Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go by Annie Barrows Page B

through a ghost.”
    And then Bean could see it clearly. The pale spot grew thicker, until it was a patch of fog about the size of a person. You couldn’t see through it to the inside of the bathroom. “I can see it,” whispered Bean. “Does it have yellowish eyes? Like little flashlights?”

    “Yes!” Ivy whispered, squeezing Bean’s arm. “Yes, it does!”
    They looked at each other and smiled. This was even better than a blood oath. “How totally cool!” shouted Bean. A haunted bathroom! In her own school!
    “What’s cool?” yelled Emma and Zuzu together. “Tell us!”
    But at that minute, the bell rang. Lunch was over.
    “We’ll tell,” said Ivy. “Right here. After school.”
    “You’re going to love it!” said Bean.

WHO’S THAT UGLY GUY?
    Even before Ivy and Bean were friends, they had both been in Ms. Aruba-Tate’s second-grade class. They didn’t sit together. But after the day they threw worms at Bean’s sister Nancy, they asked Ms. Aruba-Tate if they could share a table. Ms. Aruba-Tate just loved it when people were friends. She smiled and said, “That’s wonderful, girls! The two of you will be a great team!” After a minute, though, she added, “But if there’s talking, I’m going to have to separate you.”
    So far, Ivy and Bean had been separated six times.
    This was not a big surprise. Bean had been separated from everyone in the class at least once. No matter who she sat next to, Bean talked. Even MacAdam, who mostly talked to himself, had to be separated from Bean. Once, Ms. Aruba-Tate had Bean sit by herself, but Bean just talked louder.

    Bean
tried
not to talk. She promised not to talk. But every day she talked. Mostly, she was trying to be helpful. She was trying to explain things to kids who didn’t understand. For example, regrouping. Eric didn’t understand regrouping. Ms. Aruba-Tate had explained it, but he didn’t understand it. So he added instead of subtracting. Bean couldn’t stand to watch him add when she knew he was supposed to subtract. Just knowing that he was adding made it impossible for her to do her own subtraction. She had to tell him that he was doing it wrong. She had to tell him how to do it right.
    “Bean is only responsible for Bean,” Ms. Aruba-Tate kept saying. But Bean thought that wasn’t true, because Ms. Aruba-Tate also kept saying that a class was like a family. And families were responsible for each other. When Bean pointed this out, Ms. Aruba-Tate opened her mouth and then closed it again.
    Ivy was very quiet. She was the quietest kid in the class. So Ms. Aruba-Tate kept putting Bean back with Ivy. “I think she hopes it will rub off on me,” Bean explained to her mom. “But so far, it hasn’t.”
    Even though she hadn’t learned how to be quiet, Bean had learned a lot by sitting next to Ivy. One thing she had learned was that Ivy wasn’t as quiet as she seemed. Ivy talked. She just talked so softly that no one could hear her.

    After lunch, the second-graders had science. They were doing a unit on dinosaurs. Bean’s favorites were the ones that had big, bony skulls they cracked together when they fought. Ivy liked the bird-dinosaurs with feathers and sharp claws and red eyeballs.
    Today, the second-graders were learning about swimming dinosaurs. Actually, they weren’t dinosaurs at all. Ms. Aruba-Tatewas saying, “These prehistoric creatures are called
marine reptiles
. One marine reptile is—”
    “Pteranodon!” Eric hollered, waving his arm in the air.
    “Plesiosaur,” breathed Ivy so only Bean could hear her.
    “Plesiosaur,” said Bean out loud.
    “I like the way that Emma is raising her hand. Emma?” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.
    Emma stared at her. “Um. I forget.”
    Ms. Aruba-Tate said, “Bean, will you repeat what you said?”

    “Plesiosaur,” said Bean. “Ivy said it, really.”
    “Thank you, Ivy and Bean,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate. Then she held up a picture of something that looked like a whale and a giraffe