I Hate Rules! (2 page)

Suzanne looked at Katie and bit her lip. She didn’t move. It looked like she was frozen.

“Suzanne, you heard me.” Mrs. Derkman held out her hand.

Suzanne stood up. She walked slowly toward the front of the room. All the kids were staring. All except Katie. She couldn’t even look at her.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Derkman said when Suzanne handed her the note. “Please go back to your seat.”

Katie breathed a sigh of relief. That wasn’t so bad.

But Mrs. Derkman wasn’t finished. She opened the note and began to read it . . .
out loud!

“My mother bought me these horrible pink flowery underpants. They’re for babies.” Mrs. Derkman read Suzanne’s words.

Suzanne buried her head in her arms.

“Do you have to wear them?” Mrs. Derkman continued, reading Katie’s part of the note.

“I’m wearing them right now.” Mrs. Derkman said, as she read what Suzanne had just written.

The teacher looked at Suzanne and Katie. “I don’t think that was so important that it couldn’t wait until lunch. Do you girls?”

At first no one in the class said anything. Then, a few of the boys started to giggle. Soon, everyone was laughing really hard.

“Pink flower underpants,” Manny Gonzalez howled. “Real stylin’, Suzanne!”

“I see England, I see France, I see Suzanne’s flower underpants,” George began to chant.

Suzanne looked like she was about to cry. “I wish I could hide under a big rock,” she moaned quietly.

Katie looked up at the ceiling. What if a giant rock really did come falling down? What if it landed right on Suzanne’s head?

But no rock fell from the sky. In fact, nothing happened at all. Katie breathed a sigh of relief. Suzanne had been lucky. Her wish hadn’t come true.

Katie knew all about wishes that came true. She knew you had to be careful what you wished for. Not all wishes turned out great.

It had all started one really bad day. Katie had ruined her favorite jeans and burped in front of the whole class. Katie had wished that she could be anyone but herself.

There must have been a shooting star flying overhead or something when Katie made her wish because the very next day, a magic wind blew. It was like a tornado that stormed just around Katie. The wind turned Katie into Speedy, the class hamster! That had been awful. Katie had been completely naked—except for Speedy’s fur, of course.

Luckily, Katie had changed back into herself before anyone realized who was really chomping on Speedy’s chew sticks.
Un
luckily, the magic wind returned. That time it turned Katie into Lucille, the school’s lunch lady. She’d had to serve the kids gloppy egg salad and old milk.
Blech!

Even that wasn’t as bad as the time the magic wind turned Katie into Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. Eating cafeteria food tasted good compared to sucking smelly baby formula from a bottle.

The weirdest thing the magic wind ever did was turn Katie into Jeremy Fox. That had been a real mess. Katie hadn’t known whether to go to the boys’ room or the girls’ room. Even worse, she’d almost lost Jeremy as a friend.

The magic wind hadn’t been back for a while. But Katie had a feeling it wasn’t through with her yet. She couldn’t be sure when the wind would come, or who it would turn her into next.

That’s why Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. You never knew what could happen if they came true.

Miriam Chan sat down at the cafeteria table beside her best friend, Mandy Banks. “Come on, let’s do ‘I Wanna Send a Letter,’” she said before she even unpacked her lunch.

Mandy swallowed a bite of her egg salad sandwich and nodded. Then the two girls stood up and began playing a new clapping game.

Everyone watched as Miriam and Mandy played their new game. The girls stamped their feet when they said ‘stamp,’ missed when they said ‘miss,’ blew kisses, snapped their fingers, and clapped their hands.

“Hey, can you teach me that?” Katie asked when the girls finished.

“Sure. I’ll show you after lunch,” Mandy agreed.

“Me too?” Zoe Canter asked.

“Of course,” Miriam said. “We can do it while we watch the four-square championship.”

“I think my mother used to play a game like that,” Suzanne told the others. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. “ I’ll call her and find out.”

But before Suzanne could dial her mother, George grabbed the phone from her hands. He raced to the other side of the table and began to push numbers on the phone.

“Who are you calling?” Suzanne cried.

“It doesn’t matter,” George replied. “I’m just calling anyone.”

“It better not be long distance,” Suzanne told him.

George ignored her. “Hello,” he said to the person who answered the phone. “Is your refrigerator running?” When the person on the other end said yes, George started giggling. “Then you’d better catch it!” he exclaimed.

George tossed the phone to Katie. “You’ve got to hear this, Katie Kazoo!” he shouted.

Katie reached up and caught the phone. She could hear the woman screaming on the other end. “You shouldn’t make phony phone calls,” Katie told George.

“Especially on
my
phone,” Suzanne added.

Just then, Mr. Kane, the principal, walked over to their table. “What have you got there, Katie?” he demanded.

Katie gulped. He sounded really mad. “It’s a phone,” she said quietly.

“I can see that,” Mr. Kane said. “It’s against the rules for students to bring cell phones to school.”

“This isn’t . . .” Katie was about to say that the phone wasn’t hers. Then she looked at Suzanne. She seemed like she was about to cry. Katie just couldn’t tell Mr. Kane that the phone belonged to Suzanne. Suzanne had had a bad enough day—with her flower underpants and all.

Mr. Kane took the phone from Katie’s hands. “You’ll get this back at the end of the day.”

“Yes sir,” Katie said quietly. She turned to sit back in her seat.

But Mr. Kane wasn’t finished. “You broke the rules, Katie,” he continued. “You’ll have to miss recess today. You can spend the time thinking about why we have rules in school.”

Mr. Kane walked away. Katie could feel her face getting redder and redder. Everyone was staring at her.

And it wasn’t even her fault.

The worst part was now she wouldn’t get to learn Mandy and Miriam’s clapping game. Everyone would know it but her.

“I hate rules!”
Katie declared angrily.

Katie sat at the empty cafeteria table and looked toward the window. The sun was shining brightly. She could hear the other kids playing outside. They sounded like they were having a lot of fun.

The weather was so nice that Mrs. Derkman had gone to sit on the steps just outside the cafeteria door. That way, she could be outside and still make sure George and Katie didn’t get out of their punishment.

Katie took a big, angry bite from a carrot stick. This whole thing was so unfair!

“Hey, Katie Kazoo, how come you can’t eat carrots with fingers?” George shouted. He was sitting at a table all the way on the other side of the room.

“Why?” Katie answered.

“Because carrots don’t
have
fingers!” George laughed hard at his own joke.

Katie didn’t laugh at all. She was too mad. This was all George’s fault. “Which end of a carrot is the left end?” George tried another joke.