Ivy & Bean Bundle, Books 4 - 6 Page 5

  As it turned out, Ivy and Bean didn’t have to go to Crummy Matt’s house because Crummy Matt was already out on the sidewalk, surrounded by kids. There was his little brother, Dino, who was eight. There were Sophie W. and Sophie S. and Liana, who was Katy’s older sister. Katy was sitting on a paper bag on Sophie S.’s lawn. And there was Crummy Matt’s rat, Blister. Poor Blister. He wasn’t very old, but he was tired anyway. He was tired because Crummy Matt was always making him do tricks.

  Ivy and Bean walked toward the group. When they got closer, they heard Liana say, “Matt, that’s really mean! Put him down.”

  “He likes it,” Crummy Matt said.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Dino. “He hates it.”

  “Shut up,” said Crummy Matt. “You don’t know.” He held Blister by the tail, dangling him over the sidewalk. Blister twisted and squeaked. He hated it.

  “Boy, is he crummy,” said Bean softly.

  But Ivy was already speeding down the sidewalk. “Matt!” she cried, “Matt! Don’t be cruel! Put the poor thing down!”

  Crummy Matt looked up, surprised. Ivy had never talked to him before. “What?” He swung Blister a little.

  Ivy clasped her hands together. “Matt, I beg you! Put him down! You’re harming an innocent creature!”

  The Sophies, Liana, and Katy looked hopeful. Even Blister looked hopeful. Dino didn’t.

  “Nobody asked for your stupid opinion,” said Crummy Matt, “so shut up.”

  Ivy and Bean glanced at each other. It didn’t seem like Ivy’s goodness was doing much to Crummy Matt. In fact, it seemed like Ivy’s goodness was making him mad. Bean thought maybe it was time to leave.

  But Ivy took a breath. “Matt, you’re a really horrible person, but you could change. If you put Blister down, I’ll be your friend forever.”

  Bean got ready to run.

  Crummy Matt carefully put Blister in his shirt pocket.

  Ivy smiled purely.

  Crummy Matt reached out and pulled Ivy’s sparkly headband off her hair. “Who says I want to be your friend?” he said and threw the headband into the street. Then he turned around and went into his house.

  Ivy was thinking loving things about all living creatures, even disgusting creatures like eyeless sea worms. Then a hummingbird whizzed past her head. It was beautiful.

  Ivy pictured the shimmering creature on her shoulder like a little jewel and held her breath. Careful. Don’t move. Think like a hummingbird. “Vvvvvvvum,” she murmured.

  “What?” said Bean.

  Ivy shook her head. Shhh, Bean. The hummingbird darted from flower to flower. Come on, look at me, thought Ivy. See how good I am. The hummingbird came to a stop on a stem and turned to look at her thoughtfully. For a second, Ivy was a hummingbird inside. Then—whoosh. The bird zoomed past her head again and disappeared into the blue sky.

  Ivy was discouraged. The hummingbird hadn’t even noticed her pure heart. Her headband was still in the street and was probably going to get run over. Bean had told the other kids about the birds and the wolf, and now Sophie W., Sophie S., Liana, and Dino were lined up on the curb across Pancake Court, staring at Ivy. Katy was there, too, sitting on her paper bag, staring. It was distracting.

  Bean was distracting, too. She was standing beside Ivy on the lawn. She was supposed to be holding up her arms for the birds, but she kept bending down to scratch her legs. No bird in its right mind was going to land on Ivy’s fingers if Bean kept on scratching like that.

  “Stop scratching,” whispered Ivy.

  “I’ve got mosquito bites,” explained Bean. “Want to see?”

  “No,” said Ivy. She dropped her arms and turned to Bean. “Look, Bean, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you’re concentrating hard enough to get a bird.”

  “Hey!” Bean felt herself turning red. “I’m concentrating. I’m just itchy.”

  “I don’t think you’re thinking loving thoughts. I think you’re thinking about how itchy you are.”

  “Hey! I can’t help it if I’m itchy. And if you’re so good, you should be feeling sorry for me because I’m itchy,” said Bean.

  “I do feel sorry for you,” said Ivy. “But you’re not supposed to feel sorry for yourself. You’re not supposed to be thinking about yourself at all! You’re going to ruin my chance to have birds and wolves because you’re weakening my goodness.”

