“I’m sure I’d hate it, too.”
“You’d likely turn blue.”
Katie shot Maggie a look. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Rhyming.”
Maggie smiled. “I thought you were feeling better.”
“One step at a time. Besides, I’m still kinda bummed that we’re not going to Prague together. But if you can’t go, it’s just as well that I can’t either. It wouldn’t be fun without you either.”
“And Trey can’t go either. It’d be boring with a capital B.”
***
LATER THAT EVENING at dinner in the dining hall, Trey slid into a chair next to Katie and Maggie.
“Where have you been, Trey?” Katie asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he mumbled.
Maggie eyed him closely as he picked at his mashed potatoes. “That bad, huh?”
“The worst. My father is disappointed in me. There are some things worse than being punished, and hearing him say I’ve disappointed him is the absolute worst.”
“So, is he still punishing you by not letting you go to Prague?” Katie asked.
“You think he’d just let me off the hook by simply telling me he’s disappointed? No, he has to show it, too. So, I’m not going to Prague — or anywhere else for a while for that matter.”
Katie tried to encourage him. “At least you’ll have me around. We can get into all kinds of mischief while the class is gone.”
Trey rolled his eyes. “I wish. My father has a special assignment planned for me — one he says I’ll never forget.”
“That could be good, right?” Maggie asked.
“Let’s put it this way — he told my brother the same thing before he dragged him to an opera every day for a week.”
Katie clapped her hands. “Oh, I love the opera.”
Trey shook his head. “I bet you do — but I hate it. I don’t understand anything anyone says and that singing? Why can’t they just sing in English in a normal voice? Is that too much to ask?”
“Then it would be a musical, not an opera,” Katie said.
“Whatever. I think I’ve suffered sufficient punishment for what I did at the gallery that I don’t need to be tortured by going to a bunch of operas.”
Suddenly, everyone heard a faint buzzing sound at the table. Trey began frantically searching through his pockets.
“What is that noise?” Katie asked.
“It sounds like a phone,” Maggie said.
Trey continued to look in all his pockets.
“Trey, do you have a phone?” Katie asked.
Trey nodded as he felt his side pockets in his pants and pulled out the phone.
“But they’re not allowed on campus during the week,” Katie protested. “How did you—”
Trey held up his left index finger toward Katie as if to signal for her to be quiet. He climbed out of his chair before slipping and falling. He skidded several feet before he came to a stop when his head banged into the chair of another student sitting at the table adjacent to them.
Katie and Maggie both giggled. “And to think this is the guy who hacked the Winkleville Art Gallery’s security system,” Katie snipped. They watched as Trey picked himself up and returned to his phone conversation. In a matter of seconds, the angry expression on his face turned to a wide smile. He nodded and then ended the call. He rushed back to his seat.
“What is it?” Katie asked.
“You won’t believe this — my father has changed his mind. He received my report card today and decided that I shouldn’t be punished any more after I made such good grades last term. I’m going to Prague!”
Katie tried to be happy for him. She forced a smile. “That’s great, Trey. I hope you have fun.”
Maggie showed a bit more exuberance. “It’s going to be a fabulous time.”
As they were getting up to put their dishes away, one of the dining hall monitors approached them. “Maggie, you have a message from your mother.” She handed a slip of paper to Maggie and walked away.
Before Maggie finished unfolding it, Katie was begging her to know what the paper said. “What is it? What happened?” Usually, nothing good ever came out of such notes.
Maggie went from a furrowed brown to a huge grin. “My mother wanted to let me know she can’t make it to Milan after all, so I get to go to Prague.”
In a matter of minutes, Katie was forced to fake another congratulations for a friend. “Oh, fun. You and Trey will have such a good time.”
“It won’t be as much fun without you, Katie,” Maggie said.
“You’ll manage,” Katie said as she turned and walked away.
Katie didn’t even make it back to her room before she started to cry. Tears streamed down her face. She was fine with not going on the trip if her best friends couldn’t go. But now they both could — and she’d be in Winkleville, all alone.
“It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” she said.
CHAPTER 8
Grey Skies and a
Sudden Turn of Events
MISS DINGLEDINE BANGED on Katie’s door. “The sun is not waiting for you to get out of bed, Miss Kicklighter. Don’t make me come in there and sing you a song.”
With her hair matted to her face, Katie swung the covers off of her and slammed her feet to the ground. “I’m up!” she yelled. “Happy now?”
“I’ll be back to check on you in five minutes,” Miss Dingledine said from the other side of the door.
Katie wanted nothing more than to pull the covers over her head and stay there all day. The sun may have been peeking over the Catskill Mountains, but it wasn’t smiling on Katie. Nothing felt like it was now.
But the threat of Miss Dingledine singing was enough to make Katie forget — if even for a moment — how she felt. For she knew how she would feel if Miss Dingledine broke into a song outside her door. There was also an accompanying dance, neither of which would endear her to her fellow classmates down the hall.
