Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go

by Annie Barrows

  WHAT A GREAT DAY

  What a great day, Bean thought. She was eating her ice cream on the front porch. She stirred hard, watching the chocolate part swirl into the vanilla part. Yum. Ice-cream soup.

  Ivy stepped out onto her front porch, holding an ice-cream bar.

  “Come over!” yelled Bean.

  Ivy went back inside and came out after a moment. She started down the steps, stopping every few feet to lick the drips from her bar.

  “What do you have?” she asked as she sat down next to Bean.

  “Ice-cream soup,” said Bean, showing her.

  “Mm.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then—bang—the porch door slammed shut behind Nancy.

  “You spilled on your shirt,” she said to Bean.

  Bean looked down. She had spilled on her shirt. “Oh well,” she said.

  Nancy sat down. “It’ll never come out,” she said. “Mom says you have to come in and do your math.”

  “Hi, Nancy,” said Ivy.

  “Hi,” said Nancy in a not-very-friendly way. “You’re supposed to go in, Bean.”

  “Okay,” said Bean without getting up.

  “Did you get a new haircut, Nancy?” Ivy asked.

  “What? No,” said Nancy. There was a pause. “Why? Does my hair look different?”

  Bean stared very hard at her milkshake.

  Ivy licked a drip. “Yeah.” She tilted her head to the side and looked at Nancy’s hair. “The bottom—there— it looks different. Kind of uneven. You know?”

  “It does?” said Nancy, grabbing some hair and pulling it in front of her face.

  “Yeah. Sort of uneven,” Ivy said. She cracked off a piece of chocolate coating and ate it.

  Nancy stared at her hair and then got up and went inside.

  Ivy and Bean finished their ice cream in silence.

  A really great day, thought Bean.

  IVY + BEAN

  BOOK 3

  SNEAK PREVIEW OF BOOK 3 IVY & BEAN

  BREAK THE FOSSIL RECORD

  Boring.

  Boring!

  Boring!

  Bean turned her book upside down and tried to read it that way. Cool. Well, sort of cool. No. Boring.

  Bean sighed and turned her book back right side up. It was a book about cats she had picked from the school library. There was a different cat on each page. Bean liked cats, but reading about them was driving her crazy. All the cats looked the same except the sphynx cat, who didn’t have any fur. He looked halfway between a dog and a rat. Bean liked him the best.

  I bet Ivy’s never seen a sphynx cat, thought Bean. She knew she wasn’t supposed to talk during Drop Everything and Read, so she poked Ivy in the ribs.

  But Ivy’s eyes were binging across the pages of her book. Bing, bing, bing. She looked like she was watching a Ping-Pong game. She didn’t even notice Bean.

  So Bean poked her again. “Hey!” she whispered. “Earth to Ivy!”

  “Hmm?” Ivy mumbled.

  “Looky here! It’s a dog-rat!” Bean whispered louder.

  Ivy looked for a little tiny second. “Oh,” she said, and went back to reading.

  Bean sighed again. All the other children in Ms. Aruba-Tate’s second-grade classroom were bent over their books. Even Eric, who usually fell out of his chair two or three times during Drop Everything and Read, was quiet. He had a book about man-eating sharks.

  MacAdam was picking his nose. Bean raised her hand. Ms. Aruba-Tate didn’t see because she was reading, too, so Bean called out, “Ms. Aruba-Tate!”

  “Shhh,” whispered Ms. Aruba-Tate. “What is it, Bean?”

  “There’s a problem and it starts with M,” began Bean, looking hard at MacAdam. “And then N and P.” She wiggled her finger next to her nose, just in case Ms. Aruba-Tate needed an extra hint.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate looked at MacAdam, too. Then she put down her book and came over to Bean’s table. “I brought this from home especially for you, Bean,” she said, holding out a big, shiny book. “See,” she pointed at the cover. “It’s The Amazing Book of World Records. I think you’ll like it.”

  Bean wasn’t sure. “What’s a world record?”

  “When someone does something better or longer or weirder than anyone else in the whole world, that means they’ve set a world record.”

  “Weirder?” Bean asked. That sounded interesting.

  Ms. Aruba-Tate smiled. “There’s a man in here who walked on his hands for eight hundred and seventy miles.”

  “You mean on his hands and knees? Like a baby?”

  “No, just on his hands. With his feet in the air,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.

  “No way.”

  “Read the book. You’ll see.” Ms. Aruba-Tate returned to her chair.

  Bean opened the shiny cover. On the very first page there was a picture of a woman whose black hair trailed behind her like a fancy cape. Bean read that the hair was 19 feet long, and that the woman had been growing it since she was 12. Wow, thought Bean. Doesn’t it get dirt and bugs in it? Bean turned the page. Eeeew. A man was eating a scorpion. Double-eeeew! He ate 30 scorpions a day! On the next page was a picture of a boy with 256 straws in his mouth! What did his mouth look like when there were no straws in it? Big and slobbery, Bean guessed.

  “Ivy!” she whispered. “Ivy!”

  Ivy’s eyes stopped binging back and forth. “What?”

  “Check this out!”

  “He stuck one hundred and fifty-nine clothespins on his face!” shouted Eric. “Look at him!” It was recess, but instead of soccer or jump rope or monkey bars, the second-graders were huddled under the play structure. At the center of the circle were Bean and her book. Kids pulled the book back and forth, all trying to look at the pages at the same time.

  “Look at her! Ninety-nine hula hoops at once!” Vanessa squeaked. “Around her neck, too!”

  “Look at this turnip! It weighs thirty-nine pounds!” said Dusit.

  “Gross! I hate turnips,” Eric said. “My mom made me eat one once, and I spit it into the heater.”

  “I hate lima beans,” said Dusit.

  Bean pulled the book back in her direction. After all, Ms. Aruba-Tate had brought it especially for her. “This guy broke more bones than any living human,” read Bean. In the picture, he was smiling happily. “He’s broken his leg fourteen times.”

  “On purpose?” asked Emma.

  “I guess so,” said Bean. “He jumps off of buildings.”

  Drew slid the book his way. “Hey! This guy collects teeth! He has two million teeth!”

  “This is the world’s most poisonous snake,” read Leo, pointing to another picture.

  “It’s called the carpet viper.”

  “Does it live in carpets?” asked Zuzu. She looked worried.

  “In India and Africa,” said Leo. “Not here.”

  Bean slid the book back her way. “Look, Zuzu! This girl did one hundred and nine cartwheels in a row.”

  “Let me see that!” Zuzu grabbed the book and looked closely at the picture of a teenage girl in tights. “I bet I could do one hundred and ten.”

  “Bet you couldn’t,” said Eric.