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and cracked up.
    “I’m melting!” said Rocky in a Wicked-Witch-of-the-West voice.
    “Oh, no!” said Judy. “My Leaning Tower of Pizza Tables. I set it on the shelf . . . over the radiator!”
    “The heat melted them,” said Rocky.
    “We’ll just have to call it the Melted Tower of Pizza,” said Frank.
    “Don’t feel bad,” said Amy Namey. “That’s like what happened to my papier-mache globe. Globe explode! Remember?”
    “Okay, folks, the show must go on!” said Mr. Todd.
    Judy took out the supplies for the Pasta Shapes Game.
    “Everybody gets their own game board and a little bag with pasta in it,” said Judy, holding up a bag and rattling it. “You match the different kinds of pasta in the bag with the shapes on your board.”
    “Great idea,” said Mr. Todd.
    “That sounds like lots of fun,” said Ms. Valentine.
    “Then write the name of the noodle under it. If you don’t know the name, you can look up at my chart.” Judy held up a piece of cardboard that had pasta shapes glued onto it. Above each kind of pasta was its name.

    Everybody cracked up. “Ha, ha!” Bradley pointed.
    “You’re missing some,” said a kid from the other class.
    “Where’s the elbow macaroni?” somebody asked.
    “And the vermicelli? And the cappellini?” asked Jessica.
    Judy stared at her cardboard. How could she have missed any? She had even stayed up late making sure she had every single last one glued into place.
    She marched over to Rocky and Frank. “Which one of you stole them? Give it.” She held out her hand.
    “I didn’t do anything! Honest!” said Rocky.
    Frank was chewing away on something. And the something was not gum. The something was pasta shapes from her game.
    “You ate them!?” cried Judy.
    “I got hungry just standing here being a flag,” mumbled Frank.
    “Eeuw! Use your noodle, Frank,” she said, pointing to her head. “Those noodles were not even cooked!”
    “So?” said Frank. “They still taste good.”
    “Yuck!” said Judy. “They had GLUE on them. I’m going to tell the whole world that you, Frank Pearl, ate glue.”
    “So? Everybody thinks I eat paste anyway.”
    “ROAR-a-lini!” said Judy.

    The Leaning Tower of Pizza Tables had melted. The Pasta Shapes Game had gotten eaten. Getting around the world in eight days was definitely not easy.
    But nothing could wreck the tarantella. Nothing. It had to be perfect. If only she hadn’t forgotten about the practice that day. Now she, Judy Moody, would dance the tarantella alone. Just like her fortune had said.
    Rocky would play the record. Frank would shake the tambourine. And Jessica Finch would clap along.
    She could not mess this up, or half the third grade would be mad that they did not make it around the world in eight days.
    While everyone finished the Pasta Shapes Game, Mr. Todd pushed desks and stuff over to the corner so Judy would have plenty of room.
    “Okey-dokey,” said Judy. “This morning I am going to dance the tarantella.”
    “The tarantula?” somebody asked.
    “No, not the tarantula,” said Frank.
    “Well, actually, you’re never going to believe it, but I looked it up. Who knew? Tarantella means ‘tarantula.’ For real and absolute positive. My dad told me the dance started a long time ago, before he was even born, around the Middle Ages.” Mr. Todd and Ms. Valentine cracked up.
    Judy held up the tarantula skin in a bag. Everybody squirmed. “EEUW!”
    “Don’t worry, it’s not a real spider. Just the skin or the skeleton of a tarantula. Anyway, this dance is called the Spider Dance. Some people say it started because if you got bitten by a tarantula, then you’d act as crazy as a loon and dance to get all the spider-bite stuff out of your system. A doctor even wrote about it and said this dance was a cure for spider bites.”
    “Interesting,” Mr. Todd said, raising his eyebrows.
    “A spider has eight legs, so usually you need four people,” said Judy, glancing over at Rocky,