"Yes, well, guinea pigs do enjoy company."
"I have guinea pigs, and my guinea pig
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book says you're never supposed to have
just one guinea pig," said Jessica Finch. "That's why we take turns playing with her every day," said Mr. Todd. "And we
made her a fun box, remember? Now let's
keep our minds on our work, okay?"
At morning recess, Frank found Judy and Rocky at the water fountain. "You guys have to help me get in trouble," said Frank. "Are you crazy?" asked Rocky.
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"Do you want to go to Antarctica?" Judy
asked Frank.
"No, I just want Mr. Todd to make me stay inside for lunch recess. I need to try a science experiment. A real one. About cloning."
"Cool beans," said Rocky.
"Cool genes," said Judy, cracking herself
up. "What kind of experiment?"
"Cloning Peanut. I'll make another
guinea pig exactly like her. Right here in
Class 3T. So she'll have a friend. Or friends. Real ones, not cardboard. If it works, nobody will think cloning is just science fiction."
"Cloning just works on aliens," said Rocky.
"And bones. And frozen stuff,' Judy said.
"Nah-uh," said Frank.
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"Well, it's against the law to practice science on animals. Stink told me. You have to use a zucchini or something."
"Everybody clones vegetables. And does experiments on zucchinis."
"What's wrong with that? Real doctors practice stitches on zucchinis. It's way scientific."
"Cloning a guinea pig is way MORE scientific."
"Get real!" said Judy. "You can't just be a cloner. You need equipment. Fancy stuff, like scientists have. In labs."
"It's easy. All I need is DNA (a few hairs from Peanut), a petri dish like Rocky used for Lego germs, and electricity. Plus a little help from you guys."
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"DNA means Do Not Ask me to experiment on animals!" said Judy. "I'll watch, but only to make sure you don't hurt Peanut."
"Let's ask Mr. Todd if we can stay inside at recess and clean Peanut's cage," said Frank. "Then nobody gets in trouble."
"Perfect," said Rocky.
"Genius," said Judy.
"Scientific," said Frank, tapping a finger to his head.
When the lunch recess bell rang, Judy, Rocky, and Frank stayed inside. They lined the bottom of Peanut's cage with clean newspaper and straw. They filled up her
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water bottle. They gave her a new, never
been-chewed toilet-paper tube to hide in. As soon as Mr. Todd left to get his lunch, Frank said, "Quick!" He got Mr. Todd's pointy scissors. Rocky held Peanut while
Frank went snip, snip, snip.
"Be careful," said Judy. "I'm watching." |« "Haircuts don't hurt!" said Frank. He
carefully placed four hairs in the petri dish. "All we need now is electricity."
"How about the microwave?" said
Rocky. Frank put the guinea pig hairs in the microwave. "Three minutes," said Frank, pressing the buttons.
"I'll say some magic words," said Rocky. "Let me think. How's this:
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Snip of hair, electric power.
How many guinea pigs per hour?
Eeny Meeny, dead houdini.
Two, ten, twelve, fourteen."
Frank took out the petri dish and put it back in Peanut's cage.
"Hide it under some straw," said Rocky.
"Now what do we do?" asked Judy.
"Wait," said Frank.
"This will never work," said Judy. "You should have practiced on a zucchini."
The next morning, when Judy got to school, Frank was looking in Peanut's cage. Nothing! No more guinea pigs. Not two. Not ten. Not fourteen!. Just Peanut, sleeping with her head on a lettuce pillow.
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"It didn't work. Cloning must be harder than I thought," said Frank.
"Told you," said Judy.
"I'm not giving up," said Frank. "Everybody knows science takes time."
They waited some more. On Thursday and Friday, when Judy got to school, Frank was there, standing over Peanut's cage. Nothing. Zip. Zero-teeny.
Peanut was alone. Un-cloned. Frank Pearl was having Double Trouble.
Then, on Monday morning, it happened. While Judy was doodling guinea-pig clones with her Grouchy pencil and waiting for the start-school bell to ring, somebody yelled, "Hey! Peanut has a friend!"
