Ivy and Bean_ Books 4,5,6 - Annie Barrows [4]
She flung herself down on her bed. She was a prisoner in her own home. Treated like a criminal by her own flesh and blood. “By my own flesh and blood,” muttered Bean. It sounded good.
After a few minutes, she stopped being mad and started being bored. She looked around her room for something to do. She could knit. Except that she liked the idea of knitting more than she liked knitting in real life. Besides, her yarn was in a big knot. She thought about painting, but her watercolors were all the way downstairs. She could make a potholder, but she had already made about thirty of them, and the only colors left were brown and gray. Bean’s grandmother loved everything she made, but Bean didn’t think even her grandmother would want a brown and gray potholder.
Bean flopped into her basket chair. Ouch. She got up and looked out her window. She had never been so bored in her life. She squeezed all the way to the edge of the window and found out that she could see Sophie W.’s yard.
The mound of dirt was smaller than it had been in the beginning. There was muddy water running down the driveway and into the street. Bean pressed her eyebrow against the glass. Sophie S. had the hose. She was shooting water straight into the sky. Ivy was off to one side, hunched over a pile of rocks.
Bean frowned. Some friend. She should sense that Bean was in trouble. She should feel it in her bones. Ivy picked up a rock and splatted it down in the mud. Bean squinted and saw that Ivy’s lips were moving. She was talking to herself. For some reason, that made Bean feel better. Ivy wasn’t really having a great time with the other kids. Ivy was just playing by herself. In fact, Ivy was probably missing her right this minute.
Bean tapped her fingers against the window, thinking. Ivy would come to her rescue if she knew that Bean was imprisoned. Bean was sure of it. Somehow, Bean had to let Ivy know what was going on. Then Ivy could help her escape. Hey! Wait a minute! Bean felt an idea landing in her brain like an airplane. An escape! She was in jail, but maybe she could escape. She had heard of prisoners digging tunnels under their jail cells. Too bad her room was upstairs. If she dug a tunnel, she’d fall right into the kitchen.
Then she looked at the window—that would work! Bean pictured herself climbing out the window on a rope ladder. She pictured Ivy hiding in the bushes below, waiting to help Bean to freedom. A rope ladder. A daring escape. Cool!
THE UNDERSHIRT OF FREEDOM
Bean needed some rope, and she needed something to tie it to. But the first thing she needed was Ivy. Bean looked out the window again. Ivy was dropping another rock into mud. Splat. Her lips were still moving. How was Bean going to get her attention? If she screamed out the window, Nancy would hear. Smoke signals would be perfect, but Bean’s mother always said that if Bean used matches, she would live to regret it.
Then Bean remembered a movie she’d seen when she was little. In it, a bunch of raggedy people on an island had waved a flag printed with the letters SOS. Then an airplane had come to rescue them. Bean’s mother explained that SOS stood for “Save Our Souls.” People write it on flags when they want to be saved— after a shipwreck, for example. Bean didn’t see why they didn’t write SM, for “Save Me,” but she wrote SOS anyway. She wrote it on an old undershirt. Then she taped the undershirt to her flagpole. Okay, it wasn’t really a flagpole. It was a long silver pole with a hooked end that opened the window in the bathroom ceiling. It was much taller than Bean, and she wasn’t supposed to play with it.
“But this is an emergency,” Bean said to herself.
Bean rattled the screen on her window until it fell off. Unfortunately, it fell out the window into the front yard, but there was nothing Bean could do about that. Being extra careful not to smack the pole against the glass, Bean edged her flag over the windowsill. Her SOS undershirt