“If only we could quit,” Ivy moaned.
“But we can’t,” said Bean.
Ivy frowned. That meant she was getting determined. “There has to be a way,” she said, determinedly. “Nothing is impossible.”
Bean stared at her. “It’s impossible for us to be good at ballet.”
“Well, that, sure,” said Ivy. “But it’s not impossible for us to break our arms.”
SQUIDS IN A FIX
“What?” said Bean.
“We can’t be squids if we break our arms,” said Ivy. “Remember what Madame Joy said? We’re supposed to wave our tentacles gently on the passing tide. No way can we do that if we’ve got broken arms. Right?”
That was true. But. Broken arms. That could be going too far. Bean pictured her arm cracked in half.
“I saw a picture of a guy who broke his arm, and his bone poked out of his skin,” she said.
Ivy made an ouch face.
“Yeah, I know,” said Bean. “Maybe we don’t have to break them. Maybe we can just sprain them instead.” She didn’t really know what a sprain was, but she knew that it didn’t involve bones poking out of your skin.
“Okay. Sure. We can’t be squids with sprained arms either,” said Ivy. “No way.”
“No how,” agreed Bean. They looked at each other. “So, how do you sprain an arm?” Bean asked.
“I bet it’s like breaking, only smaller,” Ivy reasoned. “When she was a kid, my mom broke her arm falling off her garage roof. If we want to just sprain our arms, maybe we should find something shorter than a garage and fall off it.”
This made sense. Bean looked around her backyard. There was the porch, but they’d crack their heads open on the stairs. There was the playhouse. There was the trampoline— “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Bean said. “We’ll jump off the playhouse onto the trampoline and then boing from the trampoline onto the ground. That should do it.”
First they had to drag the playhouse across the lawn and set it down next to the trampoline. Bean noticed that the playhouse was not much taller than the trampoline. They were going to have to jump hard.
Next, Bean climbed up the plastic playhouse shutters until she was perched on the roof like a giant bird.
Ivy took a running jump at the playhouse and flung herself over the roof. “Oof,” she said.
“You have to stand up,” said Bean. “Or your jump will be too short.”
“You go first,” said Ivy in a muffled voice.
Bean rose slowly to her feet. The playhouse made a funny sound.
Ivy began to push herself up on her hands. There was another funny sound. It was a bending sort of sound. A cracking sort of sound.
The roof was caving in.
“Abandon ship!” Bean hollered and bounced onto the trampoline. But the two sides of the playhouse were folding around Ivy like a taco. She couldn’t abandon ship. She couldn’t do anything. Bean watched as Ivy sank closer and closer to the ground.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” said Ivy.
After a few minutes, the playhouse stopped sinking, and Bean tried to pull Ivy out by yanking on her head. But Ivy said that hurt worse than being tacoed, so Bean yanked on the playhouse instead. Soon the roof de-caved enough for Ivy to squeeze out, and then Bean crawled inside and kicked the ceiling until the playhouse was almost the shape it had been before.
“Whew,” said Bean, sitting down. “We’re going to have to get some tape to fix that crack.” She wiped her sweaty face with her sweaty hand. “Duct tape. I love fixing things.”
“But Bean,” said Ivy. “We didn’t fix anything. We’re still squids.”
Dang. Bean had almost forgotten about that. Her duct-tape happiness faded. She was a squid. A friendly squid. “Maybe we’ll get so sick we can’t be in The World of Dance,” she suggested.
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Ivy thoughtfully. “In fact, that’s a great idea. We can’t dance if we’re sick. Let’s get sick.”
Sick. Well, it would hurt less than spraining her arm. “Okay, but how?” asked Bean.
“Germs,” said Ivy. “We’ll catch some germs and get sick.”
“Germs,” said Bean, thinking. “I know where germs are. At school. Ms. Aruba-Tate says the school is full of germs. That’s why she’s always making us wash our hands.”
“But we don’t want regular dirt germs. We want sick germs,” said Ivy. “We’ll have to find someone sick.”
