by Nancy Krulik
Suzanne rolled her eyes. “Yeah right,” she said. “You two think you know everything about cruise ships.”
Just then, Lori walked over. “Are you all ready to skate?” she asked the Minnows.
“Is there such a thing as a skating rink with plastic ice?” Suzanne asked.
“Not on this cruise line,” Lori assured her. “But other cruise ships do have synthetic rinks. They are plastic.”
“See?” Stan and Dan said to Suzanne.
Suzanne didn’t answer. Instead, she twirled around and let Lizzie admire her skating skirt again.
“Okay, everyone,” Lori said cheerfully. She threw open the doors to the rink. “Let’s skate!”
A few minutes later, Katie had her skates laced up, and she was on the ice. She was surprised at just how much skating on an indoor rink inside a cruise ship felt like skating outside at the Cherrydale Rink. It was still cold, and the ice was still wet. And Katie’s rear end still hurt when she fell.
“That’s the third time you’ve fallen,” Suzanne said as she watched Katie pull herself up off the ice. “I haven’t fallen once yet.”
Katie knew that was because Suzanne hadn’t moved away from the rail. She was just standing there, smiling as the other kids skated by.
“Come on, Suzanne,” Lizzie called to her. “Skate with me.”
Suzanne didn’t answer her at first. Katie could tell she was hoping Lizzie would go off with someone else.
“I don’t think Suzanne knows how to skate,” Dan said.
Stan agreed. “Suzanne doesn’t do any kind of sports.”
Katie wanted to see how Suzanne was going to react to that. Stan had practically dared her to skate. Katie knew Suzanne could never refuse a dare.
“Oh yeah?” Suzanne said to Dan and Stan. “Watch this.” And with that, she started skating around the ice. She skated slowly at first, and then she picked up speed to try to keep up with Lizzie.
“See?” Suzanne asked Stan and Dan. “I can skate as well as anybody. It’s not hard. You just put one foot in front of the other and … WHOOPS!”
Boom. Suzanne landed with a thud.
“Ouch!” Suzanne exclaimed. “This ice is hard. And cold.”
Suzanne crawled over to the rail and picked herself up. The back of her skirt was all wet.
At just that minute, Suzanne’s parents and baby Heather arrived. They wanted to see the girls skate. Heather took one look at Suzanne’s wet rear and started to giggle.
“Suzanne, wet,” she said. “Suzanne, diaper.”
“I DO NOT NEED A DIAPER!” Suzanne shouted back at her little sister.
Everyone skating at the rink stopped and stared at her. “Well, I don’t,” she grumbled angrily as she stormed out of the rink. “Sheesh.”
Chapter 12
“I am sick of sports,” Suzanne grumbled as the Carews and Locks were eating dinner in the cruise ship dining room. “It’s all we ever do in that stupid Cruisin’ Kids Club. Today we played HORSE on the basketball court, and then we had those silly relay races in the pool. Why would anyone expect me to be able to push a ball down to the deep end with my nose?”
“I thought the relay races were fun,” Katie said.
“Yeah, but you don’t care about looking like a fool,” Suzanne said. “I can’t do that. You never know when you’re going to run into someone from a modeling agency. What if there’s an agent right here on the boat, and he saw me pushing a ball with my nose? He’d never hire me.”
Katie doubted there was anyone who worked at a modeling agency on the cruise ship. But Suzanne had been acting so mean during this whole cruise, Katie didn’t really feel like talking to her about this or anything else.
“I don’t know why we can’t do something really fun,” Suzanne continued. “Like sing karaoke at the karaoke café. I could sing a Bayside Boys song. I bet everyone would love to hear that.”
Katie wasn’t so sure. She’d heard Suzanne sing.
“The karaoke café is just for grown-ups,” Suzanne’s mother told her.
“Oh. Well, I don’t need a café to do karaoke.”
Suddenly Suzanne stood up and began to sing. “If you go, I’ll miss you. If you stay, I’ll kiss you. Cause you’re my girl, girl.” She stopped and looked at everyone at the table. “See? I had a lot of fun doing that. Don’t you think the kids in the club would love it?”
