Cars whizzed by. Whoosh! Dirt flew in her face. She swerved to miss a big hole in the road. What if she fell off her bike and broke her head?
Judy kept riding. She tooted her horn. She yelled, “HEY! Mr. Bus! My brother’s on there. GIVE! ME! BACK! MY! BROTHER!”
The bus kept going.
A dog barked at her. What if a big meany dog got loose and chased her? What if she got bitten by a wild dog? A wild dog with RABIES?
Judy pedaled faster. Wind flapped her skirt and whipped her thirteen curls every which way. A big green garbage truck screamed by, way too close. Judy’s wheels wobbled. Her handlebars shook. The truck honked at her, wooomp, deep like a foghorn. Her heart pounded.
What if she got run over by a P.U. garbage truck?
She rode her bike all the way to Bacon Avenue. Traffic! Cars! Trucks! Red lights!
Then she saw it. The bus! The school bus, bright as a big cheese in the middle of the road. It had crossed the intersection and was heading up the hill on the other side of Third Street.
Mom and Dad would FREAK if she crossed the busy street in the middle of traffic by herself. But they might freak more if she came home late . . . without Stink!
WWSLD? What would Sybil Ludington do? Sybil would think for herself. Be independent. Be brave.
Judy hopped off and wheeled her bike to the crosswalk. She waited for the Big Red Hand on the sign to change to the Big Bright Walking Man. “Hurry up!” Judy yelled at the light. “The bus is getting away!”
Finally, the light changed. She looked both ways, took a deep breath, and crossed the street safely.
Judy hopped back on her bike and zoomed up the hill. Puff, puff, puff.
Judy huffed and puffed until she caught up with the bus. “Stink!” she shouted, biking on the sidewalk, right alongside the bus. The bus driver looked over. Judy pointed to the back of the bus. “My brother!”
At last! The bus stopped to let some kids off. The door rattled open. “My little brother . . . puff, puff . . . is . . . puff, puff . . . on that bus!” Judy yelled.
Stink was already rushing up to the front of the bus. “I fell asleep!” he told Judy. “And then I woke up and you were gone and I didn’t know where I was! I was so scared.”
“It’s okay,” said Judy. “I chased you and I found you and you’re safe now.” Stink clutched her shirtsleeve and wouldn’t let go.
“Thank you,” she said to the driver. “Thanks for stopping. C’mon, Stinker. Let’s go home.”
When Judy and Stink got home — over an hour late — Mom was mad-with-a-capital-M. “I thought I asked you to come straight home after school,” Mom said. “You scared me half to death!” She said she was scared and worried sick, but she did not look sick. Just M-A-D.
She did not even give Judy a chance to explain. “Judy, you know better than this. Go to your room. Now!”
“Stink should go to his room, too. He’s the one who fell asleep and —”
Mom’s lips turned into a thin white line. “I don’t want to hear it!” said Mom. She pointed upstairs.
Judy slunk up to her room, crawled into bed, and got under her baby quilt. She, Judy Moody, Friend of Sybil in History, was in trouble again. Trouble with a capital T. Worse than the Boston Tub Party.
Grownups! They sure acted like they wanted you to be all independent, but as soon as you were, they went and changed their minds. Independence. HA! All it did was get her in trouble.
Maybe if Judy just declared UN-independence, everything would go back to the way it was. At least she wouldn’t have to clean up so much. And get run over by P.U. garbage trucks while chasing runaway buses.
Judy tried to do her homework, but all the spelling words looked like scrambled eggs. She tried chewing gum for her ABC collection, but all it did was stick to her teeth. She tried starting a scrapbook of her trip to Boston, but even the Declaration of Independence looked sad.
To cheer herself up, Judy wrote a postcard to Tori:
Judy tiptoed to the top of the stairs to see if she could hear anything. Mom was talking to Stink. Traitor! He was probably blaming the whole thing on her. Redcoat!
Judy climbed back up to her top bunk. “Here, Mouse,” called Judy. At least her cat wasn’t mad at her. At least her cat was not a traitor.
Mouse hid under the bottom bunk. “Here, Mousie, Mousie.” Mouse still did not budge. Even her cat was declaring independence.
Judy’s whole room was in a mood. For sure and absolute positive.
After about a hundred years, Stink rattled the doorknob. “Open up!”
“Go away, Stink,” Judy told him.
