“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.”
BEWARE
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.”
“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.
EASY-PEASY
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.
“If Mrs. Trantz sees us, she’s going to be really mad,” said Bean. Bean knew this garden. It was very long, and there was no way to go around it.
“Is she going to throw rocks at us?” asked Ivy. She looked a little scared.
“No. She just talks, but it’s worse than throwing rocks.” Bean sighed. “Maybe she’s not home.”
But Mrs. Trantz was home. They were halfway across her perfect yard when she came outside. She stood on her patio and glared at them. “Bernice,” she said in a high voice. “Come here.”
Bean took a few steps toward the patio.
“Closer, please, Bernice. It seems that we need to have another one of our little talks.”
Ivy came and stood beside Bean next to the patio.
“Who are you?” said Mrs. Trantz, frowning at Ivy’s white witch face.
“My name is Ivy,” said Ivy.
“Well, Ivy, children are not allowed in my garden. Maybe you can teach your friend Bernice that.” Mrs. Trantz gave a short, dry laugh. “Because Bernice does not seem to be able to remember it by herself. Do you, Bernice?”
“I remember, Mrs. Trantz, but it was just sort of an emergency,” said Bean. “I’m sorry.”
Usually when you say you’re sorry, people say something nice back to you. Not Mrs. Trantz. She said, “I don’t think you’re sorry, Bernice. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t keep coming into my garden when I have asked you not to. Do I need to call your mother again?” She smiled in an unfriendly way.
Bean heard Ivy sucking in her breath. She’s about to do something, thought Bean.
“I’m going to throw up,” Ivy said loudly.
Yuck! thought Bean, whirling around to see. Ivy looked at her and crossed one eye a tiny bit. Bean looked closely at Ivy. Then she said, “That’s the emergency I was telling you about, Mrs. Trantz.”
Mrs. Trantz looked worried.
Ivy burped. It sounded horrible.
Mrs. Trantz jumped back. “Go! Go home! Run!”
“That’s what we were trying to do, Mrs. Trantz,” Bean said sweetly. She was having a good time watching Mrs. Trantz’s face.
“Go! Now!” yelled Mrs. Trantz.
Ivy gagged.
Mrs. Trantz ran inside her house and looked at them through a window. She waggled her hand to shoo them away.
“We’ll be going now, Mrs. Trantz!” called Bean.
She waved good-bye as she and Ivy walked away. Ivy gave one more disgusting burp, just for fun. Bean tried to hold her laughs in, but they came out her nose. And then Ivy couldn’t hold her laughs in either. It was a good thing they were in the next yard by then.
It really was easy-peasy after that. They went across Kalia’s yard. Kalia was in her high chair at the kitchen window. She waved her spoon at Bean. Bean waved back and then put her finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she whispered.
Finally they came to Bean’s own yard.
BEAN’S BACKYARD
“You peek over. See if Nancy’s there,” said Bean. “She m
ight be in the yard looking for me.”
Ivy nodded and stood up. She could just see over the fence. “I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Then they’re probably out looking for me,” said Bean. She pictured her mom and Nancy with worried faces. “I’ve been gone for a long time.”
“Let’s go get the worms,” said Ivy, pulling herself over the fence.
Bean’s backyard was a big rectangle. There was a nice part, with flowers and neat grass. And then there was a messy part, with lumpy grass and a trampoline and a playhouse that Bean had had since she was little. She could barely fit inside it anymore. There was stuff lying all over the messy part: hula hoops, balls, arrows, shovels, buckets, and a broken stilt (Bean had really hurt herself that time). The worms were in the messy part, over next to the playhouse, where the ground was wet.
Ivy and Bean grabbed shovels and a bucket and got to work. At first, there was just a lot of mud. Then there was mud and a few worms. But the more they dug, the more worms they found. Six. Ten. Thirteen worms. The worms oozed and curled through the mud. Bean liked the way they were fat one second and stretched out and skinny the next. She and Ivy dug deeper and deeper, until they had made a big muddy pit in the ground. It was almost two feet across, and water dribbled down the sides. Worms were squirming at the bottom of the pit, trying to get away. Bean felt a little sorry for them. But Ivy just picked them up and dumped them into the bucket. Bean thought of Nancy kicking and waggling, and she began dumping them into the bucket, too.
“How many do we need?” asked Bean. The worms were piled on top of one another on the bottom of the bucket.
Ivy looked “Only ten. But the more worms we have, the harder she’ll dance.”
“This is enough,” said Bean. “Poor worms.”
“All right,” said Ivy. She looked toward Bean’s house. “Let’s go see if your sister is home.”