Once Upon a Toad (8 page)

“Hey, G-Man, how about some breakfast?” I asked.

Something plopped into my bowl, sloshing milk onto the counter. Geoffrey's eyes widened. He pulled his index finger from his mouth, which was shaped in an O of surprise, and pointed at my breakfast. “Cat?” he whispered.

I glanced down and nearly fell off my stool. An equally surprised-looking toad was crouched in my cereal, staring back at me.

“Whoa!” I cried in astonishment.

Plop
. Another toad joined the first one. The two of them splashed frantically in the bowl, trying to escape. Geoffrey stared at them, then at me. His face got that worried look it always does when he's about to cry. Or barf.

No way,
I thought. Absolutely no way had I just made that happen! It would be completely crazy to think that those toads had anything to do with me. And just to prove it, I said my brother's name aloud.

“With a
G
,” he added automatically as toad number three tumbled into the bowl.

I shrieked, only the sound came out as a croak, along with another toad, which missed my cereal and skittered across the counter, then fell to the floor at Geoffrey's feet. My little brother backed away and started to cry. With panic rising in me, I jumped down from my seat, grabbed him by the hand, and dragged him into the living room. I didn't want him to wake anyone—especially not Olivia. I had to figure out what was going on first.

“Shhh, G-Man, it's okay!” I said, setting him on the sofa.

Geoffrey's sobs escalated to wails as another toad plunked down beside him. I scooped it up and stuffed it into my
bathrobe pocket, looking around for something to distract him with. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Fortunately,
Robo Rooster
was on. The wails subsided as he eyed the screen, toads temporarily forgotten. After waiting until his finger had crept back into its usual place, I ran upstairs, my heart racing and my hand clamped firmly over my mouth, just in case.

I went directly to the attic. It was the only place I could think of to hide. I needed to be alone while I figured out what was going on. There had to be a logical explanation. This was a trick or a coincidence or something. Spring was probably toad season here in Oregon and everybody had just forgotten to tell me. Maybe they'd crawled into the house through the dryer vent.

The attic was just as dim and dusty and cold as it had been the other day when I was up here. Wrapping my bathrobe tightly around me, I moved closer to the trunk by the front window and took a deep breath.

“Hello,” I said softly to the empty room. A toad sprang to the floor.

I sank down on the trunk, fighting the urge to cry. This was no illusion, then, no trick. It was
me
. I nudged the creature with the toe of my slipper and watched it hop off into the shadows. It was definitely an amphibian of the order Anura, from the Greek
an
(“without”) plus
oura
(“tail”). I wasn't a wildlife biologist's daughter for nothing. I knew a real live toad when I saw one.

I drew a shaky breath. It still made absolutely no sense. Middle schoolers didn't just spontaneously start spewing toads. How could this be happening? How could that
creature have come from me? My mouth still tasted of breakfast cereal, not toad. Not that I knew what toad tasted like.

I must be dreaming,
I thought. Yes, of course, that had to be it! This was just a nightmare. A weird, vivid nightmare involving my little brother, breakfast cereal, and toads. It was that chili I had yesterday for lunch, or maybe Great-Aunt Abyssinia's root beer. All I needed to do was wake up.

I hopped down off the trunk and jogged to the other window and back, then did some jumping jacks as I tried to jolt myself out of the nightmare.

“Hey! Keep it down up there!” my father shouted, his muffled voice rising through the floorboards.

“Sorry!” I called back, releasing yet another toad.

As impossible as it seemed, this wasn't a dream, it was really happening. I moved across the attic, as far from Dad and Iz's bedroom below as possible. I wanted to try an experiment.

“Good morning,” I whispered: one toad. “Good morning,” I sang: two toads. Ditto for humming. I made a mental note to myself to avoid music. Except for whistling. Whistling didn't produce toads, for some reason.

Pretty much everything else did, however, and three minutes later the attic was carpeted with them. It didn't matter how loud or soft I said anything, whether I sang or spoke, or what language I chose to speak in—French (“
Bonjour!
”), German (“
Guten Morgen!
”), Spanish (“
Buenos días!
”), or Swahili (“
Jambo!
”)— every time I opened my mouth and made a noise, a toad appeared.

I watched unhappily as they hopped, scrabbled, and skittered off across the floor. There were twenty-seven by my count, most of them looking as dazed as I felt.

What the heck was I going to do? I knew I should probably go downstairs and talk to my father and Iz, but what exactly was I supposed to tell them? That I'd suddenly turned into a freak show?

Should I call my mother again? A toad infestation of this magnitude absolutely, positively qualified as an emergency. She might even leave the space station and come back to Earth for something like this. This was a hopeful thought. I decided it was worth a try, and began picking my way across the toad minefield toward the attic door. Then I stopped in my tracks.

Olivia
.

What if my stepsister found out? “Catbox” would seem like a compliment compared to what she'd come up with if she caught me spouting toads. I couldn't risk it.

There was only one solution.

I couldn't tell anyone.

Not yet.

I had to keep this whole thing a secret until I figured out what was happening and until things got back to normal again.

What if they don't go back to normal?
whispered a little voice in my head.
What if you're stuck like this forever?

