Ivy and Bean and the Ghost That Had to Go (5 page)

One by one, the hands went up, until only Ivy’s were in her lap.

“Ivy,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate, “are you going to tell me that you have no idea what Zuzu is talking about?”

“No,” said Ivy softly, her eyes on her desk. “It’s not a silly story. The bathroom
is
haunted.” Her face was burning hot.

Oh boy, thought Bean. Trouble with cheese on top.

Mrs. Noble shook her head. “Smart-aleck,” she boomed. “I’d send her to the Principal if she were mine, Becky.”

“Ooooooh,” murmured the second grade.

But, as it turned out, Ms. Aruba-Tate didn’t send Ivy to the Principal’s Office. Instead, the whole class sat in a circle on the rug while Ms. Aruba-Tate talked about how important imagination was. Then Ms. Aruba-Tate told them a story about yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Bean had no idea what any of it had to do with a haunted bathroom. Ivy just wanted to run away. She didn’t hear anything. At least, not until Ms. Aruba-Tate said, “Some stories can be harmful to others, class, and that means we have to use our imaginations responsibly and respectfully.”

Ivy tried to scrunch down behind Bean, who was sitting next to her.

Ms. Aruba-Tate said, “Do you understand, Ivy?”

“Yes,” whispered Ivy, not looking at Ms. Aruba-Tate.

The bell rang and everybody started squirming around, but Ms. Aruba-Tate held
up her hand. “So I expect that I won’t hear any more nonsense about a ghost in the bathroom. Right?”

Everyone looked at Ivy. Ivy picked some dirt out of the rug. “Right,” she whispered after a moment.

“Put up your chairs, boys and girls,” said Ms. Aruba-Tate.

Ivy wasn’t exactly crying, but her eyes were glittery.

“She still likes you,” Bean said. “Really, she does.”

Ivy shook her head. They were supposed to be walking home, but Ivy kept stopping. She felt too awful to walk.

“Why didn’t you just say that the bathroom wasn’t haunted?” asked Bean. “Grown-ups never like that kind of stuff.”

“But it
is
haunted,” Ivy said. “And I’m the one who said it was.”

“Okay,” Bean said. “But you don’t have to tell them everything.”

“I didn’t think Ms. Aruba-Tate would get mad at me.”

“She’s not mad at you,” said Bean.

“She
is
mad at me,” said Ivy in a choked voice. “She hates me.”

“No. She likes you because you know all the answers,” Bean said.

Ivy didn’t say anything, but she started walking again.

“Ivy’s in trouble!” sang a voice behind them.

Bean whirled around. “Why don’t you just
shut up,
Leo?!”

“Hey!” said Leo, surprised. “That’s mean.”

“Go away,” Bean said. She wished she had some plums.

“I live on this street, you doof.” Leo picked up a rock and threw it at a tree. “I heard you got sent to the Principal’s,” he said to Ivy.

“I did
not
!” yelled Ivy. She stuck her tongue out at Leo.

“Jeez,” said Leo. “If there is a ghost, your ugly face will scare him back to his grave.”

Ivy stopped sticking out her tongue. “Oh!” she said. “Bean! That’s what we have to do!”

“What?” said Bean.

“We’ve got to send it back to its grave,” said Ivy. “We need to expel it.”

“Expel? Like Cody?” Cody had lit two garbage cans on fire and wasn’t allowed to come back to school anymore. He was expelled.

“Yeah. Like Cody,” said Ivy. “That’ll fix everything.”

“How are you going to expel a ghost?” Leo asked.

They had forgotten he was there.

“Secret,” said Ivy and Bean at the same moment.

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Aw, come on,” said Leo. “I won’t tell.”

“Can’t,” said Ivy as she started to walk away.

Leo looked glum. Bean felt sorry for him. “We’ll tell you afterward.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said.

Bean turned and raced to catch up with Ivy, who was halfway up the street.

“This is going to be great!” said Bean happily. She just loved potions.

The two girls were in Ivy’s magic lab. The magic lab was one of the five little rooms that Ivy had made inside her bedroom. Chalk lines on the floor showed where one room ended and another began. There was an art studio, a living room, a doll room, a sleeping area, and the lab.

Bean’s favorite was the art studio, with its little white table and the stack of bins filled with markers, glitter glue, pipe cleaners, beads, colored paper, feathers, and paint. The magic lab was Ivy’s favorite. In it was a bookshelf that held a shiny black rock, four fossils, a real snake skin, lots of bottles in all shapes and sizes, and jars of herbs and ingredients. Ivy loved to say “ingredients.” There was another table, which Ivy had covered in tinfoil. On top was a plastic tub of water. Ivy had wanted a
sink, but her mother had said no way, so Ivy filled the plastic tub in the bathroom and carried it back to her lab. It spilled a lot.

Ivy took her magic book from its special hiding place and began flipping through the pages. “There’s got to be a potion in here somewhere,” she said, frowning. Then she giggled. “Here’s one for making someone fall in love with you.”

Bean made a throwing-up sound.

“Here’s one for getting your money back after it’s stolen.”

“That’s not it,” said Bean, sticking her hand in the water tub. Some water spilled onto the floor.

“I know,” said Ivy, still flipping pages, “but I don’t see—here’s another one for making someone fall in love with you. That’s dumb. How come there’s nothing for returning a ghost to its grave?”

“There should be,” said Bean. “Most people don’t want ghosts hanging around the house.”

Ivy looked up from her book. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“What if it creaked open your closet door in the middle of the night,” asked Bean, “and you could hear it breathing?”

Ivy thought. “I’d talk to it. My grandma’s cousin lived in a house with a ghost that whistled. My grandma said that when she was a girl, she always heard the ghost whistling upstairs when she went to play at her cousin’s.”