Once Upon a Toad Read online

  “Yeah, some practical joke,” her brother added.

  I gaped at them. They thought I’d deliberately sabotaged the quartet! I started to explain but caught myself just in time. I gave Rani a beseeching look. She ignored it and turned her back on me. Before I could reach for my pen and paper, Juliet and Rajit turned away too. My heart sank as the three of them stalked off.

  Feeling worse by the minute, I went to look for my father and Iz. All I wanted to do right now was go home.

  “You!” shrieked Olivia as I stepped through the door into the cafeteria. “I just know it was you who put those toads onstage and wrecked our dance number. You … you— Catbox, you!”

  The crowd fell away like Moses parting the Red Sea, leaving me and my stepsister facing each other amid a drift of bright red roses, complete with angry-looking thorns. Olivia’s hands were on her hips, and she was spoiling for a fight. Fine, I thought. The heck with the consequences—it was time to let her have it.

  Before I could open my mouth and launch a toad at her, though, Iz broke through the perimeter of the crowd and swooped in, reaching for my stepsister.

  “Olivia,” she warned.

  My stepsister backed away. “You had no right to mess us up like that!” she hollered at me over her mother’s shoulder.

  The crowd gasped as they watched the scarlet blossoms arc from her lips. Olivia made no move to try and catch them; she just let them tumble to the floor. It was almost as if she wanted everyone to see.

  “That’s enough!” said her mother sternly. “Hush, now. We’ll straighten this out at home.”

  “I will NOT hush! I hate Cat!” Olivia stormed.

  The baton twirler’s little brother dived for her feet. “Look, Mommy!” he piped, holding up a gemstone. The diamond glittered like a comet under the cafeteria’s fluorescent lights.

  A hush fell over the crowd. Iz grabbed Olivia and hustled her out the door. My father snatched Geoffrey up and followed. Clutching my bassoon case to my chest, I ran after them.

  CHAPTER 11

  The phone was ringing as we walked in the front door.

  “Do you want to tell us what’s going on?” my father asked me sternly, ignoring it.

  I took a deep breath. I hadn’t said a single word in the car on the way home, but obviously it was time to spill the beans. And the toads.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” I said.

  A fat toad plopped onto the living-room rug. Olivia recoiled, screaming. Iz turned pale. My dad sank onto the sofa.

  “Oh my,” he said weakly.

  “Frog!” cried Geoffrey, pulling his finger out of his mouth and pointing at it.

  We all turned and stared at him. It was the first new word he’d said in six months.

  “Actually, it’s a toad,” I told him, popping out another one. Somewhere between yesterday morning and now, my little brother had gotten over his fear of amphibians, and of me, because he grabbed his LEGO bucket and chased after the pair of them, yodeling with delight.

  My father turned to me. “Honey, why didn’t you tell us?”

  I lifted a shoulder. Wasn’t it obvious? Olivia was dripping diamonds, and I was stuck dribbling toads—why would I want to tell anyone? “I really want to talk to my mom,” I mumbled.

  “Of course you do,” said Iz. “And I’m going to call Dr. Douglass right away.”

  “I don’t think there’s a cure for spontaneous toad eruptions,” I told her miserably, erupting once again.

  “Spontaneous what?” asked my dad, eyeing the creatures at my feet.

  “Toad eruptions. That’s what A.J. calls, uh …” My voice trailed off, although the toads didn’t.

  “Busted!” said Olivia triumphantly. An orange dahlia blazed from her lips like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  The stern look returned to my father’s face. “You told A.J. about this?”

  Squirming inside, I nodded. Much as I hated to admit it, I’d done exactly what my stepsister did—broke my promise. “Sorry,” I replied, avoiding his disappointed gaze. “But Olivia did it again too! I caught her talking to Piper in the girls’ bathroom right before the talent show.”

  “Liar!” screeched Olivia, turning scarlet. What looked like a piece of broken glass flew from her mouth and clinked to the floor. Iz bent down automatically to pick it up. She gasped as she saw the size of the pear-shaped diamond.

