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  “Rest five minutes, then fight Ito,” Dad directed.

  She bowed. “Yes, Sensei.”

  As she walked over to the drinking fountain, I couldn’t help but feel nervous to face her. I could beat Marty easy. But if Amy was willing to kick a guy like that, I had no idea what I was up against. She’d figured out the no rules thing fast. Most recruits struggled to set aside their ethics.

  “Need help?” I leaned down next to Marty.

  “Just gimme a sec and watch out for yourself.” He pulled himself up to sit, but then lay back down. “I was not expecting that. Should have guessed a girl wouldn’t honor the unspoken code.”

  “Yeah, but Danielle never even—”

  “Sorry about that.” Amy kneeled next to me, and I jumped away. How did I not hear her coming? She was starting to freak me out.

  “I’ll get you next time.” Marty smiled his perfect smile. “Now that I know you play dirty.”

  “I just did what I was told.” She shrugged, looking totally satisfied with herself. She’d taken out a ninja who’d been training since he was twelve. I’d be proud of myself, too.

  “You’re not supposed to understand Ito Sensei’s code yet.” Marty pulled himself up and stayed this time. “Took me a year to figure out how he talks.”

  “Well, I am an honor student,” Amy said, sarcastic and flirty as ever. Marty leaned toward her. Here she’d kicked him, and it was like he’d totally forgotten. She was already the perfect kunoichi.

  “Ito, Sato, take your places,” my dad said.

  Amy stood up without hesitation. I kind of wanted to find a cup and bubble wrap first, but I faced her. She crouched down into her traditional karate stance, and I watched. So far, she’d been the exact opposite of what I expected. Not timid, weak, and confused, but fierce, strong, and smart.

  Her dark brown eyes stared into mine—the panther sizing up her prey. She didn’t look scared for one moment, though she had to know I’d been doing this my whole life. She could spar, but she relied on her training. Fighting was instinct for me. I could beat her if I erased my assumptions…and kept away from her knees. She obviously wanted me to make the first move, but I preferred to defend. So I waited, stared at her, and smiled. One of her eyebrows rose. Then she finally attacked.

  She was good. She assumed I’d block the first blow and attack from the side, so I dodged her and she dodged me. I grabbed her, but she twisted out of it and tried to trip me. I held my ground, which made her lose her balance.

  I had her pinned in less than ten seconds, making sure to keep her knees to one side with my leg. I twisted her free arm, trying to get her to tap out, or in other words give up. Her left hand was pinned under her awkwardly. She writhed—surprisingly strong for her size—but I kept her in place and waited for my dad to call the fight. He didn’t.

  I’d done everything right. I’d won. He should have called it. He was giving Amy a chance to do what she did to Marty, but she couldn’t. I’d covered that option. She grabbed my thigh with her awkwardly placed hand, digging her nails in. I grunted, but held firm. I wasn’t moving my leg—there was no way.

  And then she tickled me. TICKLED. This was the freakiest girl I’d ever fought. I tried to hold in my laughter, but she knew it was working and tickled more. Then she started laughing, and I busted up too.

  The second I faltered, Amy rolled on top of me. She locked my arms at my side by wrapping her legs around my torso and digging her heels into my spine. It hurt like crazy. Did she learn that in our dojo? Or did she know instinctively how to bring the pain? I tried to get my legs around her head so I could pull her off, but she leaned in so our noses almost touched. She smiled, and I was pissed off that she had me.

  “Thanks for inviting me, Tosh. This is really fun,” she whispered.

  “Glad you’re enjoying it,” I said through my teeth. I hated losing. As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t beaten me yet. There had to be a way out. Then I saw the answer. In any other circumstance, it might have gotten me in big trouble, but now was the perfect moment to “attack.”

  So I kissed her.

  She whipped her head back so fast you’d have thought my lips were poison. I used the opportunity to grab her torso with my legs and flip her over so I was on top. She stared at me—there was the shock I’d expected when my dad brought up the ninja thing.

  I grinned. “No rules, right?”

  She tried not to smile, but she totally did. I could swear she glowed, but maybe that was in my head. People didn’t literally glow. I thought about kissing her again, since it was so fun the first time, but I had no reason now. It would look like I wanted her, and I couldn’t want her without being the biggest jerk of a friend in recorded history.

  “Enough!” My dad stepped onto the mat, and I released Amy. His angry glare caught me off guard. He’d never said I was the favorite, but the Clan assumed it. Had Amy taken my place? No way. Maybe he was mad that I kissed her like that. Dad was pretty old school.

  I held out my hand and Amy took it. To cover my bases, I pulled her close and whispered, “What happens in ninja school stays in ninja school.”

  “For sure.” She wiped her cheeks like it might remove the blush, and I tried to ignore how pretty she suddenly seemed.

  “Five minutes,” my dad said through his teeth. I rushed to the fountain for a drink, hoping it might take away the zinging on my lips from that kiss. It didn’t.

  For the rest of training, Dad worked with Amy on establishing a cover. Hers was pretty similar to mine, but we had to work with what she had since she was invited so late. It wasn’t like she could suddenly take up hip-hop without her friends thinking she’d gone insane.

