  •  They’re all only about four feet tall but more than eight feet in length.

  •  They use the same colors: purple, lime green, black, and yellow.

  •  No one has any idea who’s behind it, including Mr. Demetri and the police.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird the murals are all so low?” Matt asks. “If I were the artist, I’d use the whole wall.”

  “And why a Minotaur?” I wonder. “Is there a reason the vandal picked that and not a troll? Or a toothbrush?”

  “The vandal’s got to be over eighteen,” Matt continues. “Do you know how hard it is to buy cans of spray paint in this city? When I was doing my project for the science fair, Jamie had to show his ID at the hardware store before they’d sell me any.”

  It’s true—or at least that’s what my dad said last night as we drove through the police blockade. He said the city passed a law a few years ago to cut off access to spray paint as the first step in cracking down on the city’s rampant graffiti.

  “The Minotaur guy could have his older brother buying paint for him, just like Jamie did for you. Either way, he’s certainly putting in a lot of effort.”

  Obviously, Mr. Demetri is working on this 24/7. We didn’t have an assembly this time, but he certainly has a lot to say during the morning announcement. After a while it sounds like the grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon—all I can hear is a trombone MWA MWA MWA. (As someone interested in solving the case, I guess I should be paying closer attention.…)

  On our way to English, Carly reminds us we have rehearsal after school today. I hate to say it but that kind of sounds like MWA MWA MWA too.

  Matt elbows me when he spots Umberto heading down the hall with Darcy. “You owe me money,” Matt says. “I told you this would happen.”

  But I’m not looking at Umberto and Darcy laughing and talking as they pass the lockers. My eyes are glued on the nylon pack that’s always affixed to Umberto’s chair. Since I’ve known him, that pack’s been stuffed with books, magazines, art projects, lunch bags, and baseball hats. I’ve never before seen what’s tucked inside Umberto’s pack today.

  A can of purple spray paint.

  Rehearsal

  “You’re seeing things,” Matt says after I share what I saw. “There’s no way Umberto’s the vandal.”

  I tell him I’m not saying Umberto IS the guy behind the Minotaur, I’m just saying he had a can of spray paint in his pack.

  “Purple is one of the colors,” Matt says. “And Umberto did have a perfect copy of the drawing in his sketchbook the other day.”

  “The murals are all low to the ground—someone COULD create them sitting down.”

  We get the same idea at the same time—to go to the high school and look for wheel tracks. But even as we make the plan for after rehearsal, I’m already second-guessing myself.

  “Umberto’s our friend,” I begin. “Not some random lawbreaker.”

  “He is our friend,” Matt says. “But remember how it was when we first met him?”

  Matt doesn’t need to remind me how Umberto and I clashed when he transferred to our school. Sure, he made my life miserable but that doesn’t make him a criminal.

  Matt and I decide to be vigilant and keep our eyes on Umberto while looking for clues that might point to someone else. But for the rest of the day, all I can do is wonder about one of my best friends. Why did Umberto have that paint—especially if hardware stores can’t sell cans to anyone under eighteen? And why take the time to draw a perfect Minotaur in his notebook? I’m an artist too, but I didn’t try to copy it.

  Now that I think of it, Umberto told Matt and me not to bother to wait for his van driver that night when Mr. Demetri caught us at school. Maybe Bill never came to pick him up; maybe Umberto went back to the scene of the crime after Matt and I left.

  I barely listen in my classes because my mind is focused on one thing—could Umberto have a secret life?

  Carly makes sure Matt, Umberto, and I show up at rehearsal by telling us she made homemade chocolate chip brownies for the occasion. I’m not sure Umberto needs the extra motivation, because when Matt and I get there, Umberto and Darcy are already running their lines. It might not make sense, but Matt and I take this as a sign that we should have two brownies instead of one. (I said it might not make sense.)

  Carly is handing out a schedule of the scenes we’ll be rehearsing. Umberto zooms by as Paul Revere in a wheelchair and I try to catch a glimpse of his pack.

  His sketchbook is there but the can of spray paint is gone. Matt pulls me aside after Umberto passes by.

  “Either he knows we’re onto him and hid the evidence or you just THOUGHT you saw a can of paint.”

  I assure Matt that there definitely was a paint can in Umberto’s pack.

  “You guys want to get some pizza after rehearsal?” Umberto wheels over during a break. “Bill can’t pick me up for a while so there’ll be time.”

  I stammer out an excuse about homework, which sounds flimsy even to me. Should Matt and I level with Umberto and ask him about the paint instead of lying to our friend?

  “What were we supposed to say?” Matt asks me later. “‘Do you want to come with us to the high school and look for tire prints from your wheelchair?’ Come on, we HAD to lie!”

  I think about Sensei Takai and his lessons of discipline and balance. It feels wrong to lie to Umberto. On the other hand, ninjas are experts at deception and Umberto is the best ninja in our group. Has he been deceiving Matt, Carly, and me this whole time?

