Gotcha! Gotcha Back! 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

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Laughable Laws

  To Danielle, Scott, and Talia, and

  all the children at the Heschel School—NK

  For John L. Walters: inventor of the

  tongue-in-cheek extractor—J&W

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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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: 2005019196

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14194-6

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  CHAPTER 1

  Katie Carew stared at the brightly colored postcard in her hands. “Lucky Grandma!” she told her brown and white cocker spaniel, Pepper. “I’d love to see a monkey in the wild. The only ones I’ve seen have been in zoos.”

  Pepper wagged his tail, and then ran off to play with his pal, Snowball, the white puppy who lived next door.

  Katie knew all about how much fun vacations could be. She and her parents had spent their last vacation in Europe. They had gone to England, France, Spain, and Italy. Katie had met artists, dancers, gondoliers, and a very funny palace guard. It had all been so exciting.

  But that was then. This was now. And now wasn’t very exciting at all.

  Katie took the rest of the mail from the mailbox and started to walk back toward her house. She looked around. Her front yard wasn’t nearly as pretty as the picture of the jungle on her grandmother’s postcard. There was only one tree on Katie’s lawn, and there were no monkeys or macaws in its branches.

  In fact, the only animals in sight were Pepper and Snowball. They were busy chasing their tails.

  Dogs certainly weren’t as interesting as monkeys and macaws.

  Just then, Katie’s good friend George Brennan came riding by on his skateboard.

  “Hey, Katie Kazoo, what’s new?” he asked Katie, using the way-cool nickname he had given her.

  “Nothing,” Katie answered. “Everything’s just the same.”

  “Tell me about it,” George said. “This town is so boring.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slim newspaper. “Did you see this week’s copy of the Class 4A Express?”

  “I forgot to take one when I left school today,” Katie answered.

  “That’s okay, you can have mine,” George told her, handing over the paper.

  “ ‘Beginning Band Plays ”Mary Had a Little Lamb“ in School Concert,’ ” Katie read one of the headlines. “ ‘Fourth Grade Plays Volleyball,’ ” she added, reading another.

  “Can you believe that’s the big news in our class?” George asked. “I sure wish things could be more interesting around here.”

  Katie gulped. George had just made a wish. That was not a good thing at all.

  Wishes were dangerous.

  Katie learned all about them on one really bad day back in third grade. That day she had dropped the ball and lost a football game for her team. Then she’d gotten mud all over her favorite pants. Worst of all, she’d let out a giant burp in front of the whole class. That had been so embarrassing!

  That night, Katie had wished that she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star flying overhead, because the next day the magic wind came.

  The magic wind was a big tornado that swirled only around Katie. It was so powerful that it could turn her into somebody else!

  The first time the magic wind came, it turned Katie into Speedy, the class 3A hamster. She’d escaped from her cage and wound up inside George’s stinky sneaker. YUCK!

  Since then the magic wind had been back again and again. One time it turned her into Mr. Starkey, the school music teacher. The band sounded really terrible when Katie was the conductor!

  Another time the magic wind switcherooed Katie into their school principal, Mr. Kane. By the end of the day, the cafeteria was covered in paint, kids were running wild in the halls, and all the electricity had gone out in the school.

  The worst thing about the magic wind was that every time it came, the person Katie turned into got in big trouble. Then it was up to Katie to make things all right again. That wasn’t always so easy.

  Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. They caused too many problems. She figured George probably shouldn’t be making any wishes either.

  “Forget about it, George,” Katie told her friend. “Things in Cherrydale will always be the same. I should know. I have lived here all my life.”

  George shook his head. “Things can change, Katie,” he told her. “Life in Cherrydale could get really interesting—with a little help from us.”

  Katie looked at him curiously. What was George talking about?

  “Why don’t you ride your bike over to my house?” George suggested. “I’ll show you!”

  “Sure,” Katie agreed. “Let me just tell my mom where I’m going.” Katie couldn’t wait to find out what George had in mind.

  Chapter 2

  “Okay, check this out!” George exclaimed proudly as he and Katie sat on his back porch. He held up a big cardboard box. “My cousin Charlie sent this to me for my birthday.”

  Katie watched as George reached into the box and pulled out a big, gray, hairy spider! “How did this get in here?” George shouted out. Quickly, he threw the spider across the porch.

  It landed right on Katie’s lap! “AAAAHH!” Katie screamed.

  George began to laugh. “Relax, Katie Kazoo. It’s just a fake spider.” He laughed even harder.

  “You scared me,
George,” Katie said angrily.

