Ivy and Bean Doomed to Dance

nice green lawn until she reached the not-so-nice green lawn. This part of Bean’s lawn had holes and lumps in it. The lumps were mostly places where Bean had buried treasure for kids of the future.
    Bean picked up a shovel. To heck with kids of the future. She was bored now. And maybe a kind old guy had seen her digging and added something interesting to her treasure, like a ruby skull or a dinosaur egg.
    Bean didn’t bury her treasure very deep, so it was easy to dig up. This treasure was inside a paper bag, but the paper bag wasn’t doing so well. It wasn’t really a paper bag anymore. “Oh my gosh!” said Bean loudly. “I’ve found treasure!” She pulled apart the clumps of paper. What a disappointment. No ruby skull. No dinosaur egg. Just the same stuff she had buried two weeks ago: dental floss, tweezers, and a magnifying glass. Some treasure.
    Bean flopped over on her stomach. “I’m dying of boredom,” she moaned, hoping her mother would hear. “I’m dyyy-ing.” She coughed in a dying sort of way—“Huh-ACK!”—and then lay still. Anyone looking from the porch would think she was dead. And then that person would feel bad.
    Bean lay very still.
    Still.
    She could hear her heart thumping.
    She could feel the hairs on her arm moving.
    Bean opened her eyes. There was an ant scurrying over her arm. Bean pulled the magnifying glass over and peered at the ant. Her arm was like a mountain, and the little ant was like a mountain climber, stumbling along with a tired expression on his face. Poor hardworking ant. She watched as he dodged between hairs and charged down the other side of her arm toward the ground. She offered him a blade of grass to use as a slide, but that seemed to confuse him. He paused, looked anxiously right and left, and then continued down her arm. He had a plan and he was going to stick to it. Bean watched through the magnifying glass as he scuttled into the grass, rushing along the ground between blades. He was late. He was in trouble. He met another ant by banging into him, but they didn’t even stop to talk. They rushed away in opposite directions.
    Bean followed her ant to a patch of dry dirt. There he plunged down a hole.
    “Come back,” whispered Bean. She liked her ant. Maybe he would come out if she poked his house. She found a thin stick and touched the top of the hole. Four ants streamed out and raced in four different directions. Bean didn’t think any of them was her ant.
    Bean watched the ant hole for a long time. Ants came and went. They all seemed to know where they were going. They all seemed to have important jobs. None of them seemed to notice that they were puny little nothings compared to Bean.
    Bean dragged the hose toward the ant hole. She didn’t turn the hose on. That would be mean. But she let a little bit of water dribble into the hole, and watched as the dirt erupted with ants. Thousands of ants flung themselves this way and that, racing to safety.
    “Help, help,” whispered Bean. “Flood!”
    The ants ran in orderly lines away from the water. Some were holding little grains above their heads. They were the hero ants. But even the non-hero ants were busy. They were all far too busy to notice Bean watching them through the magnifying glass. To them, she was like a planet. She wasn’t part of their world. She was too big and too far away for them to see.
    Bean looked up into the sky. What if someone was watching her through a giant magnifying glass and thinking the same thing she was? What if she was as small as an ant compared to that someone? And what if that someone was an ant compared to the next world after that?
    Wow.
    Bean waved at the sky. Hi, out there, she thought.