  Ninja Stars

  Doug and Farida’s scene takes so long to rehearse that Carly and I don’t get a chance to practice ours. On the way out, Carly asks if I want to come over and run through the scene at her house later. The web of lies continues as I tell Carly I just made plans with Matt to skateboard.

  “You know how people say it gets easier to lie the more you do it?” I ask Matt. “I think that’s true.” I feel horrible lying to two of our best friends within minutes of each other, but I know Carly wouldn’t approve of our plan to check out the high school mural.

  “It’s not lying if we skateboard there,” Matt answers.

  We jump on our boards and head to the high school. I’ve been here for a fundraiser for animal rights with my mom but don’t remember the school’s layout. Because he has an older brother, Matt knows the high school, but he’s as surprised as I am when we reach the front.

  The entire building is surrounded by a three-foot cement border.

  “There’s no way we’ll see tire prints here,” Matt says.

  “Or footprints—I’m still hoping it’s NOT Umberto.”

  “Of course it’s not Umberto—we’re being ridiculous. Maybe it’s so low because the vandal is from the elementary school,” Matt suggests.

  “Or a Mommy-and-me playgroup,” I add. “Where the moms buy paint for the toddlers.”

  “Or maybe a leprechaun,” Matt continues, “and there’s a pot of gold around here.”

  As we skateboard, we recite more silly examples—circus performers, bent-over grandmas—until we get to my house. I’m surprised to find a strange guy sitting in our kitchen eating a bowl of soup. I’m about to run out the door, when he introduces himself as Charlie, Mom’s new vet tech. I must look skeptical because he shows me his ID on a lanyard.

  “The microwave in the office is broken,” Charlie explains. “Your mom said I could use the one in the house.”

  I tell him it’s no problem but wince when he slurps his soup noisily.

  “Your mom said you like to draw,” Charlie says. “I draw too.”
He pulls out a small lined notebook from the pocket of his scrubs. Inside is a picture of a dog with rotting teeth. Charlie tells us he sketched this last week while my mom was working on the German shepherd.

  When he finally leaves, Matt and I grab some lemon cookies Mom baked and I ask Matt if he wants to practice our standing-on-one-leg homework for Sensei Takai’s class.

  “We were supposed to learn kicks and throw ninja stars,” he says. “Not stand on one leg like a flamingo.”

  I take a bite out of my lemon cookie, turn it, and take another bite. Matt immediately knows what I’m going for and bites his cookie around the edges too. Soon we have a pile of cookie ninja stars.

  “Inside or outside?” Matt asks.

  “My mom’s already going to be mad we ate all the cookies—let’s at least throw them outside so she doesn’t go ballistic.”

  Matt and I hold our shirts out and fill the pouches with stars. The next half hour is spent hurling lemon ninja stars at each other.

  I’d like to say we don’t eat the cookies off the ground when we’re done, but we do.

  Rehearsing with Carly

  Mom can’t stop talking about Charlie at dinner. I guess when he’s not drawing pictures of dogs with rotten teeth, he’s helping her streamline things around the office.

  “Maybe he can fix the microwave so he doesn’t have to slurp his soup in the house,” I suggest.

  She tells me Dad’s picking up a new microwave on his way home from work. He’s been working longer hours with his company’s new advertising campaign but he seems to like it, which is good. I can’t imagine working so hard and NOT liking what you do.

  When I tell Mom I’m going over to Carly’s to rehearse for the school play, she tells me to take Maria, Carly’s mother, some of the lemon cookies. She opens the plastic container on the counter and finds only crumbs.

  She looks at me with the same exasperated face I’ve seen a billion times. I mumble, “Sorry,” and head over to Carly’s.

  Carly opens the door wearing a dress with an old-fashioned petticoat. On her head is a starched white bonnet.

  “I didn’t realize this was a DRESS rehearsal!” I haven’t stepped into the house yet and I already feel like an amateur. I tried to learn my lines before dinner but couldn’t get further than the first paragraph.

  Carly seems embarrassed she’s overdressed for the occasion and pulls the bonnet off. “I wanted to try it on to see if it fits. You don’t have to make a big deal out of it.”

  I feel like I did something wrong but I’m not sure what it is. Luckily Mrs. Rodriquez comes in and diffuses the tension. We talk about the play and how hard Carly’s been working to create something original. After a few minutes, Carly and I head downstairs.

  When she talks about our scene, her voice is softer than usual, noticeably different from the teacher voice she uses at school. It hits me that this is the first time Carly and I have been alone since that day in the art room the other week when my imagination went wild. If tonight gets weird, maybe I can pretend to come down with asthma and leave. I’m not sure that’s even possible but I might have to go with it if things get awkward.

  “Abigail Adams was an amazing woman,” Carly begins. “She and John Adams weren’t just husband and wife; they were political partners, which was unusual for the time.”

  I already don’t like where this one-sided conversation is headed.

  “Abigail loved to read and studied lots of different subjects.”

  “Sounds like you.” I search the room to see if there are any cookies or treats down here and am excited when I spot a bowl of mini candy bars probably left over from Halloween.

