Ivy and Bean (5 page)

“It’s only chalk,” said Ivy. “It comes off. I change the lines when I change the rooms. For now, I’m thinking about getting rid of the dressing room and making it into a kitchen.”

“Is that one the dressing room?” asked Bean, pointing to the section with the dresser and the folding screen.

“Yeah.”

“I like the screen,” said Bean, “but a kitchen is a little bit boring. Maybe you could turn it into a science lab for making potions. The screen could protect your secrets.”

“A lab,” said Ivy, thinking. “A witch’s lab. That’s a pretty good idea.”

Bean looked over to the table with the paint and the glitter glue. “What’s that room called?” she asked.

“That’s my art studio,” said Ivy.

“Cool,” said Bean. “Let’s fix up your wand.”

In Ivy’s art studio, there were plenty of sequins and jewels and streamers and pipe cleaners. First they wrapped the wand with silver pipe cleaners. Then Bean attached streamers to the end. Then Ivy put some stickers on. Then Bean put plain glue on the top and dipped it in a jar of glitter. She stuck a big red jewel on the top. The wand dripped a little, but it looked much, much more magic than it had before.

“Now,” said Bean when that was done, “let’s work on your robe.”

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Ivy.

“All the stars and moons are coming off. See?” Bean pointed. “It will look better if we draw them on with sparkly markers.”

Ivy looked embarrassed. “I can’t draw stars very well.”

“I can,” said Bean. “I’ll teach you.”

Bean showed Ivy how to draw dots for the star points, then connect the dots with lines. Ivy practiced on paper for a while, and then they stretched the bathrobe over the table and began drawing. Ivy’s stars were a little bent, but they all had five points. Soon the black robe was covered with silver stars and gold moons.

Once that was done, Ivy got out her face paint. Bean couldn’t believe it. The set had 24 colors. “Wow! Let’s do green stripes,” said Bean. “Or green dots.” There were three different greens.

“No. Witches are only green in movies,” said Ivy. “Real witches are just regular-colored.”

“But you’ve got all this great face paint,” said Bean. “We’ve got to use it for something.”

Ivy thought. “You can put black around my eyes.”

“Okay. But aren’t real witches kind of pale, because they go out mostly at night?” asked Bean.

“I guess,” said Ivy. “Kind of pale. But not green.”

“My mom knew a guy who turned green. It was because he watched TV all the time,” said Bean. But she could tell that she wasn’t changing Ivy’s mind. “What if we did all white, with black around your eyes?” she suggested.

“Yeah,” Ivy nodded, “with a couple of blobs of red on my cheeks, for blood.”

“That’s good!” Bean agreed. “Blood is good!”

So Bean carefully smeared white all over Ivy’s face except her lips. Then she drew red drops down her cheeks. They didn’t really look like blood. They looked more like red tears, but that was a pretty scary thing, too. Then Bean drew thick black lines around Ivy’s eyes. Both girls thought that witches’ hats were dorky, so they wrapped Ivy’s head in a black scarf (borrowed from her mother’s dresser drawer). It looked almost like long black hair.

Ivy stared at herself in the dressing-room mirror. “Wow,” she said. “I look really strange.”

And she did.

Now they were ready to begin. Ivy went to the bedroom section of her room and pulled a cardboard box out from under her bed. Then she looked at Bean. “This part is really secret,” she said.

“I promise I won’t tell anyone,” said Bean.

Ivy opened the box and took out a square thing wrapped in pink silky cloth.
It was her spell book. Bean thought that a spell book would be mysterious looking, with a magic sign on the cover or something. But this spell book was plain black. It was old, though. Ivy said it was almost a hundred years old. The pages were yellowish.

“Where’d you get it?” Bean whispered.

“My aunt gave it to me,” Ivy said.

“Is she one?” asked Bean.

“She says she isn’t,” said Ivy. “But I’m not so sure.”

Ivy flipped through the book for the dancing spell. She read it to herself, and then she whispered it, but so low that Bean couldn’t hear. Bean didn’t mind. Everyone knew that witches’ spells were private. After a few minutes, Ivy said, “Got it. It’s a pretty easy spell. The only thing we need is worms.”

Luckily, there were lots of worms in Bean’s backyard. Tons. But now they were going to have to sneak into Bean’s yard and dig them up. Without Nancy seeing.

But also luckily, Bean knew how to get into her yard by going through the other backyards on Pancake Court. There was
one really gross dog-poopy yard and there was Mrs. Trantz, who didn’t like kids in her garden, and there was a lot of climbing. But aside from that, Bean said, it was easy-peasy.

Ivy put the big black book in her backpack. Bean tucked the wand into her back pocket. It was still a little drippy, but there was nothing Bean could do about that. Carefully, they tiptoed down the stairs. Ivy’s mother was still working in her office, and they slipped past her door like quiet ants. Soon they were moving quickly toward the back fence.

Ivy, Bean saw, did not really know how to climb a fence. She just jumped at it,
hoping that she would get to the top. Bean showed her how to find the little holes and bumps that make a ladder. When they got to the top, Bean whispered, “This is Ruby and Trevor’s house. They have a good sandbox.”

The good news was that there was a gate on the other side of Ruby and Trevor’s yard. The bad news was that it led to the really gross dog-poopy yard. Bean and Ivy walked on tiptoes, but still Ivy stepped in some. Fester, the dog whose poop it was, came out to sniff them. He was a nice dog, and he seemed sorry that his yard was so disgusting.

The next fence was low and easy, except that the wand fell out of Bean’s pocket, and she had to go back and get it. Then came Jake the Teenager’s house. There was loud music with lots of bad words in it coming from the garage. There was no way Jake the Teenager was ever going to hear them walking through his backyard.

Mrs. Trantz was next. Getting into her yard was no problem. Ivy and Bean climbed over the stone wall and dropped down onto her lawn. Everything in Mrs. Trantz’s yard was perfectly neat. Her tulips were lined up in rows. Her apple tree was tied so that its branches grew flat. Her birdbath had no birds in it.