Ivy and Bean (4 page)

“Oh.”

“It would be really mean to kill a frog.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s why I dug this pond.” Ivy pointed to the puddle with her gold stick. “I’m hoping a frog will come here and die.”

Bean didn’t mention that it looked like a puddle. “Wow,” she said. “What’s the stick for?”

“That’s my wand,” said Ivy.

Bean couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. “That’s not a wand. That’s just a stick painted gold!”

“It is too a wand!” Now Ivy looked mad. “And you better watch out, or I’ll use it on you!”

Bean stopped laughing. “Use it how?”

“I’ll cast the dancing spell on you. You won’t be able to stop dancing for the rest of your life. Like this.” She started jumping up and down, kicking out her legs and waggling her arms.

“Could you really?” asked Bean.

Ivy stopped dancing. “Maybe. I was just going to test it when you started yelling about being a ghost.”

“Who were you going to test it on?” asked Bean.

Ivy’s face turned red. “Nobody,” she said.

Bean could tell she was lying. “Come on. Who?”

Ivy’s face got redder.

“Come on. Tell me!” said Bean.

Ivy looked at the dirt. “You,” she said in a low voice.

“Me?!” yelped Bean. “What did I ever do to you?”

“I’m sorry,” said Ivy. She did look sorry.

“That’s okay,” said Bean. There was a pause.

“My mother keeps on saying what a nice girl you are,” Ivy said. “She’s always telling me I should play with you. It’s driving me nuts.”

Bean couldn’t believe it. “That’s what my mother says about you. That’s so funny. But you’re not nice at all! You’re a witch!”

Ivy giggled. “You’re not very nice either. You were doing that ghost thing in the bush.”

Bean was embarrassed.

“The part about the icy fingers was good,” said Ivy. “What were you doing in there, anyway?”

Bean sat down on the rock. “I was waiting for Nancy. That’s my sister. She’s a total pain in the kazoo. I put twenty dollars on a string, and I was going to pull it out of her hand when she reached down to pick it up.”

Ivy nodded. “Is that why she got mad at you?”

“No. She got mad at me because it was her twenty dollars.” Bean felt glum again.

Ivy saw that Bean was worrying. “Are you going to be in trouble?”

“Yeah. Probably. I’m not supposed to mess with her money.” Bean thought. “You don’t have a going-back-in-time spell, do you?”

“No. Those are hard,” said Ivy. She looked at her pond. “I wish I had a dead frog.”

“That would be good,” said Bean. “But wait a second—what about the dancing spell? Could you put it on Nancy?”

“So she’ll dance for the rest of her life? How is that going to get you out of trouble?” Ivy asked.

“It’s not,”said Bean. “But it would be really funny.”

Once they had agreed to cast a spell on Nancy, Bean stared long and hard at Ivy’s robe. Those little pieces of paper had to go. “The first thing we have to do is make you look more like a witch,” she said.

Ivy looked down at her bathrobe. “Why?”

Bean tried to explain without hurting Ivy’s feelings. “If you want other people to believe you’re a witch, you have to look more witchy.”

“But I don’t care if other people believe me,” said Ivy.

Bean shook her head. What a weird kid. “It’ll make your spells better, too. You’ve got to dress for success.” Her mother said that all the time. It usually meant that Bean had to put on a clean shirt. “Besides, it’ll be fun. Do you have face paint?”

Ivy nodded. “In my room. Upstairs.” She pointed to a window.

“Is your mom inside?” Bean asked.

“I guess,” said Ivy.

“Is she going to tell my mom where I am?” Grown-ups stuck together that way. Bean’s dad said it was because they were all in a club together, but Bean felt pretty sure he was making that up.

Ivy tapped her wand against her hand. “Maybe we should sneak in, just to be sure.”

That was fine with Bean. She loved sneaking. She loved face paint, too. And she was really going to love watching Nancy kick her legs and wave her arms for the rest of her life.

They went in the back door to the kitchen. Bean could hear Ivy’s mom talking on the telephone somewhere in the house.

“This is going to be easy,” whispered Ivy. “She’s working.” She yelled loudly, “Hi, Mom! Can I have a banana?”

“Hang on a second,” Bean heard Ivy’s mom say. Then, to Ivy, she said, “Honey, I’m on the phone. Get your own banana.” There was the sound of a door shutting.

“Okay!” yelled Ivy. She smiled at Bean. “See?”

Very tricky, thought Bean. Ivy was turning out to be a lot more interesting than she had expected.

They walked softly past Ivy’s mom’s door and up the stairs. They were very quiet. At the top of the stairs, there was a door with a sign that said “Beware” in red glitter glue letters. That was Ivy’s room.

When she went in, Bean stood still and looked all around. “This is way,
way cool,” she said. She had never seen a room like Ivy’s. There were thick lines drawn on the floor, marking out five sections. Each section was like a different room. In one section, there was a small sofa on a rug and a bookcase stuffed with books. In another was a table covered with pens and paper and glitter glue and paint. Ivy’s bed, with a canopy made of silver netting, was in another. A dresser and a folding screen painted with clouds were in the fourth section.

The fifth section had nothing in it except dolls. Bean had never seen so many dolls in her life. There were the regular plastic kind of dolls. There were the weird staring dolls with fancy costumes that were kept in glass cases at the toy store. There were stiff wooden dolls. There were china dolls: small ones, smaller ones, and tiny ones. There was one doll that was really a rock dressed in clothes. All the dolls were seated around a doll-size blanket. Even the mushy baby dolls that couldn’t sit by themselves had been propped up with blocks. In the middle of the blanket lay a Barbie doll, wrapped up in toilet paper. All the other dolls were watching her.

“Neat,” said Bean. “A mummy.”

“Yeah,” said Ivy. “I’m going to build a pyramid to bury her in. As soon as I figure out how.”

“I know how,” said Bean. “Nancy made one out of sugar cubes last year. I can’t believe your parents let you draw lines on your floor.”