  “Abigail was married to the second president of the United States and was the mother of the sixth.”

  “John Quincy Adams, right?”

  “Exactly.” Carly sits next to me on the couch and holds out her hand for one of the candies.

  I give her an almond bar, then grab the bonnet from the table and put it on. “Let’s get started, shall we?” I say in a girly voice.

  Carly laughs and we each take out our scripts. She’s so orderly, she’s highlighted all the parts for every member of the cast in different colors. I doubt highlighters were invented in the 1700s, but it sounds like Abigail Adams would’ve used them if they were.

  “Abigail and John Adams wrote over eleven hundred letters to each other—do you believe it?” Carly asks.

  “Eleven hundred? Too bad they couldn’t just text.”

  Carly rolls her eyes. “Their letters were amazing. We’ll be sitting at two desks onstage reading from them.”

  “Wait? What?” I flip through the pages of my script. I’d been paying attention to the dialogue and never read the stage directions. “Umberto gets to zoom around in his wheelchair as Paul Revere and I have to sit at a desk? I sit at a desk enough at school!”

  “It’ll be dramatic,” Carly says. “Their letters were very powerful.”

  All the gears in my brain grind to a halt. “Are we talking about LOVE letters?”

  Carly turns away when she answers. “They were apart from each other a lot, so some of them are.”

  I feel like I just got hit in the head with a mallet. “You can’t possibly think I’m going to sit onstage and read you love letters!”

  From the tone of her voice I can tell she’s starting to get mad. “Not TO me. WITH me.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “This was a stupid idea!” Carly says. “I KNEW you didn’t want to be in the play! Matt just goaded you on!”

  I have no idea what the word goaded means but I think I know what she’s trying to say. “You should look for another John Adams to read love letters to because I quit!” I yank the bonnet off my head and storm upstairs.

  On my way out, I act nice to Mrs. Rodriquez even though I’m fuming. Carly and I have had our disagreements before, but this feels like one of the worst.

  Did all this anger and weirdness stem from that stupid kiss? If it did, I’d give anything for a time machine to travel back and erase that moment forever.

  Someone New to Spy On

  The people in Mom’s office are having a party for her birthday tomorrow with some snacks and a cake. Charlie came over—thankfully not to eat soup—to invite Dad and me. Dad says he’ll leave work early to attend.

  Neither of my parents likes going anywhere empty-handed, so Dad sends me to the market the next day to pick up a platter of crudités to bring to the party. I wander around the store aimlessly, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to get, until a helpful clerk tells me crudités means cut-up carrots and celery. Why didn’t Dad just say that?

  While I wait for the woman behind the deli counter to assemble the vegetables on a platter, I roam around the aisles. The rows of cereal are the most fun; I pretend the different cartoon mascots come to life and take over the store. The woman at the end of the aisle stares as I make explosion noises and tumble across the floor. Unfortunately, I misjudge the distance and end up knocking over a display of toilet paper. I lie there hoping the other shoppers will think the toilet paper spontaneously fell.

  Three people are waiting in the checkout line, all staring.

  One of them is Sensei Takai.

  I do a double-take because I’ve never seen our teacher in regular clothes, never mind grocery shopping. He’s wearing a cardigan sweater and khaki pants—just a regular old man buying apple juice and cough drops. (I looked in his basket.)

  I’ve seen disappointment on my parents’ faces a million times before, but having your sensei find you in a giant pile of toilet paper is a whole new level of humiliation.

  I’m suddenly horrified by my antics and scramble out of the mess I’ve just created.

  Sensei Takai still hasn’t said a word.

  I don’t want to get reprimanded by the manager to pick up the toilet paper so I rush to put the packages back.

  “Out getting some groceries, huh?” I ask Sensei Takai. “I’m getting
some crudités.”

  The other customers look on as I continue to babble.

  “Crudités means cut-up vegetables. Crazy, right? Such a fancy word for something so simple. My mom’s employees are throwing a party for her birthday. She’s a veterinarian—funny place for a party, right?”

  The store manager leaves once he sees the display’s back in order. I’m desperate for my sensei to say ANYTHING but he just looks at me blankly, which is the biggest punishment of all.

  Sensei Takai places his basket in front of the cashier. The woman from the deli counter approaches with the platter of appetizers. I thank her and head to one of the other lines; the last thing I want is to stand behind Sensei Takai.

  I’m the worst ninja ever.

  My First Office Party

  To say my chance meeting with Sensei Takai ruined the afternoon is an understatement. How am I supposed to have fun at a party when I feel like a three-year-old who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar? Thankfully Matt stops over to wish Mom a happy birthday, so I have someone I can tell the whole embarrassing story to.

  Matt laughs at the image of me in a toilet paper landslide but most of his questions are about Sensei Takai. He wants to know what he wore, who he was with, if you could tell he was a martial arts master by the way he moved.

  “He just looked like a regular man,” I answer. “Maybe he’s not some famous ninja warrior after all.”

  “That whole silent thing drives me crazy,” Matt adds. “I wish the guy would just yell like a normal person.”