The Meltdown (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 13) Read online

  Hard Luck

  The Long Haul

  Old School

  Double Down

  The Getaway

  The Meltdown

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  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book

  The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary

  The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary: The Next Chapter

  THE DIARY OF A WIMPY KID SERIES

  MORE DIARY OF A WIMPY KID BOOKS

  Diary of a Wimpy Kid

  Rodrick Rules

  The Last Straw

  Dog Days

  The Ugly Truth

  Cabin Fever

  The Third Wheel

  by Jeff Kinney

  AMULET BOOKS

  New York

  DIARY

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

  incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may

  be obtained from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978-1-4197-2743-6

  eISBN: 978-1-68335-387-4

  Wimpy Kid text and illustrations copyright © 2018 Wimpy Kid, Inc.

  DIARY OF A WIMPY KID®, WIMPY KID™, and the Greg Heffley design™

  are trademarks of Wimpy Kid, Inc., and the design of this book’s jacket

  is trade dress of Wimpy Kid, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Book design by Jeff Kinney

  Cover design by Chad W. Beckerman and Jeff Kinney

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

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  to DEB

  january

  Monday

  Everybody in my neighborhood is outside today

  enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. Well,

  everyone except ME. It’s kind of hard to enjoy a

  heat wave when it’s the middle of the WINTER.

  People are calling this “wacky weather,” but it

  just doesn’t feel right. Maybe I’m old-fashioned,

  but I think it should be cold in the winter and

  hot in the SUMMER.

  I’ve heard the whole PLANET is warming up, and

  that human beings are the reason. But don’t blame

  ME, because I just GOT here.

  2

  If the world IS getting hotter, I just hope it

  doesn’t happen too FAST. Because if things keep up

  at THIS rate, I’ll be riding a camel to high school.

  They say the ice caps are melting and the sea is

  rising, so I’ve been trying to convince Mom and

  Dad to buy a house higher up on our hill. But

  they just don’t seem all that concerned.

  3

  It kind of makes me nervous that I’m the only

  one in my family worried about this stuff. Because

  if we don’t do something about the situation

  SOON, we’re gonna wish we DID.

  It’s not just the rising sea levels I’m nervous

  about. Those ice caps have been around for millions

  of years, and there could be things buried inside

  of them that should STAY that way.

  4

  I saw a movie about a caveman who got frozen in

  ice, and when it melted thousands of years later

  he was still ALIVE. I don’t know if that kind

  of thing could actually happen in real life, but if

  there ARE unfrozen cavemen walking around these

  days, the night janitor at my school might be one

  of them.

  If we DO figure a way out of this climate

  mess, it’s probably gonna be someone from MY

  generation who solves it. That’s why I’m always

  nice to the SMART kids, because THEY’RE

  the

  ones who are gonna save our butts.

  5

  Whatever the answer is, I guarantee you

  TECHNOLOGY is gonna be the key.

  Grown-ups are always saying that too much

  technology is BAD for kids, but I say the more

  the BETTER.

  In fact, as soon as I can afford one of those

  high-tech toilets that learns all your habits, I’m

  gonna get the most expensive model.

  Some people worry that one day we’ll lose control of

  our technology and robots will take OVER.

  Well, if that happens, I’m gonna make sure I’m

  on THEIR side.

  6

  I’ve actually been PREPARING for when the

  robots take over by sucking up to the appliances

  in my house.

  So when there’s a giant robot

  /

  human war in the

  future, I’ll be patting myself on the back for

  thinking ahead.

  7

  My brother Rodrick says that in the future,

  people will have robot body parts, and we’ll all be

  CYBORGS.

  Well, I hope I don’t have to wait too long for

  that, because if I could buy myself a pair of

  robot legs, I could get a half hour of extra sleep

  each morning.

  I guess we don’t really know what’s gonna happen

  in the future. And you could drive yourself CRAZY

  worrying about it.

  Even if we solve all the problems we have right

  now, some NEW thing will come along, and then

  we’ll have to deal with THAT.

  8

  I’ve read that’s what happened with the

  DINOSAURS. They were riding high for

  a couple hundred million years, and then an

  asteroid came and wiped them out.

  What’s really crazy is that cockroaches were around

  back then, and somehow THEY survived. And

  they’ll probably be here long after we’re gone, too.

  Personally, I think cockroaches are disgusting. But

  they must be doing SOMETHING right.

  9

  Speaking of SURVIVAL, right now, I’m just

  trying to get through middle school. And the last

  few days haven’t been all that great.

  Even though it’s warm outside, the thermostat at

  school still thinks it’s WINTER. So the furnace

  is on full blast all day, which makes it hard to

  concentrate in cl
ass.

