Judy Moody Goes to College

by Megan McDonald

  When the slide show and the yakking were over, everybody got to make paintings of their own. (Finally!)

  Judy got to stand next to Chloe at a tall table and make a big giant mess. At college, it did not matter if paper scraps got all over the table. At college, it did not matter if paint dripped all over the floor. And at college, it did not matter how many supplies you used, even a whole entire bottle of sparkly-blue glitter glue.

  Chloe said worrying about rules was old skool. Chloe said art is life and life is messy, so art should be messy.

  At college, all that mattered was that you (1) use your imagination (which Judy had loads and loads of) and (2) be yourself. Who else would she, Judy Moody, be?

  Judy was so busy using her imagination and being herself that she made seven artworks in no time, including a monster Venus flytrap, a self-portrait cut into cubes, and a bad-mood painting that looked a little like the spilled-can-of-paint-guy’s masterpiece with a dollop of Judy Moody thrown in.

  Chloe was painting a bowl of cherries sitting on a chair.

  “Are you still working on the same painting?” Judy asked.

  “It takes a long time to paint a still life,” said Chloe.

  “Yeah, but you might want to try finishing it while you are still in this life. It’s only cherries.” Judy turned her head sideways. “Or is it goldfish?”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Chloe.

  “You should put some polka dots in the background,” said Judy. “And it needs a cat or something.”

  Chloe said she liked Judy’s ideas, but Judy did not see her painting any polka dots. Or cats. Just the same old cherries-not-goldfish bowl.

  Judy picked up the squishy foam tray from under Chloe’s real-life cherries. “Do you mind if I use this to make a pop-art painting like that Soup Can Guy?”

  “Go for it,” said Chloe.

  A pop-art painting, Judy had just learned, was a painting of an everyday object, something that you see all the time, like a soup can, and don’t even think about. Then when you paint it shocking pink or lemon yellow, all of a sudden it shocks you, and you think about it.

  Judy drew a Band-Aid in the foam tray. She poked lots of holes for Band-Aid holes. Then she smeared it with paint and pressed it over and over nine times on one big piece of paper in lots of different neon-bright colors.

  “My pop art really pops!” Judy told Chloe.

  “You did that?” said Chloe. “It looks fantastic! I mean it.”

  Chloe still had not painted one single polka dot. Not even a cat hair. “Aren’t you done yet?” Judy asked. “You are going to get an S for Slow or a T for Turtle in this class.”

  Chloe laughed. “Okay, let’s go. I can finish this later.”

  Judy gathered up all her paintings. “I’m going to hang them up in my bedroom, like an art show. I think this one’s my best.” She pointed to her pop-art painting. “I call it Portrait of a Band-Aid-Not-Soup-Can without Shadows, Deluxe Edition.”

  “I like how you signed it just Jude,” said Chloe.

  “That’s my artist name.”

  “Well, Just Jude, I think you better leave that one here, because it’s not dry yet.”

  “Aw!” said Judy.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on it for you. You can pick it up next time you come for tutoring. I better get you home. I have a twenty-page philosophy paper to write about Plato and Socrates.”

  Play-Doh and Soccer Teams? “Well, at least you get to write about fun stuff,” said Judy.

  “Yeah, right.” As they climbed into Chloe’s punch-buggy Gecko Green VW Beetle, Chloe told Judy, “You busted that art class!”

  “I owned it,” Judy said, beaming from ear to ear.

  As far as Judy could tell, there were only three bad things about college: (1) going to school on Saturday, (2) Naked Lady Class, and (3) yakking for a year and a day about shadows.

  Other than that, college had hardly any rules, and you got to make a lot of noise about being peaceful. You got to have sleepovers every night with roomies like Bethany Wigmore and play drums with peeps like Paul and hang out in tents that did not have attitude and eat burgers made of veggies all day and change boring, old ordinary stuff into art.

  College was uber-rare. Sick-awesome!

  As soon as Judy got home from college, she asked Kate and Richard if she could have a pink mini fridge for her room. They said N-O. Judy called Chloe (for serious) on Kate’s not-candy cell phone.

  “They actually think a fridge belongs in the kitchen,” she told Chloe. Old skool.

