Beware the Ninja Weenies (10 page)

He got quiet for a minute or two as he sketched. But then he started talking again. “The piece will be called
Child of the New Decade Raging Against the Past.
”

“Child?” I asked, trying not to move as I spoke. This reminded me of being at the dentist.

“Don't take it personally. It's just a label. The important thing is for you to look angry.” He sketched some more, stepped back, stared at the pad, stepped forward, tore the page off, and let it drift to the floor. Then he started a new sketch.

And that was my workday. It was hard keeping my fists clenched for so long, but he gave me a break once in a while so I could put my arms down. He paid me in cash when we were finished.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“No. Far from it. We've just begun. There's too much at stake here to leap straight into the final stage. Every step requires thought. Tomorrow, I'll get out the paints.”

That was fine with me. I was happy to know I had more money coming. My muscles were stiff from all that posing, but it wasn't any worse than some of the stuff they made us do in gym class. And I never got paid for push-ups.

During the next two days, Caspar painted a large canvas on his easel. He kept asking me to lean forward more. I tried, but it was hard keeping my balance.

The day after that, when I showed up at the studio, there was a glass box in the spot where I usually posed.

Caspar swung out one side of it, like a door. “Step in,” he said.

“Why?

“The final piece involves having you appear to be slightly off balance, and I realize you can't hold that pose. I need to get the effect just right. And I think it will help if you have something to bang your fists against. Don't worry—the glass is unbreakable.”

“Okay. Sure.” That made sense. Well, not really. But I'd stopped trying to understand everything he was doing, and I'd really started to enjoy the way the money piled up. Besides, it would definitely be easier posing, now that I had something to lean against. I stepped inside the box. “When is the painting due?”

Caspar closed the box. I heard something click. Then he said, “Oh, the final piece isn't a painting.”

“No? What is it?”

“A sculpture,” he said. He bent over and picked up a hose from the floor. He attached the hose to the bottom of the box.

“Cool.” That could take weeks. The money would keep piling up. I looked around, but didn't see a big block of stone. Maybe he was going to use clay. “Are you carving it?”

“No. I'm casting it,” he said. “Hold still.”

I noticed a suitcase and a couple boxes stacked in the corner. As I wondered whether he was moving to another studio, I felt something wet against my legs. A thick liquid was flooding the container.

“Hey! Stop that!” I banged my fists against the glass. It didn't break.

In seconds, the liquid was up past my waist. It smelled like melted plastic. My phone had already gotten soaked. The fumes made my head spin. I banged my fists against the glass again. “Let me out!”

“Yes, perfect!” Caspar said. “Show your rage.”

The liquid was up to my chin. Then it flowed over my head. I realized he was planning to use my body as a mold for his sculpture.

I tried to smash the glass, but the liquid was so thick, I couldn't build up any force. I couldn't even move my legs. Whatever this stuff was, it had already turned solid down there. A moment later, my fists were frozen in place against the glass. On the other side, through a blur of glass and plastic, I could see Caspar's fists clenched in triumph.

“Perfect!” he shouted.

I wanted to scream, but I couldn't even open my mouth to do that. Or to breathe.

I remembered something our art teacher always said in school. She even had it printed on one of her coffee cups:
ART IS LONG, LIFE IS SHORT.

She had no idea how true that was.

 

BEWARE THE NINJA WEENIES

“Die!” Jimmy Butafesko screamed
as he leaped out of a Dumpster to my right and hurled a fistful of shuriken—ninja throwing stars—directly at my chest. This was definitely not what I wanted to run into on the way home from a long day of school.

“Fool! You fell into our devious trap.” Isaac Swadman dropped from a tree to my left and rushed forward, swinging his katana.

Fortunately, the shuriken were cardboard, and the katana was plastic. Unfortunately, Jimmy and Isaac were real. And real annoying. Even with his face wrapped in black cloth, I had no trouble identifying Jimmy, thanks to a unibrow that could have been mistaken for a climbing rope. As for Isaac, no amount of fabric could disguise his huge nose.

“Go away,” I said.