While Miss Dingledine was a woman of few words, she’d once shared with a student that her dream in life was to sing opera in Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The student decided that information needed to be public, and many “Grumpty Grumps” — as Miss Dingledine called them — took to mocking her through various singing montages. They dressed up like her and swayed back and forth, screeching as they sang. Miss Dingledine chose not to be offended and instead added it to her repertoire. She even wrote a special song for the Grumpty Grumps in Italian, which she sang in operatic style.
However, no amount of showmanship or extra dance moves added by Miss Dingledine could change the fact that she simply couldn’t produce a tune that was pleasant to human ears. While the sound is difficult to describe, Katie once told Maggie that it sounded like a cat with a microphone stuck inside a clothes dryer. It was a sound Katie admitted she never wanted to hear again. The mere threat that Miss Dingledine might sing spurred Katie to move quickly.
But putting her feet on the floor didn’t change her mood. While Katie had never been lumped into the Grumpty Grump Gang, she felt like joining this morning. Instead of mismatching her socks, Katie wore all black socks.
Maggie and Trey gasped when they watched their friend come downstairs for breakfast. “Black socks!” Maggie exclaimed when she saw Katie. She got up from the table and hustled over to Katie to feel her forehead. “Are you ill?”
“I’m sick all right — sick and tired of thinking about how I can’t go to Prague with you and Trey,” she answered.
“Maybe you can go to the opera with my father,” Trey quipped.
“With my luck, I’ll be stuck listening to Miss Dingledine perform her own arias every morning,” Katie snipped.
“Actually, you won’t have to worry about that happening,” Maggie corrected. “Miss Dingledine is going to Prague, too.”
Katie slumped into her chair. “Great. I’ll be here all alone with nothing to do but inspect nature with Trixie.”
&n
bsp; Maggie playfully punched Katie in the arm. “See — it’s not all that bad.”
Katie glared at her and then put her head down on the table. “Why is this happening to me?”
“Well, you can either sulk about it or smile about it — and while neither of them may make you feel better, at least you’ll be pleasant. The Katie I know is Katie With a K, not Katie With a Frown.”
Katie picked her head up off the table and forced a smile at Maggie. “I’ll try it your way and see what happens. But I don’t have to like it.”
***
BY THE AFTERNOON, Katie managed to break out of her funk. She remained disappointed that she would miss the trip to Prague, but she began dreaming about all the fun things she could do without all her classmates around. She wouldn’t admit it, but she started to get a teeny bit excited about what she and Trixie were going to explore while everyone was gone.
Katie settled into her desk for Miss McGuffin’s class and she looked at Maggie. “Thanks for the advice,” she said. “My day is looking much sunnier.”
Maggie smiled and nodded. “It’s all about perspective, Katie Without a Frown.”
While Miss McGuffin began that day’s lesson, Katie drifted off into her own world. All it took was for Miss McGuffin to ask one of the girls in the class named Joan a question. The next thing Katie knew, she was storming the castle gates with Joan of Arc in Medieval times. Katie, along with her trusty sidekicks Joan of Arc and Maggie of Middlesborough, fought to free the unjust imprisonment of Trey the Third.
“Katie … Katie … earth to Katie,” Miss McGuffin called, snapping Katie out of her daydream. “Would you like the join the rest of us here in class?”
Katie blinked and scanned the room. Everyone stared at her; many mouths were agape.
“Uh, yes,” she said, shifting in her desk. “What was the question?”
“I didn’t ask a question,” Miss McGuffin said. “I just wanted to see if you were interested in participating in class with everyone else. You seemed lost in your own little world.”
“I was — uh, I mean, I do. I do want to be in the class. I was just having this dream … oh, never mind.”
Miss McGuffin smiled. “I need you to see me after class, okay?”
Katie nodded. Oh, great, she thought. I’m in more trouble. That’s all I need. I’ll probably be confined to my room the entire time our class is gone to Prague. She looked outside and watched the bright sunshine fade as an enormous cloud enveloped it. Moments later, lightning crackled and the sky fell even darker. It began to rain.
When class finally ended, Katie trudged toward Miss McGuffin’s desk. “Did you want to see me?”
“Have a seat,” Miss McGuffin said.
“Wonderful,” Katie muttered. “The last time anyone told me to have a seat, I learned that my dog was run over.”
“This isn’t that kind of news, Katie,” Miss McGuffin began. “This is actually an apology.”
“An apology? For what?”
“For my poor math skills.”
Katie cocked her head and stared at Miss McGuffin with a confused look on her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about how I calculated your grades. I made a mistake, Katie. You actually made high enough on your test to go on the trip to Prague.”
Katie’s eyes bulged out of her head. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re going to get to join your class on the trip to Prague.”
“Thank you, Miss McGuffin. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Katie raced out of the room, leaped down the steps and unleashed a joyful scream when she finally caught up with Maggie.
“What is going on? What did Miss McGuffin say to you?” Maggie asked.
“She made a mistake on my grades — we’re all going to Prague!”
CHAPTER 9
Surviving Last-Minute
Disasters
WITH THE TRIP A WEEK AWAY, Katie thought constantly about the adventure awaiting her in Prague. What she didn’t think about was packing for the trip — until the night before the class was scheduled to leave.
