For a while, Ivy and Bean sat in Bean’s driveway. Then Bean said, “Let’s go show our arm to Dino.” Maybe it would strike fear in his heart.
But it didn’t, because Dino wasn’t home. Dino’s mom answered the doorbell. She had one pair of glasses on her head and one on her eyes. “What happened to you two?” she asked, squinting at their tied-up arm.
Bean always thought it was better not to tell grown-ups exactly what was going on, but Ivy answered right away. “We’re making ourselves into twins by growing our skin together.”
Dino’s mom took the pair of glasses on her head and put them over the glasses on her eyes to take a closer look. “What a good idea. Whose house are you going to live in once you’re done?”
“Mine,” said Bean.
“We’re going to switch off,” said Ivy.
Bean wished Ivy would stop saying that. She liked her own house. That’s where her mom and dad were. Unfortunately, Nancy was there, too. But still. All her stuff was there. She decided to change the subject. “Where’s Dino?” she asked.
“He’s over at Sophie W.’s, playing bannis,” said Dino’s mom.
Bannis! Bannis was a famous Pancake Court game. It was baseball played with a tennis ball. Dino and Bean and Liana had thought it up after Liana broke a window with a softball. You almost never broke a window in bannis, partly because tennis balls were soft and partly because in bannis, the bat was a bamboo stick. You hardly ever hit the ball, and if you did, the stick usually broke. Bean loved bannis. She loved whacking the tennis ball as hard as she could and then throwing the broken stick on the ground. Sometimes she spit in the dirt, too, just for good measure.
But now she was a twin.
You couldn’t play bannis with one arm tied to another person. Especially if that person was Ivy. Ivy couldn’t hit things with sticks. Ivy didn’t even like hitting things with sticks. Ivy liked reading books.
Bean imagined herself, sitting in a chair with Ivy while she read a book, for an hour.
She imagined Ivy’s mom kissing her goodnight.
She imagined never, ever playing bannis again.
Yikes! Her life wasn’t getting better. It was getting worse. Bean and Ivy said goodbye to Dino’s mom and went to sit on the grass.
“So this is being a twin,” said Bean.
They were both quiet for a long time.