  “Call Rani and Juliet if you don’t believe me,” I retorted. “They saw the tulips too. We caught her in the act!”

  Our little brother was having a field day by this time, racing around the living room scooping toads into his LEGO bucket. At least someone was having fun.

  “Great,” said my father, sighing deeply. “Just great. I can’t believe you girls went back on your word! I’m ashamed of you both.”

  I hung my head again. Across the room Olivia had the grace to do the same.

  “There’s nothing to be done for it now,” said Iz crisply. “It would seem the cat is out of the bag.” She glanced down at the gem she was holding, then over at Geoffrey’s bucket. “Make that diamonds—and toads.” She looked at my father. “Tim, we have a problem here. A big problem. After what happened tonight, there’s no way the girls can go back to school. Not until we find a cure.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

  Olivia and I stared at each other in horror. Did that mean we were stuck here in the house together indefinitely?

  “I really, really want to talk to my mom,” I said.

  Iz nodded. “Let’s see, it’s nearly nine here, which means she’s somewhere over, hang on, let me check.” She dashed into the kitchen to consult the map on the wall, then reappeared. “Somewhere over Iceland, I’d estimate. Which means it’s the middle of the night on the space station.”

  “Can I wake her up?” I pleaded. “Please?”

  My father shook his head. “You’ve waited this long, you can wait until morning to talk to her,” he told me. “Send her an e-mail instead. Tell her everything, Cat. That way she’ll be up to speed when you call her tomorrow.”

  I nodded and headed into his study, closing the door behind me. My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I thought about how to explain what had happened.

  Dear Mom, I began finally. Something really strange has happened to me… .

  When I finished, I pressed send. I had no idea what my mother would make of my e-mail. Would she think I was crazy? Or that it was some elaborate joke? It sure sounded like one. This was the stuff of supermarket tabloid headlines: STEPSISTERS IN PORTLAND, OREGON, SPOUT DIAMONDS AND TOADS WHEN THEY SPEAK!

  The rest of my family was in the living room exactly where I’d left them. Geoffrey had managed to capture all the toads and was crooning to them as they battered against the lid of the LEGO bucket, struggling to escape. It seemed my little brother finally had some pets. My father and Iz were talking quietly together while Olivia watched TV.

  I slumped onto the sofa beside her. All of a sudden there was a knock at the front door.

  “Who could that be at this hour?” asked Iz.

  My father crossed to the front hall and opened the door. There was a blinding flash, and a microphone was thrust into his face.

  “Is this the house where the diamond girl lives?” asked a woman. Her face looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “Oh my goodness,” whispered Iz next to me. I turned, and glancing over her shoulder, I saw the same woman on our TV screen. Now I knew where I’d seen her before—she was a television reporter.

  Olivia was staring at the screen, mesmerized. Alongside the reporter, my father’s surprised face looked back at us. We were watching him on live TV. They were outside our house filming this.

  Iz leaped to her feet. “For heaven’s sake, shut the door, Tim!”

  We heard the sentence in stereo as the TV news cameras picked it up and broadcast it back to us.

  Olivia’s mouth dropped open.

  The reporter spotted her a
nd craned her neck for a better view. “Is that her?” she asked, sounding excited. “Is that the diamond girl?”

  “No comment,” my father said, and slammed the door in her face.

  CHAPTER 12

  The four of us huddled on the sofa, staring at the TV screen. Geoffrey was oblivious, of course, focused only on his bucket of toads, but the rest of us couldn’t tear ourselves away. The TV crew had caught everything that had just happened and was now filming the reporter as she stood on our front doorstep.

  “Stay tuned for more of this breaking story,” she announced solemnly. “Up next: an eyewitness report from tonight’s astounding incident at Hawk Creek Middle School. Was it really a diamond or wasn’t it?”

  “I can’t believe this is happening!” moaned Iz. “This is exactly what I’ve been worried about.”

  “Do you think I’ll get to be on TV?” asked Olivia hopefully.

