Judy Moody and the Bad Luck Charm

by Megan McDonald

  When at last, finally, the end, they got there, Judy had to wake him up. “Stink! We’re here! The District of Coolsville!”

  Dad parked and they walked along the Mall that was not a mall at all. It was more like a park with a long reflecting pool and tons of famous, cool stuff you see on money. Judy saw the fancy White House where the Big Boss of the Whole Entire Country lived. Aka the Prez. Plus the First Lady and First Kids and First Dog.

  Da-da-da Dome! Judy saw a big important building with a dome where some Big Important People decided Big Important Stuff like laws or something.

  Judy saw a tall, skinny pyramid thingie called the Washington Monument. Mom said it was almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower!

  Her eyes bugged out when she saw the real, actual statue of Abe Lincoln, called the Lincoln Memorial, just like on the back of a not-lucky penny. RARE!

  “I bet James Madison, best-president-ever, stood right here,” said Stink. “James Madison could have spit on this sidewalk. James Madison could have eaten a hot dog on this bench.”

  “Hot dogs weren’t even invented yet,” said Judy.

  “How do you know?” said Stink.

  “I know you have James Madison on the brain,” said Judy.

  Dad checked his watch. “Who wants to go to the museum?”

  “Is it the boring kind? Or the way-not-boring kind?” said Judy.

  “Way-not-boring,” said Mom, pointing to a bunch of museums that were part of the Smithsonian.

  “Whoa! Check it out,” Stink said, running down the sidewalk. “A castle!”

  “Let’s start there,” said Dad. “It’s the info center.”

  “What do they have at this way-not-boring museum?” Judy asked.

  “The Hope Diamond,” said Mom.

  “Lincoln’s stovepipe hat,” said Dad.

  “Shrunken heads and dino poop!” said Stink.

  “They do not,” said Judy.

  “Yah-huh. No lie,” said Stink. “I saw it when I came here before with my class. Plus they have three thousand sea slugs, fifty thousand flies, and one hundred and fifteen thousand bird eggs.”

  “We are SO there,” said Judy.

  Here is what she, Judy Moody, saw up-close-and-personal at the way-not-boring museum:

  • Astronaut boots

  • Barf bags

  • Brick from the Great Wall of China

  • Robber crabs (They steal forks and spoons! No lie!)

  • 7 million beetles, including the endangered Northeast beach tiger beetle

  • 1 million samples of dirt

  • 10,000-year-old sloth dung

  • President Warren G. Harding’s pajamas

  • Lock of George Washington’s hair (+ hairy locks of 13 more presidents)

  • Way-old pack of gum

  After the museum, they hit the gift shop. Judy used her lucky Crazy Strips money to get freeze-dried ice cream (just like the astronauts). And a book about stuff to make with duct tape.

  Stink already had the James Madison six-inch ruler, the James Madison mini statue, and the James Madison friendship coin. And they were all sold out of James Madison talking bobbleheads. So he got a plastic un-talking statue of Abe Lincoln.

  “Abe Lincoln is my second-best president,” said Stink as they walked back to the car. “See? It says eman-ci-potato at the bottom.”

  “Potato? Let me see,” said Judy. She sounded out the word at the bottom.

  “E-M-A-N-C-I-P-A-T-I-O-N. What’s emancipation?” Judy asked Mom and Dad.

  “It means to set free,” said Mom.

  “Lincoln set potatoes free?” Stink asked.

  Mom chuckled. “No, Lincoln is famous for writing something called the Emancipation Proclamation.”

  “In it, he said slaves should be free,” Dad added.

  “Everybody knows that,” said Stink.

  “Speaking of Abe Lincoln,” said Judy. “Will we have time to go to the Museum of Doctor Stuff? They have Abe Lincoln’s skull bone there. No lie.”

  “Sorry, Jelly Bean,” said Dad. “Mom already checked. The National Museum of Health and Medicine had a power outage. They’re closed today.”

  “Rat fink,” said Judy.

  “How about the World’s Almost-Biggest Chair?” Stink asked. “I didn’t get to see that last time. Can we go? Can we? Can we?”

  “Sure,” said Dad.

  “No fair. Stink gets to do his thing and my thing is closed. That stinks on ice.”

  “Tell you what,” said Mom, checking her map. “We can drive past the chair on our way to the Frederick Douglass House in Cedar Hill.”

