Gotcha! Hardcover - 2006

Details

• Title Gotcha!
• Author Jamie Gilson; Amy Wummer (Illustrator)
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition Illustrated.
• Pages 80
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Clarion Books
• Date 2006-03-20
• Illustrated Yes
• ISBN 9780618543564 / 0618543562
• Weight 1.42 lbs (0.64 kg)
• Dimensions 9 x 6 x 0.45 in (22.86 x 15.24 x 1.14 cm)
• Ages 04 to 07 years
• Grade levels P - 2
• Library of Congress subjects Schools, Behavior
• Library of Congress Catalog Number 2005030678
• Dewey Decimal Code FIC

“Four,” said Mrs. Zookey. She crossed her arms and waited. Outside our room, lightning zigged across the sky.
“Five,” said Mrs. Zookey.
Thunder rumbled.
I blinked, but I didn’t make a peep. Nobody did. Only a minute before, all the kids at Tables Two and Three had been holding our noses and calling each other stink bugs. That’s why the whole class now had to sit with our lips zipped tight while Mrs. Zookey counted to ten.
“Six,” she went on. The thunder rumbled louder.
Over at Table Three, Patrick the Pest was straightening his red bow tie. He wore it every day. Today he had it on with a brown-and-green camouflage shirt that hung down way below his knees. It looked really dumb. Okay, at Table Two, we’d been saying “stink bug!” too, but Patrick’s table had been saying it loudest. Just the week before, Mrs. Zookey had put him at Table Three, with the quiet kids. Already he’d got them in trouble.
Patrick grinned at me, reached into the pocket of his huge shirt, and pulled something out. I looked over to see if Mrs. Zookey was watching, but as soon as I turned my head, a rubber band hit me smack on the ear.
I yelped. “Ouch!” I turned around, but Patrick was looking at the ceiling, like he hadn’t done anything.
Mrs. Zookey heard my yelp. “Seven!” she counted. Then she caught me with her eyes. Mrs. Zookey has this way of staring at you that stops you from doing stuff you shouldn’t do. Tess was sitting right next to Patrick at Table Three. She leaned forward like she was going to tell, but he shook his head at her. She rolled her eyes but leaned back. Mrs. Zookey had stopped looking. She was writing on the chalkboard: ONE MORE ARACHNID. We were doing arachnids. They’re all the spiders in the spider family. It’s my new favorite word. A-rack-nid. It feels good in your mouth when you say it out loud. But I didn’t say it. That would have been talking. I rubbed my ear where Patrick had zapped it. He made sure Mrs. Zookey wasn’t looking, and then he held up a piece of yellow paper with a red crayon sign that said “GOTCHA!!!!!” I’d seen it before. He made it the day he moved to Table Three. I think it’s his new favorite word.
Patrick is trouble. He’s not scared to do stuff. When he does something that makes him look smart or makes you look silly, he flashes the sign. Mostly he flashes it at me. A lot of kids laugh. They don’t want him to “Gotcha!” them.
I could get away with stuff, too, if I wanted to. Right now I wanted to. We’d all zipped our lips like Mrs. Zookey said. What if I just unzipped my lips, but no noise came out? What if? I crossed my eyes at Patrick and I yawned. Huge.
Mrs. Zookey saw my yawn. She shook her head at me. “Now, Richard,” she said. I zipped my lips up. She turned back to the chalkboard. “GOTCHA!!!!!” Patrick flashed his sign at me again. He and Tess covered their laughs with their hands. Then he leaned his chair back just far enough so that it almost fell but didn’t.
Mrs. Zookey has lots of red hair. When she gets mad at us she shakes her head and her hair goes from side to side. And then she counts. She counts really, really slow. She likes to count. She’s always counting stuff.
No thunder now. No lightning. No talk. The room was just totally quiet.
I looked up at the paper spiders hanging from the ceiling. There were twenty of them dangling from strings. We had each made a different kind. Mine was an orange-and-black garden spider. Under ONE MORE ARACHNID, Mrs. Zookey was drawing a great big spotted spider. It had two parts. All spiders have two parts. That’s how you know they’re spiders and not just insects. Insects have three parts. Spiders are definitely not insects. WOLF SPIDER, she wrote.
Patrick locked his thumbs together and wiggled his fingers at me like they were wolf spider legs.
“Eight,” counted Mrs. Zookey.
Ben passed me a note. Watch out. Patrick is out to get you!! Ben is my best friend since kindergarten. And I’m lucky he sits next to me at Table Two. He was right. But no way I was going to let Patrick make me look silly again. I just stared up at my hanging spider.
Only seven of its eight legs were left. If it was a real live spider, it could grow another one. But mine couldn’t. That leg was probably stuck on the bottom of some kid’s shoe. Patrick was watching me. I could tell. He thought I was scared to do stuff like he did. And so I did something I shouldn’t have done. I knew when I did it that I shouldn’t, but I leaned my chair back, way back. Way farther back than he had, even. I took a deep breath and I blew straight up to make the ceiling spiders shiver.
Kapow! My chair crashed to the floor. Me, too. I bonked my head.
It broke everybody up. They were all laughing with their lips shut tiight. Even Ben had to put his head on the table to keep from cracking up. I guess maybe I did look funny waving my arms on the way down. This time, MMMMMrs. Zookey wrote my name on the chalkboard. While she was writing, Patrick reached in his big shirt pocket, snuck out a green gummy worm, and sucked it into his mouth. A minute later he stuck out his tongue at Dawn Marie. Half a sticky green worm was sitting on it. Dawn Marie sits across from me at Table Two. She’s not afraid of anybody. She raised her hand to tell. “Nine,” Mrs. Zookey went on. Patrick smiled like he hadn’t unzipped his lips at all.
“Ten,” said Mrs. Zookey, finally. “All right, my dears,” she went on. “Now it’s time to take three deep, deep breaths and think about how to behave. Think about No Name Calling. Think about what it’s like to be called ‘stink bug.’” “One.” She held her breath a long time. Then she let it go.
“Two.
“Three.” There. We could unzip our lips and talk again.
“Now, did you have a question, Dawn Marie?” she asked.
Dawn Marie pulled her arm down. Those three deep breaths had stopped her. I knew she wanted to tell, but telling could be Name Calling. She shook her head.
Then she leaned over and whispered, “Patrick started it.” Ben, me, and Yolanda, the other kid at Table Two, all nodded. “Patrick always starts it,” I whispered back.
“But you’re the one who got caught,” Yolanda said, pointing at my name on the board.



Copyright © 2006 by Jamie Gilson. Reprinted by permission of Clarion Books / Houghton Mifflin Company.

"Patrick the Pest preys on all his classmates...[until] one last trick goes bad for [him]." -KIRKUS Kirkus Reviews

"Lighthearted cartoon illustrations follow the class on a field trip to observe spiders, during which Patrick's antics leave him, literally, all wet." Horn Book Guide