  “I am not!” yelled Bean. “I’m just as good as you are! I’m not thinking about myself! I’m thinking loving thoughts!” She glanced around Ivy’s front yard and spotted a ladybug on a leaf. “See? Look at that ladybug! She wasn’t there a minute ago! She’s following me!” Bean kneeled down beside the leaf. She was eye

  to eye with the ladybug. The ladybug froze. Bean tipped her head like she was listening. She nodded. “This ladybug says she can feel how pure of heart I am.”

  “She does not,” Ivy said.

  “How do you know?” Bean yelped. “Your heart isn’t so pure. That’s what this ladybug here—” Bean jabbed her finger toward the leaf. “Oops.” Bean had jabbed too hard and the ladybug had fallen off the leaf and dropped to the ground. “Sorry, little ladybug,” whispered Bean, hurrying to turn the ladybug right side up. The ladybug scuttled away as fast as it could.

  Bean thumped down on the grass. “I saved her life. That was good!”

  “But you knocked her over first,” Ivy said.

  “Dumb bug,” Bean scowled.

  Ivy looked at her. “Wait a minute,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’m getting an idea.”

  “Jeez. I hope it’s more fun than being good,” said Bean grumpily.

  “Way more fun,” Ivy said.

  “Well? What is it?” asked Bean.

  “Being bad.”

  THE WORST WORD IN THE WORLD

  “Let me get this straight,” Bean said. “I do something bad, and then you talk me into being good?”

  “Yeah,” said Ivy. “I reform you. Just like that guy reformed the wolf.”

  “I’m not licking your feet,” said Bean. “No way, no how.”

  “I don’t want you to lick my feet,” Ivy said. “I just want to make you good.”

  “And I’ll still get to share the wolf and the birds when they come along?”

  “Sure. They’ll love you extra because you turned from bad to good.”

  Bean thought about that. “But I won’t be bad in the end, right? The wolf is going to know I’m like him inside, right?”

  “Right,” Ivy said. “You’ll only be bad for a few minutes. Then I’ll reform you, and you’ll be good again. It’s like a play we’re putting on for the birds.”

  “What’s going on over there?” yelled Liana from the curb. “I thought you said birds were going to flutter around your head!” She pointed to the three crows who lived on the telephone pole. “I don’t see them fluttering!”

  “Hang on!” Ivy called.

  “We’re pausing for station identification,” Bean yelled. She turned back to Ivy. “Am I just bad once?”

  “Well, that depends,” said Ivy, “on how long it takes for the birds to show up.”

  Wow. Being bad was actually good. Bean jumped to her feet. “Okay, guys!” she yelled at the kids on the curb. “I’m going to be really bad, and then Ivy’s going to make me good. Then we’ll have birds galore. Not just those crow losers.”

  “How bad are you going to be?” yelled Dino.

  “You wait and see,” called Bean. “You won’t believe it.”

  She’d better think of something quick.

  She looked around Ivy’s front yard.

  She scratched her mosquito bites.

  She searched through her brain for badness. The problem was that she usually didn’t decide to be bad. For example, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to call Nancy a doody head, but when she got really mad, she forgot. She didn’t mean to be bad; she was just too mad to remember to be good.

  Maybe she should call Ivy a doody head. But she d
idn’t truly think Ivy was a doody head, so that probably wouldn’t count.

  Bean pulled a leaf off a bush and looked at Ivy. “Bad?” she asked.

  Ivy shrugged. “Not really. My mom cuts them with clippers.”

  Okay. She would have to do something worse.

  She just couldn’t think of anything. “What’s bad?” she asked.

  “Bad words,” Ivy said instantly.

  Of course! Bean should have thought of that herself! Just a few days ago she had heard a lot of bad words at the hardware store. Some of them were so bad that she didn’t know what they meant, so she picked the one that had sounded the worst. She turned to face the kids on the curb. “I’m about to say a bad word!” she yelled. “A super-duper bad word!”

  Dino, Liana, and the Sophies nodded. Katy clapped.

  Bean stood very close to Ivy and whispered the bad word in her ear.

  Ivy tried not to giggle, but it came out her nose. She sniffed hard and then put her hands over her heart and cried, “NO! I beg you, Bean, not to say that terrible word! Promise you won’t!”

  Bean looked at Ivy for a moment. What was she supposed to do? “Um, okay.”