Maggie sat on her bed, swinging her legs as she watched Katie dash about the room. “Did you remember to pack a fancy hat for when we go out to nice places?”
“Of course,” Katie answered. She dug through her suitcase and pulled out a hat, smashed and bent from the weight of the other items on top of it.
“I’m sure Miss McGuffin will love that,” Maggie quipped.
“If she doesn’t like it, she can buy me a new one,” Katie said. “I don’t care if it looks like I sat on it. It’s my hat and I think it’s stylish.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You can’t possibly think it’s stylish.”
Katie pointed at her socks. “Not everyone thinks these are stylish — but I do. Style is in the eye of the beholder. Isn’t that the saying?”
“I think the saying is, ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’”
“Whatever. I behold this hat to be stylish. You’ll see.”
Maggie laughed. “You’re one of a kind, Katie. Now, what else are you missing off that checklist?”
“Not sure yet. Are you hot?”
Maggie nodded. “I hope it isn’t this hot in Prague.”
Katie dashed across the room and opened the windows. “Now where were we? Oh, yes, I think I’ve got everything. Swimsuit? Check. Fancy hat? Check. Extra shoes? Check.” Then she stopped. “Passport? Passport? Where did I put my passport?”
In a matter of nanoseconds, Katie’s joy ended faster than when Miss Dingledine interrupted her blissful sleep. She darted around the room in search of her very important document. She dug through her bed, tossing pillows and blankets behind her as she looked intently for what was now her most prized possession. She ripped papers out of her desk and threw them in the air.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Katie mumbled to herself. “Where is it?”
“You know you can’t go if you don’t have it,” Maggie said.
“Don’t remind me.” Katie then attacked the closet. Jewelry, shoes, hair clips. It didn’t matter. Anything that wasn’t her passport landed on the floor. She tore through everything as if her life depended on finding it. And in a way, it did. At least, her trip did. Without a passport, she would be left roaming Winkleville with Trixie and trying to avoid Gerald, who wandered the town telling anyone who would listen about the time he was abducted by aliens. Katie was not going to let that happen.
She finally collapsed on the bed and fell backward. She buried her hands in her face and moaned. “What am I going to do?”
Maggie didn’t look too concerned. She smiled and said, “You always figure something out. You’re Katie with a K. You’re not going to let a little problem like this discourage you, are you? Especially when you’re this close to going to Prague on an exciting adventure?”
Katie immediately sat up. “You’re right, Maggie. I’ve already overcome insurmountable odds just to get here. I’m not going to let a little something like a missing passport get me down. Where’s Trixie?”
Maggie bent down and grabbed Trixie, which was sitting on top of Katie’s suitcase. She handed the magnifying glass to her friend.
“We’re going to find my passport if it’s the last thing I do!” Katie announced. “Now, let’s tear this room apart.”
Maggie suggested that they block the room off into squares with tape. Each square would be about two feet wide by two feet deep. They would search every inch of the square until they either found it or didn’t. Then they would move to the next square. At least, that was the plan.
But that all went out the window, quite literally.
They started with a small section near Katie’s desk. Maggie used duct tape to define the searchable area. It wasn’t long before Katie spotted the passport.
“There you are!” Kate said as she reached for it.
Yet, as she did, Maggie sat up and said, “Where?”
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Inadvertently, Maggie bumped Katie, who was reaching for the passport. The next thing they knew, Katie’s passport flew out the window.
“My passport!” Katie cried. She stuck her head out of the window and looked outside to see one of the beloved campus dogs — Buster — out for a stroll. She also saw Buster’s head snap in the direction of her dorm when he heard something rustling in the bushes. Only, it wasn’t rustling. It was Katie’s passport drifting toward the ground.
“We’ve got to get down there quickly!” Katie yelled. Without hesitating, Katie darted for the door, pulling Maggie with her. “We’ve gotta stop Buster!”
“Buster, the dog? I feel like I’m in a fog,” Maggie answered.
“Not now, Maggie. We don’t have time to rhyme.”
Down, down, down the steps they raced. With every second, Katie imagined the worst: Buster slobbering all over the passport like it was a freshly-cooked steak. No, no, no. That’s not going to happen.
Yet, Katie had no idea what would happen. All she knew is that if she didn’t get her passport back, she might be stuck at home in the morning.
Katie hit the door hard, exiting through a stairwell on the side of the building. With Maggie right behind her, the two girls spilled onto the sidewalk. They both laid there for a moment, in shock over their hard landing. The pair moaned as they started to get up.
The pitter-patter of Buster’s feet snapped Katie back into the gravity of the moment. She rolled over and looked up in the direction of the noise.
“Good girl,” Katie said as she reached to pet Buster’s head. The passport appeared coated in drool, but it wasn’t anything that the agent at the airport wouldn’t receive.
But Buster didn’t budge. Instead, he growled. And in a moment, Katie went from depressed to elated to depressed again. Then Buster turned and raced toward a nearby water fountain.
“Let’s go, Maggie. We have to stop him!”
Katie Kicklighter Page 4
