On Your Mark, Get Set, Laugh! 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

  For Lauren and Alexandra, who

  are headed down the right track!—N.K.

  For Don—a real good sport!—J&W

  The scanning, uploading. and distribution of this book via the Internet or

  via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and

  punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions,

  and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted

  materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Text copyright © 2004 by Nancy Krulik. Illustrations copyright © 2004 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 Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Krulik, Nancy E.

  On your mark, get set, laugh! / by Nancy Krulik ; illustrated by John &

  Wendy.

  p. cm.—(Katie Kazoo, switcheroo ; 13)

  Summary: When fourth-grade Katie turns into her unfair track coach, she

  gives all the kids on the team a chance to compete, including the slowest

  runner in her class.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14201-1

  [1. Track and field—Fiction. 2. Schools- -Fiction. 3. Teamwork (Sports)—Fiction. 4. Magic—Fiction.] I. John & Wendy. II. Title.

  PZ7.K9416On 2004

  [Fic]-dc22 2004005226

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Chapter 1

  “I ... can’t ... run ... much ... more,” Katie Carew huffed and puffed as she ran beside her friend Emma Weber.

  “Me neither,” Emma said, gasping for air. “This seems a lot longer than a mile!”

  Katie agreed. Her legs felt like limp spaghetti. And she still had another lap to go.

  Gym class sure had changed from last year. When Katie was in third grade, gym had been so much fun. The gym teacher let the kids play fun games like Steal the Bacon and Crab Soccer.

  But now that she was a fourth-grader, things were different. For starters, gym wasn’t called gym anymore. The new gym teacher, Coach Debbie, called it physical education.

  Coach Debbie was tough on the fourth-graders. She wanted them all to be able to run a mile in ten minutes or less by the end of the year.

  Mandy Banks and Andrew Epstein were really fast runners. They could already run a ten-minute mile. Emma Stavros, Kadeem Carter, and Kevin Camilleri had all almost made it.

  Katie wasn’t so fast. She and Emma W. were usually pretty far behind the rest of the class. But at least Katie wasn’t last.

  George Brennan always held that spot. He was the slowest runner in class 4A.

  “Not bad, girls!” Coach Debbie told Katie and Emma as they crossed the finish line. She clicked her stopwatch. “You did that in fourteen minutes.”

  “That’s a full minute faster than last time,” Katie said, out of breath.

  “But it’s still not a ten-minute mile,” Emma W. said. She bent over and rested her hands on her knees.

  “Walk it off, girls,” Coach Debbie told Katie and Emma. “We’ve got to wait for George to pull up the rear anyhow.”

  Katie looked out on the track. George sure seemed tired. He wasn’t running anymore. He was walking the last lap.

  “George needs to get new sneakers,” Kadeem told the kids.

  “Why?” Emma S. asked.

  “Because right now he’s just a loafer!” Kadeem chuckled at his own joke.

  Katie didn’t laugh. “Nobody can be good at everything,” Katie reminded Kadeem.

  “Yeah, but George isn’t good at anything,” Kadeem insisted.

  “He is too!” Kevin leaped up to defend his best friend. “George is the funniest kid in the whole fourth grade. He would never have told a lame joke like that shoe one you just told.”

  Kadeem frowned. Katie knew that Kadeem thought he was the funniest kid in the fourth grade.

  When George finally crossed the finish line, Coach Debbie clicked her stopwatch. “Eighteen minutes, George. Same as yesterday.”

  “At least I didn’t do worse,” he said.

  “We’ll get you in shape yet,” Coach Debbie assured him.

  George thought for a moment. “I guess I would do better if I had a cold.”

  “Why’s that?” Coach Debbie asked.

  “Because I’d have a racing pulse and a running nose!” He laughed really hard. So did everyone else in the class.

  “See, I told you,” Kevin told Kadeem. “George is the funniest kid in the fourth grade!”

  Coach Debbie shook her head sternly. “Physical fitness is no laughing matter,” she reminded the boys.

  George and Kevin bit their lips to keep from giggling.

  “Anyway, I have an exciting announcement!” Coach Debbie exclaimed. “It’s track team season! Since you’re in fourth grade now, you kids can be on the team. Fourth, fifth, and sixth-graders can join.”

  The kids all started talking at once. They were really excited.

  “I have to warn you,” the coach continued. “The kids on my track team will have to work hard! You’ve got to be physically fit if you want to beat the other schools.”

  “When are the tryouts?” Mandy asked.

  The smile fell from Coach Debbie’s face. “Cherrydale Elementary School does not allow tryouts for sports teams. Anyone who wants to can be on the team. That’s Principal Kane’s rule.” She sighed and shook her head. “I have no choice but to do what the principal tells me to.”

  Katie was confused. Principal Kane’s rule meant everyone had a chance to play for their school. But Coach Debbie did not seem happy about that. In fact, she seemed kind of angry. That was strange. Usually, teachers wanted kids to volunteer for things.

