“Let me get this straight,” Bean said. “I do something bad, and then you talk me into being good?”
“Yeah,” said Ivy. “I reform you. Just like that guy reformed the wolf.”
“I’m not licking your feet,” said Bean. “No way, no how.”
“I don’t want you to lick my feet,” Ivy said. “I just want to make you good.”
“And I’ll still get to share the wolf and the birds when they come along?”
“Sure. They’ll love you extra because you turned from bad to good.”
Bean thought about that. “But I won’t be bad in the end, right? The wolf is going to know I’m like him inside, right?”
“Right,” Ivy said. “You’ll only be bad for a few minutes. Then I’ll reform you, and you’ll be good again. It’s like a play we’re putting on for the birds.”
“What’s going on over there?” yelled Liana from the curb. “I thought you said birds were going to flutter around your head!” She pointed to the three crows who lived on the telephone pole. “I don’t see them fluttering!”
“Hang on!” Ivy called.
“We’re pausing for station identification,” Bean yelled. She turned back to Ivy. “Am I just bad once?”
“Well, that depends,” said Ivy, “on how long it takes for the birds to show up.”
Wow. Being bad was actually good. Bean jumped to her feet. “Okay, guys!” she yelled at the kids on the curb. “I’m going to be really bad, and then Ivy’s going to make me good. Then we’ll have birds galore. Not just those crow losers.”
“How bad are you going to be?” yelled Dino.
“You wait and see,” called Bean. “You won’t believe it.”
She’d better think of something quick.
She looked around Ivy’s front yard.
She scratched her mosquito bites.
She searched through her brain for badness. The problem was that she usually didn’t decide to be bad. For example, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to call Nancy a doody head, but when she got really mad, she forgot. She didn’t mean to be bad; she was just too mad to remember to be good.
Maybe she should call Ivy a doody head. But she didn’t truly think Ivy was a doody head, so that probably wouldn’t count.
Bean pulled a leaf off a bush and looked at Ivy. “Bad?” she asked.
Ivy shrugged. “Not really. My mom cuts them with clippers.”
Okay. She would have to do something worse.
She just couldn’t think of anything. “What’s bad?” she asked.
“Bad words,” Ivy said instantly.
Of course! Bean should have thought of that herself! Just a few days ago she had heard a lot of bad words at the hardware store. Some of them were so bad that she didn’t know what they meant, so she picked the one that had sounded the worst. She turned to face the kids on the curb. “I’m about to say a bad word!” she yelled. “A super-duper bad word!”
Dino, Liana, and the Sophies nodded. Katy clapped.
Bean stood very close to Ivy and whispered the bad word in her ear.
Ivy tried not to giggle, but it came out her nose. She sniffed hard and then put her hands over her heart and cried, “NO! I beg you, Bean, not to say that terrible word! Promise you won’t!”
Bean looked at Ivy for a moment. What was she supposed to do? “Um, okay.”
“She’s good again! She’s changed!” Ivy said loudly.
Bean checked the crows. They were still sitting on the telephone pole. They hadn’t even noticed Bean’s bad word.
“Stupid birds,” said Bean.
“We didn’t hear anything!” Dino yelled. “Say it louder!”
Whoa, Nellie. Bean was not going to say that word out loud. Um, um . . . “BRA!” she screamed.
Liana and the Sophies giggled, but Dino hollered, “That’s not a bad word! That’s boring!”
What?! Boring? Bean was insulted. She wasn’t boring! She was bad! She was the worst kid in town!
She stormed out of Ivy’s front yard, charged up the sidewalk, and came to a stop in front of Mrs. Trantz’s house.
Bean turned her head to glare at Dino. “You want to see bad?” she yelled. “Watch this!”
