The Fastest Finish

by Catherine Hapka

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Q&A with Ninja Allyssa Beird

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Cover illustration © 2019 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Hapka, Cathy, author.

  Title: The fastest finish / by Catherine Hapka.

  Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2019] | Series: Junior ninja champion | Summary: The producers of Junior Ninja Champion announce a wildcard episode, throwing the team from Fit Kidz Gym off balance and forcing them to accept a new competitor on their team. Identifiers: LCCN 2018020062 | ISBN 9781328859013 (hardback) Subjects: | CYAC: Athletes—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Reality television programs—Fiction. | Contests—Fiction. | Competition (Psychology)—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Sports & Recreation / Extreme Sports. | JUVENILE FICTION / Media Tie-In. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.H1996 Fas 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020062

  eISBN 978-1-328-53065-3

  v1.1218

  Believe you can and you’re halfway there.​

  —​Theodore Roosevelt

  One

  “Hurry up!” Mackenzie Clark exclaimed as she jumped out of the car. “We don’t want to miss a second of the show!”

  “Don’t worry, we have plenty of time,” Papa Kurt said.

  “Yeah.” Daddy Jim smiled and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Besides, we’re recording it at home. You can watch every second of it as many times as you want.”

  “That’s not the point.” Mackenzie glanced from her fathers to the Fit Kidz gym. Every window was glowing in the fading evening light. “This is the premiere!”

  It seemed to take forever, but finally her dads were out of the car and walking toward the entrance. Mackenzie rushed ahead, her long limbs quivering with excitement. The big night was finally here! Tonight was the broadcast premiere of Junior Ninja Champion—​and they were starting with her episode!

  Most people who knew Mackenzie were still surprised that she’d decided to become a ninja. She was still a little surprised herself. She’d always been proud to be a nerd, more interested in science fiction than in sports. In fact, she’d always joked that she was allergic to exercise. But being a ninja—​swinging around on bars or ropes, climbing up walls, jumping and balancing on all kinds of crazy obstacles—​well, that didn’t feel like exercise. It felt like fun!

  The viewing party for the show was already in full swing when Mackenzie and her dads walked into the gym’s big main room. It looked as if the entire town had turned out to celebrate. People of all ages crowded every corner. Mackenzie’s science teacher was over by the refreshments table, and two of her neighbors were perched on a weight bench, sipping punch.

  “Yo, Mack!” Ty Santiago yelled.

  Mackenzie followed her teammate’s voice. Ty was leaning against the spiral staircase that led up to the running track on the mezzanine. JJ Johnson was perched on one of the steps.

  Mackenzie waved to the two boys, who were both on the Fit Kidz Junior Ninja team with her. She glanced around for Izzy Fitzgerald and Kevin Marshall, their other two teammates, but they were nowhere in sight.

  “Go on and talk to your friends,” Papa Kurt said with a smile. “We’ll mingle.”

  Mackenzie didn’t have to be told twice. She took off toward Ty and JJ.

  JJ grinned when she reached them. “Can you believe we’re about to be TV stars? Every single one of my cousins came tonight.”

  “My dads are here, too.” Mackenzie waved a hand toward the spot where she’d left her fathers, though they’d already disappeared into the crowd. “It’s too bad my birth mom is away on a business trip. But she promised to watch at her hotel.”

  “Cool.” Ty pointed to several guys his age who had just entered. “Hey, check it out. It’s my boys from the baseball team!”

  He grinned and pumped a fist at the guys. Mackenzie smiled as the other guys whooped and waved back. Ty was the opposite of Mackenzie in many ways. He was superathletic and seemed to be great at just about every sport there was. His parents owned the gym where the ninja team trained.

  Then there was JJ. He wasn’t into team sports the way Ty was, but he loved climbing around in the huge tree house he and his dad had built in their backyard, which meant he was a natural at being a ninja. When Mackenzie glanced at him now, JJ was waving to someone in the opposite direction from Ty’s friends—​a petite woman with dark hair and a tattoo of a firecracker on her bicep. She was chatting with Ty’s parents next to the far windows.

  “Hey, Tara’s here!” Mackenzie exclaimed when she saw the woman. Tara “Tiny Torpedo” Warner was the coach of the team. She was also a ninja herself—​she’d appeared on National Ninja Champion, the adult version of JNC.

  “Of course she’s here,” JJ said with a laugh. “There’s no way she’d miss this!”

  Just then a portly man with a handlebar mustache hurried into the room. Next to him was a young kid wearing a cape and alien antennas on his head. They both waved at Mackenzie as they headed over toward the refreshments table.

  “Friends of yours?” JJ asked.

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie said. “That’s Carl—​he owns the comic book store over on Oak Street. He told me his son is a huge ninja fan. I can’t believe how many people turned out to watch! Look, here come the others.”