  Obviously, Coach Debbie wasn’t a usual kind of teacher.

  Chapter 2

  When physical education was over, Katie walked back to her classroom with the rest of the kids. She was still pretty tired from all that running. She and Emma were the last ones in the door of room 4A.

  “Check out Mr. Guthrie!” George shouted. “He looks like Abraham Lincoln.”

  Katie looked at her teacher. He was wearing a fake beard, a black jacket, and a stovepipe hat. Katie poked Emma in the ribs and laughed. Emma giggled at their teacher too.

  Mr. Guthrie was always doing things like that. Just last week, Mr. Guthrie had dressed like King Tut for math class. He’d made the class build pyramids out of plastic bricks. Piling those bricks up just right was harder than Katie had thought.

  Mr. Guthrie wasn’t like any teacher Katie had ever had before. Especially not Mrs. Derkman!

  Last year, in third grade, Katie’s teacher had been Mrs. Derkman, the strictest teacher in the whole school. She had lots of rules in her classroom. The desks in her room were all in neat rows. And the kids had to sit in their assigned seats all year long.

  That wasn’t the way things were in Mr. Guthrie’s class. For starters, there weren’t any desks in class 4A. The kids sat in beanbag chairs and leaned on clipboards to do their written
work.

  Mr. Guthrie let the kids decorate their own beanbag chairs. During the first month of school, when they were studying birds, they’d turned their beanbags into nests.

  Now, they were about to begin a history project. So Mr. Guthrie had asked the kids to decorate their beanbag chairs to represent important periods in American history.

  Katie was really proud of her design. Her beanbag looked like the first American flag. She’d glued a circle of thirteen white paper stars to her beanbag, and added red and white streamers to make stripes.

  Emma W.’s beanbag was right next to Katie’s. She’d built a cardboard model of the Statue of Liberty on her seat. Katie thought it looked amazing!

  “I hope we get to be partners for the history project,” Emma whispered to Katie as they sat down on their beanbags.

  Katie nodded. “I hope so too.”

  Last year, Katie would have wanted either Jeremy Fox or Suzanne Lock for her partner. They were Katie’s best friends in the whole world. But they weren’t in Katie’s class this year. They were in class 4B with Ms. Sweet.

  At first, Katie had been sad that she wasn’t in a class with her best friends. But it hadn’t turned out so bad. Katie still played with Jeremy and Suzanne after school. And Katie and Emma had become really good friends, too.

  “Check out George,” Kevin told the class. He pointed toward George’s beanbag.

  George had decorated his seat to look like the rowboat George Washington had used during the Revolutionary War.

  “Stroke! Stroke!” George called out. He was standing on his beanbag, pretending to be George Washington. “Hey, do you guys know why pictures of George Washington always show him standing?”

  “Why?” Katie wondered.

  “Because he would never lie!”

  Everyone started to laugh ... except Kadeem. He opened his mouth to tell a joke of his own.

  But Mr. Guthrie stopped him. “Not now, dude,” the teacher told Kadeem. “Save it. I’ll let you guys have a joke-off later today.”

  Katie smiled. She loved George and Kadeem’s joke-offs. They told their best jokes, and then Mr. Guthrie let the class vote on who was funnier. George had won the last joke-off, so Katie was pretty sure Kadeem would have some great jokes today.

  But for now, it was time to get to work.

  “Okay, you guys, here comes the moment you’ve been waiting for!” Mr. Guthrie announced. “I’m going to assign history partners. You have to work together to come up with a topic. Then you have to plan and present an oral report.”

  Emma looked over at Katie and crossed her fingers.

  Katie crossed her fingers too. Then she held her breath and waited.

  Chapter 3

  “Okay,” Mr. Guthrie began, “Mandy, you and George will be working together.

  “Andrew, you and Emma ...”

  Oh, no! Katie gasped.

  “... Stavros,” Mr. Guthrie continued, “are partners.”

  Phew. Wrong Emma.

  “Now, Katie Kazoo, it’s time for you,” Mr. Guthrie teased, using the super-cool nickname George had given her. “You and Kadeem will be paired up for this one.”

  This is horrible, Katie thought to herself. I wish...

  Katie was about to say that she wished she could have any other partner besides Kadeem. But she stopped herself. Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. She knew what could happen when they came true.

  It had all started one day at the beginning of third grade. Katie had lost the football game for her team, ruined her favorite pair of pants, and let out a big burp in front of the whole class. That night, Katie had wished she could be anyone but herself.

  There must have been a shooting star overhead when she made that wish, because the very next day, the magic wind came.

  The magic wind was a wild tornado that blew just around Katie. It was so powerful that every time it came, it turned her into somebody else! Katie never knew when the wind would arrive. But whenever it did, her whole world was turned upside down ... switcheroo!

  The first time the magic wind came, it had turned Katie into Speedy, class 3A’s hamster! That morning, Katie had escaped from the hamster cage and wound up stuck inside George’s stinky sneaker! Luckily, Katie had switched back into herself before George could step on her.

