Be Nice to Mice (5 page)

Katie felt all tingly as she spotted the big banner in the gym the next morning. She was so excited. The big day had arrived. In just about half an hour, the parents would be arriving, and the science teachers would start the judging.

“I can’t wait until my parents get here,” Katie told Emma W.

“My dad can’t come. He has a huge meeting this morning. But my mother is coming,” Emma said. “And she promised
not
to bring the twins!”

“That’s a good thing,” Katie agreed. Emma W. had lots of brothers and sisters. She had a teenaged sister named Lacey, a brother in first grade named Matthew, and one-year-old twin brothers, Tyler and Timmy. The twins were always getting into some sort of trouble.

And trouble was the last thing Katie wanted today. She just wanted to sit back and enjoy the science fair . . .
a science fair without Selena and her mice!

Unfortunately, Katie didn’t always get what she wanted. At that very moment, Selena walked into the room, holding her mice in their cage.

Katie watched as Selena began to set up her mazes. She placed a bottle of sugar water at the end of one. There was a plate filled with brown mouse food at the end of another. At the finish line of the third maze was a hunk of cheese.

Katie was angry. Selena was going ahead with her experiment. She obviously didn’t care about those mice!

Unlike Katie, however, Emma was focused on the lightning bug project. “I can’t get this flashlight to work,” Emma said, shaking the light up and down. “Do you think the batteries are dead?”

Katie shook her head. “They’re brand-new,” she said, looking away from Selena for a moment.

“This is terrible!” Emma moaned.

Katie thought for a second. “Wait. I have another flashlight. It’s on one of the key chains on my book bag. I’ll run back to the classroom and get it.”

“Great!” Emma exclaimed. “But hurry.”

Katie nodded and raced out of the gym. She headed straight down the hall and into 4A.

The room was completely silent. Nobody was there—except Slinky, the class snake, of course. He wasn’t allowed at the science fair. It was for people only.

People, and Selena’s mice
, Katie thought angrily.

But there was no time to worry about that now. Katie had to get her flashlight. She walked over to her book bag and began to pry the key chain loose.

Suddenly, Katie felt a cool breeze blowing on the back of her neck. She looked around the room. All the windows were shut. None of the paper bugs flying from the ceiling were moving around.

The wind seemed to be blowing just on Katie. The magic wind was back!

“Oh, no!” Katie exclaimed. “Not right before the science fair!”

But the magic wind didn’t care if Katie missed the science fair. It picked up speed, blowing harder and harder. WHOOSH! Katie was sure it would blow her away. She shut her eyes tight, and tried not to cry.

And then it stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone. And so was Katie Carew.

She’d turned into somebody else.

But who?

That was the first thing Katie heard as the magic wind faded away. Slowly, she opened her eyes. There, on the table in front of her was a big wire cage with three white mice inside.

Katie gulped. She was standing in the middle of the science fair, right in front of Selena’s display table.

That could mean only one thing.

The magic wind had turned Katie into Selena!

Katie frowned. This was so not fair! She didn’t want to be Selena. She wanted to be Katie Carew. She wanted to be able to stand in front of her lightning bug poster, and proudly tell her parents and the other visitors all about what lightning bugs eat and where they live.

She did not want to be making these poor mice run through mazes.

But Katie
was
Selena now. And as much as she hated the idea, she was going to have to do Selena’s project.

Slowly, Katie lifted off the top of the cage and reached her hand in. The mice scurried away from her grasp.

I was right
, Katie thought.
They
don’t
want to do this.
Suddenly she didn’t care if Selena had a project at the fair or not. All she cared about was the mice. And
they
sure looked miserable all huddled up in a corner of the cage.

Katie took her hand out of the cage stood back. Almost immediately, the mice began running around and around. In less than a second they had scurried up the wire side of the cage and out the top.

Katie watched as the three mice ran free around the table. Katie smiled. “I knew you didn’t want to run in those mazes,” she told them. “You just wanted to play.”

Suddenly, all three mice scurried down one of the table legs and onto the floor.

“Wait,” Katie called after them. “You were just supposed to hang out on the table for a while!”

But mice don’t just hang out. They run . . . fast. Katie grabbed the cage and took off. “Wait!” she cried out again as she raced to catch the speeding mice.

But the mice were faster than Katie was. They sped off in different directions around the gym.

“EEEEEEEK!!!!!! A mouse!” A third-grader shouted out.

“Aaaah! There’s a mouse on my project!” Miriam Chan screeched.

Everyone seemed to be screaming at once.

Mrs. Hauser, a sixth-grade teacher, jumped up on a chair. “Selena, catch those mice!” she demanded.

“I’ll help you, Selena!” Mickey called to Katie. “I see one over there!” He slid across the floor.

“Ouch!” Justine shouted as Mickey hit her in the leg. “Watch where you’re going.”

“Sorry,” Mickey apologized. “You were in my way.”

“Selena, there’s a mouse under the fossil table!” Zack screamed.

Katie jumped over to where two scared third-graders were standing at a table behind their fossil projects. She looked down. Sure enough, there was a mouse sitting beneath the table.

“Get that thing away from me!” one of the third-graders shouted.

“Shhh . . .” Katie warned. She crouched down and reached for the mouse. “You’ll scare the—”

Crash!
As she bent down to catch the mouse, Katie hit one of the plaster fossils with her rear end. The fossil fell and broke into three pieces. The mouse ran off in fear.

It seemed like everyone was screaming at the same time. Katie didn’t know who to listen to.

“Selena Sanchez, you need to get those mice under control!” Mrs. Hauser shouted from high atop her chair.

“I think I saw one head under the radiator,” Mr. Kane, the school principal, called out. He raced across the gym, leaping over the cracked fossil on the floor, and . . .
clang
! He banged his head against a metal volleyball pole. “Ow,” he moaned, raising his hand to his forehead.

“There goes a mouse!” Justine shouted. She leaped up from behind her rain forest project and tried to grab a mouse. “Whoops!” she exclaimed, as she bumped into Bryce’s cola and tooth experiment.
Splat.
The warm, brown soda spilled all over the gym floor.

“You ruined my project!” Bryce shouted angrily as she bent to recover the tooth. “Justine, you’ll do anything to win a blue ribbon!”

“I was just trying to catch the mouse,” Justine insisted. “Whoa, there he goes again!”

“I got him!” Risa shouted, as she scooped the mouse up. “Oh, yuck. He’s all sticky from the soda. Here, Selena,” she said as she handed Katie the soaked mouse.

“Thanks,” Katie said, placing him safely back in the cage and closing the lid. “Now all I have to do is find the other two.”