Ivy and Bean No News Is Good News

by Sophie Blackall

  For Margo, who likes cheese and wax.—A. B.

  For Bea and Bea, both exceedingly creative with wax and everything else.—S. B.

  CONTENTS

  SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH

  A CHEESY SUGGESTION

  OUT OF BUSINESS

  BREAKING THE NEWS

  WHAT A DEAL!

  BAD NEWS

  RATS! SALAMI! WOW!

  GUESS THE NAKED BABY

  A HOT STORY

  FACING THE MUSIC

  THE PANCAKE FLIPS

  THE WHOLE BALL OF WAX

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  SQUISH, SQUISH, SQUISH

  Bean looked around the lunch table. Vanessa had it. She got it every day. Zuzu had it. Emma had it. Marga-Lee had it. Dusit and Eric had it. Even MacAdam had it. Everyone had it except Bean and Ivy.

  While Bean watched, Vanessa opened her lunchbox and took out a small red ball. It was a ball of cheese, but nobody cared about the cheese. The cheese was totally unimportant. The important thing was the coating around the cheese. It was wax.

  The wax was red. It was smooth. If you pulled on the secret string inside it, the wax split into two halves. You unfolded them and took the cheese out. Sometimes you took a bite of cheese. Mostly, you didn’t. You rolled the wax between your hands until it was warm. Once it was warm, you could squish it. You could squish it and squish it. You could make it into a shape. You could put it on your face. You could hold it for the rest of the day, and it would get dirtier and dirtier, until finally it was a small brown lump. Then you could stick it in the middle of your table and say it was a booger.

  “Lookit,” said Vanessa, rolling her wax. “I’m making a soccer ball.”

  Maybe Mom surprised me, Bean thought. Maybe she sneaked a cheese ball in my lunch for a special surprise. She peeked in her lunchbox. Nope.

  “Lookit,” said Zuzu. She had made a little wax horn. “I’m a unicorn.” She stuck it in the middle of her forehead.

  Bean could grab the horn. She could grab it and run away with it and move to another country where she wouldn’t get in trouble. She sighed.

  Ivy poked her with an elbow. “Pretend you don’t care,” she whispered.

  “Check this out,” said Dusit. He stuck his wax underneath his nose so it looked like blood was dripping out. “Ms. Aruba-Tate’s going to freak.”

  Bean turned to Eric, who was squishing his wax flat. “Trade you my granola bar for your wax,” she said. She waved the bar at him. “Mmm! Granola!”

  He glanced at it. “Yuck. Lookit.” He stuck the wax over his eye. “Do I look like a one-eye?”

  “Why don’t you put it in your ear?” said Bean. “Your mom will think your brains are dropping out.” That’s what Bean would do.

  “No,” said Eric. “I’m a one-eye.”

  “They’re called Cyclops,” said Ivy.

  Bean turned to MacAdam. “How about a nice granola bar, MacAdam old buddy? I’ll trade for your wax.”

  MacAdam shook his head. He held his red ball of cheese in front of his face and looked at it. Then he bit it. Bean watched him chew wax and cheese. When he swallowed, she had to look away. What a waste of wax.

  “Lookit,” said Marga-Lee. She had made a mustache out of her wax.

  Bean took a sad bite of granola bar. It was going to be a long lunch.

  + + + + + +

  After school, Ivy and Bean slumped home. “What a day,” said Ivy.

  “Another day, another dollar,” said Bean.

  “What does that mean?” asked Ivy.

  “I don’t know,” Bean admitted. “My mom says it sometimes.”

  “We don’t have a dollar,” Ivy pointed out.

  “I know. Wish we did.”

  “If we had a dollar, we could buy our own cheese balls.”

  Bean shook her head. “No, we couldn’t. They cost more than a dollar.”

  Ivy nodded. “Here’s what I don’t understand. Everyone else’s parents get them cheese. Why don’t ours?”

  “We’ve got to keep trying,” said Bean. “Aren’t grown-ups always telling us we have to keep trying?”

  Together, they trudged around the circle of Pancake Court until they got to Bean’s house.

