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 1010
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 that 13 13
