I Hate Rules! (5 page)

The wind began to grow stronger. It whipped around Katie so fast that it made a slight whistling sound as it blew. Katie was scared, but she didn’t cry. Instead, she called out, “Please, please, please let me turn back into me! I just want to be Katie Carew again!”

Then the wind stopped suddenly. Katie looked around. She wasn’t in Mr. Kane’s office anymore. She was back in the cafeteria, where the whole mess had started.

Of course the cafeteria didn’t look like it had back during recess. Now there were paint stains on the walls and pieces of cake ground into the floors.

Katie looked down at her clothes. Instead of Mr. Kane’s white shirt and gray slacks, she was wearing her heart T-shirt and her skirt. She felt the top of her head. She had her hair. Good.

Just then, Suzanne came running up to her. “Where’ve you been, Katie?” she asked. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

Katie wasn’t sure what to say. Suzanne wouldn’t believe the truth even if she told her. Who would?

“Oh, I’ve been around,” Katie said finally.

“This has been some crazy day,” Suzanne said. “Mr. Kane sure surprised everyone with this no rules thing.”

Katie nodded. She had a feeling that no one was more surprised by it than Mr. Kane himself.

“I’m just glad today’s over,” Katie told her. She began to walk toward the front door of the school. It was time to go home.

“By the way, thanks for not telling Mr. Kane that the phone was mine,” Suzanne said, as the two girls walked outside.

“It’s okay,” Katie assured her.

“Maybe we should ask for my phone back,” Suzanne said as the girls left the school. “He said you could have it at the end of the day.”

Katie looked over at the principal. He was sitting on the front steps of the building. He looked like a mess. The parents he was talking to seemed really angry.

“I’d wait until tomorrow, Suzanne,” Katie suggested.

“I don’t understand how you let this happen,” Katie heard Kevin’s mother say.

“I’m not sure, either, Mrs. Camilleri,” Mr. Kane admitted.

“Didn’t you tell the students there were no rules in school?” Mrs. Chan asked.

Mr. Kane looked confused. “I don’t know. I mean, I must have. But I don’t really remember doing it.”

“I think you need a rest, Mr. Kane,” Mrs. Dobbs said in an angry voice. “A long rest.”

Katie gulped. Mrs. Dobbs was the president of the school’s PTA. If she was mad, Mr. Kane could be in real trouble.

The next morning, things on the playground seemed really weird. No one was playing. No one was laughing. No one was saying a word. Instead, the kids were standing in straight lines.

“What’s going on?” Katie asked Manny as she took a place in line.

“Shhh,” Manny whispered. “Do you want to get us in trouble?”

“Trouble?” Katie asked. “School hasn’t even started yet.”

“You. Come here!” A tall, skinny man with a small moustache called out.

“Who’s that?” Katie asked Manny.

Before Manny could answer, the skinny man walked over to Katie. “Why are you talking?” he asked.

Katie didn’t know what to say.

“We have a new rule here, Miss,” the man said. “Students will line up quietly before school.”

“Why?” Katie asked him.

“Because I said so,” he replied. “And I’m your substitute principal, Mr. Ditherspoon. Everyone does what I want them to do.”

Katie didn’t say anything after that.

Mr. Ditherspoon looked at the students lined up before him. “There are going to be a lot of changes here,” he told them. “For starters, there are new hair rules.” Mr. Ditherspoon walked over to Caleb Connor, a sixth-grader who always wore big spikes in his hair. “You may not wear hair gel to school anymore. No one can. And girls with long hair must wear braids.”

Katie didn’t like the sound of that. Her hair was sometimes knotty and kind of curly. That made it really hard to braid.

“There will be no more T-shirts with words and pictures on them, either. Also, no more glitter—on your clothes or your faces. I want plain clothes and clean skin in my school.”

Suzanne looked very upset.Everything she wore had glitter on it. With this new rule, she wouldn’t have any school clothes at all.

“Okay, I want all of you to walk
silently
to class,” Mr. Ditherspoon said as he opened the school doors. “Your teachers will fill you in on the rest of my new rules.”

“You mean there are more?” George blurted out.

Mr. Ditherspoon glared at him. “I’ll be watching you, Mr. Brennan,” he growled.

Katie walked into her classroom, hung up her coat, put her homework on the pile, and sat at her desk. She pulled out a pencil and her notebook. But before she could begin her work, Mrs. Derkman pulled the pencil from her hand.

“This pencil point is too long,” Mrs. Derkman said. She held up a ruler. “Mr. Ditherspoon doesn’t want any pencil point to be more than one quarter inch long.” She picked up Katie’s notebook. “And from now on, every student must have plain black-and-white notebooks.”

Katie looked down. She loved her notebook. On the cover, it had a picture of a puppy and a kitten in a basket. She didn’t want a plain black-and-white notebook.

But that was the rule.

At lunchtime, Katie slowly slid her tray along the line. When it was her turn, she smiled at Lucille the Lunch Lady. “I’ll have the peas, the mashed potatoes, a glass of milk, and some rice pudding.”

Lucille shook her head. “Sorry. You can’t have dessert unless you eat the whole meal. And today we have hamburgers.”

“But I don’t eat meat,” Katie told her.

“Then you don’t eat pudding, either,” Lucille told her. “That’s Mr. Ditherspoon’s rule.”

Katie sighed. “Just the peas, the potatoes, and the milk, then.” She took her tray and walked toward her class’s table.

“Move over,” she whispered to Jeremy. Katie wasn’t sure if they were still allowed to talk at lunch. Nobody else seemed to be saying anything.

Jeremy slid his chair over and made room for Katie. He took his fork and began to mush his peas together with his mashed potatoes.

Just then, Mr. Ditherspoon appeared at his side. “What are you doing with those peas?” he asked.

“Mixing them with my potatoes,” Jeremy explained.

“You can’t do that.”

Jeremy pushed his glasses up on his nose nervously. “But I always eat them that way,” he said quietly.

Mr. Ditherspoon glared at Jeremy. “There’s only one way to eat at this school. And that’s my way. If you want that dessert, you have to eat the hamburger, then the peas, then the mashed potatoes. There will be no mixing foods at my school!”

“Yes, sir,” Jeremy mumbled quietly. He picked up his burger and took a bite.

“And make sure you chew each bite twenty-three times . . . exactly,” Mr. Ditherspoon told him.

Jeremy chewed.

Katie looked around at her friends’ sad faces. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t gotten rid of all the rules at school, Mr. Kane would still be the principal. Things were really horrible now. And there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it.