  “Frederick Douglass! Mr. Todd told us all about him for Black History Month.”

  “I thought you might like that,” said Mom.

  “Who’s Frederick Douglass?” Stink asked.

  “He was a great American thinker and speaker,” said Dad.

  “He was a slave and he escaped and fought for freedom,” said Mom.

  “He told President Lincoln how being a slave was really, really bad,” said Judy. “And he said everybody should be able to vote. He even got in a fight with Lincoln about it. But that was like four score and seven million years ago.”

  Mom smiled.

  “I think Mr. Todd would be proud of you,” said Dad.

  “And now I can tell him I saw his house!”

  The World’s Almost-Biggest Chair sat out on the sidewalk in front of a parking lot.

  “Can I climb up it?” Stink asked.

  “Go ahead,” said Judy. “If you want to get the World’s Biggest Time-Out!”

  Next stop: Cedar Hill. When they got to the Frederick Douglass house, there was an orange plastic fence around it, and yellow tape that said DO NOT CROSS.

  “Under construction,” said Mom.

  “Aw, this is closed, too?” Judy asked. Double rat fink! She should have rubbed her lucky penny.

  A park ranger came out and said they were fixing up the house, and all the stuff was in storage. But they could take a tour of the grounds.

  Bor-ing! Judy and Stink sat on a bummed-out bench while Mom and Dad walked around and read blah-blah-blah to each other from their guidebooks.

  The flyer with the map had a lot of pictures. “Here, I’ll give you the tour, Stink,” said Judy. “This is a fancy bedroom. This is a fancy room where he played checkers. This is the not-so-fancy kitchen.”

  Stink peered at the shiny pictures. “Hey, wait. What’s this?” Judy saw a picture of a little stone house with a chimney. “Stink! Follow me!”

  Judy led the way to a little stone house in the backyard. Inside was a high desk with a stool. “What is it?” Stink asked as they stepped through the doorway.

  “It’s called the Growlery,” said Judy. “This is where Frederick Douglass came to growl when he was in a bad mood.”

  “No. What is it for real?”

  “That is for real, Stink. No lie. It says so right here.” Judy pointed to the caption under the picture. “He had a whole house for bad moods.”

  “A bad mood house. Whoa,” said Stink. “GRRRRRRR!” He roared like a lion.

  “ROARRRRRRR!” said Judy.

  Mom and Dad poked their heads into the Growlery.

  “It’s a house for bad moods!” said Judy.

  “I see,” said Dad.

  “I heard,” said Mom.

  “We should move this to our house. For Judy!” Stink cracked himself up.

  “Time to go, kids,” said Dad. “We have to meet the Finches for dinner so Judy can find out about taking care of PeeGee. Then we’ll check into our hotel.”

  “Can’t we stay a little longer?” asked Stink.

  “Please-pretty-please with astronaut ice cream on top?” Judy asked.

  “Five minutes,” said Mom.

  She, Judy Moody, was still the luckiest kid alive. How many kids got to go to the District of Cool and see a giant giant’s head, robber crabs, and a 10,000-year-old ball of dung? And scream their heads off in a Bad Mood h
ouse? All in one day!

  Washington was Washingfun!

  Dinnertime! The Moodys waited for Jessica Finch and her family at KaBob’s Place.

  Stink showed Judy the menu. “Every food here is on a stick. Hot-dog kabobs. Batter-dipped-veggie kabobs. Even fruit kabobs.”

  Judy was building the Washington Monument out of sugar packets. “Stink, don’t shake the — Tim-ber!” said Judy, as her sugar packets came crashing down.

  At last, the Finches arrived. Judy and Stink could not stop talking about Washingfun. They told Jessica about the Bad Mood House and the giant chair and the way-old dung.

  Judy glanced all around. “Hey, where’s your pig?” she asked.

  “PeeGee WeeGee’s in the car,” said Jessica.

  “He’ll be okay in his kennel while we eat,” said Mr. Finch.

  After they ordered, Mom said, “So, tomorrow’s the big spelling bee, Jessica. How do you feel?”

  “My tummy’s doing gymnastics,” said Jessica. “It’s like the Olympics in there.”

  “Nothing a grilled-cheese kabob won’t fix,” said Mrs. Finch.

  “I could never ever spell in front of a million people,” said Judy. “Even with my lucky penny.”

