Be Nice to Mice Read online

  Suzanne was there, too. But she wasn’t exercising. She was screaming out orders. “One, two! One, two!” she shouted.

  “What are you guys doing?” Katie asked her.

  “We’re getting in shape for the contest tomorrow,” Suzanne told her.

  “That’s a great idea. It’s going to be hard work,” Katie said, joining in with her friends.

  “Katie, you can’t practice with us. You’re the enemy,” Suzanne told her.

  “What?”

  “She means you’re in the other class,” Jeremy explained kindly. He frowned. “Suzanne, why are you so mean?”

  “Just keep practicing,” Suzanne ordered.

  Emma W. linked her arm through Katie’s. “Forget about them,” she said. “We’ve got work to do, anyway.”

  “You’re right,” Katie agreed. But as she walked away she had a worried look on her face. Once again, it seemed like there was trouble brewing in the fourth grade.

  “Katie, don’t you think we should finish our science fair poster before you do that?” Emma W. suggested as the girls sat in Katie’s kitchen later that afternoon.

  They were supposed to be working on their lightning bug poster. But Katie had spent her time making other posters instead.

  “I’m almost finished,” Katie assured her. She picked up a red marker and drew a huge exclamation point on the piece of construction paper she had in front of her. “There. Doesn’t that look good?” she asked, holding up the sign.

  MICE ARE PEOPLE TOO!

  “Selena’s going to be mad if you put that up at school,” Emma said.

  Katie already knew that. But it didn’t matter. She was doing this to help the mice. “I’m going to put these posters up all over school. When people find out what Selena is doing, I think they’ll get angry and ask her to stop. If other people talk to her about—”

  “I really don’t think Selena’s doing anything that bad,” Emma interrupted. “Didn’t she say that the mice were going to get treats if they ran through the mazes?”

  “Who says they want treats?” Katie replied.

  “Come on, Katie,” Emma said. “Animals love treats!”

  Just then, Katie’s cocker spaniel, Pepper, began to bark.

  Katie walked over to the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a green doggie cookie. “Sit,” she told Pepper. “Give me your paw.”

  Pepper sat back on his hind legs. He lifted one of his brown-and-white paws.

  Katie shook his paw. “Good boy,” she said as she handed him his treat.

  “How come you make Pepper sit before he gets a treat?” Emma asked Katie.

  “He’s supposed to work for it,” Katie explained.

  “Kind of like what Selena’s mice will have to do at the science fair, huh?” Emma pointed out.

  “I’m not making Pepper be part of a science project,” Katie argued.

  Emma took a deep breath. “We’re not going to have a project for the science fair if you don’t stop worrying about mice, and start thinking about lightning bugs. The science fair is just two days away!”

  “Okay,” Katie agreed. “Let’s go print out some lightning bug pictures from the computer. But I’m not giving up on helping those poor little mice. Not yet.”

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, Katie brought an armful of posters to school with her. But not the lightning bug poster. Emma was bringing that. Katie was carrying her own posters.

  Katie had left her house really early, so the schoolyard was empty when she arrived. “Perfect,” she said as she pulled a poster out of her bag and taped it to a tree.

  By the time the other kids got to school, there were posters taped to many of the trees.

  BE NICE TO MICE!

  MICE ARE PEOPLE TOO!

  MICE DON’T BELONG IN SCIENCE PROJECTS!

  “Hey, who put those up?” Katie heard Mickey ask as he and Zack arrived at school and saw the posters.

  “Man, Selena’s gonna be mad!” Zack exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” Mickey agreed. “And when Selena gets mad, things can get ugly.”

  Katie gulped. That did not sound good at all.

  Just then, Selena arrived. She took one look at Katie’s posters and frowned angrily. She reached up, and yanked one of them down from the tree. Then she crumpled it up into a tight ball, and threw it in the trash.

  “Hey—” Katie began. Then she stopped herself, remembering what Mickey and Zack had said. Maybe it was better that Selena didn’t know who put up the posters.

