Free Karate Katie by Nancy Krulik Page A

already warming up when Katie and George reached the field.
    Jeremy Fox was busy stretching on the ground. He looked up and smiled. “Hey, Katie,” he said. “Are you ready for the meet?”
    Katie nodded. “I think so. I’m doing the long jump today.”
    “Awesome!” Jeremy exclaimed. “That’s your best event. You jumped really far during the last practice.” He glanced over at George, who had a very angry look on his face. “What’s wrong with you?” Jeremy asked.
    “Grrrr,” George growled.
    “He’s mad because Kevin quit the track team. Now he has to run the relay race with someone else,” Katie explained.
    “Oh,” Jeremy said. “That stinks.”
    “Grrrr,” George growled again.
    Just then, Katie heard someone call her name from across the field.
    “Hi, Katie!” Suzanne Lock shouted.
    Katie laughed when she saw what Suzanne was wearing. Suzanne always managed to make her uniform look just a little bit different from everyone else’s. Today she was wearing red and white ribbons in her hair. She had also used fabric paint to draw a red cherry on the sleeve of her T-shirt.
    “Hey, Suzanne,” Katie greeted her. “Nice shirt.”
    “Thanks,” Suzanne said. “The cherry is for Cherrydale Elementary School.”
    “Coach Debbie’s not going to like it,” Jeremy told Suzanne. “She wants all of our uniforms to look the same.”
    “I never look the same as anyone else,” Suzanne told him.
    Katie had to agree with that. Suzanne was definitely different.
    “Grrr,” George growled again. He was even too angry to make a joke about the cherry that was painted on Suzanne’s shirt.
    “What’s with him?” Suzanne asked.
    “Kevin quit the track team,” Katie explained.
    “Oh. You just found out. I knew about that yesterday ,” Suzanne boasted. “Kevin’s mother told my mother that he likes karate class better. That’s why he quit.”
    “But he made a promise to be part of the track team,” George told her. “You don’t just break a promise. Now I have to run the relay without him.”

    “Oh, big deal,” Suzanne said. “You can run with someone else.”
    “It’s not the same,” George moaned.
    Suzanne shook her head. “You whine just like my baby sister,” she told him.
    Katie gulped. This was getting ugly. Suzanne got on George’s nerves even when he was in a good mood. And today, George was in a bad mood. There was no way he was going to put up with Suzanne being mean to him.
    “I wish you would just shut up!” George shouted at Suzanne. “Forever!”
    Katie gasped. George had just made a wish. A really mean wish. George had done a terrible thing.
    But Katie couldn’t really be angry with him. George hadn’t known what he was doing when he said that. He was just screaming because he was angry. He had no idea about the power of wishes.
    How could he? Katie hadn’t known about it, either—until the day the magic wind came along.
    It had all started one really bad day last year when Katie was in third grade. She’d had a terrible day. She’d lost the football game for her team, gotten mud all over her favorite pants, and burped really loud in front of the whole class.
    That night, Katie wished she could be anyone other than herself.
    There must have been a shooting star overhead when she made that wish, because the very next day the magic wind came. It turned Katie into Speedy, the hamster in her third-grade classroom! Katie spent the whole morning going around and around on a hamster wheel and gnawing on chew sticks!
    The magic wind came back again and again after that. Sometimes it changed Katie into other kids, like Jeremy, Suzanne, and even Suzanne’s baby sister, Heather. Other times it turned her into adults—like Cinnamon, the woman who owned the candy store in the Cherrydale Mall. What a mess that had been! Katie had accidentally sent candy hearts with mean messages to some of her friends at school. She’d almost ruined Valentine’s Day forever!
    Another time