Judy Moody, Mood Martian

by Megan McDonald

  The tail end of Judy’s finger knitting was floating in the paint tray. “Sorry.” Stink crawled over and plucked the chain out of the paint. “It’ll dry. This part will just be Saltwater Taffy purple.”

  Judy was seeing purple. She stared at the fresh-painted wall. Her mouth hung open. “Stink! That’s your butt on my new wall!”

  “Just my butt print,” said Stink.

  Judy felt a door slam coming on. But she had made a promise to herself. No bad moods! She couldn’t let herself slam the door to so much as her pencil box.

  Mom and Dad came rushing upstairs. “We heard a crash,” said Mom. “Is everything okay up here?”

  “Everything but my new wall,” said Judy.

  “What happened?” asked Dad, looking at the big double smudge mark.

  “Stink got his butt on my new wall, that’s what. And he wrecked my finger knitting.” Judy’s eyes smarted. She forgot all about her good-mood streak.

  “We were singing ‘Purple People Eater,’” said Stink. “Judy, too. Then I tripped on Judy’s knitting.”

  “Judy,” said Mom. “What did we tell you about all the finger knitting everywhere?”

  Judy stared at her shoe through watery eyes.

  “This is what happens when —” Mom started.

  “But it’s Stink’s fault. I was just trying to be in a good mood. Honest.”

  “We’re not saying you have to stop,” Mom said. “We’re just saying we can’t have a trail of knitting all over the place, in every room of the house.”

  “Yeah, it’s like longer than the Great Wall of China,” said Stink.

  “Stink, you’re not helping,” said Dad.

  “This can’t go on, honey.”

  “Mom’s right,” said Dad.

  “But . . . ” Judy’s eyes welled up.

  “Tell you what,” said Dad. “Let’s let the wall dry overnight. But starting tomorrow, all the yarn stays in your closet.”

  “Why is she crying?” Stink asked. “I’m the one with a purple butt.” He wiggled his behind. He leapfrogged across the floor. “I’m a purple donut frog! Ribbet!” Mom and Dad couldn’t help laughing. Even Judy cracked up a little.

  “Don’t worry about the wall,” said Dad. “A second coat will cover it right up.”

  After Mom and Dad left, Stink ran over to his room and came back with a zombie. One that Grandma Lou had knitted for him. “Here,” said Stink. “You can unwind it and use the yarn. Maybe you’ll feel better if you keep finger knitting.”

  “You’d give up a zombie for me?” said Judy. “Thanks!” She looped the end over her thumb. Knit, knit, knitknitknit.

  “You’re fast!” said Stink.

  “I’m a Knit Wit!”

  “You could win the Finger-Knitting Olympics.”

  “Think so?”

  “I know so. They’d give you a big gold trophy called the Golden Needle and you’d be all famous and get your picture on a cereal box and everything. Mom and Dad would be all proud and we’d live happily ever after in a house made of money.”

  “Okay, but it’s finger knitting, Stink. So instead of the Golden Needle trophy, don’t you mean the Golden Finger trophy?”

  “Good one,” said Stink.

  That night, Judy had a sleepover with Mouse on the downstairs couch, because:

  1. Her room was stinky. (Not as in Stink, but as in new-paint smell.)

  2. She did not want Stink’s butt print to haunt her in the middle of the night.

  3. Stink’s room was out because Stink snored.

  The next morning, she stumbled up the stairs, half awake. Judy followed the chain of knitting down the hall to the bathroom. The door was closed. The finger-knitting chain stretched under the door.

  Judy knocked on the bathroom door. “Hey, Stinker!”

  “Hey, what?” Stink said, coming up right behind her.

  Judy jumped. “Wait. You’re out here? Then who? I thought you were in there.”

  “I thought you were in there.”

  “So who’s in the bathroom?”

  Stink shrugged. “Mom and Dad aren’t up yet. Hey, I know. Maybe a finger-knitting freak-o-maniac broke in to steal your world-record finger-knitting chain.”

  “Get a clew.” Judy creaked open the door. The finger-knitting chain wormed its way across the floor. The end dangled smack-dab in the middle of . . . the toilet.

  “Eeww!” said Judy. “It’s in the toilet water.”

  “P.U.” said Stink, pinching his nose.

  With Stink’s brand-new toothbrush, Judy lifted up the chain of knitting and wiggled it at Stink. “Wet yeti tail!” she cried.

