Anyone But Me (2 page)

Read Anyone But Me Online

Authors: Nancy E. Krulik

BOOK: Anyone But Me
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“All right, Zoe,” Mrs. Derkman said as Zoe walked up to the board. “What will you get when you subtract 152 from 901?”
“The wrong answer!” George joked out loud.
Some kids in the class giggled. Zoe blushed.
Katie thought it was really mean of George to joke around like that. Everyone knew Zoe had a lot of trouble with math.
Mrs. Derkman looked sternly over at George, but she smiled at Zoe. “Go ahead,” she said to her. “We’ll do it together.”
When it was his turn, Jeremy took his time solving the subtraction problem. Katie smiled. That was Jeremy: slow and steady like the tortoise in the story of
The Tortoise and the Hare.
Sometimes Jeremy’s careful slowness could get kind of annoying. But not today.
As long as Jeremy’s up there, Mrs. Derkman won’t call on me,
Katie thought to herself.
But eventually Jeremy did finish the problem. And he got the right answer ... as usual.
Mrs. Derkman smiled and wrote another math problem on the board. “Let’s do one more,” she said.
Katie sunk even lower in her chair. Her lip was practically resting on her desk. But it was no use. Mrs. Derkman saw her anyway.
“Katie, will you solve this for us?” the teacher asked.
Katie sighed. She stood up and slowly walked toward the board.
“Here comes the Mud Monster!” Katie heard George whisper as she walked past his desk. Katie didn’t want to walk past George, but she had no choice. He sat right in the front row—where Mrs. Derkman could keep an eye on him.
Katie reached the board and picked up a piece of yellow chalk. She opened her mouth to take a deep, calming breath. But instead of breathing in air, she let out a great big belch.
It was the loudest burp she’d ever heard. A real record-breaker.
The other kids in class began to laugh. Katie blushed beet red. “I’m sorry,” she apologized to Mrs. Derkman. Katie didn’t want her teacher to think she’d done that on purpose.
Out of the corner of her eye, Katie could see George holding his nose. He was pretending to die from the smell of her breath.
“Katie’s stinking up the classroom!” George exclaimed. He laughed so hard, he nearly fell off his chair.
Chapter 3
For the rest of that day, everywhere Katie looked, someone was laughing at her. Mostly because George kept cracking jokes.
“Hey, Mud Monster, can you burp a song for us?” he asked. “I can.” George began to belch out the ABC song. By the time he got to Z, the other kids were all giggling.
“Hey, you know something?” George announced. “Burping a song kinda sounds like a kazoo. That’s what your name should be, Katie. Not Katie Carew. Katie
Kazoo
!
”
Then he started chanting, “Katie Kazoo, Katie Kazoo,” over and over again.
The other kids began to join in. “Katie Kazoo. Katie Kazoo. Katie Kazoo. Katie Kazoo!”
Katie sank down in her chair. She tried hard not to cry.
“All right, that’s enough,” Mrs. Derkman scolded the class. She turned to George. “I’m sending a note home to your mother. I expect you to bring it back to me with her signature.”
George shrugged as if he didn’t care.
As the afternoon went on, Katie wished the other kids would stop laughing when George teased her. He really wasn’t all that funny. But she did kind of understand why the kids kept laughing. If they didn’t, George might make fun of them next.
Before school ended, Katie walked over toward the window, where the hamster cage was. It was her turn to feed Speedy this week.
Hamsters are so lucky,
Katie thought to herself as she watched Speedy running on his wheel.
They never have bad days. Every day is just the same for them.
Finally, the bell rang. The day was over. Katie grabbed her books and ran for the door. She had to make sure she was the first one out of the classroom.
But it didn’t matter. George caught up to Katie right away. He followed her halfway home. “Katie Kazoo, I see you!” he shouted.
“Hey, Katie, wait up!”
Katie could hear Jeremy calling after her as she ran towards her house. She knew he just wanted to make her feel better. But Katie didn’t stop. She didn’t want to hang out with Jeremy. She just wanted to get home, go upstairs to her room, and shut the door.
Even that wasn’t easy to do. When Katie got home, her mother was sitting on the front steps, waiting for her.
“Hi, Kat!” Her mother greeted her with her special nickname. “I made some yummy chocolate-chip cookies. Want some?”
“I, um, I’m not hungry right now,” Katie mumbled. She raced past her and opened the screen door. “I gotta get homework done.”
As Katie entered her room, she found her brown-and-white cocker spaniel, Pepper, lying on her bed. Pepper picked up his head and looked at Katie. He reached out his long, pink tongue and gave her a big kiss. Katie hugged her dog tightly.
“Thanks, Pepper,” she whispered quietly into his brown floppy ear. “At least
someone
isn’t making fun of me today.”
Pepper looked up at her and smiled.
Jeremy was always telling Katie that dogs couldn’t really smile. But Katie was sure that Pepper could. “Pepper’s just a really special dog,” she would tell Jeremy when he argued with her. “He’s even smarter than people.”
Now, as Pepper lay his head in her lap, Katie decided that even if her cocker spaniel wasn’t smarter than people, he certainly was nicer.
 
That night at dinner, Katie picked at her spaghetti. She rolled the long noodles around on her fork. Then she pushed the meatballs over to the side of her plate and scowled.
Three weeks ago, Katie had told her mother that she was a vegetarian. Her mother kept giving her meat anyway. Well, Katie was just not going to eat the meatballs, that’s all.
“You wouldn’t believe the day I had at the office,” Katie’s father announced as he took a bite of his meatball. “We have this new guy, and he was working on the computer when ...”
Usually Katie hated it when her father took up the whole dinner talking about his accounting firm. But tonight she was happy to sit quietly and let him talk. It was better than having to explain why she was so miserable.
Unfortunately, her dad’s story finally came to an end. Immediately, Katie’s mother changed the subject. “So, Kat, what’s new with you?” she asked.
Katie shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Really?” her mother asked. “Well, you sure had a lot of homework. I haven’t seen you since you got home.”
Katie nodded slowly. “We had a ton of social studies questions,” she muttered. “Um ... I’m not so hungry. Can I be excused?”
Katie watched as her parents gave each other their “nervous” looks. They knew something was wrong. They just weren’t sure what to do about it. Finally, her mother said, “Sure, Kat. Go ahead. I’ll clear the table.”
Katie stood up and walked out of the room. She opened the front door, and sat on the stoop outside her house. She looked out into the darkness. Suddenly the whole rotten day flashed in front of her eyes.
She thought about missing the football and losing the game for her team.
She thought about her new jeans in the hamper, all caked with mud.
She thought about the belch she’d let out during math.
Worst of all, she thought about what George was going to do to her tomorrow.
“I wish I could be anyone but me!”
she shouted out loud.
A shooting star shot across the dark night sky. But Katie was too upset to notice it.
Chapter 4
“Rise and shine, Katie! You’re going to be late for school!” Katie’s mother called from the kitchen.
Katie sat up slowly and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She squinted at the Mickey Mouse clock on her wall. Mickey’s hands were on the 8 and the 3. Oh no! It was already 8:15. School started at 8:45. She only had half an hour to get dressed, eat breakfast, and walk to school. This day was starting out really lousy.

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