  The very next day, Judy took a long look around her room. It was wearing sadface. Time for a change. She would give her room a makeover — really college it up!

  First, Judy piled tons of pillows on the floor. Next, she drew zebra stripes all over her bedspread with a marker. Then Judy hung her paintings on the walls and even on the ceiling using Band-Aids for tape. She saved a place of honor over her bunk bed for Portrait of a Band-Aid-Not-Soup-Can without Shadows, Deluxe Edition.

  Rad! All she needed now was a fuzzy, shaggy, hairy rug like Chloe’s. But how to make a boring, old un-fuzzy rug look like a beasty animal with jungle vibes?

  She tried dust bunnies from under her bunk bed. She tried lint. She even tried getting Mouse to roll around on her rug to make it nice and cat-hairy.

  Judy stood back to admire her new fuzzy animal rug. It did not look like a tiger. It did not have jungle vibes. It looked like a giant hair ball. And to make matters worse, Kate made Judy vacuum it for no allowance.

  Judy sat on her bottom bunk to think. Mouse was chasing a ball of yarn. A ball of orange yarn. A ball of fuzzy, hairy yarn. “Mouse, give me that!” said Judy, chasing her around the room on hands and knees, knocking over stacks of pillows and books and a trash can.

  “What’s going on?” Stink asked. “What are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like I’m doing?” said Judy.

  “Chasing the cat,” said Stink. “But why are you chasing the cat?”

  “To get the yarn,” said Judy.

  “But why do you want the yarn?” asked Stink.

  “To cut it into a million little pieces.”

  “But why are you gonna cut it into a million pieces?” Stink asked.

  “To make a fuzzy orange rug. What do you think? I’m giving my room a hairy-rug makeover.”

  “Mo-om!” Stink yelled. “Judy’s chasing the cat to get the yarn to cut it into a million pieces to make a fuzzy rug to give her room a hairy-rug makeover!”

  What an NCP.

  After the hairy-rug makeover experiment, Judy went looking for a peaceful mood. “Peace out!” she called to anybody who was listening. “I’m going out back in the tent!”

  The Toad Pee Club tent was like the Attitude Tent without the attitude. Judy climbed inside, where it was secret and quiet, like the peace tents at college. She got down on her hands and knees. Mouse stood still on all fours, watching. Judy arched her back. Mouse arched her back. Judy breathed in and out. Mouse breathed in and out.

  Judy gazed at her navel. She tried to fill herself up with peace.

  “What in the world . . . ?” said Stink, barging into the tent.

  “Stink, you’re wrecking my peace.”

  “I’m wrecking your what?”

  “It’s yoga,” said Judy. “Mouse and I are doing the cat pose.”

  “Mouse looks like a cat,” said Stink, “but you just look like someone staring at her belly button upside down.”

  “Try it,” said Judy. “I learned it at college.”

  “I can stare at my belly button sitting up,” said Stink, “without going to college. Besides, staring at your belly button is about as much fun as watching paint dry.”

  “They do that at college, too,” said Judy.

  “Bor-ing,” said Stink.

  “Hey, what’s up?” asked Rocky and Frank, barging into the tent with their big boy-feet.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Stink. “I came to tell you that
Rocky and Frank were coming over.”

  “Is this an upside-down meeting of the Toad Pee Club?”

  “It’s yogurt,” said Stink. “She learned it at college.”

  “Yo-ga,” said Judy. “Not yogurt. It’s like an exercise, not a snack food.” Clearly Stink had never read the Y-for-Yoga encyclopedia.

  “Show us,” said Frank.

  Judy showed them how to arch like a cat. She showed them how to bend in half like a chair, reach to the sky like a warrior, and stand on one leg like a tree. “Now close your eyes, but don’t think.”

  “I can’t not think,” said Frank. “I keep thinking how wacked it is to stand on one leg and pretend to be a tree and try not to think.”

  “I feel like a flamingo,” said Stink. “Or a dorky stork.”

  “No talking,” said Judy. She squeezed her eyes tighter.

  CRASH! When Judy opened her eyes, the boys were a jumble of arms and legs on the ground, and they were laughing their pants off.

  “Octopus pose!” said Stink, his legs sticking in the air.

