Jeff Kinney - Dog Days

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kinney, Jeff.

Diary of a wimpy kid : dog days / by Jeff Kinney.

p. cm.
Summary: In the latest diary of middle-schooler Greg Heffley, he records his
attempts to spend his summer vacation sensibly indoors playing video games
and watching television, despite his mothers other ideas.
ISBN 978-0-8109-8391-5 (Harry N. Abrams)
[1. SummerFiction. 2. DiariesFiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title. II.
Title: Diary of a wimpy kid four.
PZ7.K6232Di 2009
[Fic]dc22
2009024953

Wimpy Kid text and illustrations copyright 2009 Wimpy Kid, Inc.
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, WIMPY KID, and the Greg Heffley design
are trademarks of Wimpy Kid, Inc. All rights reserved.

Book design by Jeff Kinney
Cover design by Chad W. Beckerman and Jeff Kinney

Published in 2009 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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TO JONATHAN

JUNE

Friday
For me, summer vacation is basically a three-month
guilt trip.

Just because the weathers nice, everyone expects
you to be outside all day frolicking or whatever.
And if you dont spend every second outdoors,
people think theres something wrong with you.
But the truth is, Ive always been more of an
indoor person.

The way I like to spend my summer vacation is in
front of the TV , playing video games with the
curtains closed and the lights turned off.

Unfortunately, Moms idea of the perfect summer
vacation is different from mine.

Mom says its not natural for a kid to stay
indoors when its sunny out. I tell her that Im
just trying to protect my skin so I dont look
all wrinkly when Im old like her, but she doesnt
want to hear it.

Mom keeps trying to get me to do something
outside, like go to the pool. But I spent the
first part of the summer at my friend Rowleys
pool, and that didnt work out so good.

Rowleys family belongs to a country club, and
when school let out for the summer, we were
going there every single day.

Then we made the mistake of inviting this girl
named Trista who just moved into our neighborhood.
I thought it would be really nice of us to share our
country club lifestyle with her. But five seconds
after we got to the pool, she met some lifeguard
and forgot all about the guys who invited her there.

The lesson I learned is that some people wont
think twice about using you, especially when
theres a country club involved.

Me and Rowley were better off without a girl
hanging around, anyway. Were both bachelors at
the moment, and during the summer its better
to be unattached.

A few days ago I noticed the quality of service
at the country club was starting to go down a
little. Like sometimes the temperature in the
sauna was a few degrees too hot, and one time
the poolside waiter forgot to put one of those
little umbrellas in my fruit smoothie.

I reported all my complaints to Rowleys dad.
But for some reason Mr. Jefferson never passed
them on to the clubhouse manager.

Which is kind of weird. If it was me who was
paying for a country club membership, Id want
to make sure I was getting my moneys worth.

Anyway, a little while later Rowley told me he
wasnt allowed to invite me to his pool anymore,
which is fine with ME . Im much happier inside
my air-conditioned house, where I dont have to
check my soda can for bees every time I go to
take a sip.

Saturday
Like I said, Mom keeps trying to get me to go to
the pool with her and my little brother, Manny,
but the thing is, my family belongs to the TOWN
pool, not the country club. And once youve tasted
the country club life, its hard to go back to being
an ordinary Joe at the town pool.

Besides, last year I swore to myself that I
would never go back to that place again. At the
town pool you have to go through the locker
room before you can go swimming, and that means
walking through the shower area, where grown
men are soaping down right out in the open.