  Izzy and Kevin were weaving toward them through the crowd. Izzy was sipping from a paper cup. As usual, Mackenzie thought, she looked supercool in her leather jacket and high-top sneakers, the purple streak in her hair making her look sort of like an anime character. Kevin, a few inches shorter than Izzy, had his black curly hair buzzed short and was wearing khaki shorts and a plain blue T-shirt.

  “Hey, it’s the odd couple,” Ty joked when they arrived.

  Izzy frowned. “Who are you calling odd, weirdo?”

  Ty held up both hands. “Chill, it was just a joke,” he said. “You know—​because you’re tall and Kev’s short?”

  Izzy rolled her eyes, but Kevin just laughed. “I’m glad you finally got here, Mackenzie,” he said.

  “Me, too. Daddy Jim got a phone call right when we were leaving.” Mackenzie glanced at Izzy’s cup.
“I think I’ll get some punch before the show starts.”

  Halfway to the punch bowl, Mackenzie spotted another familiar face. “Hi, Noah,” she said, veering off toward a slender dark-haired boy sitting on a leg press in the corner. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  Noah Dhawan glanced up from poking at a half-eaten cookie on a paper plate. “I didn’t either,” he said with a shy but friendly smile. “My mom heard about it from your dad, and she said we should go.”

  Noah’s mother, Stella Perry-Dhawan, directed most of the shows for the local community theater. Daddy Jim had acted in a few shows, including a recent production of Fiddler on the Roof.

  Noah himself was a talented dancer and had appeared in most of his mom’s shows. He never seemed to have a speaking or singing part, but he was always one of the best dancers on the stage.

  “Did you see my review of Fiddler on the blog?” Mackenzie asked him. “I mentioned how great you were in your scenes.”

  Her blog, Mack Attacks, covered lots of topics—​pretty much anything that interested her, which was almost everything. Lately she’d mostly been writing about Junior Ninja Champion, but a few days earlier she’d written a long review of the play, which had been great. Daddy Jim had played the village rabbi, and Noah had been one of the Russian dancers. He’d been much better than the other Russian dancers, though Mackenzie hadn’t mentioned that in the blog.

  “Uh-huh, I saw it. Thanks.” Noah flashed her another brief smile. Then he went back to poking at his cookie.

  Mackenzie waited a second to see if he would say anything else. But he didn’t. That was typical. Noah seemed superconfident when he was dancing onstage, but he was pretty shy the rest of the time. Mackenzie felt as if she barely knew anything about him, even though she’d known him for years—​and even though her dads liked to joke that she was so outgoing that she could make friends with a tree!

  Across the room, a loud laugh rang out. Noah’s mom was over there, talking to a big group of people.

  Too bad some of his mom’s friendliness didn’t rub off on Noah, Mackenzie thought.

  Just then she heard a loud whistle. Ty’s parents were standing on the little stage they’d set up at one end of the gym. Mrs. Santiago was fiddling with a big-screen TV while Mr. Santiago was calling for attention.

  “Ready, everyone?” Ty’s dad called out with a grin. “Find a seat—​the show’s about to start!”

  Two

  All five team members were sitting together right up front with Coach Tara. JJ held his breath as the TV came on. It was showing a car commercial, but the show was due to begin at any moment. When Ty elbowed him in the ribs, JJ let out the breath he was holding.

  “Dude,” Ty whispered. “Can you believe we’re about to be on TV?”

  “No,” JJ whispered back.

  That was the truth. JJ considered himself a pretty ordinary kid. He’d never been interested in being famous or having everyone look at him. Or about winning or being the best. He’d always left that sort of thing to his older sister, Jasmine. JJ had been happy just to hang out in his backyard tree house with his friends and do other normal stuff like that.

  He turned and scanned the crowd in the darkened gym. Finally he spotted his family—​his parents, his aunts and uncles, and all twelve cousins. Jasmine was right at the front of the group. She waved when she saw him looking. JJ was still a little surprised that she was there. Normally she never missed her Thursday-night choir practice.

  “Look—​it’s on!” Mackenzie squealed loudly.

  JJ quickly waved to his sister and then turned back to the TV screen. The Junior Ninja Champion logo had just appeared, and exciting music was playing. JJ shivered.

  “This is it!” he said.

  But nobody heard him, because everyone was cheering loudly. The crowd in the gym quieted down when a tall, athletic-looking woman appeared on camera. She was standing in front of a huge obstacle course. JJ knew it was the same one where he and his friends had competed, but it looked even more impressive on TV.

  “Welcome to the very first episode of Junior Ninja Champion!” the woman said, grinning widely into the camera. “I’m Mellie Monroe, and I’ll be your host for all six exciting episodes—​and the even more exciting finals!”

  Mellie went on to explain how the show would work. Each week it would feature a semifinals competition from a different part of the country, showing lots of kids trying to make it through a challenging course of obstacles that tested their strength, balance, and agility. At the end of each episode the audience would learn which ninjas had made the finals.

  “But we already know, right?” Kevin whispered to JJ.

  JJ grinned and gave Kevin a thumbs-up. “Only for our episode, though,” he whispered back. “We’ll have to wait to see who makes the finals from the other shows.”

