Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja (a hilarious adventure for children ages 9-12)

by Marcus Emerson

  Suddenly Zoe was interested. All this “cool girl” talk disappears when you put a real mystery in front of her face. “There’s no way, what? What were you going to say?”

  Brayden stepped closer to the tree line. Naturally, Zoe and I followed. As he leaned into the shadows, he mumbled some stuff to himself, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It was strange… it sounded as if he said… ninjas.

  And then he reached his hand into the woods. I knew what was about to happen next because it happens in movies all the time. The innocent doofus reaches his hand into a dark area and loses it.

  “Wait!” I shouted, but it was too late.

  Brayden was suddenly yanked into the trees. In a rush of activity, he disappeared. It looked as if shadows came to life and swallowed him up. I just met this kid and I already regretted it.

  Zoe cupped her hand over her mouth, muffling a scream I knew would come out sooner or later. Without thinking (I seem to be guilty of this a lot), I jumped into the woods to chase after Brayden.

  “No!” I could hear Zoe yell.

  As soon as I planted my feet into the ground beyond the border of the woods, I kept my eyes clenched tight, afraid of what kind of monsters I would be face to face with. Was Brayden’s theory of werewolves correct? Was one going to be standing there with a half eaten boy in its jaws? I forced my eyes open.

  Nothing.

  The area was empty. There were no monsters, no people, and no Brayden. I scanned farther through the trees, focusing on seeing any kind of movement against the still areas, but there was nothing.

  In that moment, the branches shook from behind me. I thought my heart was going to explode as I flipped around to face my attacker. In all the chaos, I forgot that Zoe was even with me. Weird too because less than ten seconds had passed since I jumped into the woods.

  “Where’s Brayden?” Zoe whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “And I can’t even tell where they took him!”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Werewolves, I guess? Maybe they’ve finally gotten fed up with his terrible hunting skills and have taken action into their own paws. Get it? Paws?” It was a terrible joke, but hopefully it helped Zoe feel better.

  She laughed. “Human hunters,” she sneered. “Too bad they picked the strangest kid to kidnap and study, right? Look at the ground.”

  I did, but couldn’t see what she was talking about. It was just moist dirt, or mud as a scientist would probably call it. “What about it?”

  “There’s no tracks,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t even look like there are tracks from Brayden. Whatever yanked him in here had to have struggled with him, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think Brayden would’ve gone willingly. And there wouldn’t have been enough time to cover any tracks because I followed him in here almost immediately.”

  “What did you see right after you stepped through the trees?”

  Another chill ran down my spine. “Nothing. There was nothing back here. No signs of anything that would’ve grabbed him, and even stranger, no sign of Brayden himself.”

  Zoe folded her arms and made the “smartie-pants” face I hate. “You know what I’m wondering?”

  “Do tell,” I sighed.

  “I’m wondering why we don’t just go straight to the coach with this. Why follow Brayden in here? It’s counter-productive. Mr. Cooper would probably get the police and Brayden would be found in an instant.”

  “Unless it was werewolves,” whispered a voice from above.

  My body froze as I stared at my cousin. She was staring right back at me with her eyes as wide as I’d ever seen on a person that wasn’t a cartoon. For a split second, I wanted to warn her that they’d fall out of her head. She’d probably slap my arm for being hilarious at an inappropriate time.

  I looked up in the trees and was surprised by what I saw. Nothing again. A whole lot of nothing happening out there today.

  “Right here, buck-o,” whispered the voice again, this time from in front of Zoe and me.

  When I turned, I saw not only one kid standing in front of us, but several. There must’ve been fifteen or twenty of them, all dressed in the same black uniforms. Their faces were covered with masks that only showed their eyes. There was no way this was happening, right? These kinds of things only happen in movies, and mostly movies from the eighties! My dad’s movies.

  “Are you…” I started asking.

  “Ninjas,” said the child in the mask. The rest of the ninjas behind him punched their chest once and let out a “ha!” sound at the same time. I couldn’t help but chuckle at how choreographed it was.

