The white marble patio outside the aquarium was full of hollering teachers and wandering kids. There were kids sliding down the handrail on the stairs. There were boys throwing their backpacks at each other. There were girls walking along the rim of the fountain. All the teachers were trying to get all the kids to stand still. What a nuthouse, thought Bean.
“Boys and girls! Follow me!” shouted Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Stay with your buddy!”
Linking arms, Ivy and Bean climbed the stairs toward the big golden doors.
“Our new home,” Bean whispered.
They went inside. The aquarium was big and dim, with dark hallways like arms leading off in many directions. It was sort of greenish all over, and even with hundreds of kids wandering around, it was quiet.
“Okay,” said Ivy, pulling out a list. “The first thing we do is find a good hiding place.”
But they couldn’t find a good hiding place because Ms. Aruba-Tate was calling them over to the alligator pit. The second-graders clustered around the pit and stared down at the alligators.
“Look!” Bean nudged Ivy. “There’s money in there!” Bright coins sparkled in the slimy alligator water.
Ivy looked. “No way am I going in an alligator pit to get money,” she said.
“Oh. Right.” Bean stared at the money. What a waste. The alligators seemed dead anyway. They didn’t even move. Maybe she could just slip in and out.
One of the alligators spread its mouth wide in a yawn.
Maybe not.
“Stay together!” called Ms. Aruba-Tate, leading them from the alligator pit to a dark hallway. “Now we will see Coastal Zones.”
Ivy nodded at Bean. Coastal Zones sounded like a good place to make a getaway.
“When do we eat lunch?” yelled Paul. “I’m starving to death.”
“Now,” whispered Ivy. She and Bean started to walk backward.
“There will be no eating inside the aquarium,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Ivy! Bean! Stay with the group!”
“Boy, does she have sharp eyes,” Bean muttered.
Coastal Zones turned out to be tide pools. Tide pools were good because you got to stick your hands in them. Ivy and Bean decided to run away later. Ivy held an orange starfish, which was really called a sea star and had eyes at the ends of its arms. Pretty neat.
A sea anemone wrapped its soft tentacles around Bean’s finger. She hoped it didn’t hurt when she pulled her finger away.
After Coastal Zones, there were penguins. Bean and Ivy liked penguins, but Zuzu loved them. She cried when it was time to go. Eric said he was going to freak if they didn’t get to sharks soon, so Ms. Aruba-Tate let them skip shrimp and move straight to sharks.
“I want to see sharks,” said Bean. “Then we’ll go.”
Ivy nodded. She wanted to see sharks, too.
As it turned out, sharks were not that exciting. For one, they were small. And they swam around in circles, zip, zip. They didn’t care if the second grade wanted to see them or not. They just zipped around.
“Come along, boys and girls,” called Ms. Aruba-Tate. “Let’s investigate the Kelp Forest.”
The Kelp Forest. Boringsville. Bean nodded to Ivy. Ivy nodded to Bean. They waited beside the shark glass while the rest of the class surged forward. Ms. Aruba-Tate was listening to Emma tell about the time she was seasick. She didn’t notice Ivy and Bean.
No one noticed.
In a minute, they were all alone with the sharks.
Now that Ms. Aruba-Tate’s class was gone, Bean and Ivy could hear the sharks. They could hear them move through the water.
“Come on.” Ivy pulled on Bean’s sleeve.
“Wait a second.” Bean leaned close to the glass wall. Bean wondered if they could hear her. “Hi,” she said. The sharks swam around, their black eyes empty. They didn’t care. “Let’s get out of here,” she said to Ivy.
They turned and scurried down a hall lined with little tanks of fish.
When they got to the end of that hall, they turned down another.
And then another. They had done it.
They were runaways.
OCEAN LIFE GONE BAD
Ivy and Bean came to a gray room. It didn’t have any ocean life in it. What it did have in it were a lot of dishes.
“We must be near the cafeteria,” said Ivy.
