Ivy and Bean Doomed to Dance

walls.
    “Squids. Who ever heard of squids?” said Bean. “I don’t even know what squids are.”

    “I’m not totally sure,” said Ivy, “but I think they’re ugly, and I think people eat them.”

    “Oh, great,” moaned Bean. “I can’t believe that stupid Dulcie gets to be the mermaid, and we’re squids.”
    “I believe it,” said Ivy. “We’re awful.”
    “We’re not awful —” began Bean.
    “Oh yes we are,” said Ivy. “I’m worse than you, but you’re pretty bad, too.”
    “That’s because we hate it. If we liked it, we’d be better at it.”
    “I thought I’d like it,” said Ivy sadly.
    “So did I,” said Bean. “I thought we’d be kicking some heads off. I didn’t know about the positions and pliés and all that.”
    “You know, they can’t make us do it,” said Ivy.
    Bean thought about that. “Yes, they can,” she said.
    Ivy sighed. “It was mean of them to make us promise not to complain,” she said.
    “Yeah,” said Bean. “They knew all along how horrible it would be.”
    “We’re going to have to be squids in front of everybody,” said Ivy. “That’s the most horrible thing of all.”
    “They’ll probably laugh at us,” said Bean, imagining it.
    “They can’t. They’re parents ,” Ivy said.
    “Remember? It’s friends, too. There might even be someone from school there,” Bean said gloomily.
    “If only we could quit,” Ivy moaned.
    “But we can’t,” said Bean.
    Ivy frowned. That meant she was getting determined. “There has to be a way,” she said, determinedly. “Nothing is impossible.”
    Bean stared at her. “It’s impossible for us to be good at ballet.”
    “Well, that , sure,” said Ivy. “But it’s not impossible for us to break our arms.”

SQUIDS IN A FIX
    “What?” said Bean.
    “We can’t be squids if we break our arms,” said Ivy. “Remember what Madame Joy said? We’re supposed to wave our tentacles gently on the passing tide. No way can we do that if we’ve got broken arms. Right?”
    That was true. But. Broken arms. That could be going too far. Bean pictured her arm cracked in half.

    “I saw a picture of a guy who broke his arm, and his bone poked out of his skin,” she said.
    Ivy made an ouch face.
    “Yeah, I know,” said Bean. “Maybe we don’t have to break them. Maybe we can just sprain them instead.” She didn’t really know what a sprain was, but she knew that it didn’t involve bones poking out of your skin.
    “Okay. Sure. We can’t be squids with sprained arms either,” said Ivy. “No way.”
    “No how,” agreed Bean. They looked at each other. “So, how do you sprain an arm?” Bean asked.
    “I bet it’s like breaking, only smaller,” Ivy reasoned. “When she was a kid, my mom broke her arm falling off her garage roof. If we want to just sprain our arms, maybe we should find something shorter than a garage and fall off it.”

    This made sense. Bean looked around her backyard. There was the porch, but they’d crack their heads open on the stairs. There was the playhouse. There was the trampoline— “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Bean said. “We’ll jump off the playhouse onto the trampoline and then boing from the trampoline onto the ground. That should do it.”
    First they had to drag the playhouse across the lawn and set it down next to the trampoline. Bean noticed that the playhouse was not much taller than the trampoline. They were going to have to jump hard.

    Next, Bean climbed up the plastic playhouse shutters until she was perched on the roof like a giant bird.
    Ivy took a running jump at the playhouse and flung herself over the roof. “Oof,” she said.
    “You have to stand up,” said Bean. “Or your jump will be too short.”
    “You go first,” said Ivy in a muffled voice.
    Bean rose slowly to her feet. The playhouse made a funny sound.
    Ivy began to push herself up on her hands. There was another funny sound. It was a bending sort of sound. A cracking sort of sound.
    The roof was caving in.
    “Abandon ship!” Bean hollered and bounced onto the trampoline. But the two sides of the playhouse were folding around Ivy like a taco. She couldn’t abandon ship. She couldn’t do anything. Bean watched as Ivy sank closer and closer to the ground.
    “Are you okay?” she asked.
    “I’m fine,” said Ivy.

    After a few minutes, the playhouse stopped sinking, and Bean tried to pull Ivy out by yanking on her head. But Ivy said that hurt worse than being tacoed, so