  “What’s so funny?” asked the ninja. “You dare laugh at us?”

  “Not at you,” I said. “Just at the fact that it all sounded like you were gonna laugh at the same time, but stopped instead. Plus you’re a bunch of kids out here wearing pajamas and hiding in the woods. If that’s not a red flag for a guidance counselor, I don’t know what is. Besides, you guys aren’t very good since you’re all standing here in front of us right now. Aren’t ninjas supposed to be a secret?”

  The ninja stepped forward, revealing Brayden standing behind him. “We’ve taken your friend prisoner because he got too close to our operation. We’ve revealed ourselves to you because there was a possibility you’d seek help from Mr. Cooper. We’ve come too far as a clan and can’t let it all fizzle out because of a tattle tale.”

  “Are you alright?” Zoe asked Brayden.

  Brayden nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  The first ninja spoke again. “We’ll release him to you under one condition.”

  What a strange school. I’ve been here one day and I’ve already met a clan of secret ninjas that’s holding a kid I just met hostage. How valuable was Brayden to me? Not very. I only just met the boy, but again, being the nice guy I am… “Name it.”

  “You walk out of these woods and tell no one what you saw today,” said the ninja.

  “But master,” said one of the ninjas from the back. I was surprised because it was a girl’s voice. “They’ve seen too much! We cannot let them leave here!”

  The first ninja raised his fist in the air. She quickly bowed out of respect and stepped back in line. This kid had power, I’ll admit that.

  “Fine,” I said as I glanced at my cousin.

  “Deal,” said Zoe.

  They released Brayden. He stumbled toward us with his hands behind his back. In the short amount of time they had him, they had already tied his hands together. Maybe they were better than I thought.

  At that moment, I heard the air horn Mr. Cooper uses to signal when there was five minutes left of class. It was his way of lazily telling us to return to the gym. Zoe, Brayden, and I turned toward the school.

  When I looked back, the ninjas were gone without a trace.

  Wednesday. 7:45 AM. Homeroom.

  Buchanan School had started sixth graders on a schedule similar to middle school so the transfer in the next year wouldn’t be as shocking. It was cool because we were the only kids that had this type of schedule in the school. I guess everyday was going to start with a fifteen-minute homeroom, where we’d all gather our things together and take attendance. Another cool thing about it was no assigned seating. Students were allowed to sit wherever they wanted.

  I was the last in the room just before the bell rang.

  “Cutting it close, aren’t you?” Zoe asked as she unzipped her backpack. It was bright red with speckled straps. There was a small plastic sleeve on the side that had her name written on it. She made a smiley face with the “o.”

  I smiled and mocked her. “You’re cutting it close.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” she replied.

  “Think about it for a minute, and it will,” I said.

  Zoe’s eyes darted back and forth and the gears in her head clearly cranked. In the time it took her to think, I sat in the seat behind her. Finally
she turned around.

  “I still don’t get it,” she said.

  Poor Zoe. That was the joke, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her. “Nevermind.”

  Homeroom went on as the teacher made the announcements for the day. I zoned out watching the clock as the sound of their voice trailed over my head, speaking about football try-outs, the school lunch menu, and other dumb things that didn’t concern me. Something about the food drive and how it was only the third day of school and a quarter of the way to our goal. I should probably find that thing the school mailed to my house.

  As I envisioned the teacher’s words floating over my head, I started to see myself floating there as well. I drifted over the other students, free from this horrible place called “school.” And then I flipped my body over and saw the clouds over my head. They were white and fluffy, like marshmallows. I positioned my legs to point at the floor and zoomed—

  “Hey,” Zoe’s voice said, interrupting my awesome daydream. “You comin’ or what?”

  I had a way of losing track of reality when I daydreamed. If I were in a job interview, I’d probably try to hide that fact when they asked about my weaknesses. And also my allergy to bees. ADHD and bees are my weaknesses.

