Free Gotcha! Gotcha Back! by Nancy Krulik

CHAPTER 1

    Katie Carew stared at the brightly colored postcard in her hands. “Lucky Grandma!” she told her brown and white cocker spaniel, Pepper. “I’d love to see a monkey in the wild. The only ones I’ve seen have been in zoos.”
    Pepper wagged his tail, and then ran off to play with his pal, Snowball, the white puppy who lived next door.
    Katie knew all about how much fun vacations could be. She and her parents had spent their last vacation in Europe. They had gone to England, France, Spain, and Italy. Katie had met artists, dancers, gondoliers, and a very funny palace guard. It had all been so exciting.
    But that was then. This was now. And now wasn’t very exciting at all.
    Katie took the rest of the mail from the mailbox and started to walk back toward her house. She looked around. Her front yard wasn’t nearly as pretty as the picture of the jungle on her grandmother’s postcard. There was only one tree on Katie’s lawn, and there were no monkeys or macaws in its branches.
    In fact, the only animals in sight were Pepper and Snowball. They were busy chasing their tails.
    Dogs certainly weren’t as interesting as monkeys and macaws.
    Just then, Katie’s good friend George Brennan came riding by on his skateboard.
    “Hey, Katie Kazoo, what’s new?” he asked Katie, using the way-cool nickname he had given her.
    “Nothing,” Katie answered. “Everything’s just the same.”
    “Tell me about it,” George said. “This town is so boring.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slim newspaper. “Did you see this week’s copy of the Class 4A Express?”
    “I forgot to take one when I left school today,” Katie answered.
    “That’s okay, you can have mine,” George told her, handing over the paper.
    “ ‘Beginning Band Plays ”Mary Had a Little Lamb“ in School Concert,’ ” Katie read one of the headlines. “ ‘Fourth Grade Plays Volleyball,’ ” she added, reading another.
    “Can you believe that’s the big news in our class?” George asked. “I sure wish things could be more interesting around here.”
    Katie gulped. George had just made a wish. That was not a good thing at all.
    Wishes were dangerous.
    Katie learned all about them on one really bad day back in third grade. That day she had dropped the ball and lost a football game for her team. Then she’d gotten mud all over her favorite pants. Worst of all, she’d let out a giant burp in front of the whole class. That had been so embarrassing!
    That night, Katie had wished that she could be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star flying overhead, because the next day the magic wind came.
    The magic wind was a big tornado that swirled only around Katie. It was so powerful that it could turn her into somebody else!
    The first time the magic wind came, it turned Katie into Speedy, the class 3A hamster. She’d escaped from her cage and wound up inside George’s stinky sneaker. YUCK!
    Since then the magic wind had been back again and again. One time it turned her into Mr. Starkey, the school music teacher. The band sounded really terrible when Katie was the conductor!
    Another time the magic wind switcherooed Katie into their school principal, Mr. Kane. By the end of the day, the cafeteria was covered in paint, kids were running wild in the halls, and all the electricity had gone out in the school.
    The worst thing about the magic wind was that every time it came, the person Katie turned into got in big trouble. Then it was up to Katie to make things all right again. That wasn’t always so easy.
    Katie didn’t make wishes anymore. They caused too many problems. She figured George probably shouldn’t be making any wishes either.

    “Forget about it, George,” Katie told her friend. “Things in Cherrydale will always be the same. I should know. I have lived here all my life.”
    George shook his head. “Things can change, Katie,” he told her. “Life in Cherrydale could get really