  Besides, by now, everyone had already seen them. That was all that mattered.

  “What are you guys carrying in those backpacks?” Mandy Banks asked George and Kevin a few minutes later, as the kids walked into class 4A.

  “Nothing,” George told her.

  “They sure look full,” Mandy said suspiciously.

  Katie looked at the boys. Mandy was right. Their backpacks were bulging.

  “It’s for our science project,” George explained. “No big deal.”

  Katie didn’t believe that for a minute. She could tell by the way Kevin and George were guarding their backpacks that whatever was in there was definitely a big deal to them.

  “This morning we will all go set up our projects in the gym,” Mr. G. told the class. “And then after lunch, it’s off to the big field cleanup. Are you ready?”

  “Not as ready as 4B,” Andrew said. “They practiced for it all yesterday afternoon.”

  “We’re going to lose,” Mandy moaned.

  “There aren’t any losers in this,” Mr. G. told her. He looked seriously at the class. “Ms. Sweet and I have heard about your contest. We both want our classes to remember that this is about cleaning up the environment, not winning a pizza.”

  “We’re gonna win anyway,” George assured him.

  “How can you be so sure?” Emma Stavros asked.

  “Trust me,” George told her.

  Katie sighed. Trusting George wasn’t always the easiest thing to do.

  Chapter 7

  “This is the perfect spot for our lightning bug,” Emma W. said later that morning as she and Katie set up their science fair table in the gym. “It’s just dark enough here for our flashlight to glow really brightly.”

  Katie nodded. “Now let’s find a good spot on the wall for this,” she said as she lifted up their lightning bug fact poster and taped it up.

  Katie stepped back to admire the poster the girls had created together. She and Emma had sprinkled shimmery glitter on a drawing of a lightning bug. The glitter made it look as though the lightning bug’s tail was all lit up. The drawing was surrounded by photographs of real lightning bugs eating, flying, and lighting up a dark sky. The pictures were labeled with interesting facts, like:

  Lightning bugs use their lights to warn their enemies that they taste too bad to be eaten.

  Adult lightning bugs eat other insects and sometimes nectar.

  Lightning bugs are happiest living in warm, humid places, like those near lakes and streams.

  “I think our poster looks really nice,” Emma said.

  “I hope the judges think so, too,” Katie replied. She looked around the gym. It sure was noisy. The whole school was in there at the same time. All the kids were having fun, but Katie could also tell they were all working hard. Everyone wanted to get a blue ribbon at the fair.

  Katie knew winning a prize could be tough. There were lots of good projects, like the solar system a pair of second-graders had made from fruits and vegetables, the volcano that really exploded that two third-graders had built, and the guess-the-smell game a pair of fifth-graders had created as part of their five senses project.

  But Katie thought that the sixth-grade projects were the most interesting. Sixth-graders were allowed to research anything they wanted.

  Bryce had placed one of her baby teeth in a cup of cola to show how the cola rots your teeth. Justine and Risa had created a miniature rain forest in a jar, with real plants and water. Mickey and
Zack had built a robot that could really walk and talk.

  As Katie was looking around, she noticed that one project wasn’t there—Selena’s!

  Wow! Katie thought excitedly. Maybe Selena has changed her mind about her project. Maybe she’s in the library right now, coming up with something else to display tomorrow.

  Suddenly, Katie felt very powerful . . . for a fourth-grader, anyway.

  Chapter 8

  “Okay, you guys, let’s all line up,” Mr. G. said as class 4A walked out onto the field behind the schoolyard later that day. “We’ll form a human chain, walking from each end of the field to the middle, picking up every piece of trash we find.”

  Class 4A lined up on one side of the field. Class 4B lined up on the other side. The plan was for the kids in each class to pick up trash and put it in huge garbage bags. When they met in the middle, the field would be clean!

  “George, Kevin? Don’t you think it would be a lot easier to pick up the trash if you put down those heavy backpacks first?” Mr. G. asked.

  Katie looked toward the end of the line. She was surprised to see that George and Kevin had brought their backpacks outside.