“In a flash!” Jimmy threw something at the sidewalk. It made a tiny popping sound. No flash. No smoke. But Jimmy and Isaac squatted, pivoted away from me, and duck-walked off as if they were hidden by vast plumes of dense smoke. They headed down Talmadge Street, where they joined a half dozen other black-hooded kids waiting for them on the next corner.

“They were so much less annoying last month,” my friend Kyle Hashimoto said as he caught up with me.

“Yeah. The pirate stuff was a pain, but this is a lot worse.” Back then, all we had put up with was hearing, “Arg!” a whole bunch.
Arrrrgument. Barrrrgain. Tarrrget.
You get the idea.

But I guess the pirates were lost at sea because, for the past week or so, Jimmy, Isaac, and all their friends had become total ninja weenies, crawling, leaping, skulking, sneaking, attacking, and generally being more annoying than a swarm of horseflies on a hot day.

“At least it won't last long,” Kyle said. “Those guys have the attention span of puppies.”

“You're right. They'll get bored with it soon enough.”

I went with Kyle to his place. His folks both work, but his grandfather was there. He doesn't speak much English. That didn't matter. I liked him, and he seemed to like me. He always gave us snacks.

“Did you ever meet a ninja?” I asked him when he brought us a plate of ginger cookies.

He laughed. “No ninjas.” Then he walked off to tend his garden. He grew all sorts of plants and flowers behind the house. Once, when I had a cold, he rubbed some crushed leaves on my chest and I felt a whole lot better.

“You sure he's not a ninja?” I asked Kyle. “I've never seen anyone make so little noise when he walks.”

“Right—he's a ninja. I'm a ninja. My cat is a ninja. Even the goldfish are ninjas. It's bad enough Jimmy is obsessed. Don't you start. Let's think about important stuff, like your party.”

“Good idea.” My birthday was next month, and my parents were letting me throw a big party for all my friends. Kyle had already come up with a lot of great ideas.

On the way home, I passed the place where the Twirly Tykes Dance Studio used to be. It had closed more than a year ago. There was a new sign over the door announcing
MASTER O'ROURKE'S NINJUTSU ACADEMY.
According to a flyer in the window, they were having a grand opening on Saturday.

I snorted and walked on. I'd done some research last year for a history report on ninjas. Most of the stuff you saw about them was totally wrong. Ninjas were more like spies than superfighters. They'd disguise themselves as craftsmen or soldiers to infiltrate enemy armies. They'd start fires to distract people, and then do sabotage. They were experts in poisons and chemical weapons. But they couldn't float through the air, or perform any of the other superhuman stuff people see in movies.

Kyle and I stayed away from the grand opening. Not only did all the ninja weenies go, but as I found out on Monday in school, they'd all signed up for lessons.

“This is definitely getting out of hand,” Kyle said as we walked to our class.

“For sure.” I watched Jimmy try to do a wall run. He managed to go two steps before he fell. He wasn't wearing his ninja outfit, since the school had rules about that, but he'd pulled his black T-shirt up so it covered his mouth.

All around us, the ninja weenies were dashing, sneaking, slashing, and generally turning the hallways into a pathetic version of an even more pathetic video game—the kind you can find heaped up in a bin at the bargain store for three dollars.

“What beats a ninja?” I asked after Jimmy and Isaac leaped out at me from a pair of lockers, pelted me with fake darts, and scurried away.

“Nothing I can think of,” Kyle said. “Except maybe a superhero. Why?”

“I don't know. It would just be nice to see all of them whacked back into the real world, so they stop acting like ninjas.”

“Won't happen,” Kyle said. “Not now that they're taking lessons.”

“I know, but it would be nice. Doesn't it bother you that they're stealing your culture?” I figured, being Japanese, Kyle would have a special attachment to ninjas.

“My culture? I was born in Grand Rapids, just like my dad.”

“But your grandfather came here from Japan. Right?”

“Right. But even way back when he was a kid, there was no sign of ninjas. At least, not real ones.”

The ninjas might have vanished ages ago, but the ninja weenies were far from gone. And they were learning some dangerous things. I guess even fake ninjas can do damage. Two weeks later, I saw Jimmy putting Dale Wertner in some kind of headlock behind the school. It looked like it hurt.

