Ivy wouldn’t want to miss out on a volcano, that was for sure. Bean zipped up the street to Ivy’s house and rang the doorbell. But that was too slow. “Hey!” she yelled through the mail slot. “There’s a volcano at Sophie W.’s!”
“A what?” said Ivy, opening the door. Ivy was reading. She was reading a really big book with long words even on the cover, which was something Bean couldn’t stand. It was bad enough when there were big words inside the book.
“A volcano!” Bean yelled. “Come on!”
Ivy looked at her book.
Bean rolled her eyes. “Ivy! It’s a natural disaster! You have to be there!”
“Okay,” said Ivy. She put down her book. “It’s a good book, though.”
“You are so weird sometimes,” said Bean. “Come on!”
The two girls ran back to Sophie’s house. Leo was there now, and Sophie S. and Prairie and Prairie’s little brother, Isaiah.
When she got to the front yard, Bean fell onto the grass. “Earthquake!” she hollered. Volcanoes made the earth shake, too. Volcanoes and earthquakes were like disaster twins.
Ivy grabbed a bush and shook it back and forth to show that the earth was quaking. Sophie W. and Prairie pretended they were being crushed by falling buildings. Leo pretended his car blew up, which was a little strange, but he said it happened all the time during earthquakes.
“Smoke!” screeched Bean, pretending to be terrified. She pointed to the dirt mountain. “She’s going to blow!”
They all stopped what they were doing and looked at the mound of dirt.
“It would be better if we had real smoke,” said Sophie S.
“It would be better if we had real lava,” said Bean.
Ivy glanced around the yard, looking for lava. There wasn’t any, but she did see a hose lying on the lawn. Hmmm. She picked it up.
“That’s good,” said Bean. “Lava flows, just like water.”
“Yup,” said Ivy. “But how are we going to get it to come out the top of the dirt?”
They all thought about that for a minute.
“I know,” said Prairie, her eyes shining. “Let’s stick him inside.” She pointed to Isaiah. “We dig a hole at the top, and then we bury him with the hose.”
Isaiah looked worried.
“If we bury him,” said Bean, “he won’t be able to breathe.”
Isaiah nodded.
“We’ll just dig a hole,” said Leo. “We won’t bury him.”
“It’ll be like a sacrifice to the gods,” said Ivy in a dreamy voice.
“I’m going home,” said Isaiah. He ran.
Prairie caught him. She promised to give him her stuffed seal plus three glow-in-the-dark stickers. Also a lollipop the next time she got two. That was a lot, just for being the lava. Isaiah said okay.
It took quite a while to build the volcano. At first, they tried climbing to the top of the mound to dig the crater. A lot of dirt slid off the mound, and so did Ivy and Sophie S.
In the end, they decided to smash down the dirt in the back of the mound to make steps and then dig an Isaiah-sized crater near the top. It would only look like a volcano from the front, but who cared?
Finally, everything was perfect. Isaiah climbed the steps slowly, holding the hose and Bean’s bag of corn. Bean, Ivy, Leo, Prairie, and Sophie S. gathered around the foot of the volcano. Sophie W. got to turn on the hose, since it was her house.
“You ready?” called Prairie.
“Yes,” said Isaiah. They could hardly hear him inside the crater.
“On your mark!” yelled Bean. “Get set! Go!” She threw herself onto the ground. “Earthquake!” she bellowed.
“Help!” howled Sophie S. “The volcano is spewing!”
Isaiah threw the corn out the top.
“Ask the gods for forgiveness!” yelled Ivy.
“It’s too late!” shouted Leo, flapping bushes back and forth.
“Ohhh nooooo! Here it comes!” hollered Prairie.
Sophie W. laughed and turned the hose on full blast.
“AAAHH!” screamed the volcano, and water blew out the top of the crater in a gigantic spray.
Bean was sopping wet. There was corn in her hair. There was mud on her clothes. She was crawling through the burning lava to bring life-giving corn to the hungry townspeople. The hungry townspeople were some rocks over by the edge of the lawn. Ivy and Leo and Prairie and both Sophies were crawling through the burning lava, too. Isaiah refused to come out of the crater.
“BEEE-EEN! TIME TO COME HO-OME!” It was Bean’s mom, calling from her porch.
Weird. Bean had already had lunch. She decided her mother didn’t really mean it.
Oops. Maybe she did really mean it.
Bean stood up. “Five more minutes?” she yelled.
“NOW, BEAN!” Bean’s mother sounded cranky.
“I’ve got to go,” Bean said to the other kids.
“Okay,” said Ivy. “See you.”
“Bye,” said Sophie W., pulling a corn kernel out of the mud. “Look! Food!”
Bean looked at them. “You know,” she said, “that’s my corn. And it was my idea. You guys should stop till I come back.”
Leo sat back on his heels. “No way.”
“It’s my dirt,” Sophie W. pointed out.
Bean looked at Ivy. Ivy shrugged. “I want to keep on playing,” she said.
Bean scowled. It wasn’t fair. “You wouldn’t even know about it if it wasn’t for me.” Some friend she was.
“BEEE-EEN!”
Bean stomped home.