“Easy-peasy.” Bean was definitely cheerful now. “Tomorrow we’ll find the sickest person at school and touch him!”
GERMS OF HOPE
Ivy and Bean stood on the playground of Emerson School. Around them children were running and shouting. There were kids dangling from the monkey bars and dropping off the play structure. There were kids playing wall ball. There were kids arguing about four square. Some fifth-grade girls walked around the field, talking, which looked so incredibly boring that Bean hoped she would never get to fifth grade. Ivy and Bean leaned against the fence and watched. They were hunting for germs.
“I bet MacAdam is full of germs,” whispered Bean.
MacAdam was eating dirt. He liked to do that. But other than eating dirt, he looked perfectly healthy.
“We need someone sicker,” said Ivy. “Look for someone sitting down. If you sit down during recess, it’s because you’re sick.”
They peered around the playground. “Drew is sitting down,” said Bean, “but that’s probably because the Yard Duty got him.”
“What about that kid over there?” Ivy pointed to a first-grade-looking kid that Bean didn’t know. He was sitting by himself on a bench.
“Hey! He coughed!” said Bean. “Let’s get him!”
In a flash, they were at his side.
He looked up.
Ivy nudged Bean and pointed at his nose. It was runny.
“Are you sick?” asked Bean.
“Yes,” said the kid. He coughed with his mouth wide open and then looked back up at them again. “What?”
“What have you got?” asked Ivy.
“What does it matter?” said Bean. “He’s sick.”
“I don’t want to throw up,” whispered Ivy.
“Oh,” said Bean. She didn’t want to throw up either. “You’re not going to throw up, are you?” she asked the boy.
He looked a little worried. “I don’t think so. Maybe.”
Ivy took a step away. Bean stared at him, thinking about friendly squids. “Can I touch your face?” she asked finally. “Me and her, we need to get sick.”
He wiped his nose. “Okay.”
Bean stuck her hand on his face. It was kind of gross. “Breathe on me,” she told him.
He puffed a big breath at her. She could feel the germs hitting her skin.
Ivy was standing far away in the bushes by now. “I’ll just catch it from you,” she called.
Bean rubbed her hands all over her face. “Thanks,” she said to the kid. He sneezed.
Bean and Ivy knew about germs. They didn’t make you sick right away. You had to wait at least a couple of hours. That was okay. Ivy and Bean didn’t want to get sick during science. They liked science.
This month, science was Ocean Life. And today Ocean Life was fish prints. It was art and science mixed together, Ms. Aruba-Tate said. The second-graders nodded. They liked art, too.
Ms. Aruba-Tate explained about fish prints. You took a dead fish and painted it. Then you dropped it pretty hard on a piece of paper. When you picked it up again, there was a paint fish on your paper. Then you used your crayons to draw an undersea environment around the fish.
“Does everyone understand the instructions?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate, looking around the classroom.
“Are the fish dead?” asked Zuzu.
“Yes, the fish are dead,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.
“Are you sure?”
“Completely sure,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Any other questions?”
The second-g
raders shook their heads. Fish prints sounded like fun.
“Now who is our supply person today?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate.
“Eric!” shouted the second grade.
Eric leaped to his feet, waving his hands in the air. “Thank you, thank you!”
“Eric, please put one fish at each table,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate, handing him a big plastic box.
Eric went around the room, carefully choosing the right dead fish for each table.
“Hurry up!” shouted everyone. Paint and dead fish. This was the best science yet.
Bean was itching to begin. When Eric reached her table, there were just two dead fish left in the box, but he couldn’t decide between them. He looked at one and then the other. “Which one should I give you? The little one or the big one?”
“Just give us one!” shouted Bean.
“Maybe I should ask Ms. Aruba-Tate which one I should give you,” Eric said.
Bean reached into his box and grabbed a dead fish.
“Ms. Aruba-Tate! Bean took a fish!”
Dang. Bean looked at her teacher. Was she going to be sent to the rug? Was she going to miss out on dead fish and paint?