  I turned and stared at her. My stepsister was actually enjoying this! I knew she liked being the center of attention, but this was different. Didn’t she know what this could mean, not only for her, but for our entire family? Hadn’t she seen what happened to celebrities who were hounded to pieces by the paparazzi?

  Worse than that, though, when people got wind of the valuable stuff Olivia was producing, there was bound to be trouble. Had she already forgotten the lab assistant at the hospital who’d tried to pocket one of her diamonds?

  I shook my head in disgust. This was all just a game to her—like one of her stupid Barbie dioramas. “Photo Shoot Barbie,” maybe, or “Magazine Cover Barbie.” With Olivia as the star, of course, posing for the camera. She was completely clueless!

  The phone in my dad’s office started to ring. So did the cell phone in Iz’s messenger bag on the table in the hall, and so did the one in the pocket of my dad’s pants. He pulled it out and glanced at it. “Seattle number,” he said, frowning. “More reporters, probably. The wire service must have picked up the story.”

  Iz ran around the bottom floor of our house, turning off the lights and closing all the curtains and shades. Once the living room was dark, she peeked out through a crack in one of the blinds.

  “The news van is still parked at the foot of the driveway!” she fretted. “They’re not going away.”

  “They’ll get bored soon enough,” my father assured her. “Especially when all they get from us is ‘No comment.’”

  But the news media wasn’t ready to let up, and the phones rang off the hook the whole time Olivia and Geoffrey and I were getting ready for bed. Finally my dad called the police to complain, then unplugged the phones and shut off all the cell phones too.

  By the time the ten o’clock news came on, the story had gone national. The stone that the little kid had picked up in the cafeteria had been verified as a diamond, and Olivia was a sensation, her school picture plastered over all the channels.

  “I hate that picture,” she grumbled as a narcissus fell from her lips to the living-room coffee table. “My hair is awful. I look stupid.”

  “That’s because you are stupid,” I told her as she scooched down the sofa away from me—and the inevitable toads. I moved closer, just to spite her. “Don’t you get it? This is not a good thing, Olivia. Somebody’s going to want those diamonds, just like that guy at the hospital. They’re going to come for you.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Iz said sternly, swatting at the toads with an afghan. “Time for bed.”

  But I noticed she made sure to lock all the windows and doors before following us upstairs.

  There was another uproar, though, when Olivia flat-out refused to share a bedroom with me.

  “Be reasonable, sweetheart,” said Iz. She looked exhausted; it had been a very long day.

  “What if Cat talks in her sleep?” Olivia protested amid a fretful flurry of forsythia. “I hate toads!”

  “It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose!” I retorted, but I couldn’t help smirking as the resulting toad hopped down from my bed and over to her side of the room.

  Olivia shrieked and flung one of her pillows at it and the other at me. “I hate you!”

  “I hate you, too!” I shouted back.

  “Girls!” said Iz. Our fight had woken Geoffrey, who trailed into our room rubbing his eyes. He lit up when he saw the toad-covered floor.

  “Frog!” he shouted happily, chasing after them.

  “Tim!” called Iz. “Some help in here, please?”

  While my dad put the toads outside and Geoffrey back to bed, Iz tried to calm Olivia down. It wasn’t any use. The end result was that I slept on a sleeping bag in my little brother’s room, which was fine with me. I was as glad to be away from Olivia for the night as she was to be away from me. And as for Geoffrey’s snoring, well, that’s what earplugs were for, right?

  CHAPTER 13

  I woke up the next morning feeling cold and soggy. The window was wide open and it was pouring rain outside. My sleeping bag was soaked.

  It was my own fault that I’d gotten wet; I’d opened the window last night to get some fresh air before crawling into my sleeping bag. Geoffrey’s room can turn into a smelly little bear den sometimes, what with the snoring and the diaper and the blanket and all.

  I wriggled free and splashed across the rain-spattered floor, shivering as I shut the window. I stood there for a moment, watching Connor Dixon—he was huddled on his back lawn under an umbrella, waiting for Peanut to hurry up and go—then turned around, frowning. The room was oddly quiet.

