“Oh, yeah? Then you pick it up.” Rocky picked up the toad. He held it in his hand. It felt soft and bumpy and cool-but-not-slimy all at once.
Just then Rocky felt something warm and wet in his hand. “Yuck,” Rocky cried. “Now that toad peed on me.” He tossed the toad back into the bucket.
“See what I mean?” said Judy. “I can’t believe it happened to both of us the same!”
“Same-same!” said Rocky, and they double-high-fived. “Now it’s like we’re members of the same club. A secret club that only the two of us know about.”
“And now we have a club to put on our Me collages,” said Judy.
“What should we call it?” asked Rocky.
“The Toad Pee Club!”
“Rare!” said Rocky. “We could put T. P. Club on our collages. People will think it stands for the Toilet Paper Club.”
“Perfect,” Judy said.
“Hey, what are you two doing?” asked Stink, running down the sidewalk in too-big boots.
“Nothing,” said Judy, wiping her hands down the sides of her pants.
“Yes, you are,” said Stink. “I can tell by your caterpillar eyebrow.”
“What caterpillar eyebrow?”
“Your eyebrows make a fuzzy caterpillar when you don’t want to tell me something.” Judy Moody never knew she had caterpillar eyebrows before.
“Yeah, a stinging caterpillar,” said Judy.
“We’re starting a club,” said Rocky.
“A secret club,” Judy said quickly.
“I like secrets,” said Stink. “I want to be in the club.”
“You can’t just be in the club,” said Judy. “Something has to happen to you.”
“I want the thing to happen to me too.”
“No, you don’t,” said Judy.
“It’s yucky,” Rocky said.
“What?” asked Stink.
“Never mind,” said Judy.
“You have to pick up that toad,” Rocky told Stink.
“This is a trick, isn’t it?” asked Stink. “To get me to pick up a slimy, bumpy old toad.”
“That’s right,” said Judy.
Stink picked up the toad anyway. “Hey, it feels . . . interesting. Like a pickle. I never picked up a toad before,” said Stink. “Now can I be in the club?”
“No,” said Judy.
“I can’t believe it’s not slimy,” said Stink.
“Just wait,” said Rocky.
“I’m not going to get warts or anything, am I?”
“Do you feel anything?” asked Rocky.
“No,” said Stink.
“Oh, well,” said Judy. “Put the toad back. There. See? You can’t be in the club.”
Stink started to cry. “But I picked up the toad, and I want to be in the club.”
“Don’t cry,” said Judy. “Trust me, Stink, you don’t want to be in this club.”
Just then Stink’s eyes opened very wide. There was something warm and wet on his hand. Judy Moody and Rocky fell down laughing.
“Am I in the club yet?” asked Stink.
“Yes! Yes! Yes!” said Judy and Rocky. “The Toad Pee Club!”
“Yippee!” cried Stink. “I’m in the Toad Pee Club!”
D-day. Doomsday. Dumbday. Saturday. The day of Frank Eats-Paste Pearl’s birthday party. I’d rather eat ten jars of paste myself than go to that party, Judy thought.
For three whole weeks she had kept the hand-delivered-by-Frank-Pearl birthday invitation hidden inside the bottom of her Tip-It game, where Mom and Dad (who hated Tip-It) would NEVER find it.
Then today, the very day of the party, it happened. Dad found out.
She, Judy Moody, just had to ask Dad to take her to Fur & Fangs for some toad food. She just happened to be looking at a tadpole kit with real live frog eggs — Watch tadpoles turn into frogs! See tails shrink, feet grow, legs form! — hoping to talk Dad into buying it for her when another kit just like it bumped into her. Holding the kit was Frank’s mom.
“Judy!” Frank’s mom said. “Isn’t that funny? It looks like we had the same idea for Frank’s present! I thought he’d love watching a tadpole turn into a frog. I was about to buy him the same kit!”
“Um, I wasn’t . . . I mean, you were?”
“Frank’s really looking forward to seeing you at his party.”
“Party?” Dad’s ears perked up. “Whose party?”
“Frank’s!” said his mom. “I’m Mrs. Pearl, Frank’s mom.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Dad.
