“What a Swiss Cheese Head!” said Stink. “I already have seven holes in my head. Two eyes plus two ears plus two nostrils plus one mouth equals seven.”
“Does this Chloe know any math?” Mom asked.
“Does this Chloe have any flash cards?” asked Stink.
“For your information, we don’t use flash cards,” said Judy. “But we do play Multiplication Bingo and Tic-Tac-Cookie with Oreos. We even made a giant Sponge-Block Triangle Pants, and Chloe named him Turd Ferguson.” Judy snorted. “It was so money.”
“I don’t see what a sponge named Turd Ferguson has to do with math,” said Stink. “Right, Mom? Right, Dad?”
Fact of Life: Stink = annoying!
“Stink, it’s sponge blocks. They were invented by a kid. See, you add up all the lines and angles, and it makes a polygon. You can use triangles, rectangles, and squares, too.” Mom raised her eyebrows at Dad. Dad raised his eyebrows at Mom.
“Aw,” said Stink. “Can I go to college, too?”
Judy ignored him. “Chloe says you can’t be afraid of math,” she told Kate and Richard. “You just have to practice, like piano, or soccer. And you can’t give up. And you have to remember to have fun.”
“Well, I like your attitude,” said Mom.
“You mean my math-i-tude,” said Judy, cracking herself up. “Chloe says math is everywhere. Math is life.”
“Then you better get going,” said Mom. “Don’t want to be late for life.”
On the way to school, Judy asked a question of her Ask-a-Question Watch 5000.
Will Mr. Todd be back today? She pressed the green button.
DON’T KNOW.
She tried again. Will Mr. Todd be back today?
CAN’T TELL.
She tried a third time. Will Mr. Todd be back today?
NO WAY!
When she got to school, she raced down the hall to her classroom. No Mr. Todd. No fair.
Mrs. Not-So-Great Grossman did not seem to appreciate Judy’s new math-is-everywhere take on life. To make things even worse, she told the class that Mr. Todd broke his foot in Italy. (Probably from dancing the tarantella.) Mr. Todd would not be coming back for two more weeks.
As for the peeps, well, her friends were so UN-college. When they saw Judy’s new outfit, they thought she was a scarecrow.
“What happened to your knees?” asked Rocky.
“Did you fall off your bike and rip your pants?” Frank asked.
“You must hurt bad — look at all those Band-Aids,” said Amy Namey.
“Tattoos,” Judy muttered.
“It’s just a phase,” said Rocky. “Like when she wore her pajamas to school.”
“And her doctor coat,” said Frank.
“And her pilgrim dress,” said Jessica Finch.
“For your information,” Judy pointed out, “kids in college wear pajama pants to class all the time. It’s rad.”
“It’s red?” Rocky asked.
“It’s rude?” Frank asked.
Sometimes third-graders were such NCPs.
“What stuff do you do with your tutor?” Amy asked.
“College stuff,” said Judy. “We talk about algebra, and —”
“Algebra?!” said Jessica Finch. “Even I don’t know algebra.”
“It’s no biggie. When I hang out with my college friend, I get to drink coffee and drive a car and talk on a cell phone.”
“Whoa squared,” said Amy Namey.
“Exactly,” said Judy.
“You drink coffee?” asked Rocky.
“Actually, it’s hot chocolate. But I do get to drink it at a coffee shop and order it and pay for it myself and count the change.”
“Wow!” said Frank.
“No way did you drive a car,” said Rocky.
“Yah-huh,” said Judy. “No lie.”
“You’d have to sit on like three phone books,” said Frank.
“And get a license,” said Jessica Finch.
“I got to drive a car in the Game of Life,” said Judy.
“Oh,” said Rocky. Amy and Jessica rolled their eyes.
“Judy does know how to drive,” said Frank. “She’s driving . . . us crazy!” Everybody cracked up.
At morning recess, Judy faked a call on her candy cell phone. During Science, Judy drew a cartoon of Mrs. Grossman out of polygons.
At lunchtime, Judy said, “Let’s food!” and waited in the lunch line with her peeps. When it was her turn, she stepped up to the window and said to the lunch lady, “I’ll have a small-tall upside-down backward nonfat capp, extra whip. And make it wet.”