  “She’s good again! She’s changed!” Ivy said loudly.

  Bean checked the crows. They were still sitting on the telephone pole. They hadn’t even noticed Bean’s bad word.

  “Stupid birds,” said Bean.

  “We didn’t hear anything!” Dino yelled. “Say it louder!”

  Whoa, Nellie. Bean was not going to say that word out loud. Um, um . . . “BRA!” she screamed.

  Liana and the Sophies giggled, but Dino hollered, “That’s not a bad word! That’s boring!”

  What?! Boring? Bean was insulted. She wasn’t boring! She was bad! She was the worst kid in town!

  She stormed out of Ivy’s front yard, charged up the sidewalk, and came to a stop in front of Mrs. Trantz’s house.

  Bean turned her head to glare at Dino. “You want to see bad?” she yelled. “Watch this!”

  BEAN, QUEEN OF BAD

  In Mrs. Trantz’s yard, there were two rows of rosebushes, one on either side of the front path. Each rosebush had a little circle of dirt to live in. Each circle of dirt had a tiny white fence around it and then a sea of sparkly white rocks stretching out around that. Sometimes Mrs. Trantz came outside and washed her front path. Sometimes she even washed her rocks. Mrs. Trantz liked things to be very clean. When she saw dirt, her face shriveled into a frown. When she saw children, her eyes narrowed into tiny slivers. When she saw dirty children, her frown sucked her lips all the way inside her mouth and her eyes slivered into nothing. She frowned so hard her face went away.

  Bean drove Mrs. Trantz crazy. She didn’t try to; she just did. Every time Bean walked by Mrs. Trantz’s house, one of the tiny white fences circling around the rosebushes fell over. Bean didn’t know how it happened. Then Mrs. Trantz would call Bean’s mother and say that Bean was destructive. That meant she wrecked things.

  Bean didn’t know quite what she was going to do to Mrs. Trantz’s yard, but it wouldn’t be boring, that was for sure. She stood in front of the stiff rosebushes and looked carefully to see if Mrs. Trantz was peeking from behind her curtains. The coast was clear.

  “Do something!” yelled Dino. “This is boring!”

  Boring! Bean would show him!

  She leaned over the tiny white fence and brought her face close to a rose. And then she spit on it as hard as she could.

  She turned around to face Dino. “How was that, huh? You’d never do that!”

  Ivy grabbed her by the shoulders. “Bean!” she cried. “Promise you’ll never do that again! You’re hurting the flowers, and they have feelings, too!”

  Oh. Right. Just for a second, Bean had forgotten about turning good. “Yeah, sure. I’ll never do it again,” she told Ivy.

  “She’s reformed!” yelled Ivy.

  But Bean whirled around to make sure Dino was watching. “Oh no!” she hollered. “It didn’t stick! I’m turning bad again!”

  This time the Sophies clapped along with Katy.

  Ha! Bean was the Queen of Bad! “Keep your eyes peeled!” she screeched and started to run toward her house.

  Bean knew a lot of things that Nancy didn’t know she knew. One of the things she knew was where Nancy hid candy. Nancy thought she was pretty smart. She didn’t hide candy in her own room. She hid it in the bathroom, behind the stacks of toilet paper, in a brown paper bag. What Nancy didn’t know was that Bean spent a lot of time prowling around the house, looking for treasure. One day when she was prowling in the bathroom, Bean found Nancy’s paper bag full of candy.

  Bean was always careful not to eat so much candy that Nancy would notice. Just a Tootsie Roll or a mini–candy bar—that’s all she ever took. Until today.

  Bean whisked into her house and rushed to the bathroom. Bean often rushed to the bathroom, so her mom and dad and Nancy didn’t even notice. When she came out, there was a bulge inside her shirt, but nobody was watching.

  Bean marched back up the street toward Ivy’s house, but she didn’t stop there. She walked around Pancake Court until she was standing next to Dino, Liana, the Sophies, and Katy. Ivy came running. “What are you doing, Bean?” Her eyes were shining.

  “Look,” said Bean. She pulled the brown paper bag from her shirt. “I’ve got candy. Except it isn’t mine. I stole it.”

  “Great!” said Ivy. “Who’d you steal it from?”

  “Nancy,” said Bean.

  Ivy giggled.

