Molly Moon Stops the World Read Online Free

commercial called “Check Out the Kids in Your Neighborhood.” They thought it would make people who watched it care more about the children around them. The TV company had promised to show it a lot, and so it had probably done some good. Molly wanted to ask Lucy to tell Rocky that generous, unselfish hypnotism was okay. Then he might agree to break the hypnotizing ban that they’d made. She’d need to explain this all to Lucy without Rocky being there.
    For this reason, Molly decided to go to 14 Water Meadows Road alone.

Five
    S unday morning was so bright and shiny that the glossy-leaved trees outside Molly’s window looked wet. Molly breathed in the frosty air and felt really thrilled. Today she was going to Lucy Logan’s for tea.
    As two thrushes landed on a prickly, red-berried shrub and began pecking at its fruit, Molly noticed Roger Fibbin’s skinny form scrabbling about in the dead leaves and broken twigs under the oak tree. With his beaky nose and his jerky movements, he looked like a bird pecking around for grubs. He was probably looking for a magical doorway to another world.
    Roger had gone a bit mad. He seemed to live in a scary fantasyland where the leaves and stones whispered to him. He roamed the town listening for secret messages, and he made folded-paper darts that hadwriting inside them. They said things like
Send help quick! Aliens have eaten my brain!
and
Watch out! The brain centipedes are here!
and
Don’t judge your body by its skin.
    These he threw around Briersville—through people’s mailboxes, over garden walls, into cars and shops. Once, he managed to slip in through the exit door of the cinema and throw fifty of his darts into the audience.
    Molly wondered whether the peculiar habit he’d developed—of eating from the Briersville garbage cans—had given him some sort of brain infection, but the doctor said that all he needed was rest, good food, and kindness.
    Molly undid the window and called out, “Roger, are you all right?”
    Roger looked up nervously and then glanced over his shoulder to check that no one was listening. “Yes, they can’t get me today.”
    “Do you want to go for a bike ride?”
    “Can’t, Molly. Too much to do. Maybe another day.”
    “Okay, you just let me know when. It would be good fun.”
    She shut the window and wondered whether Roger would ever get better.
    The morning tipped into the afternoon.
    It was a lovely, fresh, downhill bike ride intoBriersville. The roadside was bursting with young green shoots, crocuses and daffodils, and the sky was blue. Blossoming trees nodded in the clear March breeze. Other trees were still cold and bare, but the tips of their branches were tinged with dark pink, where new leaves were nearly ready to break out.
    Molly cycled past Hardwick village, down the winding road between fields full of cows, past Briersville Junior School, and into the town. Since it was Sunday, it was very quiet. The Guildhall, with its green pepperpot roof, was closed, and the broad street was deserted.
    Water Meadows Road was a narrow, cobbled street, across the bridge and down a turn to the right. Number fourteen was a bay-windowed cottage in a row of very old houses. Molly leaned her bicycle against its front wall and, grasping the lion’s-paw knocker on the door, rapped twice. Unzipping her jacket, she looked down at her T-shirt and noticed some gravy that she’d spilled on it at lunchtime. She was trying to suck this off when the door slowly opened. Molly let the shirt drop from her mouth.
    In front of her was a shocking sight: a figure from a horror film, yet wearing the neat, pleated skirt, the white collared shirt, and the plain blue cardigan of Lucy Logan. Its entire head was wrapped in white bandages, except for a patch of hair that was arrangedin an elegant bun. Molly could see Lucy Logan’s familiar blue eyes and her mouth, but the rest of her face was covered with some sort of dressing.
    Lucy stood leaning on crutches. Her