Free Camp Rules! by Nancy Krulik Page B

be around all this nature. I sure hope we get to camp out one night and sleep under the stars.”
    “With all these bugs?” Chelsea gasped. “Not me. I’ll sleep in here—behind all the screened-in windows.”
    Katie giggled. “You remind me of my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Derkman,” she told Chelsea. “She’s really afraid of bugs. You should have seen her when we went on our science-camp trip. She had a million cans of bug spray with her.”
    “Did it help?” Gianna asked.
    Katie nodded. “The bugs stayed away. But she got poison ivy instead!”
    Gianna, Chelsea, and Rainbow all laughed, hearing that.
    “I hate to break up the gabfest, girls,” Shannon said with a smile. “But it’s time to head over to the mess hall for some lunch.”
    “I hope it’s something good,” Rainbow said.
    “You wish!” Alicia groaned.
    Katie gulped. “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t wish anything!” she shouted out.
    The girls in the bunk all stared at her.
    “What’s wrong with wishes?” Rainbow asked her, looking puzzled.
    Katie frowned. What was wrong with wishes?
    A lot.

Chapter 3
    It all started one horrible day back in third grade. Katie had lost the football game for her team. Then she’d splashed mud all over her favorite jeans. But the worst part of the day came when Katie let out a loud burp—right in front of the whole class. It had been so embarrassing!
    That night, Katie wished to be anyone but herself. There must have been a shooting star overhead when she made the wish, because the very next day the magic wind came.
    The magic wind was like a really powerful tornado that blew only around Katie. It was so strong, it could blow her right out of her body . . . and into someone else’s !
    The first time the magic wind appeared, it turned Katie into Speedy, the hamster in her third-grade class. Katie spent the whole morning going round and round on a hamster wheel and chewing on Speedy’s wooden chew sticks. They tasted terrible, but Katie couldn’t help herself. That’s what hamsters did.
    The magic wind didn’t just turn Katie into animals, though. One time it came and turned her into T-Jon, the rapper in the Bayside Boys. Katie wasn’t very good at writing rap music. She’d almost broken up her favorite music group!

    And that wasn’t the only time the magic wind had caused a musical mess. At the beginning of fourth grade, the magic wind had turned Katie into Mr. Starkey, the school music teacher. The school band had never sounded as bad as when Katie was conducting! It was so awful that all the new kids in the band wanted to quit.
    And then there was the time the magic wind came to the Cherrydale Mall and—one, two, switcheroo—changed Katie into Cinnamon, the owner of the candy store. Katie had almost ruined Valentine’s Day for everyone by putting the wrong messages on the candy hearts. By the time Cinnamon turned back into herself, everyone was mad at her, and at each other. But Cinnamon couldn’t remember why.
    That was one of the weird things about the magic wind. The people Katie turned into never really remembered too much about what had happened to them.
    But Katie never forgot. Which was why she hated wishes so much.
    Right now the kids in the bunk were all staring at her, waiting for some explanation of why she had shouted like that. But Katie couldn’t tell them the truth. They’d never believe her. Katie wouldn’t have believed it, either, if it hadn’t kept happening to her.
    “I just meant that we’re all so hungry, we’ll eat anything they put in front of us,” Katie explained to her new bunkmates.
    There. That sounded sort of believable.
    “It’ll be pizza bagels,” Gianna told her. “It’s always pizza bagels on the first day.”
    “What are pizza bagels?” Chelsea asked.
    “They put some cheese and tomato on top of a half a bagel and then cook it in the oven,” Gianna explained. “They’re kind of soggy, but not too awful.”
    “Oh good,” Rainbow said.