  The magic wind came back again and again after that. Sometimes, it changed Katie into other kids—like Jeremy, Emma, and Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. One time, it even turned her into Mrs. Derkman. Katie had almost had to kiss the teacher’s husband, Freddy. That would have been so gross!

  Katie never knew when the magic wind would return. All she knew was that when it did, she was going to wind up getting into some sort of trouble.

  That’s why Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. She didn’t want them to come true.

  The way Katie figured it, with Kadeem as her partner, she didn’t need any more problems.

  Chapter 4

  At three o‘clock on Thursday, Katie and Emma raced out onto the field behind the school. They were very excited. Today was the first track team practice.

  The fifth and sixth-graders were huddled together near a tree. Some of them were stretching their legs, getting ready to run.

  Mandy, Jeremy, Kevin, and Andrew were practicing their long jumps. After each jump, they measured who had gone the farthest.

  Katie and Emma walked over to where the fourth-graders were jumping.

  “Hey, you guys,” Jeremy greeted them. “Isn’t this cool?”

  Katie nodded, but didn’t say anything. She was a little nervous.

  “You know, last year the track team went for ice cream every time they won a meet,” he continued.

  Emma smiled. “Then I hope we win every meet,” she said. “I can’t get enough chocolate, chocolate chip!”

  “I like cookie dough,” Jeremy told her.

  Just then, Suzanne came racing up to them. “Hi, guys!” She was wearing navy running pants and a matching sweat jacket. She looked like a real track star.

  “I didn’t know you liked running track,” Jeremy said to her. “I thought all you cared about was that modeling class you take on Wednesdays.”

  “Running’s okay,” Suzanne admitted. “But I’m really here to hang out with fifth and sixth-graders! They hardly ever talk to us. So this is my chance.”

  Jeremy looked over to where the older kids were stretching. It didn’t seem like they even noticed that the fourth-graders were there!

  “They’re still not talking to us,” Jeremy told Suzanne.

  “They will,” Suzanne assured him. “They have to. We’re a team. Look, here comes the coach now.”

  “Hello, track team!” Coach Debbie greeted them. “Are we ready for a winning season?”

  “Yeah!” the kids shouted back.

  “I can’t hear you!” Coach Debbie said.

  “Yeah!” The kids screamed louder.

  “Great!” the coach said. “Because today, you’re going to work harder than you ever have before. You’re going to discover muscles you never knew you had. It’s going to be tough. But it’s worth it. After all, you are the few, the proud, the Track Team!”

  Katie gulped. Coach Debbie sounded more like a general in the army than a teacher.

  “You have to be physically fit to win track meets. You’ve got to be ready for anything!” Coach Debbie continued. “Track meets are full of surprises.”

  At that moment, the team’s first surprise arrived.

  “Sorry I’m late!” George huffed as he ran onto the field. “It took me a while to tie my new sneakers.” He held out his foot to show off his new running shoes.

  Coach Debbie seemed more shocked than anyone to see George there. “You’re joining the track team?” she asked him. She did not sound happy.

  George nodded. “Sure. My dad was on the track team when he was in high school. He thought it was fun.”

  Coach Debbie turned red in the face. “Fun? Track is not about fun! Track is about winnin
g! We are here to WIN! WIN! WIN! If it weren’t about winning, they wouldn’t bother to keep score.”

  George gulped. “Sorry,” he said.

  “You’re going to be,” Coach Debbie assured him. “Now drop and give me ten.”

  “Ten what?” George asked.

  “I think she means push-ups,” Katie told him.

  “Exactly,” Coach Debbie agreed.

  Katie smiled proudly.

  “And since you’re so smart,” Coach Debbie continued, “you can give me ten, too. In fact, everyone can. That’s what happens on my team when someone arrives late to practice.”

  She lifted her silver whistle to her lips and blew ... hard. “Okay, enough chitchat. One ... two...”

  “George, this is all your fault!” Suzanne said as she did her push-ups.

  “Yeah, thanks a lot,” Mandy added.

  George’s face turned red. Katie couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed, or just having a hard time doing push-ups.

  One thing was for sure, though. The track team wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d thought it would be.

  Chapter 5

  On Friday morning, Katie was in pain. Every one of her muscles was stiff because of yesterday’s tough track practice. She was not in a good mood at all.

  And working with Kadeem on the history project was just making things worse.

  “Here’s a good topic,” Katie suggested. The class was in the library doing research for their projects. She pointed to a chapter in one of the history books. “We can do our report on the first Thanksgiving. We could dress as Pilgrims and ...”

  “Do you know what kind of music the Pilgrims danced to?” Kadeem asked her.

  Katie looked in the book. It didn’t say anything about music. “No. What kind?”

  “Plymouth rock!” Kadeem chuckled.

  Katie laughed—a little. It was a funny joke after all. But there really wasn’t time for fun. They had too much work to do. She stood up to get another book.