Ivy and Bean Take the Case by Annie Barrows

BLACK AND WHITE AND TOUGH ALL OVER
    Bean wasn’t allowed to watch television. Or music videos. Bean’s mom said she could watch two movies a week, but they had to be movies where everyone was good. There couldn’t be any bad words. There couldn’t be any mean people. There couldn’t be anyone smoking a cigarette or wearing tiny clothes. There were only about ten movies that followed all these rules. Luckily, Bean liked all ten of them. She watched them over and over.
    Bean’s mom said ten movies were plenty. She said kids Bean’s age should be using their imaginations instead of watching TV. She said fresh air was more important than movies.
    And then what did she do?
    She made Bean watch a movie. It was her favorite movie, she said. Everyone should see it at least once, she said. The movie was called
Seven Falls
, but it wasn’t about waterfalls or even the leaf-falling kind of fall, which is what Bean had guessed. It was about a guy named Al Seven. Boy, was he tough! He was so tough he talked without moving his lips, and some of it was bad words.

    He was also kind of mean. Everyone in the movie was kind of mean, plus they all smoked cigarettes. They didn’t wear tiny clothes, but that was the only rule they didn’t break.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re letting me watch this,” said Bean.
    â€œ
Seven Falls
is a classic,” said Bean’s mom. “It’s one of the greatest movies ever made.”
    â€œDon’t be a stooge,” said Al Seven to another movie guy. That was pretty mean, but Bean pretended not to notice, because this was one of the greatest movies ever made. Al Seven was also in black and white, but Bean knew she was supposed to imagine he was in color. “What is it about dames?” asked Al Seven, walking slowly down a rainy street. “They break your heart, I guess,” he answered himself.
    That was the end.
    Bean’s mom let out a big, happy sigh. “Wasn’t that amazing? Did you get it?”
    Get what? Bean wasn’t sure, but she nodded. “I’m going to be just like Al Seven when I grow up.”
    Her mother raised one eyebrow. “You’d better not be.”
    But then again, why wait, thought Bean. She could start being like Al Seven now. She slumped over and put her feet on the coffee table. “Whaddaya say we watch it again, pal?” she said.
    Her mom raised both eyebrows. “What I say is don’t call me pal and take your feet off the table.”
    That hadn’t worked. Bean took her feet off the table. “Dames,” she said sadly. “They break your heart.”
    Her mom’s eyebrows were almost inside her hair. “Oh dear,” she said.

    + + + + +
    It took Bean a long time to go to sleep that night. She couldn’t stop thinking about Al Seven and his black-and-white world. It didn’t seem like the real world, the world on Pancake Court that Bean lived in. People in Al Seven’s world were tough, and they didn’t laugh very much. They didn’t do normal stuff like go to school and the grocery store. They walked down alleys and wore hats. But the most un-normal thing about Al Seven’s world was the mysteries. There were mysteries all over the place.

    Bean untwisted her pajamas and thought about that. A mystery was a question you couldn’t find the answer to. In Al Seven’s world, the mysteries were things like Who took Hester’s jewels? or Where was Sammy La Barba on the night of May twelfth? Bean didn’t have any jewels and she sure as heck didn’t know anyone named Sammy La Barba, but there were plenty of questions that she didn’t have answers to. Millions of them. For instance, Who thought of money? Not even grown-ups knew the answer to thatquestion. But Bean had other questions, too, like What’s inside the cement thing in the front yard? What’s behind the Tengs’ fence and why do they lock it up?