  “Uck! Cooties! Get that thing away from me.” Stink ducked and dodged the wet yarn. “And throw away my toothbrush.”

  Judy chased Stink with the wet yarn into her room. That’s where they found Mouse stalking and hunting her prey — a clew of finger knitting. She pounced on it, picked it up with her paw, and started to chew.

  Their eyes followed the knitting chain around the room. It dangled over the closet door, snaked across the bookshelves, looped around Judy’s Krazy Kat Klock, and dropped down onto her desk.

  A clump of yarn was caught in the Venus flytrap’s trap. “Give it up, Jaws,” said Judy. “This isn’t a dead fly, you know.” She eased the yarn out of the trap. “I think our finger-knitting freak-o-maniac is a feline freak-o-maniac,” said Judy.

  Stink cracked up.

  “Hold out your hands, Stink,” Judy said. “Take this end of the yarn.”

  “Eeww! The cootie end? No way.”

  “Pretty please with silver-dollar pancakes on top? You owe me.” Judy pointed to Stink’s butt print on her new purple wall.

  “No way am I touching yarn that’s full of toilet cooties.”

  “Then help me find the other end of the chain downstairs,” said Judy. She led the way. Mouse bounded after them.

  The living room was a spiderweb of yarn. The couch was a nest of finger knitting. The coffee table looked like a plate of spaghetti. Yarn twisted like a tornado around the room and hung like rainbow-colored cobwebs from the ceiling lamp.

  “Mouse did all this?” Stink asked.

  “Tell me about it. She yarn bombed the living room. C’mon, Stink. Help me pick up all this yarn and get it up to my room before Mom and Dad wake up.”

  “Not possible.”

  “If we do it really fast, it can be like a race.” So Judy and Stink started to scoop up piles of yarn. Heaps of yarn. Loads of yarn. Mountains of yarn.

  Stink got his feet tangled in yarn. He got his head tangled in yarn. He got his middle tangled in yarn. He even had a yarn mustache. “Revenge of Yarnzilla!” he croaked, pretending to be a zombie.

  “You look like a mummy,” said Judy.

  “Look! Mouse is a mummy, too,” said Stink. “A cat mummy! Did you know that in ancient Egypt they even had hippo mummies, not just cat ones?”

  “Not now, Stink-o-pedia.”

  Judy tried to unwrap the yarn from around Stink Mummy’s ankles.

  “I think the yarn is winning the race,” said Stink. “Yarn: One. Us: Zero.”

  “I have an idea.” Judy found the other end of the finger-knitting chain in the coat tree. “We start with one end and wind it up into one big giant ball.”

  “Genius,” said Stink.

  Judy held the end in her fingers and wound the chain around and around until it had formed a tiny ball. Soon it was the size of a golf ball. Judy kept winding while Stink fed the chain to her, untangling knots and snags and tangles as he went.

  “Faster, Stink. Faster!” In no time, the yarn ball was as big as a baseball. Then it was as big as a softball.

  “This is bigger than my Jawbreaker of Doom,” said Stink.

  By the time Mom and Dad got up, Judy and Stink had a finger-knitting ball the size of a soccer ball. A basketball. A beach ball.

  “Creative idea,” said Mom.

  “Keep it up,” said Dad.

  “Wrap and
roll!” said Judy. Judy and Stink followed the chain into the kitchen, up the stairs, down the hall, into the bathroom, out of the bathroom, and into Judy’s room, winding and winding with every step.

  Yellow yarn was rolled into the ball. Purple yarn. Blue and red and key-lime green and atomic-tangerine yarn. Even fuzzy-wuzzy, space-dyed yarn was rolled into the great big ball. They wrapped and rolled until every bit of Judy’s finger-knitting chain went into the ginormous ball.

  “I bet we just rolled up ten miles of yarn,” said Stink. “No, twenty. No, fifty. This thing must weigh half as much as me.”

  “Wow!” said Mom. “Finger-knittin’ good!”

  “Wow!” said Dad. “That’s one big ball of yarn.”

  “Stink, I think we got a clew,” said Judy. Everybody laughed.

  “It’s as big as Pluto!” said Stink. “It could be a dwarf planet. The Purple Urple!”

  “Let’s roll Purple Urple upstairs to my room,” said Judy.

