5 THE UNDERSHIRT OF FREEDOM

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 fluttered in the breeze. You'd have to be blind not to notice it. Hey! There was Ivy, walking along the sidewalk! She was going home! She was about to walk right in front of Bean's house! Bean could have called out,

but she had gone to all that trouble, making an SOS flag. She didn't want to waste it. She waved the flag gently back and forth. Ivy didn't notice. Bean waved the flag up and down. Ivy just walked along. Bean jerked the flag in and out. Ivy didn't look up. So Bean threw the pole at her. It landed with a terrible crash at Ivy's feet. Ivy squeaked and jumped backward. Then she looked up at the sky. "Wow," she said. She bent down to touch the pole. "An alien." "It's not an alien! It's an SOS!" Bean said. Now Ivy saw her. "Oh. Hi. Did you throw that at me? Are you mad at me?"

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