  “Hi, sweetie,” said Bean’s mom. “Hi, Ivy. How was school?”

  “Fine,” said Bean. The real answer was too complicated. “What’s for snack?”

  “Fruit!” said Bean’s mom. She always said that.

  “Fruit,” repeated Bean. “We don’t want fruit. We want cheese.”

  “I don’t want to hear about that cheese again,” said Bean’s mom. “Have some fruit.”

  “Fruit tastes better with cheese,” said Ivy.

  “Especially lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size,” said Bean. Lowfat Belldeloon cheese was the stuff inside the red wax.

  “Lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size costs five dollars for six little bitty pieces of cheese, so if you want it, you can pay for it yourself,” said Bean’s mom. She had said this several times before.

  “Cheese is good for you,” said Bean. She had said this before, too.

  “Cheese is not good for you when it costs five dollars for six little bitty pieces,” said Bean’s mom.

  “We’d eat more fruit if we had cheese to eat with it,” said Bean.

  “I love fruit and cheese together,” said Ivy.

  “There’s plenty of cheese in the fridge,” said Bean’s mom.

  “Not lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size,” Bean reminded her.

  “I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ONE MORE WORD ABOUT THAT CHEESE!” yelled Bean’s mom, stomping out of the kitchen.

  “She’s so touchy sometimes,” said Bean.

  Ivy lowered her voice. “She’d probably be in a better mood if she ate—” Ivy glanced at Bean and wiggled her eyebrows.

  “Lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size,” they whispered together.

  A CHEESY SUGGESTION

  Really, Ivy and Bean didn’t want to hear one more word about cheese either. Words didn’t seem to be getting them anywhere. Ivy had tried whispering “Lowfat Belldeloon cheese in a special just-for-you serving size” in her mother’s ear in the middle of the night. Her mother was supposed to wake up in the morning wanting to buy cheese for Ivy. Instead, her mother woke up while Ivy was whispering and told her to get back to bed pronto.

  Bean put a sticky note in her mom’s book. In her best and tiniest handwriting, she wrote, “Belldeloon cheese is good!” and stuck it over some other words. She figured if her mom read about Belldeloon cheese in a book, she’d buy some for Bean. Instead, Bean’s mom told Bean to leave her books alone. It was tiring, trying to make parents do what they should.

  After they had eaten their fruit (boring) and some peanut butter (not as boring, but still) and a little bit of brown sugar (yum!), Bean and Ivy played Eraser Valley. Bean had 56 erasers in different shapes. Most of them were animals, like bears and pigs, but she also had foods, like french fries and toast. Sometimes Ivy and Bean set up shops and restaurants and schools in Eraser Valley, and life was good for all the happy erasers. But mostly, Eraser Valley was disaster central. There were tsunamis and there were tornadoes. There were avalanches, earthquakes, and plagues. Eraser Valley had been through it all.

  Bean and Ivy lined the erasers up and looked at them. What would befall Eraser Valley today?

  “We could sell them,” said Ivy.

  “Hey! They’re my erasers,” Bean said. She picked up a sushi and held it tight. “I like them. Not for sale.”

  “I thought you wanted wax,” Ivy said.<
br />
  “I do want wax.”

  “Then we need money,” Ivy argued. “We have to sell something.”

  “Nancy makes money babysitting,” Bean said. Nancy was Bean’s older sister. She was rich. “Do you think anyone would leave a baby with us?”

  Ivy made a face. “What if it cried?”

  Bean made a worse face. “What if it pooped?”

  “Yuck. Forget it. We’ve got to sell something.” Ivy was determined. “What’s it going to be?”

  Bean thought of a solution. “Let’s sell some of Nancy’s stuff.”

  “Isn’t that stealing?” asked Ivy.

  “Nah. Not really. Only a little.” Bean shrugged. “She won’t mind.”

  “Really?”

  Bean thought about the time she had borrowed one tiny spool of wire from Nancy’s bead kit. Which Nancy wasn’t even using and Bean had really needed. And which Bean would have given back, if Nancy hadn’t found it in Bean’s room first and completely freaked out. “Okay, maybe not.”

