“We’re going to starve,” said Bean.
“I guess we could eat spiders,” said Ivy. “Birds do it.”
Bean shivered. She didn’t want to eat spiders. All those hairy legs.
They were quiet.
Now that she had started, Bean couldn’t stop thinking about spiders. “Ivy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever worry that there’s a giant spider who’s the grandma of all the spiders you’ve ever squashed and that she’s going to come and get you in the middle of the night?”
“I worry that there’s a big potato bug inside my bed,” said Ivy. “Not spiders so much.”
Bean squinted into the shadows. There were probably spiders crawling all over the attic. Spiders she couldn’t see. Something brushed against her leg, and Bean jumped to her feet.
“This is an emergency,” said Bean. “This calls for action.”
“Okay,” agreed Ivy. “What action?”
Bean gulped. “I think we need to scream for help.”
“Well,” said Bean. “Nancy.”
“She is the babysitter,” said Ivy. “She’s supposed to take care of you.”
“Right!” said Bean. “She’s getting paid to take care of me.”
“Okay,” said Ivy. “Let’s yell for her. One.”
“Two,” said Bean.
“Three!” they said together. And then they screamed, They had to scream for a million years. That’s what it felt like anyway. Finally, they heard Nancy. Nancy was yelling, too.
“BEAN? WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT’S HAPPENED? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” They could hear doors slamming and Nancy’s feet running. “ARE YOU OKAY? ARE YOU IN THE BATHROOM?”
Once Bean knew that she was going to be rescued, she stopped feeling spiders on her legs. After a minute, it was even kind of fun to hear Nancy freaking out. Bean felt cheerful again.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, “Let’s scream, but no words this time, just a scream.”
#8220;She’s going to have a heart attack,” Ivy said.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHH,” they screeched.
“OH NO!” Nancy shrieked.
Bean took a deep breath and screeched, “WE’RE STUCK IN THE ATTIC! HELP!”
“Bean! Where are you?” Nancy opened the closet door.
“WE’RE UP HERE! HELP!”
“You’re up there?” said Nancy in a surprised voice. “How’d you get up there?” Suddenly she didn’t sound very worried.
“HELP US! WE’RE STARVING! BUGS ARE EATING US!” hollered Bean.
“Is that Ivy, too?” Nancy asked. “What’s she doing here?” Nancy was beginning to sound more grumpy than scared.
Ivy and Bean looked at each other. “HELLLLLP!” they howled.
“Okay, okay. I’m getting the ladder,” grumbled Nancy. “Hang on.” She padded away and came back a minute later. “Sheesh. This thing is heavy.”
“Quiiiick,” moaned Bean. “We’re dying.” She wanted Nancy to be leaping up the ladder.
Something crashed into something else below them. “Ouch!” said Nancy. Then she said a bad word.
Ivy and Bean giggled.
Clump, clump. Nancy climbed up the ladder. Whack! The door in front of them popped open—and then Nancy poked her head into the crawl space. “Wow,” said Nancy, looking around. “I’ve never been up here. Is there anything good in here?”
Bean nudged Ivy. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a ding-dang thing.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” said Ivy.
Nancy’s eyes scanned the darkness and then zipped back to Bean and Ivy. “You’re not allowed to go in the crawl space, Bean, and you know it.”
Uh-oh, thought Bean. She had hoped Nancy would be so glad to see them that she would forget about that. She tried to look sad. “I was scared,” she said in a quavery voice.
“That’s your own fault, bozo,” said Nancy firmly. “Get down from there.”
Nancy climbed down the ladder into the closet. Ivy edged out of the hole and followed her. Bean rolled over onto her stomach, pulled the door toward her, and set it in its frame as she backed down the rungs of the ladder.
Then Nancy noticed the sheets and towels. “What’s all this black stuff on the towels? Bean, did all this stuff fall out of the crawl space?”
“I don’t see any black stuff,” said Bean, stalling.
“Bean, look! It’s everywhere,”snapped Nancy.
Yikes, thought Bean. There was an awful lot of dirt. More than she remembered.
“Maybe it was like that before,” suggested Ivy.
“It was not like this before!” Nancy said. She turned to Ivy. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here, Ivy!” She whirled around to glare at Bean. “You are going to be in a world of trouble when Mom gets home.”
A world of trouble. Bean opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Then Ivy said in a quiet voice, “My babysitters play with me.”
That’s it! thought Bean. Maybe she hadn’t been exactly good, but that was because Nancy had been a bad babysitter. “Leona always knows where I am,” she remarked, “because she’s always with me.”
Nancy stopped glaring and started looking guilty.
“Leona doesn’t sit in the bathroom putting on makeup all afternoon,” Bean pointed out. “She earns her money, drawing horses for me.”
Nancy made a throat-clearing sound. She brushed some dirt from a towel, and then she gave Bean her big, peppy smile. “You know what?” she said. “I bet I could just vacuum all this dirt off the sheets and towels. I bet it would come right off.”
Bean smiled back at her. “I’ll go get the vacuum if you want.”
“Okay. You go get the vacuum while I put the ladder away.”
