4-EVER AFTER
Camp Flaming Arrow was over. Harlan and Franny had been the last to go. Their dad was coming to pick them up the next day.
“I’m going to ask him if we can come next year,” Harlan said.
“But this isn’t a real camp,” Franny said. “Is it?”
Bean tried to look mysterious. “Time will tell.”
After they had said good-bye, Bean turned to the tent. “I guess we’d better take this thing down now.”
“Guess so,” said Ivy. She pulled on a curtain.
Nancy was lying inside.
Bean stared. “What the heck are you doing?”
“You spied on me, so I spied on you,” said Nancy.
“I wasn’t spying on you,” Bean said. “I was just sort of watching.”
“Did you like our rou-tine?” asked Nancy.
“It was great!” lied Bean. “It looked super-fun.” Nancy sighed. “Actually, it was kind of boring.” “Yeah,” agreed Bean. Nancy sighed again. “I thought it was going to be fun. But then it was just the same thing over and over,” she said.
“Couldn’t you quit?” asked Ivy. “I would have quit.”
“Nope,” said Nancy. “Once you started, you had to finish. That was the rule.”
“That’s a terrible rule,” said Bean.
“Our camp didn’t have rules like that,” said Ivy.
Nancy smiled. “You guys had a pretend camp?”
“It wasn’t pretend!” Ivy said.
“Whatever,” said Nancy. She looked at Ivy’s dress. “How’d you get all wet?”
“I was Boudicca, Queen of the Britons,” said Ivy proudly. “A Great Woman of History.”
“You had Great Women of History?” said Nancy, surprised. “So did we!”
“We fell in Monkey Fountain,” Bean said. “Boudicca’s whole army fell in.”
“We just had a slide show,” said Nancy.
“Slide shows and rules,” said Bean. “Sounds like school.”
“It was kind of like school,” said Nancy. “Do this, do that.”
“Yuck,” said Ivy.
Nancy looked between Ivy and Bean. “Was it just the two of you in your camp?”
“No. There were lots of kids here,” said Ivy. “We were the counselors.”
“We sort of followed this,” said Bean, taking out the Girl Power 4-Ever brochure. “We were trying to be like Girl Power 4-Ever.”
Nancy sneered. “I don’t think so.”
“We did all the same stuff!” said Bean. “We did crafts and nature study and first aid!”
“What crafts did you do?” asked Nancy.
“Friendship bracelets,” Bean said. “That’s how we started, anyway.”
“But we ended up learning how to escape from ropes,” Ivy went on. “Like Houdini.”
Nancy burst out laughing. “You goons.”
“We’re not goons!” said Bean. “It was fun!”
“You want us to show you?” asked Ivy. “We can show you how to do it.”
At first Nancy said no, but then, after a minute, she said, “Okay. Show me.”
Together Ivy and Bean tied Nancy up tight, and then they told her how to get free. Nancy grunted and wiggled and laughed at them, but she was having fun, Bean could tell. After that, they showed her the Heimlich Maneuver. They described the Komodo dragon. They did strength training and how to be a zombie.
Finally, it was time to go home for dinner. Ivy folded the tent and Bean took the sign. “Camp Flaming Arrow,” Nancy read aloud. “Pretty good. You guys could make a real camp. All you’d have to do is send out a brochure and make some T-shirts and stuff. I bet you’d get lots of kids signing up.”
Ivy and Bean looked at each other. Brochures? T-shirts? Sign-ups? They shook their heads. “Nah,” they said together.
The End.
MORE THAN 2 MILLION COPIES SOLD!
* An ALA Notable Children’s Book
* A Booklist, Editor’s Choice
* A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
* A Book Links Best New Book for the Classroom
* A New York Public Library “100 Titles for Reading and Sharing” selection
* A People Magazine’s “Summer’s Hottest Reads” selection
Text © 2012 by Annie Barrows.
Illustrations © 2012 by Sophie Blackall.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4521-2015-7 (eBook)
The Library of Congress has previously cataloged this title under ISBN 978-1-4521-0295-5
Book design by Sara Gillingham.
The illustrations in this book were rendered in Chinese ink.
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San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclekids.com
Annie Barrows, Ivy and Bean Make the Rules
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