  Judy and Stink stood back to admire the giant ball of finger knitting. Peeks of pink and glimpses of green shone through the purple on top.

  “It’s like the world’s longest rainbow,” said Judy.

  “The Fuzzy Wuzzy that Ate Frog Neck Lake!” said Stink.

  “I’m going to name it the Purple People Eater,” said Judy.

  “You definitely should win the world record for the Purple People Eater. To go with your gold medal in the Finger-Knitting Olympics.”

  Judy looked at Stink. Stink looked at Judy. They picked up their air guitars. Stink started dancing around. They sang the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater song again. Beep, beep, boo bop bop, walla walla Washington!

  Later that night, Judy propped her elbows on her good-mood pillow and eyeballed the Purple People Eater. It was purple, all right. But it was also ROY G. BIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet.

  All the colors of her many moods.

  Judy took out a marker. Brainstorm! She turned Stink’s butt print into two funny faces. One side was a bad-mood face. The other was a good-mood face.

  Judy knitted her brow. She had just barely made it through GMD #6. All week long, she’d played keep-away with bad moods. Finger knitting had helped her stay in a good mood. That was something to be happy about. But tomorrow was Monday. GMD #7. Would she, could she make it?

  Eureka! She, Judy Moody, had a moontastic idea. The perfect way to celebrate Good Mood Day #7. And to brighten up a boring old Monday.

  It bumped down the stairs. It thumped across the living room. And with a whoosh, a push, and a smoosh, the big bright ball of yarn rolled out the front door.

  The Purple People Eater was going to school!

  At last, it was Good Mood Day #7 and she, Judy Moody, could not wait to get to school. She was in a mood. A good mood. She even forgot to put her hair in ponytails or match her clothes or put on lip gloss or finish her homework.

  Judy and Stink rolled the giant ball of finger knitting down the sidewalk, over tree-root bumps, past Super-Mailman Jack Frost, and around the corner till . . . the big ball of yarn got away from them.

  “Aagh! Runaway Purple People Eater!” yelled Judy. They ran after it.

  “Stop! Stop that ball.” Just then, it hit a stop sign.

  “Phew! That was a close one,” said Judy.

  The bus doors opened. Oomph! Judy lugged the giant ball up the steps of the bus. Kids oohed and ahhed, but Judy’s friends were not on the bus.

  “Who’s your friend?” asked the bus driver.

  “The Purple People Eater,” said Judy. “It’s for Mr. Todd’s class. I’m going to surprise my teacher.”

  “I bet he’ll be surprised, all right,” said the driver.

  When Judy got to school, she gave the Purple People Eater an extra-big push through the front doors. Wheee! It rolled across the front lobby. A kindergartener jumped out of the way. It started down the hall. The big ball was stopped by a . . . foot. Not a Bigfoot foot. A grown-up foot in a low-heeled sensible shoe.

  The principal!

  “What on earth!” said Ms. Tuxedo. She looked up and saw Judy. “Judy Moody. I might have known,” she teased. “What is it this time? A planet? An art project? A new game for Phys Ed?”

  “I’m going to surprise Mr. Todd,” said Judy. “It’s for math class!” She told the principal all about finger knitting and her moods and their Measure Up! unit in math.

  “I don’t think this is going to fit in your locker or your desk, do you?”

  “No way,” said Judy.

  “Tell you what. Let’s roll it into my office, and we’ll hide it there until you’re ready. What time is math class?”

  “One forty-five,” said Judy.

  “One forty-five it is! It’ll be our secret.”

  “Rare!” said Judy. “Thanks.”

  Judy practically skipped down the hall to class, humming the Purple People Eater song. She spotted her friends in a huddle outside Rocky’s locker. She rushed up to them. “Guys! Guys! Why weren’t you on the bus today?”

  Frank’s eyes got big. Amy took a step back. Jessica pointed to the sign they were making for Rocky’s locker. “Alien-Free Zone,” said Rocky.

  She held two fingers in the air for a joke. “I come in peace!”

  Her friends just stared at her.

  “You guys, I am NOT an alien, okay? Yes, I might like green and yes, I’ve been known to eat a MARS bar and watch E.T., but I’m still me. Honest! Cross my heart and hope to spy.”

  Judy turned and headed to class. Pencils and erasers and rulers went flying out of her backpack. But she did not care. She did not stop to pick them up.

