Ramona had decided to order a cheeseburger when she heard the sound of her father’s key in the front door. “Daddy, Daddy!” she shrieked, scrambling down from the chair and running to meet her father as he opened the door. “Guess what?”

Beezus, who had come from her room, answered before her father had a chance to guess. “Mother said maybe we could go to the Whopperburger for dinner!”

Mr. Quimby smiled and kissed his daughters before he held out a small white paper bag. “Here, I brought you a little present.” Somehow he did not look as happy as usual. Maybe he had had a hard day at the office of the van-and-storage company where he worked.

His daughters pounced and opened the bag together. “Gummybears!” was their joyful cry. The chewy little bears were the most popular sweet at Glenwood School this fall. Last spring powdered Jell-O eaten from the package had been the fad. Mr. Quimby always remembered these things.

“Run along and divide them between you,” said Mr. Quimby. “I want to talk to your mother.”

“Don’t spoil your dinner,” said Mrs. Quimby.

The girls bore the bag off to Beezus’s room, where they dumped the gummybears onto the bedspread. First they divided the cinnamon-flavored red bears, one for Beezus, one for Ramona. Then they divided the orange bears and the green, and as they were about to divide the yellow bears, both girls were suddenly aware that their mother and father were no longer talking. Silence filled the house. The sisters looked at one another. There was something unnatural about this silence. Uneasy, they waited for some sound, and then their parents began to speak in whispers. Beezus tiptoed to the door to listen.

Ramona bit the head off a red gummybear. She always ate toes last. “Maybe they’re planning a big surprise,” she suggested, refusing to worry.

“I don’t think so,” whispered Beezus, “but I can’t hear what they are saying.”

“Try listening through the furnace pipes,” whispered Ramona.

“That won’t work here. The living room is too far away.” Beezus strained to catch her parents’ words. “I think something’s wrong.”

Ramona divided her gummybears, one heap to eat at home, the other to take to school to share with friends if they were nice to her.

“Something is wrong. Something awful,” whispered Beezus. “I can tell by the way they are talking.”

Beezus looked so frightened that Ramona became frightened, too. What could be wrong? She tried to think what she might have done to make her parents whisper this way, but she had stayed out of trouble lately. She could not think of a single thing that could be wrong. This frightened her even more. She no longer felt like eating chewy little bears. She wanted to know why her mother and father were whispering in a way that alarmed Beezus.