  Zoe was standing over my desk waiting for me. The other students had already left the room. Man, I must’ve been completely out of it.

  “Sorry.” I stood from my desk and watched a folded sheet of paper fall to the floor. Someone had wedged it under my forearm when I wasn’t paying attention.

  “A secret admirer?” Zoe asked. “Already? Chase, you move too quickly for your own good.”

  I gestured to my scrawny body. “What girl wouldn’t want this?”

  Zoe laughed. It made me feel better.

  “What’s it say?” Zoe asked.

  I unfolded the sheet of paper and read the writing.

  Chase,

  Be at the edge of the woods today at the start of gym class. Bring your cousin. Cookies and soda will be provided.

  There was no signature.

  “Cookies and soda?” Zoe asked.

  Great. I read the note out loud when I didn’t mean to. My dad would always make fun of me because I whispered anything I ever read, even if I meant to read it in my head. “Mouth breather,” is what he’d call me. It was in good fun, but got annoying sometimes.

  “The ninjas want us to return?” Zoe asked. “And they’re offering soda and cookies as bait? Are they serious? Has anything else in the history of traps ever screamed ‘trap’ so loudly?”

  “It doesn’t say it was from the ninjas,” I said. “Maybe it’s from Brayden.”

  “The werewolf boy? Yeah, right. Like he’d be smart enough to pull off a trap like this… actually, maybe you are right. It’s such an obvious scheme that I wouldn’t be surprised it were him.”

  Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was only a little after eight in the morning. Gym wasn’t for another two and a half hours. Wonderful. I can’t stand waiting for the microwave to beep after a minute. How was I going to last two and a half hours?

  Wednesday. 10:40 AM. Gym class.

  By this time, my hands were shaking. I had endured two different classes in anticipation for gym. At one point in the morning, I had even worked up a cold sweat. Zoe made fun of me the whole time.

  She was right behind me when I entered into the woods again at the same place as the day before. I clenched my jaw as I stepped foot into the moist dirt, or mud, waiting to get punched in the face. Luckily that never happened.

  Instead, we were met right away by a shorter ninja. He was alone, carrying a zip locked baggie of Oreo cookies and two orange sodas. In my entire life, I can honestly say I never expected a ninja to greet me with cookies and drinks. It was weird.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” the ninja whispered as he turned around. “Eat your cookies and follow me.”

  Now I know that I should be cautious when given snacks by a shady character, but c’mon… they were Oreo cookies! Did I mention they were double stuffed? I think even the best of us have our weaknesses.

  “Lead the way,” I said, grabbing the baggie of cookies.

  “You’re seriously going to eat those?” Zoe asked as she followed behind.

  “Darn right.”

  Zoe smirked. “Good. ‘Cause I didn’t want to be the only one eating them. Gimme some.”

  I took a cookie from the zip locked bag and handed it to her. The ninja in front of us wasn’t walking very quickly. Maybe he wasn’t in as much of a hurry as we were, but gym class was only fifty minutes long, and twenty minutes had already passed.

  “Stop,” the ninja said. And then he turned around to face us again. “We’re here.”

  Without moving my head, I glanced around the area in front of us. “So we only walked about ten steps, and now we’re in your secret hideout? There’s no one here. What gives?”

  The ninja didn’t answer. He slowly lifted his hand up, pointing at something behind us. When I turned around, I saw what he was pointing at.

  Zoe and I had only walked about ten feet. We were only about fourteen feet from the edges of the woods that we entered. But in the amount of time it took us to walk this far, the entire clan of ninjas had quietly entered into the area. They stood like charcoal colored statues facing us.

  “Man, these guys are good,” I whispered.

  “They’re alright,” Zoe said.

  The ninja at the front of the group approached us. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought maybe it was the same short one from the day before. As I studied his movement, I kind of thought he looked like a “mini-ninja.” Y’know, almost like a toy. This thought caused me to chuckle again.