“Aren’t all drinks wet?” asked Frank.
“We don’t have coffee,” said the lunch lady.
“Hot chocolate?” Judy asked. But all they had was chocolate milk. Bor-ing. “At college, you can get hot chocolate with a heart design in the foam on top. And you can get sprinkles.”
“Oh, really?” said the lunch lady.
“How many kinds of cereal do you have here?” Judy asked.
“None. We don’t have any cereal. It’s lunch.”
“At college, you can have breakfast all day. Even if it’s midnight.” Rocky, Frank, and Jessica pushed past Judy.
“Do you have a salad bar?” Judy asked.
“Salad bar is for teachers only.”
“At college, anybody can eat at the salad bar. Even kids. What kind of cafeteria is this? They should call it cafeterrible.”
“Hey, College,” yelled a fifth-grader at the back of the line. “Move it along. Some of us want to eat lunch today.”
Judy took her not-wet, no-whip, heart-less chocolate milk and went to sit with her peeps.
“Shh, here she comes.”
“What’s she going to brag about now?”
“Yeah, she thinks she’s so college.”
Soon she, Judy Moody, was eating alone at the lunch table. Fact of Life: Rocky minus Frank minus Jessica Finch minus Amy Namey equaled a big fat zero. Not a peep.
Judy stared at her lunch tray. Her peanut butter and jelly sandwich looked so . . . kindergarten.
At recess, nobody wanted to play Judy’s game — finding polygons hidden on the playground. Judy found a triangle in a tree branch, an octagon where the fence was ripped, and six rectangles on the ladder going up to the slide.
All by herself.
For the first time ever, Judy could not wait for math class. She, Judy Moody, owned the times tables. Look out. Here comes the Multiplication Maniac. The Polygon Princess. The Graph Guru. The Fraction Freak. Just wait till they see me score candy for all the right answers.
At last it was time. Mrs. Grossman started writing on the board. Judy sat up straight. She pricked up her best-ever listening ears, the ones she usually saved for Mr. Todd. She squinted at the board.
Words? Why was Mrs. Grossman writing so many words? What did words have to do with math? Hello? Where were all the numbers?
And the fractions and the plus signs and the equal signs?
Judy raised her hand. “Excuse me,” she said. “I thought this was math class. What’s with all the sentences?”
“We’re starting something new today,” said Mrs. Grossman. “Multistep word problems. You have to read the problem first, then do the math one step at a time. That’s why we call them word problems,” said Mrs. Grossman.
Judy had a word problem, all right. A problem with words that were pretending to be math.
Mrs. Grossman pointed to the board. “Jill had twenty-four valentines. She gave one-half of her valentines to her friends at school —”
Judy raised her hand again. “Who’s Jill?”
“Jill isn’t a real person. She’s just somebody in a word problem.”
“So her name could be Chloe,” said Judy. “And her school could be a college.”
Mrs. Grossman shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “Judy, please let me finish. Then Jill gave the other half of her valentines to friends who live in her building, except for —”
Judy raised her hand again. “Building? Like maybe a dorm?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just an example.”
“Will we get to draw a graph for this word problem? With hearts for valentines?” asked Judy. “Because in college we get to draw graphs.”
“Judy, I’m going to have to ask you again to stop interrupting.”
“I was just saying . . .” said Judy.
Mrs. Grossman let out a big breath, but her face looked all pinched up. “Jill had enough valentines left over to give to her mom, her dad, and her little sister.”
“Jill sounds like a pill,” said Judy.
“Judy, that’s it,” said Mrs. Grossman. She pointed to the tent in the back of the room.
“You mean I have to go in that tent?”
“That’s why we call it the Attitude Tent,” said Mrs. Grossman.
“But I’m not really in a camping attitude,” said Judy.
“Go sit in the tent. Don’t come out until you can show me an attitude adjustment. And not another word about college, Judy.”
Eesh! Mrs. Grossman was the reason she went to college in the first place. She wished Mrs. Grossman would go back to where she came from in the first place. New England. Probably Math-a-chu-setts.