But Ms. Aruba-Tate smiled at Bean. “Next time, don’t grab, Bean.”
Bean loved Ms. Aruba-Tate with all her heart.
Carefully Bean smeared her fish with green paint. She looked down and saw the fish’s eye looking up. Poor fish. She decided to make the most beautiful fish print in the world, to make it up to the fish for being dead. Slowly she laid the fish on her paper and pressed. Then she pressed harder. It had to be good.
“Bean! Watch out!” squawked Vanessa.
Oops. She had pressed a little too hard.
The fish was kind of bent. She lifted it up and peeked at her print. That was kind of bent, too.
“You wrecked it!” said Vanessa. “And your fish print is all lumpy.”
“It’s not lumpy,” said Bean.
“It’s about to have babies,” said Ivy.
“Yeah!” said Bean. She handed the fish to Ivy. “I did it on purpose,” she said to Vanessa.
While Ivy made her fish print, Bean drew an undersea environment for her fish. Kelp. An octopus. A sea anemone. A wrecked ship with ghosts. Science was her favorite subject, for sure.
TIGHT TENTACLES
Ivy and Bean worked so hard on their fish prints that they forgot about getting sick. It was only on the way home that they remembered. Ivy looked down Bean’s throat.
“It’s pink,” she said.
“It’s always pink,” said Bean. She felt her forehead. “I have a headache,” she said.
“That’s good,” said Ivy encouragingly.
But when they got to Bean’s house, Bean’s mother said that a person with a headache was too sick to eat an ice-cream bar, and that’s when Bean realized that she didn’t have a headache after all. She felt fine.
She still felt fine the next day.
And the day after that.
Ivy touched a kid with a rash. Nothing. Eric sneezed on Bean eight times. Nothing. Half the kids in the first grade had lice, but Ivy and Bean decided that lice wouldn’t help. Their mothers would make them be squids with lice.
By the end of the week, Ivy and Bean were completely unsick. They needed a new plan. But what? Usually Bean didn’t worry much. In fact, grown-ups sometimes said she didn’t worry enough. But that weekend, even while she was doing fun things like going to a fair that included a giant slide, Bean worried. Mostly it didn’t feel like worry. What it felt like was fun with a little bit missing. When Bean came whooshing to the bottom of the giant slide, she thought, Why don’t I feel totally great? And then she remembered. Because I have to be a squid in front of everyone.
Ivy worried, too. Ivy usually didn’t worry about real life. Ivy usually worried about things like the Permian extinction, when a whole lot of animals died. The Permian extinction was very upsetting, but it had happened 250 million years ago, so it wasn’t real life anymore.
This weekend Ivy didn’t think about the Permian extinction. She thought about how she would feel being a squid on a stage in front of a whole lot of people. She knew how she would feel. Stupid. She would probably trip, because she usually did. And even if she didn’t trip, she would be a squid. Everyone would know that Madame Joy had made her a squid because she was the worst dancer in the class. Too bad the Permian extinction didn’t wipe out squids, Ivy thought.
On Sunday afternoon, Ivy went over to Bean’s house to be measured for her squid costume. Bean’s mother had said she would make both squid costumes because Ivy’s mom didn’t like to sew. But it wasn’t even a real costume. Madame Joy’s picture showed a white leotard with a circle of droopy white tentacles hanging from the waist.
Madame Joy said that tentacles were a breeze to make. Bean’s mom didn’t think so.
“Who ever heard of squid costumes, anyway?” she muttered.
“No complaining,” said Bean.
“None of your lip there, missy,” her mother said.
That was grown-ups for you. They never followed their own rules.
“I suppose I could stuff a bunch of tights and sew them on,” Bean’s mother mumbled. Bean and Ivy exchanged looks.
“Tights?” Bean said. “Like the kind you wear on your legs?”
Her mother looked up. “Yes, tights. Stuffed tights. For the tentacles. Do you have a better idea?”
Bean thought of the Wilis in their long feathery dresses. She thought of herself with stuffed tights bouncing around her waist.
