Be Nice to Mice (4 page)

Katie nodded. “Now let’s find a good spot on the wall for this,” she said as she lifted up their lightning bug fact poster and taped it up.

Katie stepped back to admire the poster the girls had created together. She and Emma had sprinkled shimmery glitter on a drawing of a lightning bug. The glitter made it look as though the lightning bug’s tail was all lit up. The drawing was surrounded by photographs of real lightning bugs eating, flying, and lighting up a dark sky. The pictures were labeled with interesting facts, like:

“I think our poster looks really nice,” Emma said.

“I hope the judges think so, too,” Katie replied. She looked around the gym. It sure was noisy. The whole school was in there at the same time. All the kids were having fun, but Katie could also tell they were all working hard. Everyone wanted to get a blue ribbon at the fair.

Katie knew winning a prize could be tough. There were lots of good projects, like the solar system a pair of second-graders had made from fruits and vegetables, the volcano that really exploded that two third-graders had built, and the guess-the-smell game a pair of fifth-graders had created as part of their five senses project.

But Katie thought that the sixth-grade projects were the most interesting. Sixth-graders were allowed to research anything they wanted.

Bryce had placed one of her baby teeth in a cup of cola to show how the cola rots your teeth. Justine and Risa had created a miniature rain forest in a jar, with real plants and water. Mickey and Zack had built a robot that could really walk and talk.

As Katie was looking around, she noticed that one project wasn’t there—Selena’s!

Wow!
Katie thought excitedly.
Maybe Selena has changed her mind about her project. Maybe she’s in the library right now, coming up with something else to display tomorrow.

Suddenly, Katie felt very powerful . . . for a fourth-grader, anyway.

“Okay, you guys, let’s all line up,” Mr. G. said as class 4A walked out onto the field behind the schoolyard later that day. “We’ll form a human chain, walking from each end of the field to the middle, picking up every piece of trash we find.”

Class 4A lined up on one side of the field. Class 4B lined up on the other side. The plan was for the kids in each class to pick up trash and put it in huge garbage bags. When they met in the middle, the field would be clean!

“George, Kevin? Don’t you think it would be a lot easier to pick up the trash if you put down those heavy backpacks first?” Mr. G. asked.

Katie looked toward the end of the line. She was surprised to see that George and Kevin had brought their backpacks outside.

“We’re cool,” George assured their teacher.

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “We need these. They’re filled with . . . ow,” Kevin stopped and stared at George. “What’d you kick me for?”

“They’re filled with important stuff we don’t want to let go of,” George finished Kevin’s sentence.

“Okay, suit yourselves,” Mr. G. said. He smiled at the kids in class 4A. “Now, is everyone wearing their gloves?”

The kids held up their hands.

“Cool,” Mr. G. said. “Dudes, get cleaning!”

“This is disgusting,” Emma S. muttered as she placed a used paper cup in a trash bag.

“Yuck,” Andrew groaned as he picked up a smelly milk container.

“The animals are lucky we’re here to clean up their habitat,” Katie said cheerfully.

“How come you’re so happy?” Kadeem asked her.

“I’m just in a good mood,” Katie replied. Even though they were picking up trash, she was glad to be outside. After all, they were helping the animals in the field. More importantly, she was pretty sure she had saved three little mice from being part of a science project.

This was a really good day. The only thing that could make it better would be if class 4A could win the pizza contest, too.

But that would mean a lot of hard work from everyone in the class. And right now, George and Kevin sure didn’t seem to be doing their part. They were sitting in the grass, whispering to each other and laughing. That made Katie really angry.

“Those guys are such jerks,” Mandy said as she bent down to pick up a soda bottle.

“George is the one who made the bet in the first place. He’s not even helping us,” Kadeem pointed out.

Katie frowned. George and Kevin were definitely not being fair. She stomped over to where they were sitting to tell them so.

“How come you guys aren’t helping?” she demanded.

“We’re finished,” George told her.

“We collected lots of garbage.” Kevin pointed to a nearby garbage bag. It was completely full.

“See, Katie Kazoo?” George said, using the nickname he’d given her back in third grade. “We’ve got this contest in the bag.”

About an hour later, the field was clean. It was time to see which class had picked up the most trash.