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Judy dropped her Grouchy pencil. She rushed over to Peanut's cage. Peanut did have a friend. No lie! For real and absolute positive! Not one friend, but one-two-three- four friends! One clone for every hair Frank had snipped.
"SCIENCE RULES!" Frank shouted.
"What happened?"
"Where did all these guinea pigs come from?"
"I cloned Peanut!" Frank told the class. "At first it didn't work. Then presto! Four guinea pigs! Double-triple-quadruple Frank-and-Stein magic!"
"They're not clones! Kids can't clone stuff."
"Are they real?"
UH
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"Did Peanut have babies?"
Judy Moody blinked once, twice, three times. She could not believe her retinas, irises, or pupils. Frank Pearl had cloned Peanut the dwarf guinea pig! She saw it with her own eyeballs. Eyeballs did not lie.
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"I did it! I cloned Peanut. I'm a world- famous kid scientist! The youngest person ever to clone a guinea pig!" shouted Frank.
"I helped!" said Judy. "Don't forget me, Judy Moody, First Girl Doctor. We did it together---right, Frank? We're both famous. I bet I---I mean we--will be in theGuinness Book of World Records. Ripley's Believe It or Not!"
"Or NOT!" said one-two-three voices. Three annoying, not-funny, used-to-befriends voices.
Frank laughed so hard he made spit fly. Rocky sprayed her, too. Worst of all, Jessica Finch was laughing her medulla off! She jumped up and down saying, "They're mine, they're mine, they're all my guinea
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pigs. Chester had babies and we played a trick on YOU, Judy Moody!"
"You fell for it," said Frank.
"You swallowed it like a pill," said Rocky.
What was she thinking? She, Judy Moody, was not First Girl Doctor, first to help clone a guinea pig. It was all a joke. A trick. A big fat bunch of cloney baloney.
"You should see your face!" said Rocky.
"We were just cloning around," said Frank.
"Did you really think you cloned a guinea pig?" asked Jessica.
"Of course not," said Judy. She searched under the straw and pulled out the petri dish. Still there. It now had four hairs,
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eight, sixteen, thirty two The only thing
that had multiplied were guinea pig hairs.
"Ha, ha! Yes, you did!" said Jessica Finch.
Judy's blood pressure went up. Her temperature was rising! She, Judy Moody, felt as silly as Bozo the Clone.
"Meet Jasmine, Cindy, Coco, and Nutmeg," said Jessica. "The Spice Girls."
"The Not-Nice girls! And boys," she said, looking at Rocky and Frank. "Mr. Todd's going to be here any minute. Don't you need to go sit down or something?"
"Yes," said Frank. "To write a letter to Ripley's Believe It or Not. Dear Mr. Ripley: Believe it or not, we played the best-joke- ever on our friend Judy Moody."
"ROAR!" said Judy.
The next morning, Judy Moody woke up sick. Not fake sick. Not just mad-at-her- friends sick. Real and true sick. Pain-in-the-brain sick. Hot-in-the-head sick. Frog-in-the-throat sick.
Judy ran to the mirror and stuck out her tongue. It was red all right. Not just Cherry-Ames-cough-drop red. Fire-engine red! And she saw a bumpy, mumps-of-a- lump in the back of her throat--one on
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each side. She, Judy Moody, had grapefruit tonsils. Bowling-ball tonsils!
The lumps made her
look like a hound dog. The lumps
& made her look like a clone of Peanut-the-dwarf-guinea-pig (with chipmunk cheeks). The lumps made her look like Mumpty Dumpty.
Dad came into her room. He felt her forehead. He looked in her LumptyDumpty throat. He took her temperature.
"You're sick, all right," said Dad, peering at the thermometer. "Looks just like what Stink had. Must be tonsillitis."
Stink came into her room before leaving for school to see if she was sick for real.
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"Stink!" Judy whisper-yelled. "Get out of my room!" The lumps made her sound funny.
"Get off your broom?"
"My room. Get out."
"How come?"
"You don't want to catch a bad case of lumps!"
Mouse jumped up onto the bottom bunk.
