2 DISASTER TWINS

DISASTER TWINS

Ivy wouldn't want to miss out on a volcano, that was for sure. Bean zipped up the street to Ivy's house and rang the doorbell. But that was too slow. "Hey!" she yelled through the mail slot. "There's a volcano at Sophie W.'s!" "A what?" said Ivy, opening the door. Ivy was reading. She was reading a really big book with long words even on the cover, which was something Bean couldn't stand. It was bad enough when there were big words inside the book. "A volcano!" Bean yelled. "Come on!" Ivy looked at her book. Bean rolled her eyes. "Ivy! It's a natural disaster! You have to be there!" "Okay," said Ivy. She put down her book. "It's a good book, though." "You are so weird sometimes," said Bean. "Come on!" The two girls ran back to Sophie's house. Leo was there now, and Sophie S. and Prairie and Prairie's little brother, Isaiah.

When she got to the front yard, Bean fell onto the grass. "Earthquake!" she hollered. Volcanoes made the earth shake, too. Volcanoes and earthquakes were like disaster twins.

Ivy grabbed a bush and shook it back and forth to show that the earth was quaking. Sophie W. and Prairie pretended they were being crushed by falling buildings. Leo pretended his car blew up, which was a little strange, but he said it happened all the time during earthquakes. "Smoke!" screeched Bean, pretending to be terrified. She pointed to the dirt mountain. "She's going to blow!" They all stopped what they were doing and looked at the mound of dirt. "It would be better if we had real smoke," said Sophie S. "It would be better if we had real lava," said Bean. Ivy glanced around the yard, looking for lava. There wasn't any, but she did see a hose lying on the lawn. Hmmm. She picked it up. "That's good," said Bean. "Lava flows, just like water." "Yup," said Ivy. "But how are we going to get it to come out the top of the dirt?"

They all thought about that for a minute. "I know," said Prairie, her eyes shining. "Let's stick him inside." She pointed to Isaiah. "We dig a hole at the top, and then we bury him with the hose." Isaiah looked worried. "If we bury him," said Bean, "he won't be able to breathe." Isaiah nodded. "We'll just dig a hole," said Leo. "We won't bury him."

"It'll be like a sacrifice to the gods," said Ivy in a dreamy voice. "I'm going home," said Isaiah. He ran. Prairie caught him. She promised to give him her stuffed seal plus three glow-in-the-dark stickers. Also a lollipop the next time she got two. That was a lot, just for being the lava. Isaiah said okay. It took quite a while to build the volcano. At first, they tried climbing to the top of the mound to dig the crater. A lot of dirt slid off the mound, and