  “What can we sell?” Ivy asked. She picked up a toast eraser. “I bet we could get a quarter for this.”

  “You’re almost a witch,” Bean pointed out. “Can’t you magically make money?”

  Ivy thought about it. “I’ve never heard of witches making money with magic.”

  “Why not?” Bean asked. “Even witches need money.”

  “Wait!” Ivy slapped her head. “Duh! Witches make money by selling potions!”

  “Well, heck!” said Bean. She stood up, causing a major earthquake in Eraser Valley. “What are we waiting for?”

  OUT OF BUSINESS

  Ivy had been practicing to become a witch for a long time. She was going to be one when she grew up, for sure. She had already learned a lot of important witch things, like spells and potions. Especially potions. Potions were fun because you had to mix ingredients to make them. Ingredients for potions were things like bugs and hair and leaf juice and rust. Ivy’s collection of ingredients stood on a shelf in a special section of her room she called the magic lab.

  Ivy took her magic book from its hiding place and flipped through the pages, looking for a potion to sell. It had to be something that people would want to buy.

  “What do people want?” she asked.

  “Horses,” said Bean. She wanted a horse.

  Ivy looked in her book. “Here’s one for making your horse as fast as an eagle.”

  Bean rolled her eyes. “That’s not much help if you don’t have a horse.”

  Ivy nodded. Then she giggled. “Here’s one that makes the first person you touch fall in love with you.”

  “Eeeww, gross! Touching.” Bean shivered.

  “Maybe we could sell it to Nancy,” suggested Ivy.

  “Too mean,” said Bean.

  “To Nancy?” asked Ivy.

  “No! To whoever touched her! Geez!”

  “Okay.” Ivy looked through more pages. Then she stopped. “This is a good one. A flying potion. Hey, and flies are one of the ingredients! I’ve got tons of flies!” She looked at the bottle of dead flies on her shelf.

  “That’s perfect,” Bean said. “Everyone wants to fly. I bet we could charge ten dollars a bottle for a flying potion.”

  “Ten dollars. That’s two bags of Belldeloon cheese,” said Ivy.

  “That’s twelve pieces of wax,” said Bean.

  + + + + + +

  “Yuck,” said Leo the next day at lunch recess.

  “But you’ll fly,” said Bean, flapping her arms up and down to show flying.

  “What are those black things?” he asked, looking at the jar of potion. It had turned out sort of yellowish, except for the bits that were black.

  “Secret,” said Bean.

  “Flies,” said Ivy at the same moment.

  “Gross!” he said. “Nobody’s going to drink that. You guys are nuts!”

  Ivy and Bean looked at each other and sighed. The potion business was not so good. No one wanted the potion, not even at the special sale price of one dollar. Eric said that he would give Bean a quarter if she drank it, but she decided not to. A quarter wasn’t enough to buy Belldeloon cheese anyway.

  Lunch was almost over. They needed a potion-buyer on the double. Vanessa walked by, a lump of red wax in one hand and her brother Toby in the other. Even though he was only in kindergarten, he had a lump of red wax, too.

  It was worth a try. “Hey, Toby, trade you a flying potion for your wax!” called Bean. He turned around and looked at her. She waved the jar of potion. “Don’t you want to fly?” She waved the jar some more. “Look, I can hardly keep it in my hand! It’s trying to fly away!” She gave the jar a little toss. “See? It’s—” The jar slipped through her fingers and crashed against the cement of the breezeway. Ivy and Bean stared at a million pieces of glass sitting in a puddle of dead flies and yellow glop.

  “Just what do we have here, young ladies?”

  Ivy and Bean turned around. It was Rose the Yard Duty. The potion business went from bad to worse.

  BREAKING THE NEWS

  That afternoon, Bean’s dad wandered into the kitchen. “Holy moly cannoli, what are you eating?” he squawked.

  “Gmckr tnch,” said Bean. Her mouth was full. “Ff bplzrp npnd rr.”