“Stop that!” I said.

“Ninjas do not take orders,” Jimmy said. He let go of Dale and leaped toward me. I put my hands up to protect myself. Jimmy grabbed my arm and put me in a wristlock.

“Ouch! Let me go!”

“Pledge your allegiance to the Black Mask Clan of Master O'Rourke,” he said.

“Knock it off.”

He twisted harder. “Pledge!”

“Okay—you have my allegiance.”

Jimmy loosened his grip. But then he bore down again. “And invite me to your party.”

Oh, man. How did he know about that? I'd been real quiet about the invitations. I had plenty of friends at school, but there were some kids I just didn't want to hang out with. So I'd emailed the invitations. I guess kids at school were talking about the party because it was just a day away.

Jimmy twisted harder.

“Okay—you're invited.”

He let go and dashed off.

I told Kyle the sad details on the way home from school.

“The last thing you want is Jimmy at your party.”

“I know. He'll ruin it. And he'll bring all his friends.” I didn't see any easy way out.

“Maybe you can talk to that ninjutsu guy,” Kyle said. “He can't possibly want his students acting like this. It brings him dishonor.”

“It's worth a try. Will you come with me?” I was nervous about going there by myself.

“Sure. I've been kind of curious about the place.”

When we went into the ninjutsu school, there was a pale redheaded guy sitting behind a counter facing the workout area. I guess it was Master O'Rourke.

“Ah, new students. Excellent. Would you like to sign up for a single year or buy a lifetime membership?”

“Uh, actually, I wanted to talk to you about some of your students, like Jimmy Butafesko and Isaac Swadman. They're causing a lot of trouble at school.”

“Wonderful!” he said. “I've taught them well. Troublemaking is one of the seventy-five secret ninja arts I teach my students.”

I glanced over at Kyle, who shrugged. I tried again. “They're going to crash my birthday party.”

“I'm so proud of them,” he said. “Crashing is another of the seventy-five secret ninja arts that I teach. We call it
infiltration.
So, now that you boys know two of the secrets, would you like to sign up so you can learn the other seventy-three?”

I could see this wasn't going to do any good. Before I could leave, Kyle said, “Who taught you to be a ninja?”

“I taught myself,” the man said. “I have a natural gift for martial arts. I've read a lot of books and watched all the best ninja movies.”

“How interesting.” Kyle smiled at the man and walked out.

I hurried to catch up with him on the sidewalk. “Doesn't that guy make you angry? He's a total fake.”

“Anger is a waste of energy. Forget about him. It's not worth worrying about.”

I tried to forget about it, but the next day at school, all the ninja weenies kept sneaking up behind me and whispering, “See you tonight.”

By lunchtime, I was ready to call home and tell my folks to forget about the party. “I give up,” I told Kyle.

“Hey, don't be a quitter,” he said.

I sat there and stared at my spaghetti. That's what they had on Fridays. And it was actually pretty good for cafeteria food, as long as you remembered not to eat the sausage. But I wasn't hungry.

I stared to my left, at the table full of ninja weenies. Past them, an old lady was mopping the floor. That was weird. The custodians always wait until after lunch to start mopping. I didn't recognize her, and I hadn't seen her come in. I knew all the custodians. Maybe she'd just gotten hired. As I was watching her, she dropped the mop and pointed out the window.

“Fire!” she shouted.

I raced over to the window with the rest of the kids. A pile of leaves along the curb was on fire. One of the regular custodians ran out with a fire extinguisher. He blasted the leaves with a jet of CO
2
, and the fire was history.

As I walked back to my seat, I noticed the cleaning lady was moving away from Jimmy's table. There was something familiar about her walk. It was smooth and silent. I watched as she slipped into the hall.

“I'll be right back,” I told Kyle.

I stepped into the hallway just in time to see the lady slip something onto her hands and climb the wall—yeah, she went straight up the wall, clinging to it like a lizard. She pushed aside a ceiling tile and vanished like chimney smoke in a sudden breeze.