Girls Don't Have Cooties (6 page)

“He probably just went home,” Jeremy said. “He knows the way there.”

“Maybe,” Katie answered hopefully. “I’m going to go check right now.” She ran off toward her house.

“Wait up!” Jeremy called after her. “I’ll go with you.”

They raced to Katie’s house. Jeremy searched Katie’s yard. Katie ran inside and looked in all the rooms. She wanted to tell her mom what had happened, but she was talking on the phone. So Katie looked under the beds and in the closets all by herself. But Pepper wasn’t there.

“This is awful!” Katie cried when she met Jeremy outside. “Pepper’s never just run off like this! What if he doesn’t know how to get back?”

“That won’t happen,” Jeremy assured her. “Pepper knows this neighborhood really well. He’ll find you.”

“We have to keep looking,” Katie said. “He’s got to be around somewhere.”

Jeremy and Katie spent the next hour looking for Pepper. They looked in their neighbors’ yards. They peered under bushes and searched behind trees. They checked the schoolyard and the playground—all the places Pepper liked to go.

But Pepper was nowhere to be found.

“Poor Pepper,” Katie cried. “He’s lost and all alone. He’s probably really scared. Oh, Jeremy! What if I never see him again?”

“Someone will find him,” Jeremy told her. “He’s got all those tags on him. Whoever finds him is sure to call you.”

“I have to make signs!” Katie said. “I’ll offer a reward for him.”

“Come on. Let’s go to my house and make some signs,” Jeremy suggested.

Katie followed Jeremy home.

“You go sit on the deck in the backyard.” Jeremy said. “I’ll get paper and markers.”

Katie did as she was told. She flopped down in one of the plastic chairs on the deck. She began to sob.

“Oh,
Pepper!
I miss you so much,” she cried.

Just then Katie heard a little bark.

“Pepper?” she called out.

There was another little bark. Then Pepper came bounding out from underneath Jeremy’s backyard deck. He had an old, soggy tennis ball in his mouth.

Katie sobbed even harder. But this time she was crying tears of joy. She hugged her dog tightly and kissed his little, round head. “Pepper! You’re okay!”

Jeremy came out of the house carrying a pile of construction paper and some markers.

“Jeremy, look who’s here,” Katie exclaimed.

“Pepper! Boy, were we worried about you,” Jeremy stroked one of Pepper’s long, furry ears. “Where was he?”

“Under the deck, I think. We didn’t look there. He might have been there the whole time.”

“Why would he go under the deck?”

Katie frowned. “He probably hid there because he couldn’t stand us fighting,” she said. “He hates when people yell.”

“I guess we
were
pretty loud,” Jeremy admitted. Then he stopped for a minute and smiled at Katie. “You know, I forgot we weren’t supposed to be talking to each other.”

“Me, too,” Katie said. “I’m really sorry. I mean about Suzanne’s party and everything.”

“I’m sorry about the Boys Club. It was a dumb idea,” Jeremy apologized.

“So, are we friends again?” Katie asked.

Jeremy smiled. “We were always friends,” he said.

Katie sighed. “You know, you don’t have to talk to me at school or anything if you don’t want to. The boys don’t have to know we’re still best friends.”

“That’s dumb,” Jeremy said. “We can be friends with whoever we want.”

“Yeah,” Katie agreed.

“The only problem is, everyone else is going to be mad at us for being friends,” Jeremy said sadly.

Katie thought about that. Then suddenly she got one of her great ideas. “I know a way we can stop that from happening!” she said excitedly. She grabbed a piece of paper and a magic marker. “Here’s what we do ...”

Manny, Kevin, and George sure were surprised when they got to school Thursday morning. They found Jeremy sitting under a tree ... with
Katie!

“Jeremy!” Kevin exclaimed. “What are you doing with her?”

“I hope you brought along a lot of cootie spray,” George added. “She’s loaded with them!”

“Cut it out George,” Jeremy said. “Katie’s my friend. She’s your friend, too—in case you forgot.”

George covered his ears. “Stop talking like that! That’s not how members of the Boys Club should sound.”

“I’m not in the Boys Club anymore,” Jeremy told him.

“Why not?” Kevin asked.

Before Jeremy could answer, Suzanne, Miriam, Mandy, and Zoe walked over to the tree.

“Come on, Katie,” Suzanne said. “We have a Girls Club meeting now.”

Katie shook her head. “I’m not in the Girls Club anymore.”

“What?” Suzanne asked with surprise.

“Jeremy and I are starting a new club,” Katie explained. “The BUG Club.” She held up a picture she’d drawn. It was a picture of a ladybug and a bumblebee.

“The BUG club,” George laughed. “That’s perfect for girls. The
cootie
bug club!”

“Not funny,” Jeremy said. “BUG stands for Boys United with Girls.”

“Isn’t that BUWG?” Mandy asked.

“I know,” Katie admitted. “But that doesn’t spell anything. So we’re just calling it the BUG Club.”

“I think the BUG Club sounds awful,” Suzanne said.

“It’s a great club,” Jeremy told her. “We’re going to do all kinds of fun things.”

“And we’re not going to fight like your clubs do,” Katie added.

“What kind of things are you going to do?” Manny asked.

“Well, for starters, we’re going ice skating at Skyrink this weekend,” Katie said.

“This weekend?” Suzanne asked. “But my party is this weekend.”

“And we were going to go to the amusement park,” Manny reminded Jeremy.

“But that’s on Saturday,” Katie said. “The BUG Club is going skating on Sunday.”

“That way we can do everything,” Jeremy added.

“It’s okay to do things just with girls or boys
sometimes,”
Katie said. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t all hang out together other times.”

“That’s what the BUG Club is all about,” Jeremy explained. “Everybody being friends.”

“Well, ice skating is fun,” Kevin said.

“I do have this adorable purple skating dress,” Suzanne thought out loud. “It’s got glitter on the skirt.”

“The BUG Club, huh?” Zoe said. “That sounds kind of cute.”

Katie looked over at Jeremy and smiled. The first meeting of the BUG Club was working out just fine.

Katie laughed as she saw George holding onto the side of the rink. He was trying not to fall. He’d never been ice skating before. “Come on George, you can do it!” Katie cheered him on.

George tried to smile. “You know what the hardest part of skating is, Katie Kazoo?” he joked.

“No. What?”

“The ice!” George answered. He rubbed his rear end. George had done a lot of falling today.

Katie giggled. “You’re getting better,” she assured him.