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be good,” said Bean, and Ivy stopped giggling. “I’m going to eat stolen candy,” Bean said to Dino and the other kids, “before lunch and in front of you guys, without sharing.” She reached into the bag and looked at Ivy. “How’s that for bad?”

  Everyone watched while she ate a Butter-finger.

  “Aw, come on,” said Katy. “Give us some. Please?”

  “No,” said Bean with her mouth full. “I’m so bad I don’t share with anyone. Right, Ivy?”

  Ivy nodded, her eyes on the candy.

  Bean opened a pack of peanut-butter cups and ate one.

  “Isn’t your sister going to be mad?” asked Liana.

  “Yg,” said Bean, jamming the other peanut-butter cup into her mouth. She was starting to feel a little sick. She looked at Ivy. “Aren’t you going to stop me?” she whispered.

  “Oh! Right!” Ivy said. She clasped her hands together and said, “Bean, I beg you! Stop stealing and eating dessert before lunch and not sharing! You’ve got to get good.”

  Bean was glad to stop eating candy. “Well, okay, since you put it that way.”

  “You should give us some to show that you’re reformed,” said Ivy.

  Bean thought about that. “No. Because it’s stolen, you’d be doing something bad if you ate it. All of you.”

  “I don’t care if I’m bad or not,” said Liana. “I want some Milk Duds.”

  “Halt!” said Ivy, stepping between Bean and the other kids. “I can’t let you go down the path of badness by eating this candy.” She smiled her pure-of-heart smile.

  “Yeah,” said Bean. “And right now I’m reformed so I can’t lead you down the path of badness either.”

  “This is dumb,” said Dino. “It’s just a little piece of candy.”

  “Stolen candy,” Bean reminded him. “And it’s before lunch, too.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” said Dino. “And what if I want to be bad, anyway?” He reached around Ivy to grab the bag.

  But someone was already there.

  It was Katy.

  She ripped the bag out of Bean’s hands and tore down the street, her white sandals flashing in the sun.

  Bean looked at the shred of paper bag in her hands. “Wow,” she said. “Badness is catching.”

  FROM BAD TO WORSE

  They all stood there watching Katy run away. Suddenly, Dino slapped his hand against his forehead. “Oh no!” he groaned. “Now I’ve go
t it, too!” He looked sideways at Bean. “I think I’ve got it bad!”

  Sophie W. smiled. “Me, too,” she said. “I’ve got it worse.”

  “Now wait a second,” began Ivy.

  “I’m the bad one around here!” said Bean.

  “You wish,” said Liana. She glanced at the row of front yards that lined the street. “First dibs on all the mailboxes,” she said.

  Kids were swarming around Pancake Court.

  Dino stole one of Mrs. Trantz’s white rocks. Ivy begged him to stop, but he just stuck the rock in the exhaust pipe of Jake the Teenager’s car.

  Sophie W. ripped a bunch of grass out of her lawn.

  “Stop it,” Ivy pleaded, and Sophie obeyed. But a minute later she hid her baby sister’s shovel and pail in a bush.

  “Look at me!” Bean hollered. She took off her sneakers and tried to throw them onto Mrs. Trantz’s roof. One bounced off the living room window and the other landed in the camellia bush. Bean was glad she hadn’t broken the window, but she turned to Ivy and said, “Dang! I was trying to break the window.”

  “Bean! Breaking windows is really bad!” cried Ivy. “You can’t do that! Reform!”

  But Bean wasn’t listening. She whirled around, looking for another bad thing to do.

  Ivy dropped down on her front lawn. She had been running back and forth between badnesses, but nobody was getting any better. Dino was stepping on ants. Sophie S. was rubbing dirt into her shirt. Liana was tying her mother’s hose in a knot. Bean was hanging upside down from the handrail on her front stairs. Sophie W. had swallowed her gum.

  Ivy glanced up into the trees. Still no birds. Even the crows had flown away.

  Bean sat down beside her. “I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”

  “No.” Ivy looked around the yard for ideas. “Hey! A squirrel!” Ivy whispered, pointing at her hedge. “He’s looking at me!”

  Inside the hedge, a little brown squirrel was sitting among the leaves. He was holding a strawberry in his tiny claws. Every few moments he lifted the berry to his mouth and tore it to bits with his chattering teeth. Little pieces of strawberry flew through the air, but he paid no attention. His bulging brown eyes were fixed on Ivy.