Out to Lunch (4 page)

After that, it seemed like everyone in the entire cafeteria started throwing food. Stanley tossed his jelly sandwich toward the table where class 3A was sitting. It landed right on Jeremy’s face. Suzanne began to giggle as Jeremy wiped grape jelly from his glasses. Jeremy threw a glob of mashed potatoes at Suzanne. Suzanne rolled a piece of hot dog bun into a little ball and threw it at Jeremy.

Mandy was so busy watching Suzanne and Jeremy that she didn’t notice a hot dog with mustard flying towards her. It landed right on her head. “Oooh! Gross!” she shouted out. The hot dog slid onto the floor below, but the mustard stayed in Mandy’s hair.

Miriam started giggling. Mandy grinned and shook her head wildly—splashing yellow mustard all over Miriam.

Miriam picked up a slice of salami and threw it at Mandy. Mandy ducked. The salami landed on Zoe’s nose.

George laughed so hard he fell off his chair and landed on the floor. Zoe picked up her milk and poured it over George’s head. George wiped the milk from his eyes, smiled, and licked his lips. “Mmmm!” he exclaimed. “Chocolate. My favorite!”

The kids were going wild! They launched lunchmeat. They flung frankfurters. They heaved hamburgers. Everyone and everything was covered with food. The teachers tried to stop the food fight, but they couldn’t. The lunchroom was a mess.

Katie looked up. A canned peach was flying straight at her head. She ducked. The bright orange fruit smacked into the wall behind her and slid toward the floor.

“Look out!” Katie cried as she scooped up two huge handfuls of green Jell-O. “Here comes a Jell-O bomb!” She reached back and threw the glop across the room. The slimy Jell-O flew through the air and landed with a splat . . .
right in the middle of Mr. Kane’s forehead.

Katie had just slimed the school principal!

“Lucille!” Mr. Kane shouted in a very angry voice as he wiped the gooey green stuff from his eyes. “I’ll see you in my office in fifteen minutes!”

The entire lunchroom froze. All eyes were on Katie.

Oh no! Katie had totally forgotten she was the lunch lady. She was in big trouble now. “Yes, sir,” Katie told the principal, in Lucille’s low, grown-up voice.

“As for you students,” Mr. Kane continued, “you will be spending the rest of your day cleaning this cafeteria.”

As Katie walked down the hall, she felt a little sick. She had never been called down to the principal’s office before—ever. Katie had never done anything bad in school in her whole life.
Until now.

Katie knew Mr. Kane was going to give her a terrible punishment. She guessed it wasn’t going to be something easy, like having to stay after school or writing a long apology note. This was going to be some sort of
grown-up
punishment. After all, Mr. Kane thought he was punishing Lucille the lunch lady, not Katie Carew from class 3A.

Suddenly Katie felt a gentle wind nip at the back of her neck. She looked behind to see if someone had just opened a door or a window. No one was there.

Katie wasn’t surprised when the calm wind began to get stronger. She wasn’t shocked when it started blowing wildly around her like a tornado, either. She knew what was about to happen. Katie was going to change into someone else.

“Please, please, please let me turn back into me,” she cried to the wind. “I just want to be Katie Carew. Nobody else.”

The wind kept blowing harder and harder. Katie closed her eyes and held on tight to one of the lockers.

After a few minutes, the tornado stopped. The wind just disappeared, leaving no marks or traces in the hall. Not even one piece of paper was out of place. Slowly, Katie opened her eyes and looked down. Lucille’s gravy-stained white dress was gone. Black jeans and a white sweater had taken its place. Those were the clothes Katie had worn to school that morning. Katie checked her reflection in a nearby classroom window. An eight-year-old girl with red hair, green eyes, and a line of freckles on her nose looked back at her from the glass.

As Katie smiled at her reflection, she heard Mr. Kane’s voice coming from his office.

“Lucille! I don’t know what’s gotten into you!” the principal yelled.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me, either, Mr. Kane,” Lucille said. “Come to think of it, I don’t even know how I wound up here in your office.”

Katie was surprised to hear the lunch lady’s voice. How had she gotten to Mr. Kane’s office so quickly? Did she know what had happened in the cafeteria? Did she remember that Katie had been inside her body?