“Tights it is!” said her mother.
“We’re going to look like idiots,” said Bean.
“No complaining,” said her mother.
Monday started out badly. Ms. Aruba-Tate was at choking class. The Principal had told her to take choking class so she would know what to do if a student choked. Bean said if someone choked, you dangled them upside down by their ankles until whatever it was fell out. Ms. Aruba-Tate said she didn’t think so, but she would find out.
Ms. Aruba-Tate’s substitute was Teacher Star. Teacher Star wasn’t mean, but she never stopped singing. She sat on Ms. Aruba-Tate’s stool and strummed her guitar and sang. She told the second-graders to sing along, but they didn’t want to, so she sang alone. She sang and sang and sang some more.
Ivy read her book under her desk. Bean thought about choking. Then she thought about ballet class. She thought about Dulcie and her pink chiffon dance skirt. She thought about white tentacles made out of stuffed tights.
“There’s a little blue planet in the sky,” sang Teacher Star.
It was nice to see Ms. Aruba-Tate again after lunch recess, but by then Bean was too busy thinking about ballet class to pay attention to what Ms. Aruba-Tate was saying. Something about permission slips. She was waving a piece of paper. Who knew what it was about?
“Does anyone have any questions about our trip?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate.
“What trip?” asked Bean.
“Will someone tell Bean about our field trip to the aquarium?” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Emma?”
“We’re going on a field trip to the aquarium,” said Emma.
“To see some ocean life,” said Dusit.
“We’re going to see them feed the sharks,” said Eric. “Raw meat.”
“And baby penguins,” said Zuzu.
“They’re going to feed the baby penguins to the sharks,” said Eric. He clashed his teeth together, being a shark.
“Eric,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.
“Just kidding, Ms. Aruba-Tate,” said Eric.
“Oh!” said Ivy in a very loud voice. Everyone looked at her. Ivy hardly ever said anything in a very loud voice.
“Ivy?” asked Ms. Aruba-Tate.
Ivy gave Bean an enormous smile. Then she turned to Ms. Aruba-Tate and said, “I was just thinking about how much I love ocean life.”
BYE-BYE, BALLET
“We’re saved!” hissed Ivy, pulling Bean toward the door.
“Saved from what?” Bean hissed back.
“Being squids!” squealed Ivy. She raced out into the breezeway. Bean’s sleeve was in her hand, so Bean raced with her. Together they left the school behind and hurried toward Pancake Court.
“Okay,” puffed Bean, “how are we saved?”
Ivy stopped. “The field trip! We’re going to run away! We’ll run away to the aquarium, and we’ll stay there until after The World of Dance is over!”
Running away! What a great idea! Bean had been waiting for years to run away. What she had been waiting for was a reason. She didn’t want to hurt her parents’ feelings by running away for no reason. The World of Dance was a great reason. This was the chance of a lifetime.
Oh yeah. Bean suddenly remembered the other reason she had never run away. “What about food?” she asked.
“Easy-peasy-Parcheesi,” said Ivy. “I read about it in a book. You know how people throw money in fountains? We scrape it off the bottom of the fountain after the aquarium is closed at night, and then we buy food with it.”
That was pretty smart. Bean was impressed. Also, it would be fun to walk in a fountain without grown-ups freaking out about it. “Cool,” she said. “Where will we sleep?”
“We’ll find a good spot once we get there. Aquariums are good for sleeping because they’re dark.”
“And quiet. Fish are very quiet.” Bean pictured herself drifting off to sleep with fish swirling around her. It would be nice. “It’ll be like sleeping on a boat.”
Ivy rubbed her hands together. “In this book I read, the kids filled their clarinet cases with extra underwear, but we’ll use our backpacks.”
“My backpack is pretty big.”
“We should bring jackets, too. And money. In the book, they brought all their money.”
“Why do we need money if we’re going to scrape it out of the fountain?” asked Bean. “Besides, I only have four dollars and some coins.”
Ivy and Bean Doomed to Dance Page 2