  “Oh, come on. It’s just a joke,” George told her. “Look what else my cousin got me.”

  Katie peered inside the box. There was a clear plastic cube with a fly inside it, a pencil, a camera, and two packs of gum. What a weird group of gifts, she thought.

  “Can I have a piece of the gum?” Katie asked George.

  “Sure.” George smiled slightly as he handed Katie a stick of gum.

  Katie unwrapped the gum and popped it in her mouth. A minute later she spit it right out. “Blech!” Katie exclaimed. “That tastes like dirt.”

  “You should see your face!” George exclaimed, laughing. “I’ve got to get a picture of you.” He pulled his camera out of the box, pointed it toward Katie and...

  “Oh!” Katie shouted angrily. She looked down at her shirt. It was all wet.

  “Gotcha!” George exclaimed. “It’s a water-gun camera!”

  Katie shook her head. “That’s not funny,” she said.

  “Sure it is,” George said, laughing. “But not as funny as this gum that stains your teeth black.” He picked up the other pack of gum. “Imagine how freaked out Miriam Chan would be if you gave her a piece of this!”

  Katie frowned. “That would be mean, George,” she told him.

  “Nah,” George disagreed. “It would be funny. And we need a few laughs at our school.”

  Katie shook her head. She wasn’t so sure that practical jokes were a good way to make things un-boring.

  “I don’t want to play jokes on people, George,” Katie told him.

  “You don’t have to,” George said. “I will.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Hey, didn’t you get a whoopee cushion and fake throw-up from your Secret Santa last Christmas?”

  Katie sighed, remembering how disappointed she had been when she had opened those gifts. They weren’t the kinds of things she liked at all.

  But they sure were the kinds of things George liked. Fake throw-up and a whoopee cushion would have been the perfect presents for him.

  “Tell you what, Katie Kazoo,” George continued. “I’ll trade you a rubber pencil for them.” He held up the wiggly yellow pencil. “Next time Kadeem asks to borrow a pencil from you, you can give him this one. It doesn’t write!”

  Katie thought about that. It was kind of annoying the way Kadeem Carter always seemed to have to borrow her pencils. Especially because he chewed them up before giving them back.

  “I guess that would serve him right,” she said slowly.

  “Sure it would,” George agreed. “So what do you say? We could start tomorrow. We’ll call it Funny Friday!”

  “Okay,” Katie said, taking the pencil from George. “I’ll bring the whoopee cushion and the plastic throw-up to school tomorrow. Just promise not to be too mean, okay?”

  “I promise,” George assured her.

  Chapter 3

  “Do you want to write an article for this week’s 4A Express?” Mandy Banks asked Katie on Friday morning as they walked into their classroom.

  Katie shook her head. “Not this week. I don’t have any ideas for an article.”

  Mandy frowned. “That’s the problem. Nobody does. How am I supposed to edit a newspaper when no one wants to write for it?”

  Katie felt bad for Mandy. She remembered when Jeremy Fox, one of her two best friends, had been the editor of their third-grade newspaper, the 3A Times. It had been a huge job. Jeremy had spent a lot of time writing articles on his computer.

  Being editor of a class newspaper was a big responsibility. Mandy really could use some help from the rest of the class.

  Still, it wasn’t really the other kids’ fault that there wasn’t much to write about. “There really hasn’t been a whole lot of news here at school lately,” Katie reminded Mandy.

  “AAAAHHHHHHH!”

  Before Mandy could answer her, somebody screamed. Everybody turned around to see Emma Stavros standing on top of her beanbag chair, pointing toward the floor.

  Mr. Guthrie raced over to Emma S. The kids ran over, too.

  “What’s wrong?” Mr. G. asked Emma S.

  Emma S. gulped. “It’s a M-m-mouse!” she stammered nervously.

  Katie looked down at the floor. Sure enough, there was a little gray mouse on the ground next to Emma S.’s beanbag chair.

  Katie stared at the furry little creature for a minute. There was something strange about it. “It’s not moving,” she told Emma S. “Usually mice are so afraid of people, they run away as soon as they see them.”

  “Maybe it’s a dead mouse,” Kevin Camilleri suggested.

  “AAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Emma S. shouted even louder this time.

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. G. told Kevin. The teacher reached down and picked up the ball of gray fluff.

  “Ooh, gross!” Emma S. gasped.

  “Relax, Emma,” Mr. G. told her. “This mouse isn’t real. Someone was playing a joke on you.”

  Emma S. opened her eyes wide. She looked like she was going to cry.

  “Whose mouse is this?” Mr. Guthrie asked.

