Karate Katie Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  For Ian: my favorite second-dan black belt!—N.K.

  For Erik S.: a black belt on the drums—J&W

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  Text copyright © 2006 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2006 by

  John and Wendy. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2005013424

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09865-3

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  Chapter 1

  “Hey, George, wait up!” Katie Carew called out as she ran toward her pal, George Brennan.

  Like Katie, George was dressed in his red and white Cherrydale Elementary School T-shirt. He also wore a pair of white shorts and sneakers. That was their track team uniform.

  “Hurry up, Katie Kazoo,” he answered, using the special nickname he had made up for her. “We can’t be late for the track meet.”

  “I’m coming!” Katie hurried faster toward George.

  But instead of waiting for her, George began to run. “Last one to the field is a rotten egg!” he shouted.

  “George, wait! Your sneaker’s untie—”

  Before Katie could even finish the word, George tripped over his shoelace. He fell face-down into the dirt.

  “Nice one,” Evan, one of the fifth-graders on the track team, teased as he ran past.

  George blushed as he sat up. He didn’t say anything while he tied his shoelace.

  Just then, Kevin Camilleri, George’s best friend, came walking over.

  “What are you doing down there?” Kevin asked George. “Aren’t you going to the track meet this afternoon? You’d better get over to the field.”

  George looked up at his best friend. “How about you?” he asked Kevin. “The meet starts in a few minutes. Why aren’t you in your uniform?”

  Katie had been wondering the same thing. Kevin was on the track team just like she and George were. But instead of his team T-shirt and shorts, Kevin was wearing his white karate uniform. He had a bright yellow belt around his waist.

  “You can’t run dressed like that,” George said. “Coach Debbie’s going to be so angry when she sees you.”

  “I’m not going to the track meet,” Kevin told him.

  “But you have to,” Katie interrupted. “Everyone on the team is supposed to be there.”

  “I’m not on the team anymore,” Kevin told them. “I gave Coach Debbie a note from my mom this morning.”

  “You quit the team?” Katie couldn’t believe her ears.

  Kevin nodded. “I had to. My karate class is on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The track meets are on Thursdays. I couldn’t do both. So I picked karate.”

  George jumped up. “Well, un-pick it!” he exclaimed. “You and I are supposed to run in the relay race today.”

  Katie looked over at George. His face was all red. He sounded really angry. Not that Katie blamed him. George had really been looking forward to running in the relay race with Kevin.

  But Kevin didn’t seem to care. “So what?” he asked with a shrug. “You can still run. Coach Debbie will just put someone else in for me.”

  George shook his head. “That’s not the point!” he declared. “We’ve been practicing for weeks. We have the baton handoff down perfectly.”

  “Sorry, dude,” Kevin said. “But I have karate today! This is my first class as a yellow belt. I just passed the promotion test last week. Boy, was it hard. I had to learn all these new forms, and break two pieces of wood!”

  Katie watched as Kevin fingered his bright yellow belt. He was obviously very proud of having earned it.

  “Big deal,” George moaned. “A yellow belt. Yellow like chicken feathers. That’s perfect. You’re a chicken, too. You’re chickening out of the race.”

  “Am not!” Kevin shouted.

  “Are too!” George shouted back.

  Just then, a car horn started beeping. Kevin’s mom had arrived. “Hurry up, Kevin,” Mrs. Camilleri shouted. “You don’t want to be late for karate.”

  “I sure don’t!” Kevin agreed. He turned and ran over to the car without even saying good-bye to George and Katie.

  “I can’t believe he did this to me,” George said to Katie as the car pulled away.

  Katie felt really bad for George. “Come on,” she urged him. “You’re going to be great, even without Kevin.”

  George shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. But he turned and followed her to the field anyway. Kevin may have been a quitter. But George sure wasn’t.

  Chapter 2

  Most of the kids on the team were already warming up when Katie and George reached the field.

  Jeremy Fox was busy stretching on the ground. He looked up and smiled. “Hey, Katie,” he said. “Are you ready for the meet?”

  Katie nodded. “I think so. I’m doing the long jump today.”

  “Awesome!” Jeremy exclaimed. “That’s your best event. You jumped really far during the last practice.” He glanced over at George, who had a very angry look on his face. “What’s wrong with you?” Jeremy asked.

  “Grrrr,” George growled.

  “He’s mad because Kevin quit the track team. Now he has to run the relay race with someone else,” Katie explained.

  “Oh,” Jeremy said. “That stinks.”

  “Grrrr,” George growled again.

  Just then, Katie heard someone call her name from across the field.