“One minute, I’m in the cafeteria, handing out food. The next minute I’m standing here,” Lucille continued. “I can’t really remember anything in between.”

“
Handing out food?
” Mr. Kane demanded. “Is that what you call slinging Jell-O across the cafeteria?”

“No sir,” Lucille answered.

“Are you saying you
didn’t
throw food in the cafeteria?” Mr. Kane asked her.

“No. I think I did throw food.”

“You
think
you threw food?” Mr. Kane repeated.

Lucille shrugged. “I’m pretty sure I did . . . I think. I don’t know. You saw me throw it, right?”

Mr. Kane nodded.

“So I must have,” Lucille continued. “It’s all very strange. I guess I just wasn’t myself today.”

“I can’t understand what would make you waste perfectly good food,” Mr. Kane continued.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘perfectly good food,’ ” Lucille argued. “It’s terrible food. We need to give those kids fresh fruits and vegetables, and there need to be more choices on the menu. I can understand why the kids treated the food like garbage. It
is
garbage. Now if I were in charge . . . ”

That made Mr. Kane more angry than ever. “Well, you’re not in charge,” he told Lucille in a furious voice. “In fact, as of right now, you don’t even work here anymore!”

Wow! Lucille had been fired! Now Katie felt really guilty. The food fight wasn’t Lucille’s fault. Katie wished she could run into Mr. Kane’s office and tell him that it was her fault, but she knew the principal wouldn’t believe her. A girl who turned into a lunch lady when a magical wind blew on her? Katie shook her head. Nobody would ever believe a story like that.

Quickly, Katie hurried back to the cafeteria. The least she could do was help the other kids clean up.

That afternoon, Katie sat in her room with the door closed. She didn’t feel very much like going out to play. Even if she did feel like playing, there’d be no one to play with. Most of the kids from school were grounded because they’d been in the food fight.

Still, Katie bet that none of the other kids felt as bad as she did. All they had lost was an afternoon of TV or a trip to the playground. Katie had made Lucille lose her job.

Katie began to cry. As soon as he saw Katie’s tears, Pepper jumped up on the bed and sat beside her. He stuck out his big, red tongue and licked her face. But even a big, sloppy, wet, dog-kiss couldn’t cheer up Katie. She used the back of her hand to wipe Pepper’s slobber from her cheek. Pepper lifted his back paw and scratched at his floppy ear.

Just then there was a knock at the door. “Katie, Suzanne is on the phone,” her mother said.

Katie walked downstairs to the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hi, Suzanne,” she said.

“Hey,” Suzanne answered. “Where were you during the food fight today?”

“I . . . um . . . er . . . I was in the bathroom,” Katie stammered. She hated lying to her friend, but she just couldn’t tell her what had really happened.

“I can’t believe you missed the whole thing,” Suzanne continued. “It was amazing. Food was flying all over the place. I don’t think I’ll ever get the tomato juice off of my sweater. Kevin hit me in the back with a really squishy one!”

“Did it hurt?” Katie asked her.

“Nah,” Suzanne said. “It was too mushy to hurt. It just sort of slid down my back. Besides, I got Kevin back—big time! I poured a container of grape juice over his head! His whole face turned purple. He looked like a space alien.”

Katie giggled, a little.

“I don’t think it’s fair that Mrs. Derkman made you clean up with everyone else. You weren’t even there.” Suzanne continued. “It’s such a bummer that you were in the bathroom! Katie, you always miss the good stuff.”

“I heard all about it, though,” Katie told Suzanne. “The whole school was talking about it when I got back to the cafeteria.”

“But I’ll bet you don’t know what happened
after
the food fight,” Suzanne said.

Katie smiled. Suzanne loved knowing things before anybody else did.

“What?” Katie asked her.

“Guess,” Suzanne answered.

“Come on, Suzanne. Just tell me,” Katie urged.

“Lucille the lunch lady got fired!” Suzanne exclaimed. “Mr. Kane told my mom when she came to pick me up. He said that he couldn’t let a lunch lady who acted like an eight-year-old work in the school.”