  “Walk Sato home,” Dad said when class was over. I always walked the new recruits home and answered questions he didn’t want to bother with.

  “Yes, Sensei.” I bowed and left the mat with Amy. We slipped on our shoes and coats, leaving the dojo and heading in the direction of her house.

  6

  It was quiet for the city. A few cars passed by as we walked the steep hill to her house. The cool air felt perfect after fighting so hard. Some of the trees still hung on to their leaves, darkening our path between streetlamps. I don’t know why I’d expected Amy to talk when she’d done everything else so completely weird that evening.

  Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “You did good. No one’s ever done that well on the first day.”

  She stopped walking and stood in front of me, finger in my face. “I knew there was something weird about you—I knew it.”

  I pushed her finger away from me. “And how’d you know?”

  She went still, seeming reluctant to tell me. “Do you remember when we sparred as little kids?”

  This question surprised me. “No, not even a little bit.”

  “We were like five or six.” She shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, though I had a feeling it was. “I just remember you were winning, like I could feel the loss coming. But then at the end…it was like you threw the match and I won. Since then it just felt like you were better than you let on, so I kept watching you after that.”

  I swallowed hard, unable to find words. For some reason the thought of her observing me so closely made me want to hide.

  “You’ve always been really secretive, even when you were younger, and so not like your friends. They’re all sweet and considerate and humble. You’re way too confident for a nerd.” She sighed. “I thought you were such a jerk. You treat people like you know everything about them, but I guess you do in a way.”

  “You think I’m a jerk?” I felt like I’d consumed a whole vial of poison. I was just trying to keep Eddie happy. I had no idea I came off like that to her.

  “Thought you were a jerk.”

  I nodded. “So, what do you think of me now?”

  “I …” She looked down, a little flustered. “Well, you make a lot more sense, that’s for sure. You’ve been doing this your whole life, huh?”

  “Y
eah.”

  She started walking again, so I followed. I tried to figure out what I should say next. I was supposed to be the one giving information, and here she was telling me how she’d seen through me, even as a little kid. That was some serious skill in perception.

  “So, you’re really okay?” At this point I was usually talking a new recruit out of some plan to run away or flat out refuse the invitation.

  She laughed. “When Sensei first said it, I almost didn’t believe it. But then it just…made sense. It’s not like ninjas are magical creatures. They used to exist, so why not now? Everything about you and your dad just clicked, so I figured no matter how weird it was it must be true.”

  “You’re not mad about getting sucked into this? Scared? Confused?”

  “Are you kidding? This is like the dream job I’d always hoped existed!”

  “Really?”

  “Hello? I love karate. What, did you think I took all those classes to see you?” She bumped my shoulder.

  “No! I never really thought about it.” I’d known Amy for years, since her first karate lesson at age five, but even then I knew to keep my distance. Eddie was in that class too, and he stared at her so much my dad would make him face the back so he’d concentrate. He quit when Amy moved up a class and he didn’t.

  She laughed. “Obviously not. I’ve been dying to get an invite to the competition class. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I just want to be the best. I want to beat you for real, not because you throw the match.”

  I smiled. “Sorry, that’s not happening.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to take your money.”

  “Whatever.” She nudged me again, at which point my stomach turned. Eddie would kill to be here with her. If he knew that I’d kissed her (and kind of wanted to do it again), he’d call me a traitor.

  We’d almost made it to her house. I’d never technically been there, but we used to ride by Amy’s like we did Courtney’s.

  “So, what exactly do we, uh, do?”

  “The usual—sabotage, espionage, smuggling, and such.”

  She pursed her lips. “Isn’t that…wrong?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Did you think we’d be superheroes in disguise? Honestly, we just get the jobs and do them. We don’t know our clients’ reasoning, good or bad.”

  “I guess I can live with that.”

  “Really?” It seemed too good to be true, like she didn’t actually get how serious this was. “You’re not bothered at all?”

  She bit her lip, and for a second I thought I saw the fear underneath her claims of being excited about this. “Will being bothered about it change the fact that I don’t have much choice?”

  Ah, so this is her way of coping. Pretend it’s fine. “No, I guess not.”

  “Right.” She took a deep breath, trying to muster her courage. “So, how many of us are there?”

  “Not something you can really put a number to, but there are thirty-one in our Clan. Thirty-two now.”

  “Wait, are there other Clans? Like, others in the city?”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure they’re all over the place. My dad had one in Japan, then made his own when he came here. We cover San Francisco, mostly, but there are a few in the Bay Area we know of. We call one the Tiger Clan, because they tend to use claws. I don’t know their official name or identities, though. They don’t bother us—we don’t bother them.”

  She nodded. “What if they do bother us? Like that guy who attacked Todd—he was a real ninja, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah, hmm …” No one had ever asked that before, and it had never been an issue. I thought about Todd lying in the hospital, how badly I wanted that guy to pay for it. “Ninja war?”

  Her smile filled with mischief, like she’d been a ninja waiting for a Clan all these years. “This is so, so cool.”

