The Meltdown (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 13)
Hard Luck
The Long Haul
Old School
Double Down
The Getaway
The Meltdown
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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.
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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