Ivy and Bean Make the Rules Read online

  IVY + BEAN

  MAKE THE RULES

  BOOK 9

  written by annie barrows + illustrated by sophie blackall

  Contents

  Dedication

  Never 4-Ever

  Un-Magic Tree House

  Camp Flaming Arrow Hits the Spot

  Very Crafty

  Happy Campers

  Monkey Park Gone Wild

  Tappettytaptap!

  Zombie Problem in Monkey Park

  The Queen’s Garbage

  4-Ever After

  Copyright

  To Athena, Satya, and Nike,

  future Great Women of History.—A.B.

  For Millie and Bella.—S.B.

  NEVER 4-EVER

  “Girls are strong! Girls are great!” sang Nancy, boinging into the kitchen. “Girls have the power to cre-ate!” She stomped her foot and put one arm in the air. “At GIRL POWER FOREVER!”

  “Stop singing that song,” said Bean grumpily. She sucked the milk out of her spoon. Then she slurped down the cereal that was left behind.

  Nancy watched. “That’s got to be the slowest way to eat cereal in the entire world.”

  “I know,” said Bean, slurping. “That’s why I do it. To make it last longer.”

  “Well, cut it out,” Nancy said. “I have to get to camp. Today’s the first day!”

  As if Bean didn’t know that already. Camp, camp, camp. Nancy had been talking about it for weeks. And there it was, right on her T-shirt, in big letters: Girl Power 4-Ever! For spring break, Nancy was going to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. Bean was too young for Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. You had to be eleven. If you were seven, like some people, the only camp you could go to was Puppet Fun! Bean would never in a million years go to Puppet Fun!

  Nancy dropped her backpack on the kitchen table and opened one of its many pockets. Nancy’s backpack was a fancy zebra-striped kind. There was a tiny troll doll attached to one of its zippers. Bean’s backpack was dirty and orange, and she had tried to draw an eagle on the front, but it hadn’t turned out right. It looked like a slug with wings.

  Nancy pulled out her special folding brush and brushed her already-brushed hair. Without even looking, she made a ponytail and fixed it with a sparkly scrunchie. “Hurry up,” she said to Bean. “Just eat it.”

  Bean took a long, slow slurp. “I don’t see why I have to hurry,” she said. “I’m not going to your old camp.”

  “You can go when you’re eleven,” Nancy said.

  Bean scowled. “No way! Camp? Ha! Not for me.” She shook her head. “I’ve got too much other stuff to do.”

  Nancy smiled. “What kind of stuff?”

  Bean shook her head like she had so much to do that she couldn’t even begin to tell about it.

  Nancy patted her shoulder sympathetically. “Finish your cereal. You have to go with Mom to drop me off at camp.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for me,” snapped Bean. But Nancy had already left the room, her ponytail swishing, on her way to have secret, big-kid fun that Bean wasn’t allowed to have. Bean pushed out her chair and stood up. “I’m not a baby, you know,” she yelled.

  Five million girls in pink Girl Power 4-Ever shirts were squirming around outside the Youth Center, waiting for camp to begin. They hugged each other and squealed. They showed each other their cell phones. They sang. They danced. They giggled. They were all bouncy and happy and busy.

  Bean stood beside her mother. Unbouncy, unhappy, unbusy. She watched as Nancy rushed to her friend, Didi. Once they had hugged and squealed, they gave each other piggyback rides. Then they traded scrunchies and squealed some more. Then someone blew a whistle, and all five million girls swarmed into the Youth Center.

  “Bye, Mom!” called Nancy, swinging her backpack over her shoulder. “Bye, Beanie!”

  Beanie? Phooey. Bean turned and began to trudge home beside her mother. At least she didn’t have to trudge far. The Youth Center was a big shed on the edge of Monkey Park, just a block and a half from Bean’s house.

  “What’s that camp about, anyway?” Bean asked. Not that she cared.

  Her mom stopped and rattled around in her purse. “I’ve got a brochure in here somewhere,” she said. “Oh. Here it is.” She pulled out a pink sheet of paper with daisies on it.

  Bean read:

  Her mom smiled at her. “You wish you were going to camp, too, don’t you?”