Judy hung her head and slunk to the back of the room. She crawled inside the tent. It was kind of like the Toad Pee Club clubhouse inside. Minus any peeing toads, of course. Natch.
She, Judy Moody, did not even play with her Ask-a-Question Watch 5000. She thought about what she’d done, but she could not for the life of her understand why Mrs. G. didn’t like her attitude. Didn’t Mrs. Grossman know a positive math-i-tude when she saw one?
Now her math-i-tude had turned into a mad-i-tude.
Math was no fair. Math = life. Life was no fair.
See? A person could do multistep word problems even in an attitude tent. No biggie. You just had to have the right math-i-tude.
Judy Moody was down in the dumps. She had an attitude that was in the lower latitudes. A bad-i-tude.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked her at tutoring that afternoon. “You hardly ate any of your pizza fractions.”
“I have an attitude,” said Judy.
“Everybody has an attitude,” said Chloe. “It just means the way you think, the way you see things.”
“The way I see things, Mrs. Grossman doesn’t like my attitude. Mrs. Grossman says I need an attitude adjustment. So I went in the attitude tent, but all I got was a spider bite. All that did was adjust my attitude from bad to itchy.”
“I know something that might help your attitude,” said Chloe.
“Don’t say algebra,” said Judy.
“How would you like to come to college on Saturday?”
“Oh, no. You mean now I have to do math on the weekend, too?”
“Not for math, silly. I mean, how would you like to come spend the day with me at college? For fun.”
Suddenly, she, Judy Moody, knew what an attitude adjustment felt like. It felt like when you went from a bad mood to a good mood. It felt like when your spider bite stopped itching. It felt like when you got to spend a whole, entire fun-not-math day at college.
Judy could not wait for Saturday.
Judy woke up by mistake at six o’clock on Saturday morning, a not-school day. Chloe told her that college kids like to sleep late, so Judy tried to think like a college kid and go back to sleep. But it was no use.
“I don’t see what the big-whoop deal is about college,” said Stink. “All they do is carry heavy books around and listen to headphones. And if you go to college, you have to sleep over without Mom and Dad for like three or four years. And you have to wash your own clothes!”
For a kid who read the encyclopedia, Stink sure didn’t know a lot. “Stink, you don’t have the right attitude about college. Just wait till you’re older and wiser, like me.”
“When I’m older and wiser, will I eat cereal with a fork, too?”
“Oops,” said Judy, opening the dishwasher to look for a spoon. By the time she got back to her bowl of cereal, her Mood Flakes had turned the milk pink.
Sweet! Pink milk (in Mood Flakes) was for happy. That was the first sign that she, Judy Moody, was about to have the time of her life.
Then Judy checked the Ask-a-Question Watch 5000 just to be sure.
Is today going to be the best day ever at college?
YUP!
She asked it again just to make sure and absolute positive.
NO DOUBT!
It was a sign, all right. A sign to the power of three.
Judy followed Chloe up to her third-floor dorm room. The tiny room was chock-full of beds and desks and computers and books. Between bunk beds was an orange hairy rug, and on the beds were furry zebra-and-leopard-skin bedspreads. Posters covered the walls, even the ceiling.
There was a pink mini fridge and a mini TV and a mini microwave. Even a Bonjour Bunny alarm clock.
“Rare!” said Judy. “Your room is so orange and furry. Everything’s cool-mini. You have bunk beds like me, only yours has a desk under it. And you have the Bonjour Bunny alarm clock radio night-light. Does it have a snooze button that lights up?”
A tall girl wearing pajama pants (same-same as Judy) came in and plopped down on a giant rubber-ball chair.
“Hey, roomie,” Chloe said. “This is my friend Judy Moody. Judy, this is my roommate, Bethany Wigmore.”
Bethany Wigmore had long, dark hair and large, dark eyes. Bethany Wigmore wore headphones and lots of necklaces. Bethany Wigmore had flip-flops with jewels on them!
“I like your flip-flops,” Judy told her.
“Thanks. I made them.”
“For serious?”
