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“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