Drat! You Copycat! (2 page)

Manny Gonzalez looked across the table at Suzanne’s lunch. “Ooh! Gross!” he shouted. He made a grunting noise. “I think I’m gonna puke!”

Suzanne rolled her eyes. “That shows what you know. This is
kosheri.
It’s a recipe from Egypt. I’ll bet Cleopatra ate it.”

“Oh no, here we go again,” Manny moaned.

Becky looked curiously at Katie.

“Suzanne is crazy about Cleopatra,” Katie explained to her.

“It’s all she’s talked about for the past two weeks,” Manny said.

“That’s better than last month, when all she talked about was that artist, Vincent van Gogh,” Mandy told Becky.

“She kept telling us how he chopped his ear off,” Katie said. “Yuck.”

“You’re lucky. Hearing about Cleopatra’s better than that,” Mandy assured Becky.

“Cleopatra was better than anyone,” Suzanne insisted. “She was the most powerful woman in ancient Egypt. She was ...”

“The Queen of the Nile,” Katie, Miriam, Mandy, and Manny all finished her sentence for her. They’d heard Suzanne give the same Cleopatra speech about a gazillion times in the past two weeks.

“Well, I don’t care who ate that stuff. It’s gross,” Manny said. “It looks like something George would do with his food.”

Katie looked over at George. He’d already begun mixing his spaghetti into his chocolate pudding. George always made a mess of his food. Then he’d wait for someone to dare him to eat it—which he always did.

George cracked Katie up. He told the best jokes. Nothing was too wild or too weird for him to try.

George had also been the one to give Katie her nickname, Katie Kazoo. It sounded a lot like Katie Carew, only cooler. Katie loved it!

Just then, Kevin and Jeremy came over to the table. Kevin’s tray was stacked high with tomatoes—round cherry tomatoes, small grape tomatoes, and thick, beefy tomato slices.

“Okay guys, it’s tomato time!” Kevin announced happily.

Everyone watched as Jeremy threw one of Kevin’s cherry tomatoes up in the air. Kevin opened his mouth wide—and caught it easily. Some of the kids clapped. Kevin took a bow and chomped away.

“Kevin’s going for the world record,” Katie explained to Becky. “He’s already eaten two hundred thirty-seven tomatoes this month!”

“I love tomatoes,” Becky interrupted. She smiled at Kevin. “One time I ate a tomato this big.” She held her arms in a circle the size of a pumpkin.

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Tomatoes don’t grow that big,” he told her, “not even prize-winning ones. You can’t fool me. I know all about tomatoes. I’ve read books on them and everything.”

Becky blushed tomato red.

Suzanne didn’t want to discuss tomatoes. She wasn’t finished talking about Cleopatra.

“You know, I asked my mother to get me a cat,” she told the other girls.

“Did she say yes?” Katie asked excitedly. “It’s so great having a pet. You know how much fun Pepper and I have together.” Pepper was Katie’s chocolate-brown-and-white cocker spaniel. She adored him.

“Well a cat is different than a dog,” Suzanne said. “I mean, dogs are fun and all, but cats are smart. The ancient Egyptians worshipped them—even Cleopatra.”

“
Pepper’s
smart,” Katie insisted. “I taught him a new trick the other day. When I hold up a treat, he dances on his hind legs.”

“Pepper
is
smart,” Suzanne assured her best friend. “For a dog, anyway,” she added under her breath.

“I used to have a dog,” Becky told Katie. She turned to Suzanne. “But now I have a cat. Her name’s Fluffy. She’s white and cuddly. And she’s
really
smart.” She turned to Suzanne and smiled. “Maybe you’ll want to come over and play with her one day.”

Suzanne ate a forkful of lentil beans.

“Hey Kevin, what do you call a pet tomato?” George asked.

“What?” Kevin asked between bites of a tomato wedge. Red tomato juice dribbled out of his mouth and onto his chin.

“Call it anything you want,” George laughed. “It can’t hear you!”

Jeremy laughed so hard at George’s joke that milk came out of his nose.

George smiled. “Jeremy, you’re the best audience. You’ll laugh at anything.”

Becky looked at Jeremy and smiled. “I know a good joke,” she told him.

Suzanne rolled her eyes. “I’m finished eating,” she said, before Becky could tell her joke. “Let’s go play double Dutch.”