  “We’re cool,” George assured their teacher.

  “Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “We need these. They’re filled with . . . ow,” Kevin stopped and stared at George. “What’d you kick me for?”

  “They’re filled with important stuff we don’t want to let go of,” George finished Kevin’s sentence.

  “Okay, suit yourselves,” Mr. G. said. He smiled at the kids in class 4A. “Now, is everyone wearing their gloves?”

  The kids held up their hands.

  “Cool,” Mr. G. said. “Dudes, get cleaning!”

  “This is disgusting,” Emma S. muttered as she placed a used paper cup in a trash bag.

  “Yuck,” Andrew groaned as he picked up a smelly milk container.

  “The animals are lucky we’re here to clean up their habitat,” Katie said cheerfully.

  “How come you’re so happy?” Kadeem asked her.

  “I’m just in a good mood,” Katie replied. Even though they were picking up trash, she was glad to be outside. After all, they were helping the animals in the field. More importantly, she was pretty sure she had saved three little mice from being part of a science project.

  This was a really good day. The only thing that could make it better would be if class 4A could win the pizza contest, too.

  But that would mean a lot of hard work from everyone in the class. And right now, George and Kevin sure didn’t seem to be doing their part. They were sitting in the grass, whispering to each other and laughing. That made Katie really angry.

  “Those guys are such jerks,” Mandy said as she bent down to pick up a soda bottle.

  “George is the one who made the bet in the first place. He’s not even helping us,” Kadeem pointed out.

  Katie frowned. George and Kevin were definitely not being fair. She stomped over to where they were sitting to tell them so.

  “How come you guys aren’t helping?” she demanded.

  “We’re finished,” George told her.

  “We collected lots of garbage.” Kevin pointed to a nearby garbage bag. It was completely full.

  “See, Katie Kazoo?” George said, using the nickname he’d given her back in third grade. “We’ve got this contest in the bag.”

  Chapter 9

  About an hour later, the field was clean. It was time to see which class had picked up the most trash.

  “I think it’s easy to see who is going to be eating pizza at lunch after the science fair tomorrow,” Kevin boasted.

  Class 4A had filled four bags of garbage. Class 4B had only filled two.

  “We want pepperoni on our pizzas,” George told Suzanne. Then he glanced over at Katie. “No, make that half pepperoni and half vegetables.”

  Katie smiled gratefully.

  Suzanne wasn’t smiling. She hated losing. “You cheated,” she insisted.

  “How?” Mandy asked. “We picked up more garbage than you did! What do you think is in those bags? Grass?”

  “Suzanne’s right,” Jeremy agreed. “The field wasn’t that dirty. There’s no way you could have collected that much junk.”

  “I agree with Jeremy,” Becky said.

  “You always agree with Jeremy,” George argued. “You have a crush on him.”

  “Shut up, George,” Jeremy said.

  Katie frowned. She couldn’t believe what sore losers the kids in Class 4B were being.

  “You guys owe us pizza,” George demanded. “And you’re going to get it for us.”

  “George, calm down,” Mr. G. said. “It’s just pizza.”

  “This isn’t fair!” Suzanne declared again. She kicked at one of the giant garbage bags. It burst open, and some of the garbage began falling out.

  “Suzanne,” Ms. Sweet scolded. She handed her another garbage bag. “Please pick up that trash.”

  Suzanne frowned, but she took the bag. She knew better than to argue with a teacher—even one as nice as Ms. Sweet.

  Everyone stood around watching Suzanne pick up the trash all by herself. A few of the boys began to snicker.

  “I’ll help you,” Katie said, feeling sorry for her friend. She bent down and began picking up some of the spilled trash.

  “Me too,” Jessica said. She picked up a torn piece of a magazine cover and began to put it in the bag. She stopped as something on the cover caught her eye.

  “Kevin, this is addressed to your house,” Jessica remarked. “You’re a litter bug!”

  Kevin bit his lip and kicked at the ground.