  Jessica Finch took out her list of spelling words. “I have to keep studying. Only seventeen hours and thirty-three minutes till Bee Time.”

  “Hey. Want me to quiz you?” Judy asked. “I’ll be your study buddy.”

  “Great idea, girls,” said Mom.

  Judy ran her finger down the list. Jessica spelled neighbor and zipper and alligator. She spelled library and geography.

  “Spell shampoo banana,” said Stink.

  “Shampoo banana is not on the spelling list, Stink.”

  “S-H-A-M-P-O-O B-A-N-A-N-A,” said Jessica.

  “Sure,” said Judy, “but can you spell berryfurrymerrycherryhoneybunnyfunny?”

  “That’s like half the words on page one,” Jessica said.

  “I bet you can, Sweet Pea,” said Mr. Finch.

  Jessica took a deep breath. “B-E-R-R-Y-F-U-R-R-Y-M-E-R-R-Y-C-H-E-R-R-Y-H-O-N-E-Y-B-U-N-N-Y-F-U-N-N-Y.”

  “As your study buddy,” said Judy, “can I just say? You are so going to win.”

  “We heard Orchard Elementary has a boy named Sanjay Sharma who’s really good. He may be tough to beat,” said Mr. Finch.

  “Yes, but can he spell half the words on page one at warp speed without taking a breath?”

  “Thanks,” said Jessica.

  At the salad bar, Jessica spelled mushroom and watermelon. She spelled artichoke, cucumber, and cauliflower.

  “Even the salad is on a stick!” said Jessica, showing off her plate.

  “Jessica can spell the whole salad bar!” Judy told everybody at the table. She set the spelling list in her lap.

  “Those are page three words,” said Jessica. “It’s page four that gets me. Like heirloom. I keep spelling it HAIR-loom.”

  “Those are like fourth-grade words,” said Judy.

  When their main courses came, Stink said, “Even vegetables taste good on a stick.”

  “Stink would eat camel on a stick,” said Judy. “Hey, Jessica? Can you spell KABOBBLEHEAD?”

  Just then, Judy dropped her mini-meatball kabob. It landed — SPLAT! — right smack-dab in the middle of her lap! On her lap was not a napkin, but . . . Jessica’s spelling list! Page four. Judy swiped at the spelling list with her napkin.

  Yikes-a-roni! Page four now had a big fat meatball smudge that would not budge. Judy flipped the list back to page one. Good thing they were done studying. She slid the list across the table toward Jessica’s plate.

  When they got to the hotel, Mom and Dad checked them in. They stood in line behind a guy with a pet iguana named Iggy. A kid walked past them in the lobby with a chinchilla on a leash.

  “This is the coolest hotel ever!” said Judy.

  “Check out the glass elevator,” said Stink, pointing.

  “It’s like the Eiffel Tower.”

  “It’s like Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator,” said Stink. “Maybe we’ll get to ride with Oompa-Loompas.”

  “Try to get a room on the seventh floor,” Judy told her parents.

  “That’s where our room is!” said Jessica.

  “Seven is good luck,” said Judy. “Maybe that means you’ll win the spelling bee!”

  “Oh, yeah. Don’t forget I need my spelling list back,” said Jessica.

  “Spelling list?” said Judy. “I don’t have your list. I thought you had your list.”

  “I don’t have my list. I thought you had my list.”

  Judy shook her head no.

  “We started eating. We were done spelling. So I gave it back to you.” A prickle of guilt made Judy’s face grow hot. She did not mention the Meatball Smudge Incident. But that’s how she knew she had given the list back. She remembered wiping the smudge, flipping the list back to page one, and passing it across the table to Jessica.

  “What am I gonna do?” Jessica wailed.

  “Judy? Is this true?” asked Mom.

  “Did you forget Jessica’s list at the restaurant?” asked Mrs. Finch.

  “I didn’t forget it,” said Judy. “I gave the list back to her. She forgot it.”

  Fink-Face Finch squinted her beady eyes at Judy.

  “You’re a bad-luck charm, Judy Moody.”

  “Am not!”

  “If you don’t want me to win,” Jessica sniffed, “just say so.”

  “Mom!” said Judy. “That is so not true. Honest!”

  “No worries,” said Mom. “Let’s just call the restaurant and find out if someone found the list.”