  Nobody answered.

  “Come on, dudes, ‘fess up,” Mr. G. urged.

  Still no one answered.

  “Okay,” Mr. G. said finally. “Well, whoever you are, I hope you learned that practical jokes like this aren’t always funny.”

  Katie was pretty sure she knew who had planted the fake mouse in the classroom. George’s Funny Friday had begun.

  Of course Katie would never tell on George. Only a rat told on her friends. And Katie wasn’t a rat.

  Katie looked over to see if George was laughing. But he had his face turned away. He was pretending to look into Slinky’s cage.

  “Slinky sure looks disappointed,” George said as he stared at the class snake. “He sure would have liked to eat a mouse.”

  “Well, I’m not disappointed that the mouse is fake,” Emma S. said.

  “Me either,” Emma Weber agreed. “Whoever put that mouse there was really mean. It’s not nice to scare someone like that.”

  “Man, Emma S., you really freaked out!” Kevin said with a chuckle.

  “That was the loudest scream I ever heard,” Kadeem added. “I’ll bet they heard you all the way in China.”

  Soon all the boys were laughing at how scared Emma S. had been of the fake mouse.

  “Okay, dudes, let’s settle down,” Mr. G. urged the class. “It’s time for social studies.”

  Kadeem leaned over toward Katie’s beanbag. “Can I borrow a pencil?” he asked her.

  Katie thought about the bendy rubber pencil in her bookbag. But she couldn’t give it to him. It was just too mean.

  “Sure,” Katie said as she pulled a regular pencil out of her bag.

  “Thanks,” Kadeem said. “I’ll give it back to you at the end of class,” he added.

  Katie watched as Kadeem placed the pencil in his mouth and chewed on the eraser.

  “Keep it,” she told him with a sigh.

  Chapter 4

  “I have definitely learned how to walk like a model,” Katie’s best friend Suzanne Lock told a few of the fourth-graders as they waited in the lunch line that afternoon. “You have to keep your chin up. Like this.”

  Suzanne raised her head high and began walking over to one of the tables.

  “You look like a real model,” Jessica Haynes told Suzanne. “Is that hard to do?”

  “It’s very difficult,” Suzanne told her. “I’ve been taking modeling classes for months to learn how to do it.”

  “It’s not so hard,” Kevin Camilleri argued. He raised his chin way up and began to wiggle his hips really hard. “Look at me. I’m a model,” he said in a high, squeaky voice.

  “Me too,” Kadeem said. He sucked in his cheeks really hard and pretended to throw kisses to an imaginary audience.

  “Boys!” Suzanne huffed as she began to sit down in one of the cafeteria chairs. “They don’t know anything about modeling. It’s really very hard. You have to be rea
lly graceful to—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, a loud, gassy noise came from her rear end.

  “Whoa!” Kadeem laughed.

  “Check it out!” Andrew Epstein added, “The great model cut the cheese!”

  Suzanne stood up right away. “I did not!” she shouted.

  “Ooh, stinky!” Manny Gonzalez said, moving his chair far away from Suzanne’s.

  “Who put this here?” Suzanne demanded. She picked up a pink rubber whoopee cushion that had been left on her seat.

  Katie looked around. All the boys were laughing, but George was laughing the hardest.

  Suzanne turned to George, and threw the whoopee cushion right at him. “I hate you, George Brennan!” she exclaimed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” George insisted. But the smile on his face proved he did.

  “Who cares who did it? It was great!” Kevin chuckled. “Somebody really gotcha, Suzanne!”

  “It was funny,” Jeremy Fox agreed. He turned to Suzanne. “You deserved it. You were being such a snob.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a slob!” Suzanne snapped back at him. She pointed to a big pizza-grease stain on Jeremy’s shirt.

  Katie frowned. Suzanne was her best friend. But so was Jeremy. It made her sad that they didn’t like each other.

  “Come on, Suzanne, chill out. It was just a joke,” Manny told her.

  Suzanne shook her head. “No way. Jokes are funny. That wasn’t funny at all.”

  George shook his head. “Wanna bet?” he asked her. “Everybody here thought it was hysterical. That joke definitely livened things up in this cafeteria. Didn’t it, Katie Kazoo?”

  Katie turned away. She had to admit that it had been pretty funny. But she could never say that to Suzanne. Especially since it was Katie’s whoopee cushion. Suzanne would be really angry at Katie if she found out about that.

  “You can deny it, George, but I know you put that whoopee cushion there,” Suzanne insisted. “And I’m going to get you back. Just you wait and see.”