The Hop (16 page)

AS SOON AS HER GRANDMOTHER WOKE UP, Taylor said, “Please! Run me home for a minute. I need to get something out of my backpack.”

Before Eve could even ask what, Taylor said, “Remember the boy I told you about? Well, we went through this exhibit of creatures that everybody thought had been wiped out forever, but the ones in this display were discovered alive again—just a few of them, so they're still very endangered.” She sucked in a breath and tried to explain calmly about the blue topaz beetles and how the boy had made her promise to look for them. And she had seen one just a while ago! “The lady at the exhibit gave us a postcard and said if we ever saw one, to contact the place printed on the back.”

She watched her grandmother trying to follow all this.

“And see, if it really is the blue topaz beetle I saw by the old tumbledown shed, then I'll bet the ecology people will be really interested and will want to come here and check it out, because think how totally special it would be! The lady said it was one of the most endangered beetles in the world.”

When she paused for breath, her grandmother said, “But Taylor, I've heard there are more than five thousand different kinds of beetles, or something like that. Some of them must look an awful lot alike. And I'll bet there are many blue ones.”

Her grandmother was just trying to keep her from being disappointed. “I know. But run me home so I can get the card, okay?”

An hour later, she was back at Eve's, talking on the telephone to someone who wanted a ton of information. What did the beetle look like? Where did Taylor live? Exactly. In terms of miles and directions. Eve had to help her with that. What was the history of the land? How had it been used? Her grandmother had to help her with that too.

Well, truthfully, she had seen it for less than a minute, but she just
knew
it was the blue topaz beetle, so she used the postcard a little to help her describe it.

“Hmmmmm,” the person on the phone said. “I think we'd like to send out an entomologist. Just to have a look, you know. The chances are one in a billion. Probably less.”

“Well, you have to hurry,” Taylor said. “The place is going to be turned into a strip mall. Some of the woods have already been knocked down, and there's a big earthmoving machine parked right by where I saw the beetle. Right by it!”

There was a long silence on the other end, then the voice asked Taylor to hold for a couple of minutes while she checked the availability of an expert.

Taylor felt herself gripping the phone, staring out the window at the tumbledown shed, hoping she was in time. Her grandmother made a cup of coffee, poured Taylor some milk, and got down a bag of cookies.

Finally, the person came back on the line. “We happen to have someone at the university near you. He's an expert in temperate zone beetles, and he says he can visit the area where you think you might have a sighting. He can be there in two hours. Will you be available to take him to the exact spot?”

“Oh yes!” Taylor said. “In two hours,” she whispered to Eve. “The bug person will be here in two hours.”

She and Eve sat on the deck eating cookies and keeping watch. “If anybody tries to move that machine before he gets here,” Taylor vowed, “I'll lie down in front of it.”

Her grandmother smiled. “That's what we did when I was a girl protesting Vietnam,” she said.

Taylor felt like she could hardly breathe. She had almost given up hope, and now that it was back, it filled her to the brim.

“What do you think will happen if there really are blue topaz beetles living in the tumbledown shed?” she asked.

Even Eve acted truly hopeful, though Taylor could tell she was trying not to. “First of all, there will be a lot of publicity. It will get people talking. It will get environmentalists interested in the acreage.”

“Maybe that rich guy's ecology foundation will buy it,” Taylor said. “Isn't he the second-richest man in the world? Maybe he'll buy it to save the beetles.”

“John Verdun.” Her grandmother smiled. “You never know.”

THE LOAMY TUNNEL had fallen around Tad during the long night of winter and padded him like a brown blanket. But now the earth was stirring. And even three feet down, the old hopper felt it.

Maybe it was footsteps in the garden, or the deep, seepy drip of warm rain. Maybe it was the chorus of spring peepers.

Tad stirred too. With the ancient toady wisdom, he knew the days were getting warm and sunny up top.

