No Bones About It

by Nancy Krulik

  It was true. Mr. Weir’s shirt was covered with perspiration. Katie felt dampness on the back of her neck and on her forehead, too. Her underarms were disgusting. Yuck. Katie frowned. Being Mr. Weir really stunk . . . in more ways than one.

  Katie didn’t like Mr. Weir at all. But she didn’t want him to lose his job. There was only one thing to do. “We’ve got to put this dinosaur’s tail back together,” she told the kids.

  “Us?” Kevin asked. “We don’t know anything about being palea . . . paleee . . . pileontol . . .”

  “You mean paleontologists,” Mandy told him. “Dinosaur scientists.”

  Kevin nodded. “See, I can’t even pronounce it,” he told Katie. “How am I supposed to be one?”

  Katie sighed. Kevin was right. They didn’t know anything about being paleontologists. But they couldn’t just leave that pile of bones sitting there. They had to at least try to put the dinosaur’s tail back together. “How hard can it be?” Katie asked the kids.

  “Really hard,” Kevin answered.

  “You played with blocks when you were little, didn’t you? This can’t be much different. All we have to do is follow this picture.” Katie pointed to a drawing of the completed dinosaur skeleton.

  George picked up one of the bones. “This looks like the bottom of the tail,” he said quietly.

  Katie smiled at him. She could tell he was sorry for what had happened. None of his pranks had ever turned out this badly before. Maybe George would be a little more of a goodie-goodie himself after this.

  “Okay,” she told him. “Let’s get started.”

  Kevin picked up a big bone. “Good thing Katie’s dog’s not here,” he said. “Can you imagine how he’d love these things? They’re huge.”

  “Pepper would have a lot of fun here,” Katie agreed.

  “Hey,” Suzanne asked. “How’d you know her dog is named Pepper?”

  Katie gulped. She’d forgotten she was supposed to be Mr. Weir! “I didn’t,” she said quickly. “I . . . uh . . . I was talking about my dog. His name is Pepper.”

  “Poor Katie,” Suzanne whispered to Miriam. “First, Mrs. Derkman moves in next door to her. Now, Mr. Weir’s dog has the same name as hers. Good thing she’s not here to find out about that!”

  Katie sighed. That was a close one.

  “I’m getting hungry,” George moaned.

  “You’re always hungry,” Suzanne told him.

  “Lunch isn’t for another fifteen minutes,” Kevin moaned as he looked at the clock on the wall.

  Katie gulped. Fifteen minutes? That was hardly any time at all. They had to get the dinosaur’s tail fixed before Mrs. Derkman came back. They would all be in big trouble if she found out what had happened.

  “Faster, faster,” Katie urged the kids. “We’ve got to get this thing together.”

  “We’re almost done, Mr. Weir,” Mandy said. “There’s just this one big bone left.”

  Katie took the bone from Mandy. Quickly, she used it to attach the dinosaur to its tail. “Finished,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “It looks pretty good,” Kevin said. “Almost like the real thing.”

  “Almost?” Katie asked nervously.

  “It’s not like the picture,” Kevin told her.

  Katie looked at the picture. Oh, no! Kevin was right. In the picture, the dinosaur’s tail was pointing down to the ground. Now, its tail was pointing straight out.

  “Maybe no one will notice,” George suggested.

  “Are you kidding?” Kevin asked. “Who could miss that?”

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Before Katie could say anything, she heard a strange noise coming from her shirt pocket.

  Startled, Katie looked down. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, black pager. She looked at the words on the screen.

  COME TO YOUR OFFICE. DR. MUFFINSTOFFER HAS ARRIVED.

  Katie gulped. Dr. Muffinstoffer was the famous scientist Mr. Weir was supposed to meet with. Now, Katie was going to have to be the one to show him around the museum.

  But Katie didn’t know anything about the museum!

  This was so not good.

  Chapter 9

  “Um, I have to go,” Katie nervously told the kids.

  “You can’t just leave us here,” Suzanne said.

  “I’ll be right back,” Katie said as she raced into the hall. “Don’t move until I get here. And, whatever you do, don’t touch that dinosaur!”

  Katie had no idea where Mr. Weir’s office could be. For a moment, she thought about asking one of the guards how to get there. But she looked like Mr. Weir now. Mr. Weir would surely know the way to his own office. If she asked for directions, the guard would surely think that Mr. Weir was weird.

