Be Nice to Mice (3 page)

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Authors: Nancy Krulik

BOOK: Be Nice to Mice
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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.”

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