“Very nice to meet you,” said Mrs. Pearl. “And Judy, I’ll see you this afternoon. Bye for now.”
Mrs. Pearl put the tadpole kit she was holding back on the shelf.
“Frank LOVES reptiles,” she said.
Amphibians, thought Judy.
“Judy, why didn’t you just say you needed to come here to get your friend a birthday present? Did I know you had a party to go to today?” Dad asked.
“No.”
In the car, Judy tried to convince her dad that there would be kids at the party making rude body noises and calling each other animal-breath names.
“You’ll have fun.”
“You know, Frank Pearl eats paste,” said Judy.
“Look. You’ve already got the tadpole kit,” Dad said.
“I was kind of sort of hoping I could keep it.”
“But Mrs. Pearl put hers back when she saw yours. At least take it over, Judy.”
“Do I have to wrap it?” asked Judy.
From the look on his face, she knew the answer.
Judy Moody wrapped the too-good-for-a-paste-eater present in boring newspaper (not the comics). Even though the party started at two o’clock, she told Mom and Dad that the party didn’t start until four o’clock, so she would only have to go for the last disgusting minutes.
The whole family rode in the car to Frank Pearl’s house. Even Toady went along, carried by Stink in a yogurt container. Judy held Frank’s lumpy present and fell into a bad-mood back-seat slump. Why did Rocky have to go to his grandma’s TODAY of all days?
“She’s crying!” Stink reported to the front seat.
“Am not!” she said back with her best troll eyes ever.
“Wait here,” Judy told her family when they got to Frank’s house.
“Go ahead. Have fun,” Dad said. “We’ll be back for you in half an hour. Forty minutes tops.”
“We’re only going to the supermarket,” said Mom. But they might as well have been going to New Zealand.
Mrs. Pearl answered the door. “Judy! We thought you’d changed your mind. C’mon out back.”
“Fra-ank. Judy’s here, honey,” Mrs. Pearl called out to the backyard.
Judy looked around the yard. All she could see were boys. Boys hurling icing insects at each other and boys mixing chocolate cake with ketchup and boys conducting an experiment with Kool-Aid and a grasshopper.
“Where are the other kids?” asked Judy.
“Everybody’s here, honey. Frank’s little sister, Maggie, went off to a friend’s. I think you know all the boys from school. And there’s Adrian and Sandy from next door.”
Sandy was a boy. So was Adrian. That Frank Pearl had tricked her — the girls next door were boys! She, Judy Moody, was definitely the one and only girl. Alone. At Frank Pearl’s all-boy-except-her birthday party!
Judy wanted to climb right up Frank Pearl’s tire-swing rope and howl like a rain forest monkey. Instead she asked, “Do you have a bathroom?”
Judy decided to stay in the Pearls’ bathroom forever. Or at least until her parents came back from New Zealand. Frank Pearl’s all-boy party had to be THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED to her.
Judy looked for something to do. Uncapping an eyebrow pencil, she drew some sharp new teeth on her faded first-day-of-school shark T-shirt. Rare.
Knock knock.
“Ju-dy? Are you in there?” Judy turned on the water in a hurry so Mrs. Pearl would think she was washing her han
ds.
“Just a minute!” she called. Water sprayed her all over, soaking her shirt. The sharp new shark teeth blurred and ran.
Judy opened the door. Mrs. Pearl said, “Frank was about to open your present, but we couldn’t find you.”
Back outside, Brad pointed at Judy’s wet shirt. “You guys! It’s a shark! With black blood dripping from its mouth!”
“Cool!” “Wow!” “How’d you do that?”
“Talent,” said Judy. “And water.”
“Water fight!” Brad took a glass of water and threw it on Adam. Mitchell threw one at Dylan. Frank poured one right over his own head and grinned.
Mrs. Pearl whistled, which put a stop to the water battle. “Dylan! Brad! Your parents are here. Don’t forget your party favors.” Mrs. Pearl gave a baby Slinky to each kid as he went out the door. By the time she got to Judy, there were no more baby Slinkies left.
“I must have counted wrong,” said Mrs. Pearl.