  Suzanne glanced at the piece of notebook paper in her hand. “George, this has your name on it. It’s your spelling test!” She looked down and laughed. “Sixty-three. That’s pretty bad, George.”

  George glared at her.

  Suzanne began looking more closely at the garbage. “Hey, all of this stuff has Kevin and George’s names and addresses on it,” she said.

  Katie stared at the boys in amazement. So that was what they had been hiding in their backpacks!

  “This isn’t garbage from the field,” Suzanne told George and Kevin. “It’s from your houses.” Suzanne ran over and started opening up garbage bags.

  “What are you doing?” Kevin asked her.

  “Proving that you cheated!” Suzanne said.

  Jessica went over to help Suzanne. “Look, these are from last month’s science unit,” she said, holding up a pile of notebook paper and showing them to Kevin. “And they have your sloppy handwriting on them.”

  “That’s it!” Suzanne exclaimed. “You cheated, so you’re disqualified. Class 4B wins!”

  Katie turned and scowled at Kevin and George. Class 4A had lost the bet, and it was all their fault. The other kids in the class were really angry, too.

  “I can’t believe you guys,” Andrew moaned.

  “You are so lazy,” Emma S. added.

  Usually, Katie would have been upset that everyone was picking on George and Kevin. But today she wasn’t upset at all. George and Kevin hadn’t cared a bit about cleaning up the field so the animals could have a clean place to live. So why should Katie care if they got yelled at?

  Finally, Mr. G. stepped in. “Okay, everyone, that’s enough. Ms. Sweet and I think you’re all winners. You worked very hard.”

  “Except for George and Kevin,” Jeremy reminded him.

  Mr. G. nodded. “That’s true. And don’t worry. I think I know a way that they can do some cleaning up, too,” he said mysteriously.

  George and Kevin gulped.

  “But the rest of you deserve a reward,” Mr. G. continued. “So you can all have pizza for lunch tomorrow.” He turned to George and Kevin. “Except for you two,” he added. “You’ll have the school lunch. Tuna surprise.”

  “Oh, man,” Kevin moaned. “I hate tuna surprise.”

  George frowned. “Me too. It tastes like garbage.”

  Suzanne looked a
t the pile of envelopes, papers, and magazine covers on the ground. “That’s just perfect,” she said with a laugh.

  Chapter 10

  WELCOME TO THE SCIENCE FAIR!

  Katie felt all tingly as she spotted the big banner in the gym the next morning. She was so excited. The big day had arrived. In just about half an hour, the parents would be arriving, and the science teachers would start the judging.

  “I can’t wait until my parents get here,” Katie told Emma W.

  “My dad can’t come. He has a huge meeting this morning. But my mother is coming,” Emma said. “And she promised not to bring the twins!”

  “That’s a good thing,” Katie agreed. Emma W. had lots of brothers and sisters. She had a teenaged sister named Lacey, a brother in first grade named Matthew, and one-year-old twin brothers, Tyler and Timmy. The twins were always getting into some sort of trouble.

  And trouble was the last thing Katie wanted today. She just wanted to sit back and enjoy the science fair . . . a science fair without Selena and her mice!

  Unfortunately, Katie didn’t always get what she wanted. At that very moment, Selena walked into the room, holding her mice in their cage.

  Katie watched as Selena began to set up her mazes. She placed a bottle of sugar water at the end of one. There was a plate filled with brown mouse food at the end of another. At the finish line of the third maze was a hunk of cheese.

  Katie was angry. Selena was going ahead with her experiment. She obviously didn’t care about those mice!

  Unlike Katie, however, Emma was focused on the lightning bug project. “I can’t get this flashlight to work,” Emma said, shaking the light up and down. “Do you think the batteries are dead?”

  Katie shook her head. “They’re brand-new,” she said, looking away from Selena for a moment.

  “This is terrible!” Emma moaned.

  Katie thought for a second. “Wait. I have another flashlight. It’s on one of the key chains on my book bag. I’ll run back to the classroom and get it.”