The Judy Moody Double-Rare Collection - Megan Mcdonald [28]
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.
She drew cartoons on her pillowcase with markers. Frank with a mustache. Rocky with Frankenstein hair. Jessica Finch with a rodent brain.