The Carews and Locks just stared at her. No one knew what to say.
“Uh, sure,” Katie said finally. “Karaoke is always fun.”
“I’ll bet you girls are excited about the midnight chocolate buffet,” Katie’s dad said. Then he smiled at Suzanne. “That has nothing to do with sports. Unless eating has become a sport.”
Suzanne and Katie giggled.
“I’m definitely excited!” Katie exclaimed. “Only I can’t decide.”
“Decide what, Kit Kat?” her mother asked her.
“If I’m more excited about eating all kinds of chocolate or about being allowed to stay up past midnight,” Katie answered.
The grown-ups all laughed.
“I’ve been up past midnight before, haven’t I, Mommy?” Suzanne boasted.
“I don’t remember that,” her mother replied.
“Sure you do,” Suzanne said. “That time we went to see the Christmas show at the Cherrydale Arena. We got stuck in all that traffic on the way home and didn’t get home until midnight.”
“Oh, right,” Mr. Lock said. “It was before Heather was born. You fell asleep in the car, and I had to carry you inside.”
Heather perked up at the sound of her name. “Me,” she said. “Me.”
“No, Heather,” Suzanne told her little sister. “We were talking about me.” She turned her attention back to her dad. “I woke up when you were carrying me,” Suzanne reminded him. “And that was after midnight. So that counts.”
Suzanne’s dad laughed. “I guess so,” he agreed.
“Maybe I’ll pass on dessert at dinner,” Katie’s mom said. “Save my sweet tooth for the chocolate buffet.”
“The ship hired a chocolate artist from France to carve all the sculptures,” Mrs. Lock told everyone. “His name is Chef Pierre Éclair, and apparently he can carve just about anything from chocolate. From the pictures I saw, some of those statues could be in a museum.”
“Chocolate statues?” Katie asked excitedly. “Wow! That sounds like my kind of museum.”
“Mine too,” Suzanne agreed. She thought for a minute. “I wonder if Chef Pierre needs a model for his statues. The statues in the Cherrydale Art Museum are all based on real artists’ models.”
“I think the chocolate statues here are mostly of fish and whales and dolphins,” Suzanne’s mom told her. “Things you see in the sea. It’s a cruise, after all.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Suzanne said.
“Oopsie!” Heather exclaimed suddenly. She looked down at her lap. There was pizza all over her flowery dress. “Pizza, bye-bye.”
“Oooh! Gross!” Suzanne shouted. “Heather, you are such a pig!”
“Want pizza!” Heather shouted. “More pizza.” She started to cry.
“Suzanne, can you cut one of your slices of pizza in half and give her some?” Suzanne’s mom asked.
“Why should I have to do that?” Suzanne asked. “It’s not my fault she’s a pig.”
“More pizza! More pizza!” Heather wailed.
“Suzanne, please,” her mother pleaded. “Just share the pizza. It’s easier to compromise with Heather than listen to her cry.”
“I am sick of sharing and compromising!” Suzanne grumbled as she cut a slice of pizza for her little sister. “There isn’t one thing on this cruise that’s just for me. I’m really sick of it! Something around here has to change!”
Uh-oh. Katie didn’t like the sound of that. That sounded like trouble.
Chapter 13
But Katie wasn’t thinking about trouble when she, Suzanne, and Lizzie walked into the main dining room at midnight. All she
could think about was chocolate!
“Wow!” Katie exclaimed. “This is amazing!”
Everywhere she looked in the dining room she saw chocolate. White chocolate swans. Milk chocolate dolphins. Dark and white chocolate whales. They were beautiful.
“I can’t believe my mom and dad are at a show,” Lizzie said. “Who would want to miss this?”
“Our parents are at the show, too,” Suzanne told Lizzie. “But that’s over by twelve thirty. They’ll get to eat plenty of chocolate.”
“Boy, I wish Cinnamon could see this,” Katie said. “I thought her candy store was magical. But this is incredible.”
“It’s like walking into a game of Candy Land,” Suzanne agreed.
“Didn’t you love that game?” Lizzie asked Suzanne.
“I did,” Suzanne said. “And I was very good at that game.”