  “Hi, Katie!” Suzanne Lock shouted.

  Katie laughed when she saw what Suzanne was wearing. Suzanne always managed to make her uniform look just a little bit different from everyone else’s. Today she was wearing red and white ribbons in her hair. She had also used fabric paint to draw a red cherr
y on the sleeve of her T-shirt.

  “Hey, Suzanne,” Katie greeted her. “Nice shirt.”

  “Thanks,” Suzanne said. “The cherry is for Cherrydale Elementary School.”

  “Coach Debbie’s not going to like it,” Jeremy told Suzanne. “She wants all of our uniforms to look the same.”

  “I never look the same as anyone else,” Suzanne told him.

  Katie had to agree with that. Suzanne was definitely different.

  “Grrr,” George growled again. He was even too angry to make a joke about the cherry that was painted on Suzanne’s shirt.

  “What’s with him?” Suzanne asked.

  “Kevin quit the track team,” Katie explained.

  “Oh. You just found out. I knew about that yesterday,” Suzanne boasted. “Kevin’s mother told my mother that he likes karate class better. That’s why he quit.”

  “But he made a promise to be part of the track team,” George told her. “You don’t just break a promise. Now I have to run the relay without him.”

  “Oh, big deal,” Suzanne said. “You can run with someone else.”

  “It’s not the same,” George moaned.

  Suzanne shook her head. “You whine just like my baby sister,” she told him.

  Katie gulped. This was getting ugly. Suzanne got on George’s nerves even when he was in a good mood. And today, George was in a bad mood. There was no way he was going to put up with Suzanne being mean to him.

  “I wish you would just shut up!” George shouted at Suzanne. “Forever!”

  Katie gasped. George had just made a wish. A really mean wish. George had done a terrible thing.

  But Katie couldn’t really be angry with him. George hadn’t known what he was doing when he said that. He was just screaming because he was angry. He had no idea about the power of wishes.

  How could he? Katie hadn’t known about it, either—until the day the magic wind came along.

  It had all started one really bad day last year when Katie was in third grade. She’d had a terrible day. She’d lost the football game for her team, gotten mud all over her favorite pants, and burped really loud in front of the whole class.

  That night, Katie wished she could be anyone other than herself.

  There must have been a shooting star overhead when she made that wish, because the very next day the magic wind came. It turned Katie into Speedy, the hamster in her third-grade classroom! Katie spent the whole morning going around and around on a hamster wheel and gnawing on chew sticks!

  The magic wind came back again and again after that. Sometimes it changed Katie into other kids, like Jeremy, Suzanne, and even Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. Other times it turned her into adults—like Cinnamon, the woman who owned the candy store in the Cherrydale Mall. What a mess that had been! Katie had accidentally sent candy hearts with mean messages to some of her friends at school. She’d almost ruined Valentine’s Day forever!

  Another time the magic wind had turned Katie into Lucille, the lunch lady in the school cafeteria. That time, Katie had started a food fight and gotten Lucille fired. It took all the kids in school to get her hired back again.

  In fact, it seemed like Katie got into trouble whenever the magic wind came. And so did the person she turned into. That was why Katie didn’t like wishes. When they came true, they really could make a mess of things!

  Chapter 3

  “Go, Emma, go!” Katie shouted as the relay race began. Coach Debbie had put Emma Weber in as George’s partner in the race. Now Emma W. was running as fast as she could down the track. She held a metal baton in her hand as she ran.

  Katie really cheered her two pals on! “Come on, Emma!” she shouted loudly.

  Emma W. was running pretty fast. She was tied with the runner from the other team. As Emma reached the finish line, she handed the white baton over to George. He took off and ran down the track.

  “Come on, George!” Katie yelled. “You can do it!” She really wanted her team to win.

  “Move it, George!” Suzanne screamed toward the field. “Go faster! FASTER!”

  Unfortunately, George wasn’t moving very fast at all. He hadn’t tied his shoelace very well. It came untied when he started to run. Now his sneaker kept falling off his foot.

  A few moments later, a runner for the other team crossed the finish line. George was way behind.

  As George crossed the finish line, Emma W. and Katie were there waiting for him.

  “It’s okay,” Emma told George. “We’ll get them next time.”

  “Grrr!” George growled. “There won’t be any next time.”

  Katie shook her head. “Come on, George. That’s not fair. It’s not Emma’s fault you lost the race.”

  “No. It’s Kevin’s fault,” George grumbled. “I hate him.”

  Katie shook her head. She knew it wasn’t Kevin’s fault at all. If George had just tied his shoelace, he might have had a chance.

  But there was no sense telling George that now. He wasn’t going to listen anyway.

