Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo

by Greg Leitich Smith

  I told them then, “I’m fine, get over it.” Really, I am. I mean, I’m interested in Japan and stuff, which is why I’m still taking Nihon’go as my Asian language elective, but I like a lot of other things, too. Besides, it’s not like I’m genetically programmed to worship the emperor, or anything. But when my parents are on a mission to improve me, “I’m fine” is the worst possible thing to tell them.

  My mom got a little teary and clasped my hands in hers. “Your ancestors are speaking to you,” she said. “We’re going to help you hear.”

  It’s been downhill ever since.

  “Hey, ninja-boy,” I said to my little brother, getting back to our project, “Elias and I need to use the computer.”

  Without looking up, Tim held up a hand, arm bent at the elbow.

  At Elias’s questioning look, I explained, “He’s decided he wants to become a master of stealth and secret death.”

  “You’re kidding,” Elias said.

  I shook my head. Tim could be a big pain sometimes, but basically he’s a good kid. Not that I’d ever tell him that. “My parents have cut him back to an hour of TV a day,” I said to Elias. Then, to Tim, “I meant now!”

  Tim clicked the mouse to disconnect, lifted the scanner cover to take out a sheet of paper, then stood and whirled, his black cape flying behind him. “Sensei,” he said to me, “how could you bring that” — he pointed at Elias —“to our dojo?” Without waiting for an answer, he dashed from the room.

  “I didn’t know ninjas wore capes,” Elias said.

  “Don’t ask,” I replied.

  6

  Secret Messages

  Elias

  Later, when we’d finished with the science project stuff, Shohei flopped back onto his tatami bed. “Since you screwed up my Titus idea, I’ve got a new plan to get you and Honoria together.”

  “What?” I asked. Sometimes when Shohei’s on a roll, it’s better to humor him and redirect him later than try to stop him all at once.

  “You’re going to write her secret letters by e-mail,” Shohei said.

  “E-mail?” I was appalled.

  “Hey, it’s the twenty-first century,” Shohei replied, deliberately misunderstanding.

  “Love letters?”

  “We’ll set up an e-mail alias and —”

  “Is that legal?” I asked. “Isn’t it like stalking or something?”

  “What are you, the FBI?” Shohei asked. “Look, all you do is set up a couple exchanges, tell her you’re an admirer, then move in for the kill.”

  Then Shohei lay back on the bed and pulled his cap over his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He pointed, without looking up. “There’s the computer. Start typing.”

  I sat at his desk, watching the cobra screensaver flash by. I clicked the mouse and opened the word processor. I didn’t write a letter. I typed “WHY?” and underneath it made a column of numbers from one to ten:

  She’s smart.

  She’s my friend.

  She likes things that are creepy, slimy, and have big teeth.

  After number 3, I blanked. There was a reason I didn’t want to write love letters. I looked at the list, then glanced over my shoulder. Shohei was still lying there, his cap over his face, the Cubs logo mocking me.

  I wasn’t going to e-mail it anyway.

  No. Face-to-face was the only way to go.

  I hit “delete” as I thought of number four: Because to do nothing would be worse.

  7

  Plagues

  Elias

  When Honoria and I were in third grade, we went to Vacation Bible School together. That’s where I found out that Honoria’s favorite part of the Book of Exodus is the plague of locusts. When you get over to her house, you can see why. Her mom’s an entomologist who brings her work home. More shelves in the Grob Library — really, a spare bedroom with built-in bookcases — are filled with bottles of bugs than with books. And there are a lot of books.

  Since it was Honoria’s favorite room, I’d decided it was a good place to tell her that I wanted to move beyond the buddy phase, especially since Shohei didn’t seem interested in her. There was the whole problem that she was interested in Shohei. But I was hoping she might get less interested in him if she knew I was interested in her.

  The fact that at the moment Honoria was holding a plate of diced cattle hearts and several banana chunks, dripping blood, didn’t help the romance factor. Neither did the fifty-gallon tank that housed her two new piranhas, Spot and Fluffy, replacement pets for an iguana named Barbie and a tarantula named Skipper.