  Bean was getting ding-dang tired of people looking at her sympathetically. “No!” And she didn’t. Not really.

  “I can still get you into Puppet Fun!” her mom said.

  “No!” Bean yelled. “I’ve got too much to do. Ivy and I have important plans for this week.”

  Her mother stopped walking and crouched down to look in Bean’s eyes. “Okay. You’re probably too grown-up for Puppet Fun! anyway. You’re getting to be a pretty big kid.” Bean nodded. She was. Her mom went on, “I think you might be old enough to do something new.”

  “You’re going to get me a dirt bike?!” Bean broke in.

  Her mom laughed. “No. I wasn’t thinking of a dirt bike. I was thinking that maybe you were big enough to come here to Monkey Park by yourself, if you come with Ivy and if it’s okay with Katrine.” Katrine was Ivy’s mom.

  Bean sighed inside herself and turned to look at Monkey Park. Its real name was Mrs. Taylor Hopper Ansuch Memorial Park, but everybody called it Monkey Park because it had a fountain with a statue of a smiling monkey in the middle. The monkey was dressed in a shiny blue suit, and he held a big, shiny platter of oranges and grapes. The fountain water spurted out of his hat. Besides the fountain, Monkey Park had one big flat field and one not-so-flat field and a playground filled with babies. There were some trees and some bushes and some flowers.

  Kids played soccer at Monkey Park. Families had picnics there. Babies crawled up the play structure. Nothing exciting had ever happened in Monkey Park. Going to Monkey Park was the opposite of going to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. But Bean knew her mother was trying to be nice, so she nodded. “Okay.”

  They walked home. As they climbed the front stairs, Bean’s mom said, “You can always help with the dishes, if you’re looking for something to do. Big kids help.”

  “Sorry,” said Bean. “I’m only seven.”

  UN-MAGIC TREE HOUSE

  Bean did have important plans. Okay, one important plan. It was about a board. She had found a good board, a really good one. It was wide and strong and smooth. It had probably been a bookshelf once, but when Bean saw it, she knew that it was meant to be a tree house. It would be the floor of Bean’s tree house, her secret hideaway, her fort, her almost- apartment up in the leaves, where no one could come unless Bean gave her permission. Except Ivy, because Ivy was going to help her build it. They were going to be tree housemates.

  There was one problem with Bean’s plan. Trees. Bean’s backyard had trees, but not trees with nice, low, friendly branches. It had trees with high, unfriendly branches. Bean had tried putting her board in a bush, but that didn’t work. The bush had sort of fallen over. Bean had gritted her teeth and lugged the board to her front yard, where there was a plum tree with some sturdy branches. A front-yard tree house was not as good as a backyard tree house, but Bean was trying to be open-minded.

  Another problem was nails. Bean was not supposed to use them. Or hammers. Her dad had promised to nail the board into the plum tree, but he kept forgetting.

  Now, as Bean thought about Nancy and Girl Power 4-Ever Camp, she decided she couldn’t wait for her dad. She had to make her tree house today. No hammer and nails? Fine. She would find another way, a better way. Nancy would come home from camp and wish she had a tree house like Bean’s. Bean might let her sit inside it for one minut
e.

  Bean looked over at Ivy’s house, on the other side of Pancake Court. The curtains were closed. But that was okay. Bean could do it on her own. “Girls are strong, girls are great,” she sang softly. “Girls have the power to cre-ate.”

  Feeling determined, Bean set to work. The first question was how to stick things together without nails. Easy-peasy! Duct tape! Bean raced inside and came out with a thick roll of tape. She was getting more determined by the moment. Probably kids would cluster around the bottom of the plum tree, hoping to be allowed in her tree house. She shoved the board up into the tree’s branches, looked at it for a second, and then went inside to get a chair. She banged her knee dragging the chair over the lawn, and it wasn’t very good for the lawn, but at last she was ready. She stood on the seat, wrapping tape around the board and the branch. Tape, tape, tape. Okay! Done!

  She got down and moved the chair to the other end of the board. Tape, tape, tape—

  “Hi.”

  “Yikes!” Bean grabbed the tree to keep from falling off her chair.