“I think it’s easy to see who is going to be eating pizza at lunch after the science fair tomorrow,” Kevin boasted.

Class 4A had filled four bags of garbage. Class 4B had only filled two.

“We want pepperoni on our pizzas,” George told Suzanne. Then he glanced over at Katie. “No, make that half pepperoni and half vegetables.”

Katie smiled gratefully.

Suzanne
wasn’t
smiling. She hated losing. “You cheated,” she insisted.

“How?” Mandy asked. “We picked up more garbage than you did! What do you think is in those bags? Grass?”

“Suzanne’s right,” Jeremy agreed. “The field wasn’t
that
dirty. There’s no way you could have collected that much junk.”

“I agree with Jeremy,” Becky said.

“You
always
agree with Jeremy,” George argued. “You have a crush on him.”

“Shut up, George,” Jeremy said.

Katie frowned. She couldn’t believe what sore losers the kids in Class 4B were being.

“You guys owe us pizza,” George demanded. “And you’re going to get it for us.”

“George, calm down,” Mr. G. said. “It’s just pizza.”

“This isn’t fair!” Suzanne declared again. She kicked at one of the giant garbage bags. It burst open, and some of the garbage began falling out.

“Suzanne,” Ms. Sweet scolded. She handed her another garbage bag. “Please pick up that trash.”

Suzanne frowned, but she took the bag. She knew better than to argue with a teacher—even one as nice as Ms. Sweet.

Everyone stood around watching Suzanne pick up the trash all by herself. A few of the boys began to snicker.

“I’ll help you,” Katie said, feeling sorry for her friend. She bent down and began picking up some of the spilled trash.

“Me too,” Jessica said. She picked up a torn piece of a magazine cover and began to put it in the bag. She stopped as something on the cover caught her eye.

“Kevin, this is addressed to
your
house,” Jessica remarked. “You’re a litter bug!”

Kevin bit his lip and kicked at the ground.

Suzanne glanced at the piece of notebook paper in her hand. “George, this has
your
name on it. It’s your spelling test!” She looked down and laughed. “Sixty-three. That’s pretty bad, George.”

George glared at her.

Suzanne began looking more closely at the garbage. “Hey,
all
of this stuff has Kevin and George’s names and addresses on it,” she said.

Katie stared at the boys in amazement. So that was what they had been hiding in their backpacks!

“This isn’t garbage from the field,” Suzanne told George and Kevin. “It’s from your houses.” Suzanne ran over and started opening up garbage bags.

“What are you doing?” Kevin asked her.

“Proving that you cheated!” Suzanne said.

Jessica went over to help Suzanne. “Look, these are from last month’s science unit,” she said, holding up a pile of notebook paper and showing them to Kevin. “And they have your sloppy handwriting on them.”

“That’s it!” Suzanne exclaimed. “You cheated, so you’re disqualified. Class 4B wins!”

Katie turned and scowled at Kevin and George. Class 4A had lost the bet, and it was all their fault. The other kids in the class were really angry, too.

“I can’t believe you guys,” Andrew moaned.

“You are so lazy,” Emma S. added.

Usually, Katie would have been upset that everyone was picking on George and Kevin. But today she wasn’t upset at all. George and Kevin hadn’t cared a bit about cleaning up the field so the animals could have a clean place to live. So why should Katie care if they got yelled at?

Finally, Mr. G. stepped in. “Okay, everyone, that’s enough. Ms. Sweet and I think you’re all winners. You worked very hard.”

“Except for George and Kevin,” Jeremy reminded him.

Mr. G. nodded. “That’s true. And don’t worry. I think I know a way that they can do some cleaning up, too,” he said mysteriously.

George and Kevin gulped.

“But the rest of you deserve a reward,” Mr. G. continued. “So you can all have pizza for lunch tomorrow.” He turned to George and Kevin. “Except for you two,” he added. “You’ll have the school lunch. Tuna surprise.”

“Oh, man,” Kevin moaned. “I hate tuna surprise.”

George frowned. “Me too. It tastes like garbage.”

Suzanne looked at the pile of envelopes, papers, and magazine covers on the ground. “That’s just perfect,” she said with a laugh.