“Or Brad took two,” said Frank.
“Here, Judy. I was going to buy these for party favors, but I couldn’t find enough.” Mrs. Pearl handed her a miniature rock-and-gem collection in a plastic see-through box! Tiny amethyst and jade stones. Even a crackly amber one.
“Thank you, Mrs. Pearl!” Judy said, and she meant it. “I love collecting stones and things. Once my brother thought he found a real moon rock!”
“Frank’s a collector too,” said Mrs. Pearl. “All the boys are gone, Frank. Why don’t you take Judy up to your room and show her while she waits for her parents?”
“C’mon. Last one up’s a rotten banana!” said Frank.
He probably collects paste jars, Judy thought. He probably eats it for a midnight snack.
Frank Pearl’s shelves were lined with coffee cans and baby food jars. Each one was filled with marbles, rubber bugs, erasers, something. Judy couldn’t help asking, “Do you have any baseball erasers?”
“I have ten!” said Frank. “I got them FREE when a real Oriole came to the library.”
“Really? Me too!” Judy smiled. She almost said “Same-same,” then caught herself just in time.
“I’m taping one to my Me collage, beside my favorite bug, a click beetle, for HOBBIES — you know, collecting things.”
“That’s my hobby too,” Judy told him.
He also had two pencil sharpeners — a Liberty Bell and a brain — and a teeny-tiny flip-book from Vic’s. Frank Pearl showed her his buffalo nickel, which he kept in a double-locked piggy bank. “It’s not really a collection yet because there’s only one.”
“That’s okay,” said Judy.
Frank also had a killer comic-book collection, with really old ones like the Green Hornet, Richie Rich, and Captain Marvel. To top it off, he even had a miniature soap collection, with fancy hotel names on the wrappers.
Judy forgot all about wanting to leave. “What’s that?” she asked.
“A pitcher plant. It catches insects. They think it’s a flower, so they land on it. Then they fall down this tube, and the plant eats them.”
“Rare!” said Judy. “I have a Venus flytrap named Jaws.”
“I know,” said Frank. “That was funny when you brought it to school, how it ate that hamburger and stunk up your backpack and everything.”
“Fra-ank! Ju-dy! The Moodys are here.”
“I guess I gotta go,” Judy told Frank.
“Well, thanks for the tadpole kit,” Frank said, twisting a leg of the rubber click beetle from his collection.
“Hey, do you really eat paste?” asked Judy.
“I tasted it one time. For a dare.”
“Rare!” Judy said.
Judy’s day was off to a grouchy start. This was the day that Stink, her once smelly, sold-dirt-for-moon-dust brother was going with his class to Washington, D.C., to see the president’s house!
She found out Mom and Dad were going too, as chaperones.
Yours Truly had to stay home and finish her Me collage. She, Judy Moody, still had several bald spots to fill.
“I think my brain has a leak,” Judy told her family. “I can’t think of one more interesting thing to put on my collage.”
Judy sank down on the family-room couch like a balloon that had lost three days’ air. “Interesting things could happen to me better in Washington, D.C.,” said Judy.
“You know it’s just for the second-grade classes, honey,” said Mom.
“ROAR!” was all she said.
“We might be home late,” Dad told her. “You can go to Rocky’s after school. You two can finish up your projects together.”
“You’ll have fun,” said Mom. “And aren’t you going to an assembly today for Brush Your Teeth Week?”
How could she forget? One more reason to be grouchy. Stink got to rub elbows with the president while she, Judy Moody, would be shaking the hands of Mr. Tooth and Mrs. Floss.
Stink waddled into the family room wrapped in a red and white striped tablecloth, looking like he just got hit by a flying picnic.
“What’s that?” asked Judy.
“It’s a costume, for my YOU ARE THE FLAG project. I’m the flag.”
“Stink, you’re not supposed to be the flag. You’re supposed to tell what the flag means to you.”
“To me it means I am the flag.”
“What’s on your head?”
“A hat. See, each star is a state, like on the flag. There’s one for all forty-eight states.”
“Guess what. There are fifty states, Stink.”
