Be Nice to Mice Read Online Free Page B

shouted as Mickey hit her in the leg. “Watch where you’re going.”
    “Sorry,” Mickey apologized. “You were in my way.”
    “Selena, there’s a mouse under the fossil table!” Zack screamed.
    Katie jumped over to where two scared third-graders were standing at a table behind their fossil projects. She looked down. Sure enough, there was a mouse sitting beneath the table.
    “Get that thing away from me!” one of the third-graders shouted.
    “Shhh . . .” Katie warned. She crouched down and reached for the mouse. “You’ll scare the—”
    Crash! As she bent down to catch the mouse, Katie hit one of the plaster fossils with her rear end. The fossil fell and broke into three pieces. The mouse ran off in fear.

Chapter 12
    It seemed like everyone was screaming at the same time. Katie didn’t know who to listen to.
    “Selena Sanchez, you need to get those mice under control!” Mrs. Hauser shouted from high atop her chair.
    “I think I saw one head under the radiator,” Mr. Kane, the school principal, called out. He raced across the gym, leaping over the cracked fossil on the floor, and . . . clang ! He banged his head against a metal volleyball pole. “Ow,” he moaned, raising his hand to his forehead.
    “There goes a mouse!” Justine shouted. She leaped up from behind her rain forest project and tried to grab a mouse. “Whoops!” she exclaimed, as she bumped into Bryce’s cola and tooth experiment. Splat. The warm, brown soda spilled all over the gym floor.
    “You ruined my project!” Bryce shouted angrily as she bent to recover the tooth. “Justine, you’ll do anything to win a blue ribbon!”
    “I was just trying to catch the mouse,” Justine insisted. “Whoa, there he goes again!”
    “I got him!” Risa shouted, as she scooped the mouse up. “Oh, yuck. He’s all sticky from the soda. Here, Selena,” she said as she handed Katie the soaked mouse.
    “Thanks,” Katie said, placing him safely back in the cage and closing the lid. “Now all I have to do is find the other two.”

    But that wasn’t going to be easy. The gym was so big. And the mice were so small. How would Katie ever find them?
    “Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh! A mouse!” a second-grade boy cried out.
    That was how! She would just follow the screams.
    “There he is, Selena!” Bryce shouted, leaping over one of the tables. And racing toward the second-grade solar system projects. “I’ll grab him.”
    “Careful, Bryce!” Katie shouted out. “You’re going to knock over that . . .”
    Too late! Bam! Bryce bumped into the solar system made of fruit. The planets tumbled to the floor.
    Katie spotted the mouse hiding under the table. She took a step toward him and . . . squish. She stepped on a tomato.
    “You just crushed Mars!” the second-grader screamed. He began to sob. “Waaah!”
    “Don’t cry,” Katie told him. “You can get another tomato from the cafeteria.”
    The second-grader cried harder. His teacher bent down and tried to help scoop up the squashed tomato. The mouse ran off.
    “Selena, over there!” Zack cried. “Near the model volcano!” He ran over and reached across the volcano table to catch the mouse.
    KABOOM!
    Suddenly, there was a loud explosion as the third-grade volcano project erupted, spitting lava high up in the air.
    “Boys! What have you done?” Mrs. Derkman shouted.
    Katie looked over at her old third-grade teacher. Mrs. Derkman had been standing right next to the volcano when it had erupted. She was covered in ooey, gooey fake lava!
    “This is not funny,” Mrs. Derkman scolded the boys.
    “It wasn’t us,” one of the third-graders said. He pointed to Zack. “That sixth-grader hit the remote control button.”
    “Sorry,” Zack apologized to Mrs. Derkman. “I was trying to catch a mouse. It wasn’t my fault.”
    Katie looked around at the soda puddle on the gym floor, the squished tomato, the broken fossil, and the flowing volcano lava.
    Zack was right. It wasn’t his fault. It