A man walked into the room pushing a cart. He didn’t look surprised to see them, but he didn’t look happy either. “No kids in here,” he said. “Cafeteria’s that way.” He pointed to a door.
“Okay,” said Bean. She and Ivy went through a different door.
Now they were in a dark hallway. A dark, small hallway. They could just barely see the sign on the wall. It said, “Life without Light: Creatures of the Deep Sea.”
“Perfect!” said Ivy.
“Perfect? For what?” asked Bean. It didn’t look perfect to her. It looked dark.
“Life without Light.” said Ivy. “It’s great for sleeping. Plus, no one will be able to see us.”
Bean looked around the little hall. “We’re going to sleep in here?”
“No. This is just where they put the sign. The fish and stuff are in there.” She pointed to a doorway.
Together they walked into a long, narrow room. At least Bean thought it was a long, narrow room. She couldn’t really tell because it was so dark. It was even darker than the hall.
“Why don’t they turn on some lights?” whispered Bean. It seemed like a whispering place.
“It’s showing what it’s like in the deep sea. The sun doesn’t get all the way down there,” whispered Ivy.
“So that’s all? Just a dark room?” Bean shook her head.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. Do you see fish tanks anywhere?”
Bean looked hard into the darkness. She could see some glimmering on the wall. Maybe it was glass. Or something else. Bean started to get a worried feeling. “Why aren’t there any people in here?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Ivy said again. Bean could see the outline of Ivy’s head as she looked from side to side. “Maybe the sign was old. Maybe there’s nothing in here.”
For a moment, they stood there in the dark. It was so quiet that they heard the sound of the quiet. Bean began to think of all the things that might be slithering silently toward them.
“Ivy? I’m not liking this so much,” she said.
Ivy linked her arm into Bean’s. That was better. A little. “There’s got to be a light switch in here somewhere,” said Ivy. “If we walk around, I bet we’ll find one. And once we turn on the light, we’ll figure out where to hide our backpacks.”
Slowly, with their arms out, they walked toward the wall. Bean’s hands brushed against cool glass. No light switches there. She felt around its edges.
“Hey,” said Ivy. “Here’s a button thing. Should I push it?”
“Um,” said Bean. “What if it opens a trapdoor and water gushes out?”
Too late. Ivy had pushed the button. The wall in front of them began to glow with red light. For a second, they blinked at the brightness. And then they saw. Behind the glass was black water rising high above their heads. They pressed their faces to the window. Was it just empty water?
“I don’t see any fish,” Bean began to say—and then a massive mouth came hurtling toward them, shining with thousands of needle teeth. “YIKES!” Bean took an enormous leap backward, dragging Ivy behind her.
“Holy moly cannoli!” she squeaked. “What the heck is that?”
Ivy didn’t say anything, but her hand held tight to Bean’s. The giant mouth was attached to a long snaky creature that glared at them with tiny bright eyes.
“I guess this is what it’s like at the bottom of the sea,” whispered Ivy.
Bean shivered.
On the other side of the glass wall, a fish swam by, a thin arm sprouting from its head. At the end of the arm was a glowing lump. The fish swished its head from side to side, and the glowing lump swung like a lantern.
Slowly the two girls made their way around the room. Long white worms poked from tubes. See-through fish wiggled along, trailing other fish with glowing eyeballs. Shining blobs with no heads or tails rolled on the floor of the tank. Were they alive?
“Could we turn the lights off again?” Ivy asked in a small voice. “I can’t stop looking at those blobs.”
Bean reached over to the button under the glass and pressed it. The red light faded into darkness. Thick nighttime darkness. With worms and giant mouths in it.
“Ivy?” said Bean. “I don’t think I can live in here for two weeks.”
“Sure you can,” said Ivy, but her voice didn’t sound sure. “They’re inside tanks. Tank glass is super-strong.”
There was a pause.
“I keep thinking they’re watching us,” said Bean.