  All morning, Judy tried not to let a bad mood ruin GMD #7. If only it were time for math class. She watched the clock. Had it gone backward? Nine more minutes of subject-verb agreement and counting.

  Finally, the loudspeaker crackled. “Judy Moody to the principal’s office. Judy Moody? Please come to the front office.”

  Getting called to the front office meant one thing, and one thing only. T is for T-R-O-U-B-L-E. That was one word that did not agree with its subject — Judy.

  Luckily, Judy wasn’t in trouble today. But Class 3T did not know that. They stared and glared at her like she had just landed from outer space. Mr. Todd nodded. Judy got up out of her seat, trying to look un-guilty. When she got to the office, Ms. Tuxedo looked up and down the hall like a super spy.

  “The coast is clear,” she whispered. “Ready?”

  “Ready, Freddy,” said Judy.

  The principal pointed to the Purple People Eater. “Let’s roll on down to math class and Measure Up!”

  Ms. Tuxedo and Judy roll-roll-rolled the ball as gently as they could down the hall. They stopped outside Class 3T. One, two, three . . . and they both gave a push. The Purple People Eater zoomed through the doorway and into Class 3T, rolling right smack-dab into Mr. Todd’s desk.

  “Ack!” Mr. Todd jumped back.

  “Surprise!” Judy shouted.

  “What have we here?” asked her teacher. “The World’s Biggest Super-Ball?”

  “Judy Moody brought something to liven up math class,” Ms. Tuxedo explained. “I offered to keep it for her until then so it would be a surprise.”

  Mr. Todd pretended to grunt and groan as he helped Judy lift it up onto the desk.

  “Ooh. Eee. Ooh. Ahh. Ahh,” everybody exclaimed.

  “It’s like a planet!” said Rocky.

  “Planet Moody,” said Frank.

  Judy tilted it left and right. She rolled it back and forth for the class to see. The gigantic ball of finger knitting dazzled with all the colors of the rainbow.

  “Judy?” asked Mr. Todd. “Do you want to tell us about this?”

  “This is my finger-knitting chain,” said Judy.

  “You knitted that whole entire thing?” Jessica asked.

  “Whoa!”

  “Weird!”

  “Crazy!”

  “Awesome!”

&nbs
p; “Okay. So. Yes. It all started with Backwards Day. I was in a good mood all day. It was way-super fun and Mr. Todd and Ms. Tuxedo and everybody thought it was great, right? So I decided then and there to give myself the ultimate test — I would try to be in a good mood for ONE WHOLE WEEK.”

  “That would be a challenge for any of us,” said Mr. Todd. Ms. Tuxedo nodded.

  “I had to do something to help me get through the week or I’d go cuckoo-for-coconuts. I started finger knitting like crazy. Then I realized it helped take my mind off the bad moods.”

  “Good for you,” said Mr. Todd.

  “Whoa. You must have knitted your fingers off,” said Frank.

  “A skein a day keeps the bad moods away!” Judy joked.

  “That’s a new one to me.” Ms. Tuxedo laughed.

  “There’s lots of purple in here because it’s my favorite color. So I call it the Purple People Eater,” said Judy. “But there’s also sky blue and grass green and fuzzy gold and tomato red and periwinkle. I guess you could say it’s kind of like a giant mood ring. The colors are all my different moods.”

  “Well, class, we all have lots of moods, but as your teacher, I do appreciate bringing good moods to our classroom.”

  “How did you ever get it to be so long?” Jessica asked.

  “I just kept adding colors and it got longer and longer and longer and pretty soon it started to eat up the whole house. My mom and dad weren’t too happy — so I rolled the chain into a big giant ball.”

  “Class,” said Mr. Todd, “anybody want to take a guess about how long it is?”

  “I bet it’s as long as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge!” said Hunter.

  “That’s almost twenty miles long,” said Rocky.

  “I bet it could go all the way across the United States,” said Frank.

  “Nah-uh. That’s three thousand miles,” said Jessica.

  The classroom buzzed with excitement. “I bet it could stretch from here to the moon,” said Hannah.

  “I think we’re getting a little carried away, here,” Mr. Todd said. Then he went over and whispered something in Ms. Tuxedo’s ear. She nodded. “Class 3T,” he said. “We’re taking math class outside. Grab your rulers and math journals, and follow Ms. Tuxedo. I’ll meet you out front.”