Katie bit her lip and tried not to laugh. Being good at Candy Land wasn’t hard. It was all luck. “Ooh, I’m dying to taste that white chocolate,” she said, trying to change the subject.
“Oh, you’ll have to wait for zat,” a man in a white coat and a chef’s hat said with a French accent.
“Why?” Katie asked. “Isn’t this the midnight chocolate buffet?”
“Eet eez,” the man said. “But for zee next hour, people are only allowed to take peectures of zee chocolate.” He smiled at Katie. “Take out your camera. Make a memory.”
But Katie didn’t take out her camera. “A whole hour?” she asked the man in the hat. It was so late, and she was so tired. “But by then it will be one in the morning. And I’m tired already. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay awake that long.”
“That’s because you wore yourself out doing sports all day,” Suzanne told her. “I told you karaoke would have been better.”
“Well, I guess I can wait up if it means I can try some of that chocolate whale,” Katie said.
“Oh, we do not actually cut up zee sculptures,” the man in the chef’s hat said. “We refrigerate zem and use zem as decorations for zee rest of zee cruise. Only zee small candies and pastries are for eating. You can have chocolate tarts right after I, Chef Pierre Éclair, feeneesh carving a sculpture in zee chocolate.”
“You are Chef Pierre Éclair?” Suzanne asked him.
Chef Pierre Éclair stood a little taller. “Oui. Zat eez me.”
Suzanne gave him a look. “You talk funny,” she said.
Chef Pierre didn’t answer. Instead, he turned and walked away, mumbling something in French under his breath.
As Chef Pierre left, Katie frowned. “Pastries? That’s no big deal. They served those same pastries for dessert at dinner tonight. I already had a chocolate tart.”
Just then, Carly came running over.
“Hi!” she said. “Are you guys here to see the chocolate-carving demonstration? Chef Pierre is about to carve something out of a big block of chocolate. Right here. In front of everyone. I wonder what he’ll make. Do you think it will be a fish? Or a sea anemone? Or a mermaid? Oooh. I hope it’s a mermaid. I love their tails and the way they—”
“It seems so unfair to have all this yummy chocolate around just to look at,” Katie complained. She yawned. “I’m just going to go back to my cabin and go to sleep.”
“Katie’s just not used to staying up late,” Suzanne told Lizzie and Carly. “But midnight is early for me.”
Carly and Lizzie looked really impressed.
“Come on,” Suzanne continued. “Let’s go look around at all the sculptures.”
As Suzanne and the other girls strolled off, Katie headed for the stairs. The hallways were completely empty. Everyone on board the ship seemed to be at the show or the midnight chocolate buffet.
Suddenly, Katie felt a cool breeze blowing on the back of her neck. She looked around. Funny. There were no open windows in the hallway and no air-conditioning grates.
So where was that wind coming from?
Suddenly the breeze began to blow faster and colder until it was no longer a breeze at all. It was a full-fledged wind. A whirling, twirling tornado of a wind that was blowing just around Katie.
Uh-oh! This was no ordinary wind. This was the magic wind! It was back. And it was really, really strong. So strong that Katie thought it could blow her halfway across the ocean!
Katie was cold, tired, and really, really scared. She shut her eyes tight and tried very hard not to cry.
The wind blew stronger, whipping Katie’s red hair around her face and blowing the skirt of her blue dress up and around her. Harder and harder it blew, and then …
It stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone. But so was Katie Kazoo. She had turned into someone else. One … two … switcheroo.
But who?
Chapter 14
Slowly, Katie opened her eyes. She looked down. Her red high-top sneakers were gone. They’d been replaced with a pair of white shoes. She wasn’t wearing her blue dress anymore. She was wearing white pants and a white shirt.
She was still on the ship—otherwise she might have thought she’d turned into the ice-cream man who drove down her block in the summer in his big truck.
Not only was Katie still on the cruise ship, but she was back at the midnight chocolate buffet. Everywhere she looked, passengers were smiling at her.
Okay, so now Katie knew where she was. But she still didn’t know who she was.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, our own Chef Pierre will carve a beautiful flying fish from this block of dark chocolate,” someone suddenly announced over a loudspeaker.
