Ivy and Bean Doomed to Dance (4 page)

“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.