  “Katie, it’s almost time for the long jump,” Coach Debbie called out. “You’d better start warming up.”

  “Okay,” Katie called back.

  “Good luck,” Suzanne told her.

  Katie looked at Suzanne strangely. Her voice sounded kind of hoarse. Uh-oh! What if George’s mean wish was coming true?

  “Are you okay?” she asked Suzanne.

  Suzanne nodded. “Sure, I’m fine. I’ve just got a sore throat. It’s my third one this month.”

  “Are you sure?” Katie asked her.

  “Stop worrying about me,” Suzanne continued. “Worry about how you’re going to beat that girl from Oakwood Elementary School in the long jump. Have you seen how tall she is?”

  Suzanne wasn’t kidding. The girl from Oakwood Elementary had really long legs. And, boy, could she jump! Still, Katie had come in second place against the four people who were jumping. That was the best she’d ever placed in a track meet.

  “I think I did pretty well,” Katie told Suzanne that night while the two girls were on the phone.

  “You did,” Suzanne assured her. “But no matter how you did, you would have been better than George. What a klutz.”

  “Why are you so mean to him?” Katie asked her.

  “I’m mean?” Suzanne insisted. She coughed hoarsely. “How about him? Did you hear what he said to me?”

  Katie sighed. How could she forget?

  “Besides, he’s always blaming other people for his—” Suzanne stopped in the middle of her sentence and began coughing again.

  “Are you okay?” Katie asked her.

  Suzanne coughed harder. When she finally stopped, there was silence on her end of the phone.

  “Suzanne?” Katie asked. “Are you there?”

  The answer came back in a hoarse whisper. “I think I lost my voice,” Suzanne struggled to say.

  Katie gasped. George’s wish had come true!

  Chapter 4

  Katie didn’t sleep very well that night. She was really worried about Suzanne. What if she never got her voice back? How would she sing along with Bayside Boys songs? Or answer questions in school? Or talk on the phone? And what would Suzanne be like if she couldn’t brag all the time?

  It was hard to believe. Katie really would miss hearing Suzanne’s boasting.

  When Katie arrived at school the next morning, she spotted Suzanne across the school yard. A group of fourth-grade girls were standing around her. Katie rushed over to her friend. She hoped she was all right.

  “How are you?” Katie asked Suzanne.

  Suzanne picked up a pink heart-shaped pad. She used a bright purple pen to write a message on it.

  I just lost my voice, she wrote. No problem.

  But Katie knew Suzanne was wrong. She had a big problem. Bigger than she knew.

  “I like that pen,” Emma Stavros said. “I have a green one just like it.”

  Suzanne rolled her eyes. Purple is prettier, she wrote.
/>   “Your mom said you could come to school with a sore throat?” Katie asked, amazed. Mrs. Carew would never have let Katie come to school if she were sick.

  Sure, Suzanne wrote on her pad. My mom called the doctor. He said it wasn’t catching. It is okay for me to be here, as long as I don’t talk.

  “KEEYAH!”

  Suddenly, Katie heard a loud scream. She quickly turned to see what had happened. Across the yard she saw Kevin. He was lifting his leg and kicking at the air.

  “KEEYAH!” Kevin shouted again as he kicked even harder.

  “What’s he doing?” Miriam Chan asked.

  “I think that’s karate,” Mandy Banks told her. “It’s all Kevin thinks about these days.”

  Katie watched as a group of boys walked over to Kevin. George was one of them. He did not look happy. He still looked really angry with Kevin.

  George was going to start an argument with Kevin. Katie just knew it. He might even make another mean wish.

  Katie couldn’t let something horrible happen to someone else just because of George’s temper! She had to stop him!

  “I’ll be right back,” Katie told Suzanne and the others.

  Quickly, she hurried over to where the boys were. “Hi, George,” she greeted him. “Did you do the math homework? Can I see what answer you got for number three?”

  Katie was trying to turn George’s attention from Kevin. But it wasn’t working.

  “In a minute, Katie Kazoo,” George replied. “I’m watching the kung fu fool.”

  “It’s karate, not kung fu,” Kevin told him. “And you’re the fool.”

  “I’m not the one kicking the air,” George said. “Are you trying to break wind?”

  The boys laughed.

  “Break wind! Good one, George,” Manny Gonzalez said.

  “I’m doing a flying side kick,” Kevin told him. “You have to know how to do one to be a yellow belt.”

  George rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said.

  “The flying side kick is a good way to break a wooden board,” Kevin continued. “In fact, that’s how I’m going to break the board in my karate competition this weekend.”