“I keep thinking the glass is going to break,” said Ivy.
Bean pictured the giant mouth whizzing toward her. She jumped up and pressed the button again.
But it was a different button. The red light did not begin to glow. Instead, a serious voice began to talk.
“The most famous creature of the deep sea can’t be seen in an aquarium because it has never been captured alive. The giant squid, which may reach a length of forty feet, is shown here in a rare video….”
The voice went on talking, but Bean and Ivy didn’t hear it.
They were watching the video. An enormous white blob flapped in empty black water, its long, blubbery white arms trailing behind. Around and around it spun and ruffled and circled, dancing in the water. It was like a horrible Wili, Bean thought. Its legs flailed and waved. Then, with a giant flap and whirl, the squid shot toward them. Its head, huge and soft, turned, and suddenly a single monster eye, an eye the size of a plate, stared right into theirs. It could see them.
For a second, Ivy and Bean stood frozen.
And then they began to run.
IN HOT WATER
Bean couldn’t stop running. She was gasping for air and her backpack was slamming into her shoulders, but she couldn’t stop running.
Ivy slammed into a kid. “Excuse me,” she gasped.
“Watch out!” yelled a teacher as they pounded by. “No running in the aquarium!”
They couldn’t stop. The squid was back there, waiting for them. They had to get out.
They tore up a dark hallway filled with sardines and down a dark hallway filled with jellyfish.
They flashed past the sharks, past the penguins, past the alligator pit, and exploded through the heavy golden doors into the outside world.
Air instead of water. Light instead of darkness. People instead of fish.
They were safe.
For a moment, they stood there, panting and gasping. I love light, thought Bean. I love air. I love this white marble patio—
“BEAN! IVY! WHERE ON EARTH HAVE YOU BEEN?” Ms. Aruba-Tate rushed toward them with her arms open. “Did you get lost? We were looking everywhere! Oh dear, I was so worried!” She gathered them up in a giant hug. “Oh dear,” she said, “oh, honeys!”
Ivy and Bean let themselves be hugged. It felt nice, after that squid, to be hugged.
“We’re okay,” said Bean.
“We got lost,” Ivy said quickly. That was kind of true.
“Oh, sweeties!” Ms. Aruba-Tate hugged them again. “Why didn’t you go to one of the guards? Didn’t I tell you to go to a guard if you got lost?”
“There weren’t any guards,” said Bean. That was completely true.
Now the rest of Ms. Aruba-Tate’s class was clustering around.
“There you are!” said Emma. “See, Ms. Aruba-Tate, I told you they weren’t dead.”
“We got to see the eels and you didn’t,” said Eric. “They’re hecka gross.”
“I can’t believe you got lost,” said Vanessa. “Where’d you go?”
“Into a part of the aquarium that no one has ever seen before,” said Ivy.
“There was this squid with eyes this big,” said Bean, holding her hands apart.
“You’re making that up,” said Vanessa.
“We’re not!” said Ivy. “There were white worms and this mouth with teeth—”
“Girls!” interrupted Ms. Aruba-Tate. She looked very serious. “Girls, are you telling me that you were wandering around the aquarium having a good time? That you didn’t even try to find us?”
Ivy and Bean looked at each other. “Um,” said Bean.
“We were trying to find you, Ms. Aruba-Tate,” said Ivy. “We just happened to see a few worms and things while we were trying.”
“Ivy and Bean, I am very disappointed in you,” Ms. Aruba-Tate began. “Our class has discussed safety rules many times, and I was counting on you being mature enough to understand that a field trip is an educational experience, not an excuse for bad behavior.”
All the way to the bus Ms. Aruba-Tate talked about disappointment and safety and bad behavior. Ivy and Bean nodded. They said she was right and they were wrong. They said they were sorry.
She was going to have to tell their parents, Ms. Aruba-Tate said.
Ivy and Bean nodded. They knew she had to.
