Ivy and Bean

loudly, “Hi, Mom! Can I have a banana?”
    “Hang on a second,” Bean heard Ivy’s mom say. Then, to Ivy, she said, “Honey, I’m on the phone. Get your own banana.” There was the sound of a door shutting.

    “Okay!” yelled Ivy. She smiled at Bean. “See?”
    Very tricky, thought Bean. Ivy was turning out to be a lot more interesting than she had expected.
    They walked softly past Ivy’s mom’s door and up the stairs. They were very quiet. At the top of the stairs, there was a door with a sign that said “Beware” in red glitter glue letters. That was Ivy’s room.
    When she went in, Bean stood still and looked all around. “This is way,way cool,” she said. She had never seen a room like Ivy’s. There were thick lines drawn on the floor, marking out five sections. Each section was like a different room. In one section, there was a small sofa on a rug and a bookcase stuffed with books. In another was a table covered with pens and paper and glitter glue and paint. Ivy’s bed, with a canopy made of silver netting, was in another. A dresser and a folding screen painted with clouds were in the fourth section.
    The fifth section had nothing in it except dolls. Bean had never seen so many dolls in her life. There were the regular plastic kind of dolls. There were the weird staring dolls with fancy costumes that were kept in glass cases at the toy store. There were stiff wooden dolls. There were china dolls: small ones, smaller ones, and tiny ones. There was one doll that was really a rock dressed in clothes. All the dolls were seated around a doll-size blanket. Even the mushy baby dolls that couldn’t sit by themselves had been propped up with blocks. In the middle of the blanket lay a Barbie doll, wrapped up in toilet paper. All the other dolls were watching her.

    “Neat,” said Bean. “A mummy.”
    “Yeah,” said Ivy. “I’m going to build a pyramid to bury her in. As soon as I figure out how.”
    “I know how,” said Bean. “Nancy made one out of sugar cubes last year. I can’t believe your parents let you draw lines on your floor.”

    “It’s only chalk,” said Ivy. “It comes off. I change the lines when I change the rooms. For now, I’m thinking about getting rid of the dressing room and making it into a kitchen.”
    “Is that one the dressing room?” asked Bean, pointing to the section with the dresser and the folding screen.
    “Yeah.”
    “I like the screen,” said Bean, “but a kitchen is a little bit boring. Maybe you could turn it into a science lab for making potions. The screen could protect your secrets.”

    “A lab,” said Ivy, thinking. “A witch’s lab. That’s a pretty good idea.”
    Bean looked over to the table with the paint and the glitter glue. “What’s that room called?” she asked.
    “That’s my art studio,” said Ivy.
    “Cool,” said Bean. “Let’s fix up your wand.”
    In Ivy’s art studio, there were plenty of sequins and jewels and streamers and pipe cleaners. First they wrapped the wand with silver pipe cleaners. Then Bean attached streamers to the end. Then Ivy put some stickers on. Then Bean put plain glue on the top and dipped it in a jar of glitter. She stuck a big red jewel on the top. The wand dripped a little, but it looked much, much more magic than it had before.
    “Now,” said Bean when that was done, “let’s work on your robe.”
    “What’s the matter with it?” asked Ivy.
    “All the stars and moons are coming off. See?” Bean pointed. “It will look better if we draw them on with sparkly markers.”
    Ivy looked embarrassed. “I can’t draw stars very well.”
    “I can,” said Bean. “I’ll teach you.”
    Bean showed Ivy how to draw dots for the star points, then connect the dots with lines. Ivy practiced on paper for a while, and then they stretched the bathrobe over the table and began drawing. Ivy’s stars were a little bent, but they all had five points. Soon the black robe was covered with silver stars and gold moons.

    Once that was done, Ivy got out her face paint. Bean couldn’t believe it. The set had 24 colors. “Wow! Let’s do green stripes,” said Bean. “Or green dots.” There were three different greens.
    “No. Witches are only green in movies,” said Ivy. “Real witches are just regular-colored.”
    “But you’ve got all this great face paint,” said Bean. “We’ve got to use it for something.”
    Ivy thought. “You can put black around my eyes.”
    “Okay. But aren’t