Double Fudge by Judy Blume Read Free Book Online Page B

"All the children do."
    "Gift shop?" Mom said. "Warren, did you know there was a gift shop?"
    Dad groaned.
    74
    8 Cousin C oincidence
    Rosie was right. Fudge loved the gift shop. Everything in sight had a money motif. Everything. Shirts, socks, ties, pencils, notepads, snow globes, you name it--it was done up as money.
    "This is better than the tour!" Fudge sang, racing all around. He was fascinated by a five-pound bag of shredded money containing a minimum of ten thousand dollars. You could buy it for forty-five dollars. "Pete, look... ten thousand dollars all in one little bag."
    "Yeah ... but it's shredded, so it's totally useless."
    "I could try to glue it back together. Then we could buy every toy in the world."
    "Even if you could glue it back together, it'd be
    75
    counterfeit," I told him. "If you tried to use it, you'd go to jail."
    "Anyway," Dad said, "forty-five dollars is way too much to spend."
    "How about a five-dollar bag, instead?" the clerk suggested, holding one up.
    Fudge liked that idea. "I'll get one for me and one for Richie."
    "Richie Richest doesn't need shredded money," I told him.
    "How about you, Pete?"
    "I don't need it either. I don't even want it."
    "Okay, fine," Fudge said. "Then I'll just get a bag for me."
    While Dad was paying, Fudge tore around the shop. "How about this tie?" he shouted. "I have to have this tie! Mom, please can I have this money tie?"
    Mom hustled over to him. "What are you going to do with a tie?"
    "Wear it," Fudge said. "Please, Mom! Pretty, pretty please with pistachio nuts on top."
    "All right." Mom gave in. "But that's it."
    "What about Tootsie?" Fudge said.
    "Tootsie doesn't need anything from this shop," Mom said. "She doesn't understand about money."
    "Yet," Fudge said. Then he took off again, laughing like a lunatic.
    76
    I turned to Mom and Dad. "So, you think he's cured now?"
    They looked at me like I was the lunatic. Then Dad said, "Let's just get out of here."
    While we were collecting our things, Fudge raced back across the gift shop. "Dad ..." he said. "That guy is staring you out."
    "What guy?" Dad asked.
    "That one," Fudge said, pointing across the shop.
    "Don't point," Mom told Fudge. "It's not polite."
    "Then how will Dad know which guy I mean?"
    "Good question," I said. "It's pretty crowded in here."
    "Peter, please ..." Mom said, shaking her head. Then she turned to Fudge. "You can describe him, instead of pointing."
    "Okay," Fudge said. "That guy, who kind of looks like you, is staring you out, Dad."
    "It's not staring you out," I told Fudge for the twentieth time, at least. "It's staring at you."
    Now some guy came across the room and walked right up to Dad. He was big--taller and heavier than Dad. His voice boomed through the room, "You have the Hatcher jaw and the Hatcher eyes and if I didn't know better I'd swear you must be a Hatcher!" He stuck out his hand and introduced himself. "Howard Hatcher of Honolulu, Hawaii."
    77
    For a minute Dad looked blank. Then he did a double take. "No," he said. "It can't be. Are you telling me you're Cousin Howie Hatcher?"
    "None other. And you're Cousin Tubby, aren't you?"
    "Cousin Tubby?" Fudge said.
    I was thinking exactly the same thing but I don't always say what I'm thinking, the way Fudge does.
    "I'm known as Warren now," Dad told Cousin Howie.
    Cousin Howie gave Dad a friendly punch in the shoulder. "Lost a few pounds since we last met, huh? You were a real butterball in those days." He laughed. "A big tub of lard."
    Dad sucked in his gut and stood up really straight.
    "You got to work out, Tub!" Howie said, sticking his finger in Dad's gut, like Dad was the Pillsbury Doughboy.
    "I do work out, Howie." Dad got a funny look on his face then, like he suddenly wished he'd told this guy he must be mistaken. Like he had no long-lost cousin named Howie.
    "Well, maybe you got to work harder," Cousin Howie said. "Run a marathon or two."
    That struck me as weird, because Dad was a lot less flabby-looking than