  “Honoria, I —”

  Just then, she turned, still holding the plate, and tripped over her mother’s Oriental rug, dumping most of the experimental diet into my lap. I jumped out of my chair, cold cow blood already seeping into my jeans, and the mess slid from my lap onto Honoria’s mother’s prized rug. Trying to catch my balance, I took a step, squishing a chunk of meat. Honoria gasped and rushed out of the room.

  In a moment, she was back with a handful of moistened paper towels. “Here,” she handed me some. “I’ll pick up the meat. You dab the rug, or Mother will throw both of us in the tank with the killer bees.”

  I dabbed. Quickly, I ran the paper towel over the top of the rug. Every now and then I glanced up to look at Honoria. She was grabbing at the meat chunks and staring worriedly at where they had fallen, clearly hoping the rug wouldn’t permanently stain. Her forehead was a frown, and a couple of strands of hair had fallen over her face.

  I thought of brushing away the hair and kissing her, like a normal person. I think I was starting to move in that direction, too, when she announced, “That looks good. I’ll get some more bait.” Then she strode out the library door.

  I rubbed the back of my neck in frustration before realizing my hands were still covered in cow blood. It was okay, I told myself. I was probably better off asking her first. Before I kissed her. Otherwise, she’d probably freak. She might freak anyway.

  Honoria returned a moment later with a fresh plate of banana and ground beef heart.

  While she resumed her fish training, I decided to try again. “I wanted to tell you —”

  “Hey, Eli,” Honoria said, holding up a wet plastic leaf. “Do you think it’s a problem that Spot and Fluffy are going after the plants in the tank?”

  I suppressed a groan and asked, “Are the fish actually eating the leaves?”

  Honoria shook her head. “I don’t think so. I just found one or two floating on top.”

  “Then it’s probably not a problem,” I told her.

  Honoria dropped more beef heart and banana into the tank. The fish swam in slow circles but ignored the offering.

  One more try, I decided, opening my mouth.

  “You know,” Honoria interrupted again, “I’m thinking it has to be a gift.”

  “For the piranhas?” I asked.

  “Shohei!” she said, impatiently.

  I’d blown my last chance. Still holding the plastic leaf, I watched her scribble some notes on a yellow pad about her heart-eating piranhas.

  Honoria

  “You know, you’re supposed to be wearing your goggles,” Goliath Reed told Eli and me in chem lab, with all the self-righteousness of someone who always followed the rules, thereby demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had no imagination whatsoever.

  Eli and I, of course, were not unaware that we were supposed to be wearing our goggles, but they always made Eli’s glasses fog up, and even without glasses, the goggles were hot, uncomfortable, obstructed your peripheral vision, and in general made you look like some kind of bubble-eyed space dork.

  The lab for the day was how much confectioner’s and/or granulated sugar could be dissolved in half a liter of room-temperature water, because Mr. Eden was trying to show how much of the stuff goes into Kool-Aid, or, as he put it, “that revolting beverage probably invented by the Lifetime Employment Division of the American Dental A
ssociation.” The goggles were not strictly necessary, because there wasn’t any actual danger of acids splashing into anyone’s eyes, just syrupy water.

  Unfortunately, during lab, Mr. Eden prowls the aisles, keeping an eye on things, and he was, in fact, about six feet from Eli when Goliath Reed made his announcement. Something Goliath Reed clearly knew, since he was looking in Mr. Eden’s direction.

  Mr. Eden instantly came around the lab bench and dragged Eli off his stool by his left ear.

  “Ow,” Eli said.

  “Mr. Brandenburg,” Mr. Eden replied. “What. Are. You. Doing?”

  Mr. Eden then released Eli’s ear, and Eli settled back onto the lab stool.

  “I was running the experiment,” Eli replied.

  Mr. Eden looked at Eli as if he was something stuck to the bottom of one of his polished penny-loafers. “Where, pray tell, are your goggles?”

  Behind Mr. Eden, I very quietly put mine on. Mr. Eden was known to be more strict with some people, and in particular, everyone named Elias Brandenburg, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

  “Oh, sorry,” Eli said, “but it’s just sugar …” He pointed out the box. “And I’m wearing my glasses.”

