Girls Don't Have Cooties (2 page)

“What are you talking about?” she asked George.

George moved his chair even farther from Katie. “Oooh! Get this girl away from me!” he shouted. All the boys laughed.

That made Katie upset. George was her friend. He was the one who had given her the nickname Katie Kazoo. They told jokes together and played after school. Katie was the very first kid to become George’s friend when he was the new kid at school. Now he wouldn’t even sit next to her.

“Come on, George, cut it out!” Katie insisted.

George didn’t answer. Instead he took a huge bite of his bologna sandwich and turned toward his buddy, Kevin Camilleri.

“Aachoo!”
George let out a really fake sneeze. Pieces of chewed-up bologna, cheese, and bread, sprayed out of his mouth and all over the table.

Kevin chuckled. “Good one, George!”

“
Eeeeew! Yuck!
” Miriam Chan shouted. She was sitting across from Katie. That gave her a clear view of George’s flying food.

“Boys are really gross,” Miriam’s best friend Mandy Banks said.

“I don’t know how you can be friends with any of them, Katie.”

Katie sighed. She hated it when there were fights between the boys and the girls.

Just a few weeks ago, Suzanne and Jeremy had had a fight about who would get to take Speedy, the class hamster, home for the weekend. The whole class had gotten involved in that war. The boys had sided with Jeremy, and the girls had sided with Suzanne. Katie had been stuck in the middle—right between her two best friends.

Katie sighed. “I wish this didn’t always ...” Katie was about to wish that this didn’t always have to happen to her, but she stopped herself. She’d learned the hard way to be really careful about what she wished for.

It had all started one rotten day. Katie had ruined her favorite jeans, lost the football game for her team, and belched really loudly in front of the whole class. That day, Katie had wished that she could be anyone but herself.

Right after that, the magic wind came.

The magic wind was big and horrible, like a tornado. But it only stormed around Katie. Nobody else could see it or feel it. Whenever the magic wind came, it turned Katie into someone else.

The first time the wind had come, it changed Katie into Speedy, the class hamster! She’d spent a whole morning nibbling on chew sticks and running on a hamster wheel.

Luckily, Katie changed back into herself pretty fast.
Un
luckily, the magic wind had come back again. It turned Katie into Lucille, the cafeteria lunch lady.

But serving mystery meat to her friends wasn’t nearly as bad as the next time the wind came. That time it turned Katie into Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. Katie had come this close to having her best friend change her diaper. How embarrassing would
that
have been?

So Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. She never knew what would happen if they came true.

Just then, George and Kevin snuck up behind Miriam and Mandy.

“Pffft!”
the boys shouted. “We want all girls to go away. Blast them hard with cootie spray.”

“Get away!” Mandy cried out. “
You’re
the ones with cooties.”

“No way,” George argued. “Girls have cooties.”

Katie looked across the table at Jeremy. He was sitting next to Manny Gonzalez. When he saw Katie staring at him, Jeremy looked down at the floor. But Manny didn’t look away. He smiled and held up an imaginary spray can.
Pffft.
He pretended to spritz Katie with cootie spray.

Katie was getting mad.
Really mad.

“Girls don’t have cooties!”
she shouted. Then she jumped up and ran out of the cafeteria.

“Hey Katie, where are you going?” Suzanne asked as she ran after her best friend.

“I can’t stand this fighting anymore!” Katie told her.

“Then stop hanging around with the boys,” Suzanne suggested. “They started it all.”

Katie wanted to tell Suzanne that that wasn’t true. Suzanne had actually started it all by having an all-girl party. But Katie already had one best friend refusing to talk to her. She couldn’t take it if Suzanne ignored her, too.

“Katie, come on outside,” Suzanne said.

“We’re going to play double Dutch jump rope. Mandy and Zoe have already said that they’ll be steady enders.”

That was good. Mandy and Zoe were the only ones who knew how to turn both double Dutch jump ropes at the same time without getting them tangled.

“Okay,” Katie agreed. “Just let me run back to the classroom and get my jean jacket.”

“Great! I’ll see ya out on the playground!” Suzanne said with a grin.

The classroom was empty. Katie ran in, grabbed her jacket, and headed straight for the door.

But before she could leave the room, she felt a strange breeze tingle against the back of her neck. Katie put on her jacket, and raised the collar around her neck. But she could still feel the breeze blowing.

She looked around the room. The windows were all shut. The breeze was obviously not coming from outside.

“Oh no!” Katie cried out. “Not again.”

The magic wind was back. And she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The wind began to circle strongly around Katie. Her red hair whipped wildly around her head. The tornado swirled faster and faster. Katie held on to a desk so she wouldn’t blow away. She closed her eyes tightly, and tried not to cry.

It seemed like the wind was blowing for a very long time. But it was probably just a few seconds before it stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun.

Katie knew what that meant. She wasn’t Katie Carew anymore. She was someone else.

The question was, who was she?

Before Katie opened her eyes, she sniffed at the air around her. The smells had changed. Room 3A smelled like a mix of chalk dust, crayons, and Speedy’s hamster litter.
This
room smelled like food—tuna sandwiches, ketchup, french fries, and milk.

Oh, no!
This had to be the cafeteria. Had Katie become Lucille the Lunch Lady ... again?

Slowly, Katie opened her eyes. At first everything looked blurry. Then Katie reached up to her nose and slid her glasses back up toward her eyes.

Glasses?
Wait a minute. Katie didn’t wear glasses. Who was she?

Katie looked down at her clothes. She was wearing a pair of jeans, black sneakers, and a denim jacket. Typical third-grade clothes.

Okay, so she was a kid. But
which
kid?

Before Katie could figure that out, Kevin poured his chocolate milk onto what was left of his tuna hero. “Hey check this out,” he said. “Pretty gross, huh?”

George shook his head. “That’s nothing,” he said. “Watch this!” He mixed tuna salad into his chocolate pudding and stirred it with ketchup-covered french fries. “Now that’s what I call gross!”

Katie looked down at the mess George had just made. It was brown and red, with bits of gray tuna and mayonnaise floating in it. It was possibly the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen.

“See, I told you this was super-colossal-gross,” George bragged. “Jeremy looks like he’s about to puke just from looking at it.”

“I dare you to eat that,” Kevin said to George.

That was too much for Katie. If George swallowed a spoonful of that mess she was going to be sick. “No, don‘t!” she cried out.

George looked over toward Katie. “Relax, Jeremy,” he said. “Even I wouldn’t eat that mess!”

Oh, no! Was it possible the magic wind had turned her into her own best friend? Her
boy
best friend?

Of course it was possible. The magic wind could do anything.

“You ready, Captain?” George asked Katie suddenly.

Katie looked back at him. “Ready for what?” she asked, confused.

“The soccer game, remember? You’re one of the captains.”

“Huh?” Katie asked. “I am?”

“Sure you are,” George said. “You’re always captain. You’re our best player.”

“I’m the other captain,” bragged Andrew Epstein from class 3B.