“Open up, honey.” That did not sound like Stink. That sounded like Mom. Nice Mom, not Will-You-Ever-Learn Mom.
“We just want to talk to you, Judy.” That sounded like Dad. Kind Dad, not You-Are-in-Big-Trouble Dad.
“Am I in big trouble?” Judy asked the door. “Because if I am, then I declare UN-independence. I promise I will NOT make my bed or do my homework or be nice to Stink. And I will definitely not rescue him anymore. EVER!”
“Judy, open the door so we can talk about this,” said Dad.
Judy opened the door. Mom rushed to hug her. Dad ruffled Judy’s hair and kissed the top of her head.
“Stink told us what happened,” said Dad. “That was a very brave thing you did.”
“It was?”
“I’m sorry, honey,” said Mom. “It gave me quite a scare when you two didn’t come right home, so I didn’t even stop to listen. You had a hard choice to make, and you really used some good, independent thinking.”
“I did?”
“You sure did,” said Dad.
“I was scared, too,” said Judy. “I thought a big meany dog might bite me or a garbage truck might run me over or I’d fall and break my head or something. I just kept thinking about Sybil Ludington and how she was scared, too.”
“We’re very proud of you, Sybil,” Dad said. “I mean Judy.”
“Proud enough to give me more allowance and stuff?”
“Dad and I will talk things over,” said Mom. “Maybe you are ready for a little more independence.”
She, Judy Moodington, was not in big-or-little-T trouble. And she showed independent thinking. Just like Sybil Ludington.
Star-spangled bananas!
After all the excitement, Judy was feeling much too independent to do homework. She got out her Judy Moody Declaration of Independence. This was going straight into her scrapbook.
Judy climbed up to her top bunk. She spread out all the stuff from her trip to Boston. In her scrapbook, she pasted, taped, glue-sticked, or Band-Aided all her souvenirs from Boston.
Last but not least, she turned the page and pasted sugar packets with Ben Franklin sayings onto the page. And she made up a new one:
The next day, the story of the not-so-midnight ride of Judy Moody was all over Virginia Dare School.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
How Judy Moody rode like Sybil and
Paul Revere.
Every time Stink told the story, it got a little wilder. Some heard she was chased by wild wolves. Some heard she was kidnapped by a garbage truck. Some heard she fell and broke her leg but kept on riding.
Stink even made Judy a gold medal with a blue ribbon.
After dinner that night, Judy climbed up to the top bunk to paste the ribbon into her scrapbook.
The scrapbook was not there! As in G-O-N-E, gone!
She looked under her reading pillow. She looked under lumps of covers and heaps of stuffed animals. She looked under Mouse.
Judy looked all around her room. The scrapbook was missing. The scrapbook was stolen! By Number One Scrapbook Thief, right here in the Moody house.
“Stink!” Judy ran into his room. “I did not say you could take my scrapbook. Give it!”
“I didn’t take your scrapbook,” said Stink.
“After I saved your life and everything!” said Judy. “Robber! Stealer! Scrapbook-nappe
r!”
“Am not! I swear on Toady’s life I didn’t take it.”
“If you didn’t take it, and I didn’t lose it, that leaves Mouse. And Mouse can’t read!”
“Maybe Mom and Dad took it,” Stink said. “Let’s go ask.”
“Let’s go spy,” said Judy.
Judy and Stink tiptoed down the stairs without too many creaks. They slid across the floor without too many squeaks. They slunk past the living room, past the kitchen, to Mom’s office.
“Stink, you hold the flashlight. I’ll look around.” She pawed through the trash. She searched on top of the file cabinet and in the bookshelves.
“Uh-oh!” Stink said. “Check it out!” A message was flashing across Mom’s computer screen. It said:
JUDY AND STINK,
IF YOU ARE READING THIS,
I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE.
READ THIS NOTE:
XLOW UVVG ZIV MLG HDVVG.
“How can we read it? It’s in Russian,” Stink said, shining the light on the screen.
“It’s not Russian,” said Judy. “It’s secret code. SPY code. It looks just like Dr. Church’s secret code in Dad’s Freedom Trail book from Boston. Rare!”
“The spy guy? Sweet! We can be code busters, just like him.”
“Yep.” Judy ran and got her book. She looked it up in the back. “The code is A=Z, B=Y, and C=X. All you have to do is use the alphabet backward.”