"How come Mouse gets to be in there and I don't?"
"Cats don't have tonsils!"
"Stink, don't get too close to Judy!" yelled Mom.
Stink was not allowed in her room! RARE!
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Staying home sick was not as fun as Judy
thought it would be. When Mom brought
ginger ale with a crazy straw, it went up
Judy's nose. When Dad brought toast with mashed bananas, Judy took one look and said, "I think somebody already ate this."
And, worst of all, TV shows in the middle of the day were full of kissing. Mom took Judy's temperature for real, with a brand-new, no-cat-hair thermometer. Human temperature: 101.9! "I called - Dr. McCavity," said Mom. "This will make you feel better." She held out some medicine. Not double-yum baby aspirin that tastes like orange Lifesavers and you get to chew it. Not triple-yum cough syrup that
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tastes like grape Lifesavers and you get to drink it.
A pill! Not just any old pill.
A big pill. A monster pill.
A pill the size of Nebraska. Mom wanted her to swallow it. Not chew it. Not chink it.
Swallow it. Mom wanted her to swallowNebraska!
Judy held her throat. "I can't swallow," she said in a sickly way.
"You were swallowing ginger ale just
fine," said Mom.
"Ginger ale is not Nebraska!" Judy
mumbled in her bowling-ball-tonsils voice. Her words came out all mumbly-dumbly.
"Alaska?" said Mom.
"Ne-bras-ka!" said Judy.
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"Just try," said Mom. "It will make you feel lots better." Judy shut her eyes. She pinched her nose, put the pill in her mouth, and gulped down a glass of water.
"That's better," said Mom. Judy stuck out her tongue. The pill was still there!
"Judy, how are you going to be a doctor if you can't take your own medicine?"
"When I'm a doctor, I'll invent a pill- swallowing machine," said Judy.
"Okay. Never mind. I'll crush it up and you can drink it."
"Wank hoo," said Judy.
Judy felt lousy. Lousier than lice. Lumpier than mumps. Germier than worms.
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She made a list of all her stuffed animals.
Med bear Ted bear Fred Bear Cornflake not cloned guineapig. Tookie Toucan, snowflake, Coon from Minnesoda. auggie Doggy, Pepper smells like pepper.
There were more, but writing them all down gave her writer's cramp on top of bowling-ball tonsils.
She took her own temperature. With the fancy thermometer that beeped. It was not normal. It was not 98.6. Judy's temperature was 188.8! Judy's temperature was
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00.0! Judy's temperature was beep-beepbeep-beep-beep. She, Judy Moody, had the temperature of an outer-space alien!
She stared at cracks in the ceiling. The Big Dipper. A giant hot dog. A brain (without a pain in it).
She took her temperature again. Beeeeeeep! Still 00.0.
"Mouse, stick out your tongue," she said. She held the thermometer under Mouse's tongue. Mouse's temperature was . . . the letter M. She tried again. Mouse's temperature was E R R. Mouse's temperature was not even numbers. Mouse's temperature was not even human. Mouse
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the cat was sicker than she, Dr. Judy Moody!
"Poor baby!" said Judy. She fed Mouse an ABC (Already Been Chewed) mashed-up banana toast strip. Mouse loved mushed bananas.
She speed-read one book of Stink's Megazoid books about evil ants from an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter that try to take over the universe.
She read two days of Rex Morgan, M.D., comics Dad saved for her. She read three chapters of a Cherry Ames, Student Nurse, mystery till her eyes felt kerflooey.
Finally, after about a hundred years, Stink came home from school. After about a hundred more years, he came
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upstairs and walked right into her room.
"Stink! Worms! Worms are everywhere.
You better get out of here."
"Worms?"
"Germs, Stink. Germs! Didn't you see the sign?" Judy pointed to the sign she made on the door. "QUARANTINE! That
means STAYAWAY!"
"Mom said to bring you your home
work.
Plus I brought other stuff."
"Like what?"
"A wooden nickel from Rocky. That he got from Suzie the Magic Lady. It has a picture of a rabbit coming out of a hat."
