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Authors: Nancy Krulik

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BOOK: On Thin Ice
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And Katie was very glad. She was tired of being Kerry Gaffigan.
The magic wind began whirling wildly around Katie. The tornado blew faster and faster, harder and harder.
Then it stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone.
Katie Kazoo was back!
So was Kerry Gaffigan. And boy, did she look confused.
Kerry blinked her eyes a few times and looked around. “How did I get in here?” she murmured.
“You . . . um . . . you wanted some time alone to think,” Katie stammered vaguely.
Kerry squinted a little to get a good look at Katie’s face. “It’s you!” she exclaimed. “The girl with the roses.”
Katie felt really bad about that. “I’m so sorry, Kerry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were allergic to roses. I just wanted to bring you the prettiest flowers I could find.”
“It’s okay.” Kerry glanced down at her wet Snow White dress. “What happened to me?” Kerry asked.
“You had a couple of spills out on the ice,” Katie said, not knowing how else to explain it.
“Then it really happened,” Kerry said slowly. “The ripped magic mirror, the falling cardboard trees, the dwarfs carrying me off . . .”
Katie nodded sadly.
Kerry moaned and held her head in her hands.
“You’ll skate better in the second half of the show,” Katie assured her. “You’re back to your old self now.” Katie sighed. Kerry didn’t know how true that really was.
Kerry shot Katie a look. “Skate? Are you kidding? I’m not going out there again.”
“But you have to. Everyone’s waiting for you,” Katie insisted.
“Everyone’s
laughing
at me,” Kerry corrected her. “I’m a big joke. My career is ruined. I’ll never skate again.”
Katie’s eyes opened wide. She couldn’t believe her ears. Kerry Gaffigan giving up skating? She couldn’t let that happen.
“Kerry, you can’t do that to your fans!” she said.
“What fans? I just lost all of my fans,” Kerry told her.
“No you didn’t,” Katie insisted. “Your fans still love you. They understand that you just had a bad day. They fall, too.”
“Well of course
they
fall,” Kerry said. “They’re just beginners. It’s okay to fall when you’re just starting out.”
“But if you quit after falling a few times, then they might, too,” Katie said. “Remember my friend Emma who said she wants to be just like you?”
Kerry thought about that.
“A
lot
of girls want to be just like you,” Katie continued.
Kerry didn’t say anything. She just bent down and started to take off her skates.
This was bad. Katie could tell. “You’re really not going to skate anymore?” she asked nervously.
Kerry shook her head. Then she grinned. “Not in these skates I’m not. I have different skates for my Alice in Wonderland costume. That’s what I wear in the second act of the show.”
Katie breathed a big sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m so glad!” she exclaimed.
“You’re pretty smart for a kid, you know that?” Kerry said with a grin.
Katie smiled. “I’m smart enough to know I’d better get back to my seat,” she told Kerry. “Because I can’t wait to see you skate in person!”
Chapter 12
“Wasn’t Kerry amazing as Alice in Wonderland?” Emma S. asked Katie, Emma W., and Miriam as the girls stood together on the playground the next morning.
Miriam nodded. “I loved the way she twirled when she was supposed to be falling down the rabbit hole.”
“Spinning is really hard on the ice. It can make you kinda sick to your stomach,” Katie added.
Emma S. looked at her curiously. “How would you know?” she asked her.
Oops. Emma S. didn’t know it was actually Katie who had been spinning with that dwarf yesterday. “It
looks
like it would make you kind of queasy,” Katie corrected herself.
Phew.
That was close.
Just then, George walked over to the girls. “Hey, Katie Kazoo,” he said, holding out a deck of cards. “Pick a card. And don’t show it to me.”
Katie pulled a card from the deck and peeked at it. It was the ace of hearts. “I thought you’d given up on magic,” she said.
“Well, did you read that article about Kerry Gaffigan in the newspaper this morning?” George replied. “She told the reporter that even though she had messed up part of her show, she was never going to give up on skating.”
Katie grinned. She knew why Kerry had said that. But Katie didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter, anyway. All that mattered was that Kerry Gaffigan was still skating, and the Great Georgini was still doing his magic tricks.
Emma S. nodded. “Kerry said you had to learn from your mistakes to make yourself better.”
“Right,” George agreed. “And I’ve learned from
my
mistake. I’m never going to do a magic show with Suzanne again! From now on, the Great Georgini is a solo act.”
“Good idea,” Miriam said with a giggle.
George closed his eyes and looked like he was concentrating really hard. “Yes. In my mind, I can see the card you picked, Katie.” The Great Georgini paused. “You picked the two of hearts.”
Katie shook her head. “Nope. Try again.”
George fingered the cards for a minute. “Oh, wait. It was the
ace
of hearts!”
“You got it!” Katie exclaimed happily.
“Me next,” Emma S. said to George.
As Katie watched George perform his card trick again, she smiled contentedly. It was so nice to have things back to normal again.
Well . . . as normal as things can be when you are always waiting for the next magic wind to arrive.
Going Downhill
Chapter 1
“Cowabunga!” George Brennan shouted as he crouched slightly on his snowboard and took off down the big hill.
“Whoa! Check him out!” Kevin Camilleri, George’s best friend, exclaimed.
“He’s as good as a professional,” Katie Carew said. She watched as George slid downhill faster and faster. She was sure he would fall. But he didn’t. Not once.
“Come on, Katie Kazoo,” Jeremy Fox, one of Katie’s best friends, said. He placed his neon green snow saucer on the snow. “Let’s make a chain.”
“Cool,” Katie agreed, lining her snow saucer up behind Jeremy’s and sitting down.
“Count me in!” Kevin told them. He lined his sled up behind Katie’s saucer.
“Me too!” Emma Weber shouted, placing her sled behind Kevin’s.
“Okay, everybody ready?” Jeremy shouted behind him.
“Oh yeah!” Katie exclaimed. “Let’s go!”
A moment later, the train of sleds and saucers went zooming down the big hill on Surrey Lane. Katie loved sledding. It felt like she was flying without ever leaving the ground! Especially when she went down Surrey Lane—the steepest hill in town!
“Oh, that was a good one!” Jeremy exclaimed as they reached the bottom of the hill. “We went
so
fast.”
“And I got it all on video,” Suzanne Lock said, running over with a small video camera in her hand.
Katie grinned as Suzanne came closer. She was Katie’s other best friend. Katie was glad Suzanne wanted to go sledding, too. Except Suzanne didn’t have a sled with her. All she had was her video camera.
“Where’d you get that?” Jeremy asked Suzanne.
“It was a gift from my uncle,” Suzanne told him. “I just got it yesterday. I’m trying it out today.”
“Cool!” Kevin exclaimed. “Did you get some shots of George going down the hill? He’s amazing on that snowboard.”
At just that moment, George went whizzing by.
“See what I mean?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah,” Suzanne replied. But she didn’t seem nearly as impressed as the other kids were. Instead, she turned her attention to Katie. “Will you tape me making a snow angel?”
Katie took the video camera from Suzanne’s hands. “Sure,” she said. “What do I do?”
“Just look through this little square. Once you can see me, press the red button,” Suzanne said. Then she laid down in the snow and began moving her arms up and down.
BOOK: On Thin Ice
7.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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