Judy Moody, M.D. (8 page)

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 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:

Ding!
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 fourteeny. Just Peanut, sleeping with her head on a lettuce pillow.

“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!”

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?”

“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.

“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 the
Guinness Book of World Records. Ripley’s Believe It or Not
!”

“Or NOT!” said one-two-three voices. Three annoying, not-funny, used-to-be-friends 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 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, 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 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 Lumpty-Dumpty 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.

“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!

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 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 drink it. Swallow it. Mom wanted her to swallow Nebraska!

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.

“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.

A day without school was longer than a month. A day without school took a year. At least she, Bozo the Clone, did not have to go to school and face her not-so-funny friends.

Still, if they made up, she could be passing notes to Rocky right now. Or telling jokes to Frank Pearl. Or making faces at Jessica Rodent-Fink Finch. But they were all at school, school, school. Learning fun, interesting, fascinating, not pain-in-the-brain stuff, like the smallest bone in your ear is an
ossicle
(not Popsicle). Or how to spell
maxilla
(a jawbone, not Godzilla).

Judy wished she could clone a friend to have right here, right now. Instead, she counted Band-Aids in her Band-Aid collection. Three hundred thirty-seven. Plus thirteen on Hedda-Get-Betta, her doctor doll. Plus a brand-new box of thirty bug Band-Aids she got from Mom this morning just for being sick!

337 + 13 + 30 = too hard to figure out when you’re not at school.

She practiced her autograph, fast and messy like real doctors.