  I eyed the Bunsen burner and wondered how combustible Mr. Eden’s eyebrows were.

  “Mr. Brandenburg,” Mr. Eden said, “need I remind you that sloppy laboratory procedure is sloppy science?”

  “It’s just sugar,” Eli protested valiantly.

  “‘Just sugar,’” Mr. Eden repeated. “Mr. Brandenburg, if you do not put on your goggles and cease your cretinous mewling, I will assign you a ten-page report on the metabolic toxicity of refined sugar.”

  Eli put on his goggles.

  “How did you know that the beaker was clean?” Mr. Eden asked, raising an index finger. “Beware of false assumptions!”

  Then he strode off, but not before I caught a “I saw you as well, Ms. Grob!”

  I watched him go up to the front of the room and write “GOGGLES” in big letters on the whiteboard. The problem with Mr. Eden is that, even when he’s right, you don’t like him.

  Shohei

  So I’m at lunch in the school cafeteria eating sushi, again, when Elias comes by with this gift-wrapped box on his tray, next to a plateful of cod nuggets and Tater Tots. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A gift,” he said, “for that pet of yours. From Honoria. She’s got a Student Court meeting.”

  “Cool,” I said, grabbing the box from the tray. I tore open the cardboard, and then, okay, I admit it, I spazzed. These things were moving around inside. I dropped the box into my soy sauce, jumping up and knocking over my chair. “It’s alive!” I yelled.

  “They’re alive,” Elias said, like I was some kind of idiot and it was the most natural thing in the world to be handed a gift box full of squirming rodents.

  Three white mice scurried out of the box and raced to the other end of the table, where Freddie M-K was nibbling tofu with her club of animal rights activists.

  “Get them!” Elias shouted. “They’re heading toward the Murchettes!”

  Like I couldn’t see that. Elias lunged and managed to grab one of the mice.

  Another disappeared onto the floor, and the third somehow got in Freddie’s long black hair. She screamed, shaking her head like crazy and waving her hands around.

  Then Freddie jumped onto her chair, shouting “Rats!” while still trying to get rid of Mouse Number Three. By now, the whole cafeteria knew something was going on. Some people stood, some crouched, looking around. Louise Nguyen was clutching a fork like a dagger and, I think, stalking Number Two. Octavian Henderson was next to her, pelting something with Tater Tots. One or two of the übercool ignored everything and just kept eating their cod nuggets.

  I tried to snatch Mouse Number Three from Freddie’s hair. That’s when she clobbered me in the eye. Hard. I don’t think she meant to; her hands were just flying all over the place.

  As I held my hand to my eye, Elias shoved Mouse Number One back into what remained of its box and dived under the table to find the last one. By then, just about everyone was screaming or shouting, either joining the chase or trying to get up onto a chair or a table. One or two teachers appeared, trying to herd everyone out.

  “It bit me!” Freddie yelled, clutching at her neck. “It’s got rabies! I’m going to die!”

  “You’re not going to die,” I could hear Elias muttering. “But Honoria’s definitely going to kill me.”

  Then, someone pulled the fire alarm and Mouse Number Three dashed out of sight. A second later, Vice Principal Harrell’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “A fire alarm was pulled in the cafeteria. We do not have a report on whether there is a fire. But everyone, please leave the building. This is not a drill.”

  That’s when I felt my foot come down on something kind of squishy and kind of crunchy.

  Then Elias was in front of me. “‘It’s alive,’” he mimicked. “What did you think Honoria would give Mathilda, a chew toy?”

  I shrugged. “Look …” I raised my foot to show the squished mouse.

  Elias made a face. “We are not going to tell Honoria about that one.”

  That left just one missing mouse. I crouched down and looked under the now empty tables and chairs. No mouse.

  It wasn’t my day. First, the snake food got loose in the cafeteria. Next, when I got home after soccer practice, I made the mistake of telling Tim what happened. So he went around all night telling everyone I “got beat up by a girl.” The fact that my eye was a gross shade of purple and black with a bit of yellow around the edges didn’t help.