“It’s easy,” said Bethany Wigmore. “All you need are fake jewels and beads and a mini glue gun. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Bethany Wigmore showed Judy Moody how to make fancified flip-flops. Then she said, “Now let’s paint our toenails!”
“No, thanks,” said Judy.
“We have mood nail polish,” said Chloe. “It changes with your mood.”
“I’m in!” said Judy. In no time, she, Judy Moody, had red-glitter toenails that turned purple. It was more impressive than sick, more powerful than rare. It was sick-awesome. Mad-nasty!
Who knew that having a roomie made life so way-not-boring?
“Let’s food,” said Chloe. “I’ll take you to the dining hall, Judy. Then you can come to class with me.”
“Class?” Judy asked. Class sounded semi-boring, even though college class sounded like something she could brag about later.
“Painting class,” said Chloe. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
Bethany Wigmore called after them, “Hit me up later!”
On the way to lunch, they passed a big green patch of grass in the middle of the campus called the Quad. Every inch of it was filled with tents. Judy had never seen so many attitude tents. Was everybody in college in a bad mood?
“Did all the kids in these tents get in trouble and get sent to an attitude tent?” Judy asked.
“These aren’t attitude tents,” said Chloe. “This is a peace rally. Only instead of marching, people slept out in tents on the Quad last night to make a statement saying that they’re for peace.”
“I guess you could say they rested in peace,” said Judy, grinning.
“Good one,” said Chloe. “C’mon, let’s go see my friend Paul.”
There were drummers drumming and dancers dancing and people waving signs — all for peace. Chloe’s friend Paul was one of the drummers. He let Judy make loads of noise on a bongo drum, and she got to Hula-hoop for peace and even tie-dye a shirt. On the front she drew a peace sign and wrote PEACE IS CRUCIAL.
They waited for Judy’s shirt to dry, but Chloe finally said, “This is as much fun as watching paint dry, huh? Let’s check out the yoga tent.”
The yoga tent had a very peace-full attitude. Judy learned to make shapes with her arms and legs.
She got to pretend to be a cat, a mountain, a chair, and a not-math triangle.
“Who knew peace could be so much fun?” said Judy, wriggling into her PEACE IS CRUCIAL shirt over her I ATE A SHARK shirt.
Next stop: cafeteria. Judy ate one pancake with three colors of syrup, a salad from the NOT-teachers-only salad bar, and half of Chloe’s burger, which was made of vegetables (minus eggplant). No lie!
She did not have to wait in line, she did not have to get bossed by bossy fifth-graders, and she did not have to eat boring old PBJ sandwiches that were so kindergarten, like at the cafeterrible. Who knew that veggies (smushed up on a bun with ketchup) could taste so rad?
“Oops, we better not be late for class,” said Chloe. They raced across campus to the art building. Judy followed Chloe down a long hall lined with colorful lockers. They passed a pottery class where people were spinning clay on wheels, a sculpture class where students were making buildings out of bubble wrap, and a . . . naked lady class!
Judy squeezed her eyes shut. “Please tell me we are NOT going to Naked Lady Class.”
Chloe almost spit out her coffee. “It’s Life Drawing. To be an artist, you have to learn to draw real life.”
“When I draw Real Life, it is NOT going to be bare-naked,” said Judy.
In painting class, Judy got to sit next to Chloe in a dark room and watch a slide show of paintings. There were paintings of bones and giant sunflowers and swirly-twirly night skies. Even soup cans. There were paintings of cut-paper leaves and moons and paintings that looked like spilled cans of paint, even though the teacher (that everybody had to call professor) said it was a masterpiece. There were black-and-white paintings of birds that hurt your eyes if you stared at them too much.
“These paintings are psycho!” Judy said, cracking herself up. Chloe put her finger to her lips.
“In third grade, you’re not allowed to talk when the teacher is talking either,” Judy whispered. “Same-same!”
The teacher, Mr. Professor-Who-Likes-Psycho-Paintings, was yakking on forever about shadows in every picture. Shadows this and shadows that. Shadows here and shadows there. Shadows seemed to be very-way-important in art.