  “Geoffrey?” I said, popping out my earplugs and a toad. There was no response. Picking up the toad, I squinted at the clock across the room on his bedside table. It was 5:30 a.m.—way early for my little brother to be up. Like Iz, he isn’t a morning person, and Robo Rooster didn’t start for a while yet. Still, he must have gotten up for some reason, as the covers on the bed were thrown back. He was probably downstairs, waiting in front of the TV.

  I figured I’d go downstairs and check on him, then check to see if my mother had e-mailed me back. I pulled on my robe and slippers—dry, fortunately, since I’d thrown them on the armchair over by the bookcase, away from the window—then went downstairs, pausing on the landing to peer out the stained-glass window. A sheriff’s car was parked in our driveway, and the single news van from last night had grown to an entire fleet. The whole street, in fact, was clogged with reporters and cameras.

  I glanced down at the creature that was struggling in my hand. This news story was not going away, any more than my toads were.

  I needed to talk to my mother.

  The smell of coffee and bacon wafted up from the kitchen, where my early-bird dad was rattling around making breakfast. Geoffrey was probably in there with him; bacon is his favorite food, and the aroma would have drawn him like a magnet. My stomach rumbled; I was hungry too. I wanted to check my e-mail first, though, so I crossed the front hall to my father’s study, closing the door behind me.

  My mother had gotten my message. Her reply was short and sweet:

  Look for the envelope inside the lining of your suitcase, and call me after you read the letter it contains.

  I sat there staring at the computer screen for a moment, surprised and intrigued by her response. Then I tiptoed back upstairs to find that Olivia had locked our bedroom door. This was nothing new—she used to do it all the time when we were little. Fortunately, being a 1912 bungalow, Dad and Iz’s Northwest Honeymoon Cottage has the original doors, with the original old-fashioned keyholes under the handles. I’d squirreled away a spare key years ago, when my stepsister had tried this trick before. I crept down the hall to the bathroom and lifted a loose corner of wallpaper in the bottom cupboard, behind where Iz stored the toilet paper.

  Yep, the key was still there.

  Unlocking the door as quietly as I could, I slipped into our bedroom, squelched the urge to pop a toad under my still-sleeping stepsister’s covers, and knelt on the floor by my bed. I slid my suitcase from underneath it, pulled out the clot
hes still piled inside, and started prodding at the lining.

  Top? Nothing. Sides? Nothing there, either, nor on the bottom. Hmmm. Had I understood my mother’s instruction correctly? My fingers worked across the surface of the bottom lining again and stumbled over an almost-imperceptible thickness. That had to be it. I tugged at a small zipper tucked beneath a pleat in the lining and slid my fingers inside. They closed on an envelope.

  Pulling it out, I sat back on my heels and looked at it. There were words emblazoned in bright red marker across the front:

  OPEN ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!

  This whole thing was getting more bizarre by the moment. But if anything qualified as an emergency, this did.

  I stuffed my clothes into the suitcase again and shoved it back under my bed, then left the room, shutting the door quietly behind me. I relocked it and returned the spare key to its hiding place, then started downstairs. When I reached the landing, I hesitated. I wasn’t ready for anyone else to know about the envelope yet. My instincts told me the contents were important, and I wanted to be alone when I read whatever was inside.

  There was only one place to go: the attic. I spun around and ran back up the steps, then on to the door at the far end of the hall. By the time I reached the top of the attic stairs, my heart was pounding like crazy. What could possibly be in this envelope that had caused my mother to hide it so carefully?

  I crossed to the trunk by the front window, tugging it slightly to one side so as not to be seen by the reporters below. I peeked out at the street to check on them; they were still there, of course. People were starting to emerge from their cars and vans, yawning and stretching. It would stink to work for a magazine or newspaper that made you sleep in your car outside someone’s house, hoping to snag a story.

  I sat down and slid my fingernail under the envelope’s flap. Then I took out the letter and began to read:

  Dear Cat,

  If you’re reading this, then something odd has happened in your life.

  You can say that again, I thought, and continued: