by Nancy Krulik
“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?
Chapter 11
Squeak, squeak, squeak.
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.
Chapter 12
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.”
But that wasn’t going to be easy. The gym was so big. And the mice were so small. How would Katie ever find them?
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! A mouse!” a second-grade boy cried out.
That was how! She would just follow the screams.
“There he is, Selena!” Bryce shouted, leaping over one of the tables. And racing toward the second-grade solar system projects. “I’ll grab him.”
“Careful, Bryce!” Katie shouted out. “You’re going to knock over that . . .”
Too late! Bam! Bryce bumped into the solar system made of fruit. The planets tumbled to the floor.
Katie spotted the mouse hiding under the table. She took a step toward him and . . . squish. She stepped on a tomato.
“You just crushed Mars!” the second-grader screamed. He began to sob. “Waaah!”
“Don’t cry,” Katie told him. “You can get another tomato from the cafeteria.”
The second-grader cried harder. His teacher bent down and tried to help scoop up the squashed tomato. The mouse ran off.
“Selena, over there!” Zack cried. “Near the model volcano!” He ran over and reached across the volcano table to catch the mouse.
KABOOM!
Suddenly, there was a loud explosion as the third-grade volcano project erupted, spitting lava high up in the air.
“Boys! What have you done?” Mrs. Derkman shouted.
Katie looked over at her old third-grade teacher. Mrs. Derkman had been standing right next to the volcano when it had erupted. She was covered in ooey, gooey fake lava!
“This is not funny,” Mrs. Derkman scolded the boys.
“It wasn’t us,” one of the third-graders said. He pointed to Zack. “That sixth-grader hit the remote control button.”
“Sorry,” Zack apologized to Mrs. Derkman. “I was trying to catch a mouse. It wasn’t my fault.”
Katie looked around at the soda puddle on the gym floor, the squished tomato, the broken fossil, and the flowing volcano lava.
Zack was right. It wasn’t his fault. It was her fault. All of it.
Just then Mr. Kane walked over to Katie. “Here you go, Selena,” he said, handing Katie
one of the mice. “I caught him under the radiator.”
“Thank you,” Katie said sincerely. She looked at the big, egg-shaped bump above the principal’s eye. “Sorry about your head.”
“I’ll be okay,” he assured her. “Just put this mouse in its cage before anything else happens.”
“Well, at least you got two of them back,” Mickey said to Katie as she placed the mouse in its cage and closed the lid.
“I wonder where the third mouse is?” Zack asked.
Just then, George came running over. He was huffing and puffing really hard. “Selena, I just saw your mouse go out into the hallway. I tried to catch him, but he was too fast. Boy, I hope he wasn’t going into class 4A.”
“Why?” Mickey asked him.
“We have a snake in our classroom.”
“So?” Mickey asked.
“Snakes eat mice!” George sounded very proud to know something a sixth-grader didn’t.
Katie gulped. What if the mouse really was heading for her classroom? She had to save him!
Quickly, she raced out of the gym.
Chapter 13
“If I were a mouse, where would I hide?” Katie wondered as she walked through the empty hallway.
Before Katie could figure that out, she felt a cool breeze blowing against the back of her neck. Seconds later, the breeze turned into a full-fledged tornado that was spinning only around Katie.
The magic wind blew harder and harder. It whistled wildly in her ears, and blew Serena’s long brown hair in her eyes.
And then it stopped. Just like that.
Katie Carew was back.
And so was Selena. She was standing in the hallway next to Katie. “How did I get out here?” she asked. She sounded very confused.
“You were looking for your mouse,” Katie told her.
“Oh, yeah, I remember. Or at least I think I do. It’s all kind of fuzzy,” Selena said quietly.
“Two of the mice are back in their cage,” Katie told her. “We just have to find this one.”
“I kind of remember letting the mice out of their cage,” Selena muttered. “But that doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?” Katie asked her.
“Because I would never do that,” Selena explained. “I always take good care of my pets.”
Katie’s eyes shot open wide. “Your pets?”
Selena nodded. “My mice. Larry, Moe, and Curly. I’ve had them for six months now. And I always keep them safe. At least I did until today.”
Suddenly, Katie felt extra-bad. The mice were Selena’s pets. She obviously loved them a lot. And now Katie had lost one of them. Maybe even for good!
“My poor little mouse,” Selena said. Her eyes welled up with tears. “He’s probably scared, and hungry, and thirsty.”
Hungry. “That’s it!” Katie exclaimed. There was only one place in the school where the mouse would find plenty of food and water. “I’ll bet I know where your mouse is, Selena. Follow me!”
The cafeteria was empty when Katie and Selena arrived. As Selena checked under the tables and chairs, Katie went back to where Lucille, the lunch lady, had set up the food for today’s lunch. The hot food was being kept in the warming trays. The sandwich meats and cheeses were in the refrigerated section.
Katie looked over to where the triangular slices of yellow and white cheese were laid out under plastic wrap. Sure enough, there was a little white mouse standing over the cheese.
Katie stayed very still. She didn’t want to scare him away. After all, she might never find him again. Slowly, she reached toward him.
The mouse’s little ears shot up at attention. He turned and scampered away. But Katie was fast and determined. She reached out with both hands and . . .
Bam!
The tray crashed to the ground. There were pieces of Muenster, American, and Swiss cheese all over the floor.
Katie didn’t care. She’d apologize to Lucille later. She may have dropped the cheese, but she’d caught the mouse!
“Selena!” she called out. “I’ve got him!”
Chapter 14
“Katie, where have you been?” Emma W. asked as Katie walked into the gym. “I’ve been looking all over for you. The flashlight works after all! We just had the batteries in the wrong way.”
Phew! Katie was relieved. After all the excitement, she had totally forgotten about the flashlight.
Katie looked over at Selena’s table. A crowd of kids had formed around her. Katie hoped Selena was okay. She decided to go over and find out.
“Your mice sure caused a mess,” Justine told Selena as Katie walked over to the table.
“It wasn’t their fault. They were just acting like mice,” Selena defended them.
“That’s right,” Katie said, stepping up beside Selena. “If everyone hadn’t been screaming and jumping all around, everything would be fine. You people scared them away.” Suddenly Katie wasn’t so afraid of the sixth-graders. She felt very brave. Especially now that she and Selena were on the same side.
“Don’t blame us,” Justine argued. “Selena is the one who let them out of their cage.”
Katie bit her lip. She knew that wasn’t true.
Just then, Mr. G. walked over. Mrs. Hauser came up behind him with a fresh soda for Bryce’s tooth experiment.
“Katie, you’d better get back to your lightning bug,” Mr. G. said. “The parents will be here any minute.” He frowned slightly at Selena’s sad expression. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Everything’s okay now.”
Mrs. Hauser nodded in agreement. “The fossil is glued back together. The tooth is in a fresh cup of cola. Lucille is going to the cafeteria to get a new tomato for the solar system, and the third-graders have put fresh lava into their volcano,” she said. “But you need to go set up your mazes.”
“I can’t ask my mice to run through mazes now,” Selena told her teacher. “They’re too tired. They’ve been through too much!”
“If you don’t do your experiment, I can’t give you a grade,” Mrs. Hauser reminded her. “You don’t want a zero, do you?”
Selena bit her lip. “No. But I can’t make my mice do this, either.”
Mrs. Hauser thought for a minute. “I understand,” she said finally. “How about you do a research paper instead? Maybe something about animals?”
“Okay,” Selena replied. “I’ll start on it this weekend.”
Wow! Katie was very impressed. Selena loved her mice so much, she was willing to do extra work rather than make them do some more running. Selena really cared about animals and their rights after all.
Katie had been very wrong about Selena. She wished there was some way she could help her.
Chapter 15
“I can’t believe Jessica and I didn’t get a ribbon today,” Suzanne moaned later that afternoon, as she and Katie walked together in the Cherrydale Mall. “We looked so awesome in our ladybug dresses.”
Katie knew that wasn’t the point of a science fair. But she couldn’t explain that to Suzanne. Especially since Katie and Emma W. had won the third-place ribbon for the fourth grade. Suzanne would just think Katie was bragging.
“You want to get a snack?” she asked Suzanne, changing the subject.
Suzanne shook her head. “I’m still full from the pizza we ate for lunch. Did you see the look on George’s face when I slid my slice right under his nose?”
“That was kind of mean,” Katie told her.
“Not as mean as his cheating,” Suzanne answered her.
Katie turned her head. Something exciting caught her eye. Rows and rows of wire animal crates had been set up in the middle of the mall. Inside each crate was a kitten or a cat. Nearby, volunteers were walking dogs. The dogs all wore coats that read, “Please Adopt Me.”
“The Cherrydale Animal Shelter is having one of their pet adoption days!” Katie exclaimed.
“You’re really crazy about that animal shelter,” Suzanne remarked.
“Of course I am. That’s w
here I found Pepper,” Katie reminded Suzanne. “I got him when he . . .”
“. . . was just a puppy,” Suzanne finished Katie’s sentence for her. “I know. Everybody knows. You tell that story all the time.”
Katie couldn’t argue with that. She did talk about Pepper an awful lot. Suzanne didn’t have any pets. She couldn’t understand how special they could be.
But Selena understood. Katie learned that today.
Just thinking about Selena made Katie sad. She was probably sitting in the library working on her research paper. And here Katie was, having fun in the mall.
Just then, one of the volunteer dog walkers strolled near to where Katie and Suzanne were standing. Katie looked at the volunteer with surprise.
“Selena!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here? I thought you would be in the library.”
Selena looked at her curiously. “Hi, Katie,” she said. “Why would you think that?”
“Well, you have that research paper to do and I just thought . . .” Katie began.
Selena frowned. “I know. I have to start on that. But I volunteered to help with the pet adoptions this afternoon. I couldn’t let the animals down.”
“Do you work at the shelter?” Suzanne asked.
Selena nodded. “Just once a week.”
“I didn’t know kids could work there,” Katie said.
“You have to be twelve years old to volunteer,” Selena explained. “I just turned twelve last month.”
“What kind of things do they let you do?” Katie asked.
“I walk the dogs. I play with them a lot, too,” Selena replied.
“That sounds like a great job!” Katie said. “I’d like to do that when I’m twelve.”
“Maybe you won’t have to wait,” Selena told Katie. She pointed over to where some of the puppies were. “Those two boys are your age, and they’re helping out.”
Katie turned and looked toward where Suzanne was pointing. “George! Kevin!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