  Next, I got the lecture from Mom and Dad on how “more effective and persuasive” nonviolence was and how I should “learn from the examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” I explained that Freddie M-K, who was a girl, clocked me in the eye because she was having a fit over a mouse. After that, I got another lecture on how I should not “perpetuate Eurocentric stereotypes about how women are separate from the oneness of Mother Earth.”

  So, in honor of Mother Earth, I went to my room and fed Mathilda a mouse. While she digested, I got to work on Elias’s letter to Honoria. First I rescued his deleted document and figured out that he hadn’t actually written a letter. Just some lame list. But he didn’t say I shouldn’t write one for him. So I did. I even used the thesaurus so I’d sound like Elias. Love letters are harder than they look.

  Dearest Honoria:

  I am not a stalker. I am a fellow Peshtigo Warrior Penguin. I am writing you this way because whenever I talk to you, I feel clumsy and uncoordinated, and I say ridiculous or frightening things. I admire you a lot for your intelligence and looks, and whenever I see you, my heart soars. Will you be the helium in my balloon?

  An Admirer

  I had just clicked “Send” when the phone rang. It was Elias, calling about the science project, which I had kind of forgotten to work on that day.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Just working on the project,” I lied.

  “Me, too,” he said. “The hypocotyls are beginning to emerge.”

  “Sounds exciting,” I replied, as I logged off my computer.

  “The embryonic stems,” he explained. “All according to schedule.”

  “Oh, yeah. Same here,” I said. Also according to schedule was his obsessiveness kicking in — he’d complain that his dad was making him do it, or that he was worried about his grades. Really, it’s just him. Like last year, when he joined the chess club, he got all these books from the library and played game after game online with his brother Johann Ambrosius and then got kicked off the team for arguing with Mr. Martyniuk about the best way to counter some move named after some old Russian guy.

  “Any differences in the control group?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither. Probably takes a while.”

  It was time to stop this. “By the way,” I asked, “should you be calling? I mean, aren’
t we supposed to be going for” — what was it? —“independent confirmation?” Who says I don’t pay attention? I held my breath. I was pretty sure I was right. Besides, I didn’t want him calling every night to check on me.

  “Hmph,” he replied.

  Honoria

  The next day, Eli went with me during study hall to the computer lab in the library, which is the empire of librarian Ruth Talmadge, a former lawyer, sponsor of the Student Court, and a huge White Sox fan who doesn’t allow Shohei to wear his Cubs cap in the library. Other than the White Sox thing, which, for the Peshtigo School, is a fairly minor quirk, she’s all right.

  The computer lab has about twenty top-of-the-line PCs and overlooks the Atrium Garden. I’d gone there to check my e-mail and to do some more research to make sure Spot and Fluffy were, in fact, Pygocentrus nattereri. That’s what the people at Lincoln Park Pets said, but I’ve known them to mislabel their crickets (Gryllus texensis) and I wanted to make sure they actually knew what they were talking about this time.

  “Did Shohei say anything about the mice?” I asked Eli as I logged on. It had taken me a while to pick them out, because I’d wanted something that he would notice that I’d noticed said “Shohei,” but not something that made me seem too girlie or pathetic. But I hadn’t heard anything from him about it so I was feeling at least a little nervous and possibly borderline terrified.

  “He started a riot,” Eli replied.

  “I know,” I said. “We had to reschedule Student Court yesterday. He hasn’t said a word to me about it.” Not even his usual, “Huh. Weird.”

  “He probably forgot when Freddie clocked him in the eye,” Eli said, while he logged on to his computer.

  “How is it?” I asked. “His eye, I mean.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Eli replied. “On him, actually.”

  “She takes tae kwan do,” I replied. Freddie and I got along well enough. We weren’t like friends who had sleepovers, watched bad movies, made and ate s’mores, giggled over boys, and told each other their innermost secrets, but we could have a healthy debate over small mammal and amphibian dissection in front of the entire school and still be able to speak to each other in public and private with some civility and, sometimes, without shouting.