Authors: Nancy Krulik

Three Cheers for...Who? (3 page)

BOOK: Three Cheers for...Who?

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Kevin Camilleri laughed. “Yeah, Jeremy,” he said in a high, girly voice. “Bang that drum.” He batted his eyelashes up and down.

“Kevin, cut it out,” Jeremy said.

Katie felt bad for Jeremy. Everyone knew Becky had a huge crush on him.

Katie was really glad when Mr. Starkey said, “Becky, no instrument in a band is dumb. They're all equally important.”

“Well, some are more equal than others,” Becky said.

“That doesn't even make sense,” Kevin told Becky. “
Equal
means all the same.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Starkey said. “And as far as I'm concerned, every musician in this band is a star. So let's make some music!”

Katie was very happy to pick up her clarinet and start playing the opening to the band's new song, “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy.” The music would definitely drown out any cheering.

At least for now.

“Hurry up, Katie,” Jeremy urged as Katie left school at the end of the day. “I don't want Suzanne and the rest of the pom-pom squad to follow me home.”

“Suzanne's making you nuts, too?” Katie asked as she and Jeremy turned the corner and headed down the block.

“It's awful,” Jeremy said. “They were actually cheering for Sam McDonough when he went into the bathroom.”

Katie made a face. She didn't even want to think about what
that
one sounded like.

“Doesn't Suzanne ever cheer for any of the girls?” Katie asked Jeremy.

He shook his head. “She can't,” he said.

“Why not?” Katie asked him.

“Because all of the girls in our class are on the 4B pom-pom squad,” Jeremy explained. “That just leaves us guys to cheer for.”

Unfortunately, Katie sort of felt like all the problems in class 4B were her fault. After all, she was the one who had been cheering in the school yard yesterday. But Katie and Emma W. had just been having fun. They weren't trying to drive people crazy or anything.

Driving people crazy was more of a Suzanne thing. And she did it better than anyone.

Chapter 5

The next day at school was no better. As class 4A walked down the hall to the library, class 4B was heading toward the art room. Suzanne started to wave her pom-poms the minute she spotted Katie and Emma W.

“Grab that brush. Add some paint. If it's not 4B art, then art it ain't!”
the 4B pom-pom squad cheered.

“
Ain't
isn't even a word,” Mandy said.

“Exactly,” Kadeem Carter agreed. “
Ain't
ain't a word 'cause
ain't
ain't in the dictionary!”

Katie giggled. Kadeem could be pretty funny sometimes.

Luckily, Ms. Sweet, class 4B's teacher, knew how to stop the cheering. “Girls,” she scolded. “That's not how we behave in school.”

“Sorry,” Miriam, Becky, Zoe, and Jessica Haynes all said at once.

But Suzanne started to cheer all over again.
“Sorry, sorry is what I am! No one is sorrier than Suzanne.”

Kevin groaned. “She's sorry, all right. A sorry excuse for a cheerleader!”

Katie hated when her friends said mean things about one another. But Suzanne was taking this whole cheerleading thing way too far.

“Hey, Katie, do you want to come over after school today?” Emma W. asked as the girls walked into the library.

Katie didn't know what to say. She really didn't want to spend another afternoon listening to Lacey and Rachel practicing cheers. “Do you want to come to my house instead?” Katie suggested.

Emma W. shook her head. “I can't,” she said. “My mom needs someone to keep an eye on Matthew while she's taking care of the twins. And since Lacey has an after-school cheerleading practice, that someone is me.”

Katie smiled. Lacey wasn't going to be home.

“Sure, I'll come over,” Katie said. “I'll call my mom later from the school office.”

Things were nice and quiet at Emma W.'s house that afternoon. Mrs. Weber was in the living room playing blocks with Timmy and Tyler. Katie and Emma W. were in the backyard finger-painting with Matthew. It was a warm, spring day, so it was nice to be outside.

“Wow, Matthew,” Katie said. “I like the purple dog you painted.”

“That's an elephant,” Matthew told her. “I just didn't add the trunk yet.”

“Oh,” Katie said. “Sorry. Now I can see. It's definitely an elephant.”

Katie dipped her fingers in the brown paint and started to paint a picture of Pepper. She started with his big, brown eyes, and then worked her way back to his stubby, little tail.

Finger painting wasn't the kind of thing she would usually do with a friend because it was a first-grade thing, not a fourth-grade thing. But since Matthew was in first grade, Katie and Emma W. had an excuse. And if someone said it was babyishâsomeone like
Suzanne
, for instanceâthe girls could just say that they were finger-painting to make Matthew happy.

“Would you pass the yellow?” Emma W. asked Katie.

Katie looked over at her friend's paper. “Nice rainbow,” she said as she passed the yellow.

“Thanks,” Emma W. said. “I'm so glad Mr. G. gave us that little trick to remember what order the colors go in.”

Katie knew exactly what trick Emma W. was talking about. They'd learned it on the day they were studying light. Mr. G. had come to school dressed in a rainbow shirt, with a rainbow-colored wig on his head. He had told everyone his name was Roy G. Biv.

Except Roy G. Biv wasn't a real person. Roy G. Biv was the way Mr. G. wanted them to remember the colors in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

“Mr. G. is a very cool teacher,” Katie said.

“The coolest,” Emma W. agreed, smushing some yellow paint around on her paper.

Katie reached for the red paint so she could start making Pepper's collar. But before she could dip her hand into the dish, Lacey and Rachel came racing into the backyard.

“You guys have to leave,” Lacey told them.

“Why?” Emma W. asked her sister.

“Because our squad learned a new cheer today and we have to practice so that we can do it perfectly at the game on Saturday,” Lacey told her.

“We were here first,” Matthew said.

“Well now you're leaving first,” Lacey said. “Mom said we have to practice out here. The ceilings are too low for us to do our jumps in the house.”

“But mom said she didn't want us painting inside,” Emma W. explained. “It makes too much of a mess.”

“Then do something else,” Lacey told her.

“Can't we share the yard?” Katie asked.

Lacey shook her head. “No way. We need a lot of room.”

Katie couldn't believe what she was hearing. Lacey was acting like she owned the backyard. And that wasn't true.

But Emma W. was already packing up the paints and paper. She obviously didn't feel like arguing with her sister.

“It's getting a little chilly, anyway,” Emma W. told Katie and Matthew.

Katie had been happy to be finger-painting. And she'd been happy not having to hear cheers for a while. “I don't know why you guys have to practice so much,” Katie told Lacey and Rachel. “Cheerleading isn't
that
hard.”

“Are you kidding?” Rachel demanded.

“Cheerleaders are athletes!” Lacey said. “We have to practice, just like in any sport.”

“There's no cheerleading in the Olympics,” Katie told her.

Lacey and Rachel just stared at Katie. They couldn't believe what she had just said.

“You don't know anything,” Lacey told Katie.

But Katie
did
know something. She knew she hated cheerleading. Cheerleading had ruined her day in school, and now it was ruining her playdate after school.

Cheerleading was definitely
not
something to cheer about. No way!