  “Did I scare you?” Ivy looked pleased. “I’m trying to walk without making any sound.”

  “Why do you want to do that?” asked Bean.

  “So I can creep up on people and cast spells on them,” Ivy said. Ivy was going to be a witch when she grew up, so she needed to know things like that.

  “Oh. Can you hold onto this side while I tape the other end?”

  Ivy stood on the chair beside Bean. Bean taped up a storm. “There!” she exclaimed. “Done!”

  They both got off the chair and stood back to look. The board looked surprisingly small, there among the branches of the plum tree. In fact, it looked puny. It didn’t look like a tree house. It looked like a board. With lots of tape on it.

  Bean’s throat got thick and hot. Big kids made tree houses all the time. They didn’t have to use tape. They used nails and a hammer. They stood on ladders, not chairs. They pounded nails while telling jokes, and their tree houses were as big as regular houses and secret, not out in front of every-one in their front yards. Big kids built things, made things, cooked things, had things, knew things. And Bean didn’t. Because she was just a little kid.

  Ivy watched Bean’s face. “We could fix it,” she said. She meant the tree house.

  “No,” said Bean. “I’m sick of this tree house.” She kicked the plum tree. “What good is a tree house anyway? You just sit in it. It’s dumb.”

  “Well,” said Ivy, “you could eat cookies in it.”

  “Eating! Eating is boring,” said Bean crabbily. “I want to do things. Fun things. Like crafts and nature study.”

  “Crafts and nature study?” Ivy asked. “What?”

  From her pocket, Bean pulled out the Girl Power 4-Ever paper and handed it to Ivy. “That’s what I want to do,” she said. “I want to do all that.”

  Ivy read the list. “Crafts. Nature Study. First Aid.” She looked up at Bean and then back at the paper. “Dance, Drama, Social Skills, Great Women of History.” She began to smile. “Bean! We can do all this stuff. We don’t need to go to camp. We can make our own camp!”

  CAMP FLAMING ARROW HITS THE SPOT

  There are certain things a camp has to have. The first thing is counselors. The people who run camps are called counselors. They make all the decisions and they are prepared for any-thing. Plus, everyone has to do what they say.

  “Counselor Ivy,” said Bean. She saluted.

  “Counselor Bean,” said Ivy. She saluted, too.

  Bean put the ring of duct tape on her arm. If you had duct tape, you were prepared for anything. “Okay, now let’s make some decisions. The first thing we have to decide is the name.”

  “Okay,” said Ivy. “What do you want to call it?”

  “Something good,” said Bean.

  “Right.”

  “Something cool,” Bean said.

  “Right. Cool,” agreed Ivy.

  “And something kind of tough-sounding,” Bean went on. “Something that will make people wish they went to our camp. Like Camp Flaming Arrow.” Flaming arrows were totally cool and tough. Bean had seen them in a movie. They shot through the air and whatever they hit burned to a crisp.

  “Or Camp Neanderthal,” said Ivy dreamily. “Neanderthals are cool and tough.” Bean had never heard of Neanderthals, so Ivy explained that they were long-gone cave people who were maybe short and stumpy, but definitely brave. They clubbed saber-toothed tigers over the head, they were so brave.

  Bean had to agree: Neanderthals were pretty cool. They were just as cool as flaming arrows. How could they choose between them?

  “Eenie-meenie,” Ivy suggested. So they eenie-meenied, and when flaming arrows won, Ivy didn’t even mind very much, because Camp Flaming Arrow was such a great name. Who wouldn’t want to be in Camp Flaming Arrow?

  Another reason Ivy didn’t mind very much about eenie-meenie was that she had her own great idea right afterward. It was about the tent. They needed a tent. No tent, no camp. But unfortunately, neither Ivy nor Bean had a tent handy. Where could they get one? For a few minutes, they were stumped. Then Ivy got her great idea. “Hey!” she said and jumped to her feet. “My mom got new curtains!” She began to run toward her house.

  Bean didn’t think that was very exciting. But, as she found out when Ivy came back, the new curtains were not the exciting part. The exciting part was the old curtains. Ivy had fished them out of the garbage, four long white pieces of cloth, perfect for tent-making. She and Bean laid the cloth out on the grass and duct-taped the tops of the curtains together to make one superwide piece of white cloth. Ta-DA! Now they had a tent.

