Ivy and Bean Doomed to Dance (5 page)

“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-graders 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.