Tad woke up half frozen to his center from a long season of sleep. Sluggishly, he scootched upward through the sand and clay and veins of rotting roots. Moisture soaked through his dry, papery skin.

Near the surface, Tad tried a little hop. But it was lopsided and feeble—just a lurch, really, that flopped him half out of his hole. Using his rear diggers, he scrambled the rest of the way out and sat in the April sun for a while.

He could no longer see the sun, but he could feel it. Tad's eyes had turned milky over the years, like crystal balls. But although he was blind, he could still see many things.

He sat as still as the clod of earth he might have been mistaken for. A newly awakened young hopper would come along soon and lead him back to Toadville-by-Tumbledown. That was the place he was headed. That was the place he was
always
headed this time of year.

How many springs had Tad come to life again?

He wasn't sure and couldn't say. But many.

He sensed the girl nearby, as he often did. He couldn't see her anymore, but he knew when she was there. She still warmed him like the sun, tugged him like the moon, and made his heart dance like the stars.

Today, Taylor was picking oxeye daisies by the tumbledown. As she pushed her hair back from the wind, her ruby ring that Eve had given her for her fourteenth birthday caught the sunlight.

“Pretty!” Kia exclaimed, looking at it.

She and Kia were on the committee for the eighth grade end-of-year party, and Taylor was supposed to bring flowers for the refreshment table—which was why she was picking her grandmother's daisies.

“So who do you think you'll dance with?” Kia asked, plucking the petals off a daisy and naming two boys she thought were cute.

Taylor shrugged. There
was
Carter Harris. He was cute, and he'd called her twice already. But even after three years, Taylor still compared all boys to the one who'd helped her look for her toad in Reno. The one who had told her about the blue topaz beetles. The one who had helped her save the pond.

The ecology people had located fourteen blue topaz beetles in the rotting timbers of the old tumbledown shed. It had all been on TV, better than Taylor had hoped—the beautiful beetles, Taylor, and Eve. Several ecologists and entomologists. Mr. Verdun, the second-richest man in the world. Even the owner of the pond and woods. In front of the cameras, he acted like he'd bought the land
because
it had a few wonderful shiny blue beetles. And he had happily sold it for a ton of money to the Verdun Foundation as a land preserve. He didn't say a word about the woods he had turned topsy-turvy and the pond he had been planning to drain.

Any time Taylor saw Mr. Verdun on television, she always searched the crowd for Tad. She knew his family was active in trying to save the environment, and she thought she might glimpse him. She never did.

But she would never forget him. Not ever. Sometimes when she was in her grandmother's garden, she got this strange feeling.…Taylor laid down the tulips so she could pull up her hood. And that's when she saw the small toad right by her left shoe.

She studied the little guy, paying attention to the pattern of his warts and the size of his eyes. He
looked
like the toad she had brought back from Reno and turned loose in her grandmother's garden.

Her grandmother called from the deck. Taylor turned and saw Eve pointing to the pond. Taylor stood up to look. A family of ducks was making a pattern of rippling V-shapes. Each spring, the pond seemed a little smaller to Taylor, but no less magical. Most years, a groundhog paraded her babies for Eve and Taylor to admire. Every April, Eve and Taylor planted seeds with names like
nasturtium
and
chocolate morning glory.
And always, she was on the lookout for her special toad.

A gust of wind caught Taylor's hood, and the breeze brought her back to reality. She still had so many things to do.

“It's time to go,” she told Kia.

She moved carefully away, trying not to disturb the little toad or the earth around him.

To my good friend Carol Gorman for having long every-other-Saturday phone calls in the early days of the story.

To my writers' group (Jan Blazanin, Eileen Boggess, and Rebecca Janni) for reading version after version of the manuscript.

To my agent, Susan Cohen, for finding a good home for
The Hop
.

To my editor, Abby Ranger, for knowing where the story needed to go and guiding me there.

To my granddaughter Lizzie for helping me see small things in the garden.