  “But what if — I mean —” Jessica was tearing up, half-sobbing. “What if they threw it in the T-R-A-S-H?”

  Mr. Finch called KaBob’s Place. Mr. Finch said, “Uh-huh, uh-huh.”

  “Good news. We’re in luck!” said Mr. Finch, after he hung up the phone. “The waitress found the list on our table. They’re holding it at the cash register.”

  “Jessica has a big day tomorrow,” said Dad. “Why don’t you go up to your room and relax. Judy and I will go back and get the list. We’re more than happy to help, right Judy?”

  Judy half-nodded. Fink-Face Finch sure knew how to turn on the waterworks and make everybody think she had done this on purpose. It was on-top-of-spaghetti way-not-fair.

  ROAR! Where was the Growly House when you needed it?

  Just when she’d been starting to think Jessica was an UN-fink, too. She’d like to give that Jessica Finch a Shampoo Banana.

  When Judy and Dad came back from KaBob’s Place with the spelling list, Mom said, “Honey, take it over to Jessica. They’re right across the hall in room 711.”

  There were exactly three things wrong with that plan.

  1.) Judy still wanted to give Fink-Face Finch a HAIRLOOM full of banana.

  2.) There was still that big fat kabob blob smack in the middle of page four.

  3.) Jessica A. Freakazoid would go nuts when she saw the blob.

  “Mom, I might have spilled a kabob on page four. Do you think she’ll notice?”

  “Let me see.” Stink took a look at the list. “Oh, she’ll notice. This looks like it was on the Titanic — after it sank.”

  “Stink, you’re not helping,” said Dad.

  Judy snatched the list out of Stink’s hand. She stomped across the hall. She stood outside the door and rubbed her lucky penny. Don’t be mad. Don’t be mad. Maybe she’d get lucky and Jessica would not turn to page four.

  Judy knocked on the door. “Room service!” she called.

  Jessica opened the door. Mr. and Mrs. Finch were watching TV. PeeGee WeeGee was curled up asleep on Jessica’s bed.

  “Here’s your list.” Judy handed it over. The list was wrinkled. The list was crinkled. The list looked like it had just survived a food fight. Or a tsunami. Or a tsunami food fight.

  Jessica started to flip through the pages. Some luck.
r />   “I may have spilled a little something on page four,” Judy blurted.

  “A little something?” Jessica wailed. “I can’t read half these words. What if the winning word is under this smudge? I could lose the whole spelling bee because of this. Which means our whole class could lose. Our whole school could lose.”

  “I’m VERY BERRY FURRY MERRY CHERRY HONEY BUNNY FUNNY sorry.”

  “Why do you have to Judy-Moody-ruin everything?” Jessica said, sighing.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Judy said in a low voice.

  Jessica crossed her arms. She dug her foot into the carpet.

  Judy’s ears burned. Her mouth felt like sand. “Go ahead. Don’t believe me,” she croaked. “I’m going to emancipate from you if that’ll make you happy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Emancipate. It means to set free. I’m free now. Free from being your Study Buddy. And you’re free, too. Free from my bad luck.”

  Jessica’s mouth hung open. “What are you saying? I don’t get it.”

  “Then let me spell it out. E-M-A-N-C-I-P-A-T-E.” Judy stormed across the hall. “Do you want me to use it in a sentence?”

  The next morning, Judy peered through the peephole in the hotel door that looked out into the hall. All she could see was nothing. All she could hear was the slam of the door from last night after she got mad at Jessica.

  Judy sat on the edge of the foldout bed. She, Judy Moody, was a cruddy Study Buddy. Now Jessica would think she was a crummy pig sitter, too. She twirled and twisted her hair until it made a big fat knot. Ouch.

  Knock knock!

  She leaped up and ran to the door.

  Jessica Finch. Plus one potbellied piggy on a leash!

  Judy forgot she was still mad. “PeeGee WeeGee!” she said, throwing open the door. Judy bent down to scratch the piggy’s ears. PeeGee WeeGee snuffled the carpet. PeeGee WeeGee turned in circles. PeeGee WeeGee curled his tail. “At least somebody’s happy to see me.”

  Jessica had her hair in a special pigtail. And she was wearing a pink skirt and a shirt that had a picture of a pig. It said I’M WITH HIM. “I know you want to emancipate from me and everything,” said Jessica. “But I still need you to babysit my pig.”