  Katie wandered around the museum until she came to what seemed to be a row of offices. Maybe this was where Mr. Weir worked. Quickly, Katie opened the first office door and stepped inside.

  Oops. This was definitely not Mr. Weir’s office. Instead of a desk and books, the room was filled with mops, pails, and cleaning supplies. Katie was in the janitor’s closet!

  She reached for the doorknob. But before she could open the door, Katie felt a cool breeze blowing on the back of her neck. There were no windows in the closet and the door was shut tightly. Katie knew right away that this was no ordinary wind. This was the magic wind.

  The magic wind grew stronger and stronger. It whirled around Katie like a tornado. Faster and faster it blew, until the wind was so strong that Katie could barely breathe.

  And then it stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone.

  Slowly, Katie opened her eyes and looked down at her feet. Her purple sneakers were back. So were her jeans. And there wasn’t even a trace of sweat on her tank top.

  She was Katie Carew again!

  Katie knew she should find her way to the library and wait for her class. But Katie wanted to be with the rest of her class in the Hall of Dinosaurs. Unfortunately, she had no idea how to get back there.

  But the real Mr. Weir certainly did.

  As Katie stepped out into the hall, she found him standing outside an office door. He was staring at his beeper.

  “Mr. Weir,” Katie said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “One minute, I was in the Hall of Dinosaurs and the next thing I knew, I was standing outside of my office.” He stared at Katie for a moment. “What are you doing here?”

  “Um, I came to get you,” Katie said quickly.

  Mr. Weir didn’t ask her why. He just kept staring at his beeper. “Dr. Muffinstoffer is supposed to be in my office. But I don’t remember hearing my beeper or walking over here. And Dr. Muffinstoffer isn’t here.”

  Katie didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure why Dr. Muffinstoffer had disappeared. She just hoped that it wasn’t her fault. Too many things had been her fault today.

  “How about we go back to the dinosaurs?” Katie said quickly.

  Mr. Weir sighed. “I’ve got to get a new job,” he moaned. “This one is too stressful.”

  Chapter 10

  When Mr. Weir and Katie arrived in the Hall of Dinosaurs, only the kids who had been with Mrs. Derkman were there. The teacher looked frantic.

  “Mr. Weir!” she cried out. “Where have you been? And where are my students?”

  “I . . . um . . . er . . . I’m not certain,” Mr. Weir mumbled.

  Mrs. Derkman gasped. “You lost my students?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Mr. Weir said. “I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.”

  “I know where they are,” Katie interrupted. “Follow me.”

  Katie led her teacher and Mr. Weir to the back hallway and into the room where the dinosaur models were built. Sure enough, the kids were all there. So was a small man with a long white beard and glasses.

  “Dr. Muffinstoffer, I can explain,” Mr. Weir said as he walked over to the man with the beard. “At least I think I can . . . I’m not really sure.”

&nb
sp; “It’s fine. When you weren’t in your office, I started to walk around the museum myself,” the famous scientist explained.

  “I don’t know why I wasn’t there,” Mr. Weir apologized. “I don’t know anything.”

  “You can sure say that again,” Jeremy whispered to George.

  “Fascinating,” Dr. Muffinstoffer muttered. He was looking at the tail on the dinosaur model. “I don’t know how you did this.”

  “I’m not sure, either. It’s all kind of fuzzy,” Mr. Weir sighed.

  “There are only a few paleontologists in the world who are aware of the change,” Dr. Muffinstoffer continued.

  “The change?” Kevin asked.

  “Yes.” Dr. Muffinstoffer pointed to the dinosaur’s tail. “This dinosaur was always thought to walk with its tail upright. Recently, we figured out that the tail stuck straight out, just like you have it here. The tail helped it balance.” He turned to Mr. Weir. “But that information hasn’t even been published yet. How did you know about it?”

  “Well . . . I . . . I mean . . . er . . .” Mr. Weir stammered. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Mr. Weir knows all the up-to-date information. He rebuilt the tail himself,” Katie butted in. “Some of the kids in our class helped.”

  “What an interesting project,” Dr. Muffinstoffer said with a smile.

  “There’s no better way to learn about dinosaurs than to help build one, is there Mr. Weir?” Katie said.

  “I, um . . . er . . . sure. I guess,” Mr. Weir said. He was staring at the tail on the model dinosaur.