"I'm mad at him," said Judy. "In fact,
I'm smad. And I'm not going to make up for a nickel. Wooden or not."
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"Here's a card from Jessica Finch, with a pretend spelling quiz. See?" The card said:
Get-well-Sune
GetuwellSun, Get weel Soon!
"And you have to look inside for the right answer."
Judy opened the card. It said:
Getweil soon! none of the above!
"I think she meant to put Your pal, Jessica Finch."
nd--da-da-da-da! love note from Frank Pearl," Stink told her.
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"Give me that," said Judy. "I made you something at school today, too." Stink took a mashed-up wad of paper out of his backpack.
"A mashed-up wad of paper?" said Judy. thank yoo very much."
"N-O! It's a cootie catcher! I can catch germs with it. See?" Stink jumped up and down, grabbing at air.
"Stink!" said Judy. "Don't make me waff."
"Okay, okay. I won't make you waff. But look. It tells fortunes." Stink held out the cootie catcher. " Pick a number." Judy looked at the cootie catcher. She
could not find a number. All she could find were funny-looking words. "It's French!"
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said Stink. "We learned French colors and numbers today. Pick one."
Judy pointed to quatre. "Four," said Stink. "Un, deux, trois, quatre. Now pick a color." "If you say so," said Judy. She pointed to bleu. It looked like blue with the letters mixed up.
"Blue. B-L-E-U," said Stink. "Pick one more color." Judy pointed to another one.
"Red. R-O-U-G-E," said Stink. He lifted up the flap.
"Here's your fortune," said Stink. "Ily a un dragon clans mon lit."
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"What's that mean?" asked Judy. "Your friends are a bunch of cloney baloneys?"
"It means, There's a dragon in my bed," Stink told her.
"That's it? That's my fortune?"
"It's that or My horse is dizzy," said Stink. "Those are the only two sentences I learned so far."
"I know one more," said Judy.
"You know French?" asked Stink.
"Oui," said Judy. She took out her doctor pad. She wrote a prescription for Stink. Stink Moody get out of my roomay and close le dooray!
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She, Judy Moody, was in a mood. A sick-ofbeingsick mood. Even her bowling-ball pajamas didn't cheer her up. They made her think of tonsils. Judy put on her around-the-world postcard pajamas.
Dr. McCavity told Mom that Judy might not feel like herself again for about twelve days.
Twelve days! Her human temperature was rising just thinking about it! Her blood r />
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pressure was skyrocketing! Twelve days before she could stop talking like a cat under water. Twelve days before she could learn any new bones or spell scapula or stay away from Antarctica.
Twelve more days to feel like Bozo the Clone.
Judy made up a song. "The Twelve Days of Tonsils."
On the firsst day of tonsils My brother gave to me, one cootycatcher and one love note from Frank P.
That's as far as she got before falling asleep. Again. She slept all through the second day of tonsils.
Tonsils, Day 3: Judy drew an x-ray of her
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hand; an x-ray of Mouse; an x-ray of Jaws, her Venus flytrap; and one of Ned Bear.
Tonsils, Day 4: Back to Dr. McCavity.
Tonsils, Day 5: BOR-ing! Judy drew a map of her brain.
Tonsils, Day 6: When she became a doctor, she would find a cure for fire-engine tonsils so sick people did not have to make x-rays of cats and maps of their brains all day.
Tonsils, Day 7: Ding, dong! Maybe Stink was home from school. Judy crawled back under the covers, put her head under all her stuffed animals, and pretended to be asleep.
"Knock-knock," said Stink.
"I'm asleep," said Judy.
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"Knock-knock," said Stink again.
"Stink, have you been eating the BRAT diet again?"
"Just say Who's there," said Stink.
"Who's there?" asked Judy.
"US!" said Rocky, Frank, and Jessica Finch. All three of her UN-best friends!
"What are YOU guys doing here?" Judy grumped. "You came to laugh at my chipmunk cheeks, didn't you? You heard I have bowling-ball tonsils and came to tell me I look like Mumpty Dumpty."