  The Fit Kidz ninjas had signed some legal papers promising not to tell anyone the results of their show. So had the competitors from the other five semifinals. JJ knew that some of his friends wished they knew all the results already, but he liked the suspense of waiting to find out what had happened on the other shows.

  The host was still talking, explaining the rules. Only ninjas between the ages of nine and thirteen could compete. No ninja was allowed to try the course before the competition. That sort of thing.

  But JJ already knew all that stuff. He tapped his foot impatiently, eager for the action to start. All of Mellie’s explanations reminded him of the credits that played at the beginning of his favorite video game. He always counted the seconds until that was over, too.

  Mellie finally stopped talking, and the camera shifted to the first ninja, a dark-haired girl. As she stood on the mat at the beginning of the course, her “package” started to play. That was what the show’s producers called the short film that played before each ninja’s round. The package gave the ninja’s name and age, their nickname if they had one, and a few other interesting things about him or her. In this case, the dark-haired girl talked about how doing agility competitions with her dog had inspired her to become a ninja.

  Then the girl started her course. JJ remembered her—​she’d wiped out on the fourth obstacle. But he didn’t say anything about that out loud. He didn’t want to spoil it for anyone who hadn’t been there.

  After that, the next two ninjas took their turns, though neither of them did much better than the first one. Then came a commercial break. JJ sat back as an ad for a new movie started to play.

  “Wow, this is cool,” he told his teammates. “It’s so exciting that I almost forget I already know what happens.”

  Izzy nodded and bumped Kevin’s shoulder with hers. “You were the next one to go,” she reminded him.

  JJ realized that Izzy was right. Kevin had been the fourth ninja to attack the course—​and the first from Fit Kidz.

  “Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!” Mackenzie exclaimed. She leaped to her feet and did a little happy dance, which made them all laugh.

  When the show returned and everyone saw Kevin standing on the mat, the room erupted in cheers. Ty stood and pulled Kevin up beside him.

  “Take a bow, bro,” he urged with a grin.

  Kevin waved and bowed to the crowd. JJ heard a loud whistle.

  “Was that your mom?” JJ exclaimed in surprise. Mrs. Marshall hardly ever smiled, and she had lots of strict rules that Kevin and his younger brother, Darius, were expected to follow at all times. Especially Kevin, since he’d had cancer when he was younger and his mom was scared to let him do anything that might get him hurt. She almost hadn’t let him be a ninja at all. She definitely didn’t seem like the type of person who could whistle like that!

  “Probably.” Kevin laughed. “Usually she only whistles to call Darius and me in for dinner.”

  Then they all stopped talking, because Kevin’s package was playing. It started off by describing how he’d beaten cancer a few years earlier. Many of the people in the room already knew about that, but JJ could h
ear gasps from others, and one woman exclaimed “Poor baby!” so loudly that everyone could hear her. When Mrs. Marshall spoke about how proud she was of Kevin, JJ could hear sniffles from all around the room.

  He glanced at Kevin, who looked kind of embarrassed. But then JJ forgot about that because the package was ending and Kevin was starting his course.

  JJ leaned forward, watching as his friend leaped up and grabbed the rings of the first obstacle, which was called the Ring-a-Ding Swing. He cheered along with everyone else when Kevin swung himself along from ring to ring and landed on the mat at the end, barely pausing to rest before leaping forward onto the first of the five balance steps known as Stepping Out.

  JJ’s foot twitched, almost as if he were doing the obstacle himself. Jump forward, hit the middle of the block, push off . . . He’d worked hard to master the balance obstacles, which hadn’t come as easily to him as the climbing and swinging ones. Onscreen, Kevin skipped through the blocks, making it look easy.

  Even though JJ already knew what was going to happen, he groaned when Kevin’s hand slipped on the fifth obstacle, the tire swing, sending him tumbling down into the safety net. Everyone else in the room groaned, too—​even Kevin himself! But when the Kevin on TV climbed out of the net and gave everyone a thumbs-up, the room erupted in cheers once again.

  The rest of the episode seemed to fly by. Mackenzie was the next Fit Kidz competitor to go. She let out a whoop when she appeared on the mat, which made JJ and everybody else laugh. When she fell on the sixth obstacle, most of the people in the gym groaned. But when JJ glanced over at Mackenzie, she was beaming at the TV set, looking happy and proud of herself.

  Ty had a much different reaction to his appearance. He’d made it through the entire course, but had just missed at the Crazy Cliff. Everyone cheered anyway, but Ty looked as if he wanted to crawl under his chair and never come out.

  After that it was Izzy’s turn. When she flew up the Crazy Cliff, the tall, steep, curved wall that was the final obstacle on the course, the crowd in the gym went wild. Izzy looked a little embarrassed, and she rolled her eyes when Mackenzie grabbed her arm and dragged her to her feet. But JJ grinned and joined in as Mackenzie led the whole team—​including Izzy—​in a happy dance.