No Bones About It by Nancy Krulik

Chapter 1
    “Ouch!” Katie Carew shouted. She turned around and stared at Kevin Camilleri. “Stop kicking the seat!”
    Kevin grinned at Katie. “I didn’t do it. George did.”
    George Brennan was sitting next to Kevin on the school bus. The kids in class 3A were on their way to the Cherrydale Museum of Natural History for a field trip.
    “It wasn’t me,” George assured Katie.
    “It must have been a ghost,” Kevin joked.
    Katie sighed. “I don’t care who it was. Just stop kicking.”
    As Katie turned back around in her seat, one of her best friends, Suzanne Lock, let out a yelp.
    “George, keep your disgusting hands off my ponytail!” she shouted. “It took me hours to get it right. You’re going to ruin it.”
    “You mean you meant for it to look like that?” George asked.
    Suzanne looked at Katie. “Boys!” she huffed. “They’re all pains in the neck.”
    “Jeremy’s not a pain,” Katie pointed out.
    Suzanne rolled her eyes. “He’s your friend, Katie. Not mine.”
    It was true. Jeremy Fox was Katie’s other best friend. But he and Suzanne did not get along at all.
    Katie looked across the aisle. Jeremy was sitting next to Manny Gonzalez. They were making bunny ears over Becky Stern’s head. Katie was glad Suzanne didn’t see them. It would only prove her point.
    “Hey, Jeremy! Manny! Watch this,” George called out. He stuck his tongue out at a car that was passing by.
    “How about this?” Manny said. He squashed his nose and mouth up against the bus window.
    “You guys better stop that,” Katie warned them. “If Mrs. Derkman catches you, you’ll be in big trouble!”
    “She’s all the way in the front of the bus,” George said. He looked out the window and stuck his tongue out again as another car drove by.
    Jeremy held up a camera. “Hey, George, say cheese.”
    George made a funny face as Jeremy snapped a photo.
    “What was that for?” George asked him.
    “I’m taking pictures of our field trip for the Class 3A Times ,” Jeremy explained. He was editor of the class newspaper.
    “Cool, how about this one?” George asked. He stood up and held his ears straight out as a car passed by.
    “Mrs. Derkman will be really mad,” Katie reminded them.
    George sighed. “Katie Kazoo, you’re a goodie-goodie!” he exclaimed.
    “I am not!” she insisted.
    “You are, too,” George told her. “You never get in trouble. You never do anything wrong. You’re a goodie-goodie.”

    “Goodie-goodie,” Kevin repeated. “Katie is a goodie-goodie.”
    “Katie is a goodie-goodie,” Manny joined in. “Katie is a goodie-goodie.”
    The boys’ chanting grew louder and louder. Katie’s face got redder and redder. She was mad. And she was hurt, too. After all, Katie and George were friends. She’d been the first one to be nice to him when he was the new kid at school. And George was the one who had given Katie her way-cool nickname, Katie Kazoo.
    But George sure wasn’t treating Katie like a friend right now. He kept on singing, “Katie is a goodie-goodie, Katie is a goodie-goodie.”
    “That’s enough!” Mrs. Derkman shouted from the front of the bus.
    The boys quieted down right away.
    “It’s almost the end of the school year. By now, I would expect you to know how to act on a field trip. If you children cannot behave, I will ask Mr. Bloom to turn this bus around right now. We can go back to school and have a math test instead of a field trip,” Mrs. Derkman warned.
    Suzanne looked at Katie. “See, I told you boys were rotten!”
    “George was mean. And he was wrong. I’m not a goodie-goodie,” assured Katie.
    “Well . . .” Suzanne said slowly. “Not all the time, anyway.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Katie asked her.
    “Nothing,” Suzanne said. “It’s just that you hardly ever get in trouble.”
    “I do, too,” Katie insisted.
    “When?”
    “There was that time Mrs. Derkman read our note out loud,” Katie said. “We got in trouble