  Jeremy pulled out his camera. “I want to get a picture of you guys with the dinosaur,” he said to Mandy, Miriam, Kevin, Suzanne, and George. He turned to Dr. Muffinstoffer and Mr. Weir. “Would you be in it, too?”

  “Now why would I want to . . .” Mr. Weir began angrily.

  “It would be my absolute pleasure,” Dr. Muffinstoffer interrupted.

  “Exactly what I was going to say,” Mr. Weir quickly added.

  Katie choked back a laugh. That wasn’t at all what Mr. Weir was going to say. He was just trying to impress Dr. Muffinstoffer.

  Suzanne, George, Kevin, Mandy, and Miriam all gathered for their picture. Mr. Weir fluffed the tuft of hair on the top of his head and fixed the collar of his sweaty shirt. He wanted to be sure he looked good.

  “You must really like children,” Dr. Muffinstoffer said as he stood next to Mr. Weir.

  “Oh, I love them,” Mr. Weir said. “Ask anyone.”

  George was about to open his mouth to disagree, but he shut it quickly. He’d caused enough trouble for one day.

  “Okay, everyone,” Jeremy said. “Say dinosaur.”

  “Dinosaur!”

  Chapter 11

  “Wow! You guys were so lucky to be in Mr. Weir’s group,” Jeremy told George and Suzanne as he got onto the school bus behind them. “You got to build a dinosaur. We had to listen to Mrs. Derkman talk about them.”

  “We did have a lot of fun,” Suzanne admitted. “Even if we were with Mr. Weird. It was a nice way to spend our last third-grade field trip.”

  “Yeah,” Mandy chimed in. “It’s hard to believe that this school year is almost over. Summer’s almost here.”

  “My big brother Ian says fourth grade is very different than third,” Kevin said nervously. “It’s a lot harder.”

  “Different’s okay,” George said. “We’ll have new teachers.” He didn’t sound upset about that at all.

  “But we won’t be together,” Becky Stern told the others. “There are two fourth-grade classes. Some of us will be in one class, and some will be in the other.” She looked at Jeremy and sighed. She didn’t want to be in a different class than him.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes. He wouldn’t mind it if he and Becky were in a different class next year.

  “We can all play together at recess and after school,” Katie said, trying to be cheerful. “We’ll still be friends.”

  “Yeah, but it won’t be the same,” Mandy told her.

  “I guess we’re in for a lot of changes,” Suzanne shrugged.

  Just then, Katie felt a cool breeze blowing on the back of her neck. She gasped. Was it possible that the magic wind had come to change her into someone else?

  The magic wind wouldn’t do that in front of other people. Or would it? Katie didn’t know for sure. It was hard to say what the magic wind would or wouldn’t do. She closed her eyes and got ready for the tornado to start swirling around her.

  “George, close that window!” Suzanne shouted out suddenly. “The wind is ruining my hair.”

  Katie breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the magic wind, after all. It was just the breeze from an open window. “Don’t worry, George, I’ll close it,” Katie replied.

  “Ow!” Suzanne groaned. “George, stop pulling on my ponytail!”

  “It wasn’t me,” George said. “I think it was Jeremy.”

  “Not me.” Jeremy shook his head. “Maybe it was Manny.”

  Suzanne frowned and folded her arms across her chest. “I hate boys,” she sighed.

  Katie laughed. Some things never changed.

  Class 3 A’s Dino Fun Facts

  Class 3A learned a lot about dinosaurs at the museum. (Most of all, they learned never to climb on top of one!) Here are some of the fun facts they gathered on their field trip:

  Dinosaurs lived everywhere! Their bones have been found all over the Earth—even in the Arctic Circle and near the South Pole.

  The biggest known dinosaurs were the plant-eating Argentinosaurus huinculensis. They grew to be 115-130 feet long. They had long necks that allowed them to reach the leaves in tall trees. They also had huge tails that helped them keep their balance.

  It is harder to find small dinosaur fossils than large ones. So far, the smallest known dinosaur is the Microraptor. It was only about sixteen inches long, which makes it no bigger than a crow. It was discovered in China.

  The Diplodocus was the dinosaur with the longest tail. Its tail could grow to about forty-three feet long!

  The deadliest dinosaurs were fast, bird-like meat-eaters. These Megaraptor, Utahraptor, and Deinonychus dinosaurs all had huge claws, sharp teeth, and wing-like arms that helped them move quickly during a chase.

  The plant-eating Hadrosaurs had 960 teeth! (How’d you like to have to brush all of those?)