“Nuh-uh. I counted. I crossed them off on my map.”
“Count again,” Judy said. “You probably forgot Hawaii and Alaska.”
“Do you think the president will notice?” asked Stink.
“Stink, the president just about made the states. He’ll notice.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll stick two more on.”
“Every other second-grader writes a flag poem or draws a picture for YOU ARE THE FLAG. My brother’s a human flag.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You look like a star-spangled mummy and walk like a banana. That’s what.”
“I get to see a room where everything is made of real gold. Even the curtains and bedspreads. Heather Strong says the lamps are made of diamonds.”
“Heather Strong lies,” said Judy.
It was no use. She would have to change her Me collage. Frank’s birthday party was no longer THE WORST THING EVER. Frank Pearl ate paste for a dare! And he gave her a baby food jar with six ants and a fly for Jaws.
Not meeting the president of her own United fifty States was absolutely and positively THE WORST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED. Her whole family, including her brother, the human flag, was going to Washington, D.C., while she, Judy Moody, would be listening to a talking tooth.
It was pouring outside. Judy’s dad would not let her leave for school without an umbrella, and the only one she could find was her first-grade yellow ducky one. She wouldn’t open a baby umbrella, so she got soaked clear through. The sun is probably shining over the president’s house this second, thought Judy. She felt like a bike left out in the rain.
“Frank wants to come over after school too,” Rocky told her on the bus. “And I have a brand new ten-dollar bill from Nay-Nay. We can go to Vic’s after school and buy something really rare.”
“Do they have any real gold at Vic’s?” was all she said.
In Spelling, Judy wrote WEASELS when Mr. Todd had really said MEASLES. In Science, when Jessica Finch threw Judy the ball of yarn for their giant spider web, she dropped it. It rolled out the door just when Ms. Tuxedo, the principal, walked past in high heels. And at the Brush Your Teeth Week assembly, Mr. Tooth picked Judy to be a cavity. On stage. In front of the whole school.
She could not get her mind off Stink at the president’s house, where she wasn’t. Seeing all that real gold. Would he get to shake the president’s hand? Meet the president’s daughters? Sit in a gold chair?
“Are flags allowed
to talk?” she asked Frank.
“Only if they’re talking flags!”
That did it. There would be no living with Stink once he had been to the president’s.
On the bus ride home, Rocky squirted Frank with his magic nickel. Frank snorted, wiping the drips on his sleeve. Judy pretended it was funny. Really she was thinking, Stink could be petting the president’s puppy, right now, this very instant. When Rocky said, “I can’t wait to go to Vic’s,” Judy grunted.
The three of them half-ran through leftover puddles all the way to Vic’s. Rocky didn’t even stop to cross through China and Japan the right way. “What’s the big hurry?” she asked.
“I need something,” said Rocky, “but there’s only one left, and I want to make sure I get it!” he said. When they got to Vic’s, Rocky went straight to the counter.
“Over here,” Rocky told them. “There’s still one left!”
Judy stood on tiptoes to look in a box on top of the counter. Lying in the bottom was . . . a hand. A person’s hand! Judy almost screamed. Frank almost screamed too. Then they realized it was made out of rubber.
“What do you think?” asked Rocky.
“Rare,” said Judy.
“Ace,” said Frank. “It looks so real. Fingernails and everything!”
Rocky bought the hand and three fireballs.
“What are you going to do with your hand?” Frank asked.
“I don’t know,” said Rocky. “I just like it.”
When they got to Rocky’s house, Judy tried to work on her Me collage. But she was not in a FUNNIEST THING EVER mood. All the funny stuff that had ever happened to her seemed to have gotten up and left. Marched right out of her brain like a line of ants from a picnic.
Rocky showed Judy and Frank his finished collage. “Here’s Thomas Jefferson in the window of my house for WHERE I LIVE. I cut him out of play money.”
“That’s good!” said Frank. “For Jefferson Street.”
“The piece of cloth is part of my sling from when I broke my arm, THE WORST THING EVER.”
“And here’s a toilet paper roll for the T. P. Club, a secret club I’m in,” Rocky said, glancing at Judy.
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