  I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off her. Strands of shiny black hair floated around her gentle features. I’d never noticed how full her lips were or how cute her tiny nose was. She was really pretty when I took the time to look. I stopped myself—I could not think that about Amy Sato that way. I squared my shoulders and forced myself to say something that might scare her out of acting like she was fine. “So, you know this is a permanent thing, right? No getting out or hiding or anything. No going back to normal life.”

  My own words hit me. I didn’t even know what normal life was. Ninjutsu was all I knew. I’d always thought I had a lot in common with my friends. We lived and breathed nerd life, but there was a part of me they’d never know. In truth, I had to hide from them. No one really knew me.

  Amy shrugged. “Normal is so overrated.”

  “No, it’s not.” We stood outside her three-story Victorian-style mansion, leaning on the fence that guarded the smallest courtyard ever. “You can’t tell anyone. You’re alone. My mom—she doesn’t even know her own husband. Normal is nice. Normal is…easy.”

  “Tosh.” Her smile was sad. “You are totally projecting.”

  “Am I?” I looked away, embarrassed.

  “You aren’t alone. Your dad knows who you are, and so do Marty and all the other ones out there. And now I know, too.” She leaned her head on my arm, and I didn’t know whether to feel happy or terrible. “For what it’s worth, the real you is way nicer, even if you’re a cheater when you fight.”

  I smiled. “Oh yeah, and kicking a guy in the balls is totally fair.”

  “Fair when you’re my size! How else was I supposed to win?”

  “You could have lost.”

  “I don’t like to lose.” She fake-pouted, at which point I realized I needed to leave. She was flirting with me, like she did with everyone, and I could not get sucked in.

  “Well, I better get going.” I pulled myself from the fence. “This walk is usually for damage control purposes, but it looks like you’re ‘fine’ with your new…job.”

  “Totally fine.” She stood up and opened the gate. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Yup.” I jogged back to the dojo, unable to stop thinking about Todd. That poison…I still had to tell my dad. He’d been too busy with classes earlier and wouldn’t even let me pull him aside. I could easily leave out Courtney and still tell him everything about the attack. Maybe he could explain what was going on.

  7

  The dojo was closed for the night when I arrived, its bright red and white sign darkened. I went to the back and unlocked the door. When I entered the training room, my father wasn’t there, so I went upstairs.

  Mom sat in her favorite brown recliner watching a Japanese game show. Her housedress made her look sixty, though she was barely forty.

  “No! Push from your center!” she cried at the television in Japanese. She got up and mimicked whatever she wanted the contestant to do. “Baka!”

  I took off my shoes and headed straight for the kitchen. Dinner sat on the tiled counter, still steaming.

  “Bring your food in here and watch this with me,” she called. “These guys are being so stupid!”

  I laughed as I grabbed the biggest plate I could find. Then I opened our rice cooker and piled on the rice. I threw some steamed vegetables and rolled omelets on the other side. My bowl of miso was on the table. I chugged it as I walked back to the living room and sat on our old green couch.

  “Where’s Dad?” He left most nights, but not usually this early.

  “He needed a walk. He should be home in a couple hours,” she said without looking away from the TV. “This guy thinks he can pick up that big block—he needs to push it. They get the dumbest people for these shows now.” She was supposed to laugh at people willing to pedal around on cat-sized bikes, not critique their form. But she really did know what she was talking about. The dojo was bought with the money she won from those shows.

  “Or at least use that stick and rock for leverage.” I shoveled another mouthful of rice in with my chopsticks. No one made rice better than my mom; it was sticky but not mushy.

&nbs
p; She nodded. “See? You’d win.”

  “Yeah, I would.” I laughed. You’d never guess she was so energetic. She was the kind of lady who never looked people in the eye or talked to strangers. She didn’t even come to my school stuff, since she was too embarrassed about her English. I felt lucky I got to see her like this. Sometimes I wished I could tell her more about my life, but then again, it was better she didn’t know how much danger Dad and I were in on a regular basis.

  I pulled out my homework to distract myself until my dad got home. Dad didn’t show up until two. Mom had already gone to bed and I was dozing off on the couch, my chemistry book abandoned for some late-night, totally inaccurate kung fu movie. He didn’t even jump when I sat up.

  “Do you need to speak with me, son?” He pulled his mask off, sitting in the recliner. He was always serious, but something felt different tonight. His mouth was pulled tight like he was mad at me.

  His reaction to my kissing Amy came rushing back. Not that I planned on it, but relationships within the Clan weren’t technically off limits. Though they weren’t commonplace either.

  “Um, did I do something wrong?”

  He hesitated. At least that was what I thought the twitch was. I’d never seen him pause like that before—like he was taken off guard. “You are getting older. Such tactics are acceptable on missions, but should be used with extreme discretion on Clan members.”

  “So you would have rather had me lose?” That didn’t seem like him. Coming out on top was always the goal. He should be proud of me like he’d always been.

  “The fox does not lose when he retreats to the foxhole.”

  “Yes, Sensei.” I tried to see his logic. He probably didn’t want Amy thinking that was normal Clan practice, that I’d take advantage of her. I didn’t regret my choice, but I’d listen to my father.

  “Is that all?”

  I shook my head. “You know how Todd got attacked? I’m positive it was a ninja.”