Katie looked around to see where Chef Pierre was. A thousand eyeballs stared right back at her.
Okay, how weird was that?
Katie looked away. Then she looked back. All those eyes were still focused on her. That was when Katie noticed the giant block of dark chocolate on the table in front of her. There were all sorts of fancy knives and carving tools beside the chocolate.
Uh-oh. That could only mean one thing: The magic wind had turned Katie into Chef Pierre—just before he was supposed to carve the chocolate into a flying fish.
The only time Katie had ever carved anything was back in summer camp. She’d used a plastic knife to carve some white soap into the shape of a flower. It hadn’t gone very well. And now all these people were expecting her to carve a beautiful flying fish out of chocolate in front of their very eyes!
This was sooo not good!
Katie wanted to run out of the dining room as fast as she could, which would have been a very fourth-grade girl thing to do.
The only problem was, Katie wasn’t a fourth-grade girl anymore. She was Chef Pierre, the chocolate maker on board a giant cruise ship. It wasn’t his fault Katie had turned into him. He shouldn’t have to look like a fool. There was only one thing Katie could do: She was going to have to pick up one of those sharp knives and start carving.
Katie reached down and picked up the knife. She had never seen a knife quite that long or sharp before. She never would have been allowed to handle a knife like that—if she were still Katie. But she wasn’t Katie anymore. She was Chef Pierre. He used knives all the time.
Katie chopped off a big chunk of chocolate from the top of the block.
Whoosh! The chocolate flew off the table and hit a woman in the face.
“Ouch!” the woman shouted.
“S-s-sorry!” Katie apologized. She gave the woman a nervous smile. “I guess you get to eat zee first bite of chocolate tonight.”
A few people laughed. But the woman wasn’t one of them.
Katie was surprised to hear her voice sound so deep. She was also surprised to discover she had a French accent. Of course, that sort of made sense since Chef Pierre was from France. Well, it made as much sense as anything did when the magic wind was around, anyway.
“Send a piece of chocolate over here,” Dan shouted.
“Yeah,” Stan added. “We want to start eating!”
Katie frowned. She knew how they felt. All that yummy
chocolate around and not a bite to eat yet. So Katie looked down at the big block of chocolate and thought about what a flying fish might look like.
Fish had round, smooth faces. Maybe she should start with that. Slowly, Katie began to carve the top of the chunk of chocolate into a rounder shape.
Or at least she tried to. But all she managed to do was hack off some chunks that flew off into the audience, hitting people.
“Hey! You just got chocolate on my new white dress!” a woman shouted out.
“Please step back,” Katie said nervously.
Katie decided to forget about the head and work on the fish’s tail instead.
“I weell carve zee tail now,” she told the audience.
That didn’t work out any better.
“This is stupid,” Katie heard Suzanne say loudly. “I’m leaving.”
“Wait for me,” Lizzie told her.
Katie watched as Suzanne and Lizzie stormed out of the room. Lots of other passengers followed them.
But Katie kept carving. And chocolate kept flying.
“What are you trying to do, kill me?” a woman who got bopped between the eyes said.
Now that was ridiculous. Nobody had ever been killed from flying chocolate.
“What is going on here?”
Suddenly, Katie heard a loud voice bellowing from the back of the room. She looked up and saw the ship’s captain heading right toward her. And boy, did he look angry.
He looked so mad that he made Katie forget that she was supposed to be a grown-up. Instead, she felt like a ten-year-old girl—a sad, scared, embarrassed ten-year-old girl.
So she did a very ten-year-old thing. “Zee demonstration eez over,” she said. Then she dropped her knife and ran out of the room as fast as she could.
Katie ran and ran. She didn’t want to see anyone. And she sure didn’t want anyone to see her. She was crying really hard now. It was embarrassing to have people see you cry. Especially if they thought you were a famous chef from France.
Finally, Katie found an empty pantry in the back of the kitchen. There was no one there—just boxes and boxes of dry food. She ran inside and slammed the door shut. Then she sat on the floor and started to cry.