  “What’s so funny?” the ninja asked. He even had a higher pitched voice. It wasn’t the ninja from the day before.

  “It’s nothing. I just—”

  “Do you know why you’re here?” the ninja asked, interrupting me.

  I pulled the note from my gym shorts. I had been anxious all day about this meeting, which meant that I opened and closed the note about a hundred times, reading and re-reading it. The sheet of paper was falling apart as I held it out to the masked boy. “I got this in homeroom.”

  The ninja shook his small head. “You’re here because we’ve allowed you to be. You’ve been invited to join our clan. It’s not an invitation you should take ligh—”

  This time, I interrupted him. “Yes. Yes, yes, and yes please, with a side of French onion yes.”

  The ninja paused. “You haven’t even heard our proposal yet.”

  “I don’t care,” I replied. “Ninjas are the coolest thing since wireless video game controllers. Of course I want to be a ninja!”

  Zoe folded her arms and grumbled.

  The short kid looked at her. “The invitation is for you as well, darling.”

  “Ew,” Zoe said. “Don’t call me darling.”

  “Apologies,” the ninja said. “Your cousin has just decided to join our clan. What says you?”

  “Meh,” Zoe said. “Is this whole thing a secret?”

  The ninja nodded like a bobble-head toy. Seriously, he looked like a stinkin’ child’s play thing!

  “So nobody will ever know I was in this club?” Zoe asked.

  “Correct.”

  After a sigh, she looked at me and tightened her lips. “Why not? Sounds like fun.”

  “Excellent!” shouted the ninja in front of us. The minions behind him all raised their arms in the air and exalted with the same “ha” sound as the day before. The ninja turned around, but glanced over his shoulder at us. “Be here tomorrow at this time. If you wish to join our clan, each of you must find a four leafed clover and present it to us in this spot.”

  “Wait,” I said. “We’re not automatically entered into your little ninja gang?”

  The boy remained silent as he nodded his head. I could tell from his squinty eyes that he was smiling under the mask. And then he
spoke loudly. “Ninja vanish!”

  Immediately, two ninjas hopped down from the treetops and started clapping chalkboard erasers together violently in front of my face. The white powder of chalk exploded into the air, making it impossible to see anything. When the smoke cleared, the ninjas were gone.

  “Amazing,” I whispered.

  “A little dorky,” Zoe snipped quietly.

  “Then why’d you say you’d join?”

  Zoe’s shoulders slumped down and she waved her arms out. “Because you’re new at this school, and I want you to feel normal about it. I don’t know what it’s like being the new kid, but I’m sure it stinks. If joining a ninja clan will help you get on your feet, then by golly, that’s what I’ll do.” She paused. “What a weird sentence I just spoke! I do it ‘cause you’re family, y’know. You’re cool enough, Chase, but if it takes a little bit of a push, then I’ll be the one to push.”

  I smiled at the sappy way she was telling me she cared. “Gross, stop it already. You’re gonna bore me to the point of comatose.”

  Zoe shook her head, confused. “That’s not even a thing!”

  Thursday. 7:45 AM. Homeroom.

  I took my seat behind Zoe again since the desk was open. She turned around immediately, wearing a stupid grin. I knew why she was grinning and I couldn’t help but return the dorky smile.

  “Did you find one?” Zoe whispered.

  I shook my head. “No. I looked all night in my yard. There were a billion three leafed clovers, and a couple of two leafed ones… even found a five leafed clover, but no four leafs. I’ll have to spend the first half of gym class with my face buried in the grass looking for one I guess.”

  She slammed a textbook down on my desk. It made enough ruckus that the entire class noticed.

  “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed.

  “It’s alright,” said the homeroom teacher as he continued making the announcements. “And the food drive total is up to over three thousand dollars! All the cash and checks are sitting in the front office inside a plastic container for everyone to see. It’s quite a spectacle, really. If we can fill two of those containers, we’ll have made our goal of reaching ten thousand dollars! And you know what that means…”