Tears welled up again at this appalling thought, and this time I couldn't hold them back. Fortunately, it turned out that crying didn't cause toads, nor did snuffling. What it did cause, unfortunately, was sympathetic croaking. The toads I had already produced, including the one still stuffed into my bathrobe pocket, interpreted my sounds as some sort of amphibian song or distress signal, and they began to chorus back to me from all corners of the attic.

A toad's croak is not like the
ribbit
sound a frog makes. It's
more like a creaky hinge. A single toad isn't all that loud, but twenty-seven of them croaking in unison is enough to wake the dead.

“WHAT IS GOING ON UP THERE?” my father yelled, and this time I heard his footsteps pounding up the attic stairs.

I picked up the hem of my bathrobe and flapped it frantically at the toads in an attempt to scatter them under the eaves. My father couldn't know about this. Not yet.

“Nothing!” I called back, adding yet another to the amphibian population.
Twenty-eight,
I thought, counting automatically. “I'm just—uh—practicing my bassoon. For the talent show.”
Twenty-nine and thirty
.

“For crying out loud, Cat, it's six thirty in the morning! Put that thing away!” The door started to open, then halted as a bloodcurdling scream echoed down the second-floor hallway.

“Mom!” screeched Olivia. “Help me!”

I heard my father's footsteps pounding back down the attic stairs. I crossed swiftly to the door, opened it, and listened.

“What's happening to me?” I heard my stepsister wail.

Was Olivia afflicted with toads too? It would certainly level the playing field if she was. I could tell Dad and Iz, for one thing. I tiptoed downstairs to see.

My father was standing in the doorway to the room I shared with my stepsister. Geoffrey was beside him, clutching his blanket. It takes a lot to pry my little brother away from his favorite cartoon, but I guess hearing his sister holler like she was being skinned alive did the trick. I drew closer, craning for a better view.

Iz was sitting on the edge of Olivia's bed, surrounded by flowers. Piles of flowers. I spotted bachelor's buttons and buttercups, marigolds and daisies and rosebuds. My stepsister saw me peeking over Geoffrey's shoulder and frowned.

“What are you staring at?” she snapped. As she spoke, a cluster of thistles fell from her lips, along with something else, something that winked and flashed in the early-morning light. My stepmother plucked it from the bedspread and held it up.

“Tim,” she said, her face full of wonder. “This looks like a diamond!”

My mouth dropped open. “No way!” I whispered.

Geoffrey whipped around just in time to see my latest toad make its escape. “Cat!” he shrieked, then leaned over and barfed.

I turned and fled back upstairs to the attic.

CHAPTER 7

Between cleaning up my little brother and all the excitement over Olivia, nobody noticed my absence.

I closed the attic door quietly behind me and leaned against it, stunned. How could this be happening? How could I be stuck spouting toads, while Olivia was showered in flowers and diamonds?

It wasn't
fair
!

I desperately wanted to talk to my mother. Calling her was out of the question, though—for one thing, my cell phone was downstairs. For another, even if NASA didn't mind connecting another call from me to the space station, the house would be overrun with toads by the time I finished trying to explain all the weird stuff that was happening.

An e-mail would be better. But all the computers were downstairs too, and no way was I going back down there again. Not just yet.

For now I was on my own.

I chewed my lip, trying to imagine what my mother would say if I could talk to her.
Pull up your socks,
probably. That's her all-purpose advice for curing the droops, as she calls it whenever I get moody or worried or sad.

But how? My socks, unfortunately, were full of toads. I knew I had to do something, but what?

I need a game plan,
I thought, glancing around the toad-strewn attic. First things first, I decided. Time to get rid of the evidence. I crossed to the trunk and opened it. It was jammed with ancient camping equipment; Jurassic-era stuff that must have been my dad's back when he was a Boy Scout. Sifting through the moldering heap, I pulled out a decrepit duffel bag. It would have to do. I spotted a tattered butterfly net and pulled it out, then gave the air a tentative swipe. I had a sudden urge to laugh.
Just call me Cat Starr, Toad Huntress.

Toads aren't easy to catch, even in the best of circumstances. In a dimly lit attic, when you're trying not to attract attention, it's nearly impossible. The little suckers spotted me coming a mile away. Every time I sneaked up on one and brought the net down, it would somehow manage to skitter out of reach. Finally I got down on my hands and knees and waited, motionless, until one of them unwisely hopped into range.

“Gotcha!” I said triumphantly, and scooped it up, along with number thirty-one as it sprang from my lips. I was getting better at this.

Ten minutes later I was breathless, crabby, and covered with dust. So much for getting better at this. I'd corralled exactly three toads in the duffel bag, in addition to my “Gotcha” one. That left twenty-seven more to go.

I needed a new game plan.

I went back to the trunk and rifled through it again. A length of frayed rope—useless. A decaying tent and a bag of tent stakes—nope. At the very bottom was a mildewed old tarp, though, which gave me an idea. I dragged it out into the middle of the floor and spread it out, then went to get something in the far corner that I'd glimpsed when I was up here the other day—a broom. It was missing half its straws, but it might just do the trick for the idea that was beginning to form in my head.