  “All we have to do is throw it over that branch and Camp Flaming Arrow can begin,” said Ivy, pointing to the plum tree.

  “No,” said Bean. “Camp Flaming Arrow isn’t here.”

  Ivy looked confused. “Then where is it?”

  “Monkey Park,” said Bean firmly. “Real camps are at Monkey Park.”

  Bean’s mom said okay. In her backpack, Bean placed a safety pin, a Santa hat with a beard attached to it, and a wolf mask left over from Halloween. She carried a big sign that said Camp Flaming Arrow in her hands, so it wouldn’t get crumpled. Presto! She was ready for camp.

  Ivy’s mom said okay. Ivy got the tent into her backpack, but there wasn’t much room for anything else. She slipped in a few Band- Aids. Better safe than sorry, just like teachers always said. At the last minute, she jammed in her magnifying glass as well. She was ready for camp.

  “BYE!” they screeched to their mothers.

  At the edge of the park, they stopped.

  “Whoa, Nellie,” Bean said. Monkey Park was bursting with kids. On the big flat field, there were two soccer games going on, with another pack of kids jumping up and down on the side. On the not-so-flat field, kids clustered around a picnic table, doing something with paper bags. A bunch more kids were having a tug-of-war with some teenagers. More kids sat in the grass, listening to a man talk about Indians. Over in the playground, babies were falling down and sliding and screaming.

  Nobody paid any attention as Bean and Ivy walked over to the side of the park where the trees were. They flung the two-curtain-wide cloth over a tree branch and carefully spread out the edges that touched the ground. They went inside. They came back outside and put rocks on the edges to make them stay. Bean unrolled the Camp Flaming Arrow sign and stuck it to the tent with her safety pin.

  Ivy and Bean looked at each other and smiled. Camp Flaming Arrow was open for business.

  VERY CRAFTY

  Bean and Ivy went inside their tent. They came out. They sat on the grass. They got up. They walked around. They sat back down again.

  Finally, Ivy said, “What exactly do you do at camp?”

  Bean pulled out the Girl Power 4-Ever paper and looked at the list. “All this stuff is what you do.”

  Ivy nodded. “But what comes first?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Bean. “That’s why I brought t
hese.” She held up the wolf mask and the Santa hat.

  “Wolf and Santa camp?” asked Ivy. “That sounds fun.”

  “No, we’re going to go to the Youth Center and spy on Girl Power 4-Ever camp,” said Bean. She put the wolf mask over her face and handed the Santa hat and beard to Ivy. “Whatever they’re doing, we’ll do it too.”

  Ivy put on the Santa hat. Hunks of beard fell off in her mouth. “Don’t you think they might notice a wolf and a Santa spying on them?”

  “Nah,” said Bean. “We’re going to be really quiet. They won’t notice a thing.”

  “Then why are we wearing this stuff?” asked Ivy, pulling Santa hair out of her mouth.

  “Just to be on the safe side,” said Bean. “Because if Nancy does notice us, she’s going to lose her marbles.”

  Wolf eyes are not in the same place as people eyes, Bean realized. After she smacked into a tree for the second time, Bean decided to take the mask off until she got to the Youth Center. Santa didn’t have a problem seeing. Santa had a problem breathing. With every breath, big puffs of beard flew into Ivy’s throat and made her cough. “Shh,” warned Bean.

  “I can’t help it,” choked Ivy.

  “Spit,” said Bean.

  So Ivy did. That helped some.

  They slithered among the Monkey Park trees. Even without her mask, Bean was a wolf, hunting her prey, tiptoe, tiptoe. Ivy was Santa, trying to deliver presents without waking up all the kids, tiptoe, tiptoe. They were almost there. Bean and Ivy whisked across a patch of grass and huddled against the cement walls of the Youth Center, tiptoe, tiptoe. They curled around the building’s corner, tiptoe, tiptoe. They crouched down and scuttled underneath the window, and Bean snapped her mask on. Slowly, slowly, they stood up and peeked in the window.