Graffiti Day dawned clear and warm. It would be a good day for painting the white wall around the playground. I put on some old jeans and a torn up shirt. They were good paint clothes, and it wouldn’t matter if I paint on them.

Before I left for school, I stopped in the greenhouse to check on Greenie Boy. Mom said that he would hatch any day now.

All was quiet. I checked the Egg Cam, and it was working.

Each class had an assigned time to paint. Third grade was right after lunch. We’d be the last class to paint the wall. And then, we’d have the Graffiti Day assembly. Freddy wanted to win a prize for guessing who did our graffiti poster. But the Boys Team was going to lose to the Girls Team. We still didn’t know who did our poster.

It was a long, slow morning. Finally after lunch, it was time for us to paint. We raced out to the wall.

Except Aja. He walked.

For the past week, he had walked everywhere with a frown on his face. And I hadn’t told him anything about his surprise party. I felt like I was a bad friend.

Mrs. Crux and some parent volunteers had set up long tables beside the wall. Each table had one color of paint on it. The green table had five different greens. The red table had seven cans of colors. I asked for a cup of avocado green and smeared the color onto the largest egg in my drawing. Olive green went onto the smallest egg. In between, I painted moss green, spring green, and celadon green.

Mrs. Crux came by and said, “Great job. The Emu eggs are wonderful.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I walked back to the paint table, and just as I got there, I tripped.

My cup of green paint flew up and up and up. And then, it came down and down and down. Right onto Aja’s dark hair.

Aja turned slowly. He scowled. He was mad.

He grabbed two cups of red paint and charged. He knocked me over and sat on top of me and poured paint onto my face.

Coughing, spluttering, I shoved him off.

Someone yelled, “Paint fight!”

Around us, kids starting grabbing paint cups and throwing at each other. They slapped paint brushes at each other. Paint splattered everywhere.

But Aja and I just stood and glared at each other.

I shrugged. “It’s a surprise party. For you.”

“What?” Aja’s dark eyes went wide with shock.

“Your mom hired Aliens, Inc. to give you a surprise party.”

“You mean everyone is invited—“

I finished it for him. “—to your party.”

“Oh.” Emotions flitted across his face. Relief. Anger. Surprise. Joy.

“Yes. Oh.”

He shook his head. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” I said. “Now, your mom won’t pay Aliens, Inc. Because I told you.”

Freddy and Mary Lee ran by covered in orange paint. Bree had a swipe of red paint down the back of her t-shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Aja said. “I just thought—“

“—that no one liked you. Wrong. Everyone is coming, and everyone is excited.”

Aja frowned. “Can I just act surprised tomorrow?”

“You are a good detective. Are you a good actor?” I asked.

“Yes!” Aja yelled.

There was a sudden quiet.

The paint fight around us had stopped and everyone turned to look at Aja. He just started laughing, and I laughed with him. It was good to have my friend back. Besides he looked silly with green paint dripping from his eyebrows.

Mrs. Crux set up hoses for kids to wash off. It was a good thing that kids had worn painting clothes today.

We went in and out of the school building, and the glass door got filthy. In fact, it had lots of my zigzag fingerprints on the door. I decided to clean them off. I went to the Sanitation Room and knocked.

“Hello?” Mr. Chamale opened the door. He grinned. “You have a green stripe in your hair.”

I grinned back at him. “You should see the other kids.”

He nodded and turned to get his mop and bucket.

I said, “If you give me supplies, I’ll try to clean off the glass doors.”

“Thanks for the help.” He picked up a basket, put glass-cleaning supplies into it, and handed it to me. But I was looking around the Sanitation Room.

An old battered desk stood in the corner. On the desk was a vase. And in the vase were a dozen peacock feathers.

“Why do you have those?” I asked.

Mr. Chamale ran a hand along a feather. “Back in Mexico, my parents had a peacock farm. We had a couple peacocks, the males with big tails. We also had a large flock of pea hens, the females. That meant we always had lots of pea chicks. My father sold the peacock feathers and did quite well.”

Oh, that Mrs. Crux. She was tricky. Mr. Chamale wasn’t a teacher, but he was on the staff at the school. I tried to remember exactly what she said: “I asked some teachers and staff to make graffiti posters.”

You see what you expect to see. You hear what you expect to hear.

I asked Mr. Chamale, “Do you like diet drinks?”

He held up a diet Coke.

“Can I see your socks?” I asked.

He pulled up his pants leg. White socks.

“Are those women’s socks?” I asked.

Mr. Chamale shrugged. “I have small feet and women’s socks fit better. What difference does it make?”

“It’s your graffiti poster!”

“You guessed it. I wanted something abut my life in Mexico. I’m an immigrant—an alien from another country.”

English is a strange language. I’m an alien because I’m from another planet. Mr. Chamale is an alien because he’s from a different country.

Mrs. Crux is an immigrant and alien, too, because she’s from Australia. If she did a graffiti poster, it might have pictures of kangaroos. Or sheep, because she was raised on a sheep farm in Australia.

Why did it take the Boys Team so long to figure this out? I wondered: Do kids really see or hear the adults in their lives?

Quickly, I ran upstairs and cleaned my fingerprints off the glass doors.

The bell rang. Time for the Graffiti Day assembly.

At the front of the cafeteria, the graffiti posters sat on easels. One by one, teams guessed who made each poster. Bree’s all-girl team correctly guessed that Mr. Vega, the music teacher had done their poster. That was too easy. Only his poster had written music.

Finally, it was my team’s turn to guess who did the peacock-feathers poster.

“Mr. Chamale,” I said.

“Correct,” Mrs. Crux said.

Aja slapped my back and said, “You’re a good detective.”

“Thanks,” I said.

On the way home, Bree asked how I figured out the peacock feathers belonged to Mr. Chamale.

“Fingerprints,” I said. And then I explained about cleaning off the glass doors.

Bree said, “That makes sense. Detectives always figures out things from fingerprints.”

“I have a surprise for you,” I said. Mr. Chamale had given me a small peacock feather, and I gave it to Bree.

“Oh! It’s beautiful,” she said. And that smile from an Earthling girl must have lit up a galaxy.

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