They looked at the letters again: XLOW UVVG ZIV MLG HDVVG. Judy figured it out. “COLD FEET ARE NOT SWEET. Hmm. It’s some sort of clue. Not sweet . . . not sweet.”
“How about the cookie jar?” Stink asked.
“It says NOT sweet, Stink.”
“How about socks? Socks aren’t sweet. And they help cold feet.”
“Brilliant!” Judy and Stink dashed upstairs, where Judy rummaged through her sock drawer. Sure enough, there was another clue sticking out of her Screamin’ Mimi’s ice-cream socks.
“It’s like a treasure hunt.” She opened the note and it read: QFWB GRNVH GDL, YLGS ZIV BLF. She took out her pencil and figured it out in her notebook. “This one says, JUDY TIMES TWO, BOTH ARE YOU.”
They thought about it for a long time. They were both stumped. Then Judy got a brainstorm! “There’s only one me,” said Judy.
“You can say that again,” said Stink.
“Unless . . . I look in a mirror!” Judy and Stink raced for the bathroom. On the bathroom mirror, a message was written in soap crayons: Z SLFHV ULI NLFHV.
Stink helped Judy work out the code. “A HOUSE FOR MOUSE!” yelled Judy.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Stink.
“Think,” said Judy. “What else could be a house for Mouse?”
“Under your bed?” asked Stink. “Or your top bunk?”
“I looked there,” said Judy. “Wait! I got it! Where is Mouse whenever we can’t find her?”
“The dirty-laundry basket!” said Stink. He ran downstairs after his sister. Judy raced over to the pile of laundry on the washer and dug around. “Found it!” she said, holding up her scrapbook.
They flipped through pages of pictures and pebbles, pressed leaves and pencil rubbings, tea bags and sugar packets and Band-Aids, her Declaration of Independence, the postcard from Tori.
She flipped to the last page. She, Judy Moody, was gobsmacked! Glued to the page was a fancy certificate on old-timey paper that looked like parchment.
Taped to the same page was a shiny new quarter.
“Holy macaroni!” said Judy. “Look! A Maine quarter with a lighthouse! Now I have liberty AND the purse of happiness.”
“And with more allowance, you can pay me back a lot faster!” said Stink.
“Wait till I write to Tori and tell her. My Declaration of Independence really worked!”
“Except for the getting your own bathroom thing.”
Judy Moody hugged her scrapbook, then Stink. She found Mom and Dad and hugged them, too. She even kissed Mouse on her wet pink nose.
“Independence doesn’t end here,” said Mom. “We’re going to expect you to keep being responsible.”
“And, of course, you still always have to do your homework,” Dad told her.
“And be nice to me!” said Stink.
“Maybe I could also stay up a teeny-weeny bit late? Just for tonight?” asked Judy. “On account of how independent I am now and how I’m not going to be treated like a baby anymore and stuff.”
“Fifteen minutes,” said Dad.
“And just for tonight,” said Mom.
Fifteen whole minutes!
“No fair!” said Stink. “Then I’m declaring independence from brushing my teeth! Give me liberty or give me bad breath!”
“One independent kid is enough for now,” said Mom. Dad laughed.
That night, in those fifteen minutes, Judy ate a snack of grapes and goldfish (the crackers!). She brushed her teeth with red, white, and blue toothpaste and washed her face with her very own (Bonjour Bunny) washcloth. She read a whole chapter of her Ramona the Brave library book. After only twelve and a half minutes, she couldn’t even stay awake anymore. She climbed the ladder to her top bunk.
“Lights out!” said Mom. “Good night, sweetie.” Dad blew her a kiss.
After Mom and Dad pulled the door almost-shut, Judy lay on her top bunk and gazed up at the night-sky ceiling full of glow-in-the-dark stars.
Star-spangled bananas! She, Judy Moody, was Independent-with-a-capital-I. As independent as Ben Franklin. John Hancock. Paul Revere. As independent as Sybil Ludington on her midnight ride.
Being independent was brilliant! The bee’s knees. And staying up late was Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Judy was getting sleepy. So sleepy. But just before she drifted off, she took out her flashlight pen and wrote something on the wall, in permanent marker, right next to her pillow:
JUDY MOODY SLEPT HERE.
Megan McDonald, Judy Moody Declares Independence!
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