They also knew that their parents were going to be mad. And that they were going to get in trouble.
But Ivy and Bean didn’t care as long as each of them could hold one of Ms. Aruba-Tate’s hands on the bus ride home. As long as they never had to go back to that aquarium and see that squid again in their whole lives.
SQUIDARINAS
They were right. Bean’s mother was mad. “This is not what I expect from you, Bernice Blue. When you go on a trip of any kind, I expect you to listen to the grown-up in charge. This is something we’ve discussed a thousand times.” Bean’s mother folded her arms and glared at Bean.
Bean could tell she was supposed to say something. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“I should think so!” said her mother. She glared some more. “Well! We’ll talk about the consequences this evening when Daddy comes home. In the meantime, both of you go upstairs and try on your ballet costumes. And I don’t want to hear any complaining!”
Bean and Ivy walked quietly upstairs. Quietly they closed the door to Bean’s room. “Whew,” said Ivy. “That was a close one.”
“It’s not over yet,” said Bean. “Your mom still has to get mad.”
“I know,” said Ivy. “But at least none of them found out about the running-away part.”
“We’ve got to get rid of the evidence,” said Bean, busily pulling the bag of salt, the Band-Aids, the string, and the underwear out of her backpack. She stuffed it all under her bed.
Ivy did the same.
“Jeez!” Bean slumped against her bed. “What a day.”
Ivy lay down on the floor. “I’m pooped.”
“Are you trying on those costumes?” shouted Bean’s mother from downstairs.
“Sheesh,” said Bean, getting up. “Work, work, work. That’s all I do.” The white leotards lay across her bed, stuffed tights legs tangled around them. “Come on,” said Bean. “You have to try yours on, too.”
Ivy sighed and got up. Together they untangled the tights legs and got undressed and pulled on the white leotards. Bean looked at Ivy in her white leotard with ten white legs dangling from her waist.
Ivy looked at Bean. “I don’t think Madame Joy has ever seen a real squid,” she said.
Bean thought about the long, blubbery white legs. It made her head prickle. “Remember its legs?”
Ivy nodded. “And its eye? Remember how it looked at us?”
“Like it was excited. Like it could hardly wait to squeeze the life out of us,” said Bean.
“Like we were food,” agreed Ivy.
“Squids are not friendly,” Bean announced.
Ivy lifted up one of her white tights legs and shook it. “A real squid would wrap its legs around Dulcie and squish her.”
Bean giggled. “And then it would eat the starfish and the sea horses.” She
bonked Ivy with one of her tights legs. “And the prince.”
Ivy bonked her back. “And then it would look at the audience with its humongo eye and say, ‘And you people are my dessert.’”
There was a pause.
“You know,” Bean said thoughtfully, “we could use your face paint to make big black eyes.”
There was another pause. Ivy and Bean looked at each other.
“Madame Joy will kill us,” said Ivy.
“We won’t do anything,” said Bean. “We’ll just look more like real squids. She won’t mind.”
“In a way, she should be glad,” said Ivy. “We’ll be teaching everyone what squids are really like.”
“Yeah, it’s educational,” said Bean. For the first time, she felt a little bit excited about being a squid. “And maybe, at the very end, after the rest of the dance is over, we can be two squid trying to squeeze the life out of each other.”
“Yeah!” said Ivy cheerfully. “Like this!” She jumped at Bean and wrapped three of her tentacles around Bean’s arm.
Bean hit Ivy over the head with a tights leg and growled. The two unfriendly squids bashed and squeezed each other until they had to lie down on the floor.
“You know what?” said Bean after a minute.
“What?” said Ivy.
“By the time we get through with it, ‘Wedding Beneath the Sea’ is going to be a lot like Giselle. Only more exciting.”
Ivy smiled. “Plus more scientific.”
“I just knew we’d end up liking ballet!” said Bean happily.
THE END
Annie Barrows, Ivy & Bean Bundle, Books 4 - 6
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