  And it’s worse in the CAFETERIA, because there

  aren’t any windows you can open to get fresh air.

  10

  The heat has been frying my brain, and I’ve been

  forgetting when my school assignments are due.

  I forgot a really BIG one today, which was my

  country project for the International Showcase.

  Back in November, everyone had to choose a

  country to do a report on. I picked Italy,

  because I’m a HUGE pizza fan.

  But it turns out Italy was a really popular

  choice, so my Social Studies teacher had to do a

  random drawing to decide who got it. And she

  chose Dennis Tracton, which isn’t fair because he’s

  lactose intolerant and can’t even eat cheese.

  So the teacher assigned me Malta, which I didn’t

  even know was a country.

  11

  Anyway, that was two months back, and I didn’t

  give my country project a second thought until

  TODAY. And the only reason I remembered

  was because when I got to school, everybody was

  wearing weird clothes.

  I probably should’ve realized it was International

  Showcase day when my friend Rowley came by to

  get me for school wearing a crazy getup. But he’s

  ALWAYS doing strange stuff, so I barely even

  noticed.

  12

  In homeroom, I took a look at Rowley’s project

  to see how much work was involved, and that’s

  when I started to panic.

  His report looked like it took a TON of time, and

  it was pretty obvious his parents helped him with

  it. Of course Rowley had actually BEEN to the

  country he got assigned, so I’m sure that made it

  a lot EASIER for him.

  I asked Rowley to be a pal and switch countries

  with me, but he’s kind of selfish, so he wouldn’t

  go for it. That meant I was on my own, and I

  only had a few hours to do my whole project from

  SCRATCH. And I didn’t know WHERE I was

  gonna find a tri-fold this late in the game.

  13

  That’s when I remembered that I had a tri-fold in

  my LOCKER. I had started my country project

  the day after it was assigned so I could get ahead

  of things for once. But when I pulled it out to see

  how FAR I’d gotten, I was pretty disappointed.

  This project was 50% of my Social Studies grade,

  so I was pretty desperate. I tried getting help

  from my CLASSMATES, but all THAT did was

  remind me I need to get some smarter friends.

  14

  I stayed indoors for recess to work on my

  project. I didn’t have time to go down to the

  library for research, so I had to do a lot of

  GUESSING. The only thing I felt pretty sure

  about was that Malta was near Russia, but I was

  pretty shaky on everything ELSE.

  Once I finished filling out my tri-fold, I started

  working on the OTHER stuff.

  We were supposed to wear our country’s “traditional

  dress” for the International Showcase, so on the

  way to lunch I picked out some clothes from the

  Lost and Found in front of the principal’s office.

  15

  Luckily, there were a few decent items in the

  box, and I put together an outfit that looked

  pretty convincing.

  Everyone was supposed to bring in a traditional

  MEAL, too. At lunch, I bought as many items as

  I could afford, and threw something together that

  seemed like it might’ve come from another country.

  16

  The International Showcase was during the last

  period, and when I set up my project in the gym,

  I was actually feeling pretty good about things.

  But I wish I’d gotten assigned a country where

  they wore lighter clothes, because the furnace was

  still on full blast.

  The heat was getting to some OTHER kids, too,

  and tempers were starting to flare. At one point,

  Brazil and Bulgaria got in a fight over table

  space, and a teacher had to come break it up.

  17

  Kids came in from the elementary school to check

  out our projects and ask questions. But all I had

  to do to get them to move along was to pretend

  I only spoke Maltese.

  After that, the PARENTS started to arrive.

  Luckily, MINE couldn’t come, because Dad was

  at work and Mom was at her college. But some

  kid in my grade has a mom and dad who are

  actually FROM Malta, which was really bad luck

  for ME.

  18

  I thought they were gonna report me to my

  teacher, and I was ready to make a run for it.

  But then something happened that got me off

  the hook.

  The fight that started between Brazil and

  Bulgaria flared back up and spilled over to the

  “C” and “D” countries. And before long, the

  whole GYM was at war.

  Luckily the bell rang, and school got dismissed before

  anyone got seriously hurt. But the whole situation

  doesn’t exactly give me a lot of hope for world peace.

  19

  Tuesday

  Well, I THOUGHT I was in the clear, but I

  was wrong. My Social Studies teacher sent a note

  home to my parents that said I have to do my

  International Showcase project AGAIN.

  So Mom said I can’t watch TV or play video

  games until I finish. I figure I can probably get

  this thing done by Saturday, but it won’t matter

  anyway. That’s because Mom is making me and my

  brothers have “Screen-Free Weekends.”

  Mom thinks us kids are addicted to electronics,

  and they’re the reason we misbehave. So she

  started this new policy where we’re not allowed to

  use any electronics on Saturdays and Sundays, and