05 Brat-i-tude

Brat-i-tude 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?"