  “Graham cracker sandwich,” explained Ivy. “With maple syrup and peanut butter.”

  “Wow,” said Bean’s dad. He sat down at the table to watch.

  Bean swallowed. It took a long time. Finally, she said, “Dad. Can we have some money?”

  “You get an allowance.”

  Bean sighed. “No, I don’t. Not for two more months. Don’t you remember?”

  His eyes got narrow. He remembered. “Serves you right.”

  Bean didn’t want to talk about that. Quickly, she asked, “But what if I need some money?”

  “Earn it!” he said. “When I was a kid, I didn’t get extra money from my parents. If I wanted a comic book, I had to buy it myself. With money I earned myself.”

  “But how did you make the money? Did you have a job?”

  “Sure. I had a bunch of jobs. I washed my father’s car, for instance. And mowed the lawn. And vacuumed the house.” He paused. “And there was the newspaper, too.”

  Ivy and Bean looked at each other. Car, mouthed Ivy silently.

  “We’ll wash your car for ten dollars,” said Bean at once.

  “No,” said her father.

  “What do you mean, no?” yelped Bean. “You just told us we should make money by washing cars.”

  “Hello? Do you remember the time you washed the house? Do you remember what happened in the basement?” he said. “No water.”

  Bean rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Lawn.”

  “Ha!” Her father snorted. “You think I’m going to let you drive a lawn mower? Think again.”

  “Vacuuming?” said Ivy.

  “Excuse me?” he said. “Aren’t you the ones who vacuumed up the tuna salad?”

  Bean sighed deeply. “Fine. What was the newspaper?”

  “I made a newspaper,” said Dad. He smiled. “It was called The Explosion.”

  “Cool! Did it explode?” Bean asked. That sounded like a pretty good newspaper.

  “No, no. That’s just what it was called,” her dad said. He leaned back in his chair and stared into space. “It was about all the stuff that happened in my neighborhood. You know, who’d gotten a dog, who’d fallen off their bike, that kind of news.” He started to look dreamy. “It was great. Everyone wanted it. I charged a quarter a copy. Which was a lot of money back then. I went to all the houses in my neighborhood. I remember exactly what I said, too. I said, ‘Hello, I’m David. Do you want to know what’s going on in the world around you? Subscribe to The Explosion and you’ll learn about all the thrilling events that happen on Aspen Avenue. Plus, you’ll be helping to keep a neighborhood child off the streets.’”

  “What’s subscribe mean?” asked Ivy.

  “That means they gave me the money.”
Bean’s dad still looked dreamy. “And then I brought them the newspaper when it was done.”

  Bean sat up straight. “They gave you the money first?”

  “Yup.”

  “How much money did you make?” asked Bean.

  “Lots,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

  “More than ten dollars?”

  “I guess,” he said. “Everyone bought it.”

  “Dad,” said Bean. “Let me get this straight: You went around your neighborhood asking for money, and people just gave it to you? You didn’t have to give them The Explosion first?”

  Her dad shook his head. “No. They gave me the money, and then I made the newspaper.”

  Ivy looked at Bean. It sounded too good to be true.

  “Are you sure, Dad?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” he said. “That’s what subscribing is.”

  Bean looked at Ivy and shrugged. Dads don’t lie. Both girls stood up. “Thanks for making such a great snack, Dad! See ya!” said Bean.

  “Wait. Don’t you want to hear about what I wrote?” asked Bean’s dad. But Ivy and Bean were already gone.

  + + + + + +

  Bean sat down with a thump in her basket chair. “Bet we could charge a dollar.”

  “Your dad only charged a quarter,” Ivy reminded her. She was stretched out on the floor.

  “But that was back in the old days,” said Bean. “And besides, our newspaper will be great. It’ll be worth a dollar.”

  “What should we call it?” asked Ivy.

  “The Explosion!” said Bean.

  “No, that would be copycatting,” Ivy said.

  “Okay,” Bean said. “How about The Wax?” After all, wax was the whole point of the newspaper.

  Ivy frowned. “I don’t think most people like wax as much as we do.”