“I love double Dutch,” Becky said. “Back in Atlanta we used to have contests to see who could jump the longest without missing.

I was always the winner.”

Miriam, Mandy, and Zoe Canter were impressed.

Suzanne wasn’t. She turned to Becky. “I’d ask you to play, but you’re wearing a dress ... unless you’ve got shorts under there.”

Becky shook her head. “I never thought to do that.”

“All the girls in our class wear shorts underneath their dresses,” Zoe told her. “That way you can play and no one sees your underpants.”

“Wow!” Becky exclaimed.

“It was Suzanne’s idea,” Miriam said.

“Suzanne is definitely the fashion expert around here,” Katie agreed.

Suzanne laughed. “Everyone needs a hobby.”

Becky looked at Suzanne’s leopard-print shirt. It had fake fur on the cuffs. Her pants were glittery-black.

Katie had hoped Suzanne would have wanted to do something else at recess. But it was clear that wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes Suzanne could be so stubborn.

But Katie didn’t want to argue with her in front of everyone. That would just make Becky feel bad. “You guys go ahead and jump rope,” she told the others, finally. “Becky and I can do something else. Maybe play foursquare.”

“It’s okay, Katie,” Becky said. “If you want to jump rope, I can just watch for today.”

“No way,” Katie told Becky. “There’s always lots of fun stuff going on during recess.”

Katie smiled warmly at Becky. But the new girl wasn’t looking in Katie’s direction. She was busy watching Suzanne’s sparkly silver sneakers move back and forth as Suzanne walked away.

The next morning, Katie was the first kid to arrive at Cherrydale Elementary School. She wanted to be there before Becky arrived. Katie took the job of being Becky’s school buddy very seriously.

She sat down on a woooden bench and looked around nervously. It was creepy being the only one on the playground. Everything was so quiet ... and lonely.

Katie didn’t like being alone. Lately it seemed as though whenever she was all by herself, strange things happened.

It had all started a few weeks ago on one really horrible day. Katie had lost the football game for her team. She’d fallen in the mud and ruined her favorite jeans. Then, as if all that weren’t bad enough, Katie had burped really loudly in front of the whole class!

The day had been so incredibly, unbelievably awful that Katie had wished she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star flying overhead or something, because the very next day the magic wind came.

The magic wind was like no wind Katie had seen before. It was a wild, fierce tornado that only blew around Katie.

But the tornado-like gusts weren’t the worst part of the magic wind.

The worst part came
after
the wind had stopped blowing. That’s when the magic wind turned Katie into someone else.

The magic wind could turn Katie into anyone! One time it transformed her into Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. Suzanne had almost changed Katie’s diaper! How embarrassing would
that
have been?

But even that wasn’t as bad as the time the wind turned her into Jeremy Fox. Katie didn’t know anything about being a boy!

Katie knew the magic wind wasn’t through with her yet. It could show up at any time—as long as no one but Katie was around.

“Hey, Katie Kazoo, you’re here early,” George called out as he rode his skateboard onto the playground.

Katie was glad someone else had arrived.

“Skateboarding is so cool!” George exclaimed. “That’s why I’m doing my research project on the history of skateboarding.”

Katie gulped. The research project! Katie had been so excited about being Becky’s buddy that she’d forgotten to think of a topic.

“What are you going to research?” George asked her.

“Well, I ... uh ...” Katie stammered. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the picture frame key chain on her backpack. It had a photo of her dog in it.

“I’m going to do my research project about cocker spaniels,” Katie blurted out.

Phew.
Pepper didn’t know it, but he had just saved Katie.

“That doesn’t sound like too ruff of a topic,” George teased her. “You should be able to find a lot of information fur your paper.”

“Maybe Mrs. Derkman will let me bring Pepper in as an example,” Katie said.

George shook his head. “Are you nuts? Mrs. Derkman doesn’t even like having Speedy in the classroom. And he’s just a hamster. How do you think she’d feel about a dog?”

Katie nodded. “You’re right. I’ll bring in some pictures.”

Just then, Suzanne wandered onto the playground. It was impossible not to notice her. She was wearing a hot pink glittery rugby shirt. Her capri pants were hot pink and covered in glitter, too.

“New outfit?” Katie asked her.