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“I’ll say some magic words,” said Rocky. “Let me think. How’s this:

“Snip of hair, electric power.

How many guinea pigs per hour?

Eeny-meeny, dead Houdini.

Two, ten, twelve, fourteeny.”

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