  “For your 411, there’s no such thing as an octopus pose.”

  Judy closed her eyes again and tried to hear quiet, but all she could hear was more thrashing and crashing. She opened her eyes again.

  Rocky had his neck stretched up to the ceiling. Frank had bendy knees and arms out like a monster. And Stink was all in a twisty ball.

  “Giraffe pose,” said Rocky.

  “Superhero pose,” said Frank.

  “Human Pretzel pose,” said Stink, cracking up.

  “P.U.!” said Rocky, waving his hand in front of his face. “You should call that Passing Gas pose.” The boys went cuckoo.

  “Oh, brother,” said Judy. Boys were just plain no good at peace-full yoga.

  When Judy got to Class 3T-now-3G the next morning, there was no teacher in the room. No teacher? No math candy on the desk? No attitude tent? Something was up. Way up!

  The whole room was buzzing about what might have happened to Mrs. Grossman. She went camping in her attitude tent? She ate too much good-behavior candy? She ran away to Italy to be a better teacher?

  Soon the bell rang. Still no teacher.

  “Somebody has to be the teacher,” said Jessica Finch, “and I think it should be me, since I’m smartest.”

  “But Judy Moody’s been to college!” yelled Frank.

  “And she learned cool stuff,” said Rocky, “like how to make yourself into a cat or a chair or a tree.”

  “Ju-dy Moo-dy! Ju-dy Moo-dy!” The class started yelling and stomping their feet.

  She, Professor Judy Moody, stood in front of the whole class and told them all about college. She told about dorm rooms and drums, veggie burgers and vending machines. She told about pancakes and pop art and peace tents. She led the whole class in a tree pose.

  “And they learn Floss-O-Fee. It’s not about cleaning your teeth. It’s about thinking stuff till your head hurts, kind of like a brainteaser but more like a major head-scratcher.”

  “Like what?” asked Frank.

  “Like . . . if a tree falls in the forest, okay, but nobody is around for miles and miles to hear it, does it still make a sound?”

  The whole class got quiet. Peace-full quiet. Yoga-not-yogurt quiet. The whole class was lost in a head-scratching attitude of thinking.

  Just then, Judy caught a glimpse of something in the hallway. Something like a shadow. The shadow moved. The shadow was . . .

  “MR. TODD!” Judy yelled, breaking the head-scratching silence. “Look, everybody! Professor Todd is back!”

  “Mr. Todd! Mr. Todd!”

  “Can I try your crutches?”

  “Where’s Mrs. Grossman?”

  “She gave us candy.”

  “Except Judy, who had to sit in a tent all by herself.”

  When Class 3T-not-3G had settled down, Mr. Todd told them about his broken foot and going to the doctor’s and being late. He showed them his cast, and all the kids got to sign it.

  “I’m very proud of you, class, for the way you took over until I got here. And Judy, you’ll have to let me in on your secret,” said Mr. Todd. “I don’t know how you got this class to be so quiet.”

  “It’s college thinking!” said Frank. “Judy Moody goes to college AND third grade now.”

  They told Mr. Todd everything about Mrs. Grossman and the tutor and going to college. They told him about multistep word problems and math candy and the Attitude Tent.

  Mr. Todd smiled and frowned and raised his eyebrows and pushed up his glasses. “I sure missed a lot these last few weeks. Tell you what.” Mr. Todd glanced at his watch. “Looks like we missed Spelling for today. So let’s take a short recess, and when we come back, it’ll be time for math. I’m going to pass out a quick quiz —”

  “Not a test!”

  “Don’t worry. You won’t be graded. I just want to see where everybody is in math.”

  “Aww,” everybody groaned. Everybody except Judy. She wanted to take the quiz. She wanted to show Mr. Todd all the stuff she’d been learning with her tutor — graphs and fractions and algebra. For once, she’d be the one to win gobs and gobs of math candy.

  Mr. Todd passed out the tests. Judy got out her college-not-grouchy pencil for good luck. Third-grade pencils were old skool. Judy’s college pencil flew. She erased only two times. She even drew a graph for extra credit. She did not look at her Ask-a-Question Watch 5000 once.

  Judy busted that pop quiz. She owned that math test. Mr. Todd was going to be amazed at Judy’s new math-i-tude. Soon she would be the proud owner of buckets of math candy.

  Done! Judy looked up. She could not believe her eyes. She, Judy Math-Genius Moody was not done first. She was dead last.

  “Time’s up!” said Mr. Todd. “Let’s have fifteen minutes of silent reading while I look over your papers.”

  For fifteen silent minutes, Judy read ahead in the Catwings book. She read with her eyes, but not with her brain. All her brain could think was how super-duper great she was going to be in math.

  Mr. Todd was frowning. He looked up. He looked back down. Mr. Todd scratched his head. Mr. Todd frowned some more.

  He wrote and wrote with his red pencil. Judy could not help noticing he hardly even touched his green-for-good-work pencil.

  “Class,” said Mr. Todd, looking up at last. “We have a problem.”

  Problem? Of course there was a problem. There were ten problems. Everybody knew math was full of problems.

  “I’ve corrected the papers, and the top score goes to Judy Moody.”

  “Woo-hoo!” said Judy. But she could not see how being top-of-her-class, best-ever in math was a problem.

  “The problem is . . . everybody else failed.”

  What!? The whole, entire class flunked! As in flubbed it up big-time. As in got a big fat F.

  “Most of you did not even finish your tests. And many of you did not even seem to try. Can anybody tell me what’s going on here?”

  The whole class looked down, staring at their desks, the floor, their shoes. Except for Judy.

  “Professor Todd,” said Judy, raising her hand. “I know what happened. I got to go to college and become an uber-genius in math, and everybody else fell behind.”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Todd. “Any other ideas? Jessica Finch?”

  Jessica cleared her throat. “Well, um, Rocky and Frank thought it would be way-cool to go to college, and they said —”

  “It’s our fault,” said Rocky. “We thought if we all flunked, we would need a tutor and we would get to go to college, too.”

  “Like Judy,” said Frank.

  “You mean you messed up on purpose?” Judy asked.

  “Yeah, we just thought it up — during morning recess,” said Frank.

  “Professor Todd!” said Judy. “I think I should get all the math candy, since I’m the only one who took the test for serious. And they should all go to the Attitude Tent.”

  “Let’s get something straight,”
said Mr. Todd. “I realize Mrs. Grossman may have had different rules for the last few weeks. But in my class, we do our work to learn, not to earn candy. As for the tent, well, it seems we have an attitude problem bigger than any tent.”

  Class 3T was silent. Not peace-full quiet. Itchy-scratchy quiet.

  “We’re sorry,” said Frank.

  “We’ll take it again,” said Rocky. “For real this time.”

  Mr. Todd nodded.

  “Professor Todd?” Judy asked. “I have a question. I mean, I was wondering — if you yelled at our class, but nobody was here to hear it, would it still mean you’re mad at us?”

  “Mom! Dad!” Judy said at supper that night. “I mean Kate! Richard! Guess what! Professor Todd gave us a pop quiz in math today, and I owned it. I only got one wrong, and I did the best of all my peeps and my whole entire class.”

  “Yeah, but everybody else flunked on purpose,” said Stink, “because they all want to go to college, too.”

  Eesh! Word sure traveled fast around Virginia Dare School.

  “Who cares? It was sooooo money!” Judy said.

  “She doesn’t get money, does she?” asked Stink. “’Cause I’m good in math, so if she gets money, I should get money too!”

  “Stink, you’re such a geck. And don’t say, ‘What’s a geck?’ Because that would make you more of a geck.” Fact of Life: Stink = geck. Geck = annoying person!

  “Nobody’s getting any money,” said Dad.

  “And nobody’s a geck,” said Mom.

  “Yeah, you’re not at college now,” Stink said.

  “Good news, though,” said Mom. “You won’t have to go to tutoring anymore.”

  “Yeah, no more yogurt!” said Stink.

  “Huh?” Judy loved college. She liked having a tutor.

  “You knew this was just for a short time,” Dad said. “To get extra help for a few weeks. But now Mr. Todd’s back, and we’re proud of how great you’re doing.”

  “You’ll still see Chloe, honey,” Mom said. “Maybe she’ll come to your class to help Mr. Todd. And she said she’d be happy to babysit anytime.”