Toad Rage (8 page)

The girl looked over and saw Goliath. Her eyes bulged too, in amazement.

“A cane toad?” she said. “You're a bit far south, aren't you?”

Goliath glared at her.

Limpy flung himself forward. Suddenly he didn't know if he was trying to rescue Goliath or the girl. Then he realized it didn't matter because he was going round in circles.

The girl saw him.

Her mouth fell open. She stared for a long time.

“Don't I know you?” she said at last.

Limpy didn't understand what she was saying, but he hoped she was pleased to see him.

The girl looked over to where the truck was being noisily unloaded at the edge of the stadium.

“Stack me,” she said. “Did you hitch a ride?”

Limpy still couldn't understand, but the sparkle in
her eyes and the size of her grin gave him hope, and then a brilliant idea.

Perhaps she could help him apply to be a mascot. If he could just find a way of asking.

Behind her, he saw, on a post holding up a roof over a hillside covered in seats, was a big picture of the other mascots. Limpy went over to it, hopped up, and clung to the picture so he was between the kookaburra and the platypus.

He waited for the girl to understand.

He could see she was thinking hard.

Finally she spoke. “I'm really glad to see you guys,” she said. “You can be a big help to me tomorrow.”

Limpy was pretty sure he understood. “Yes,” he was pretty sure she'd said, “I can definitely help you apply to be a mascot.”

So, unlike Goliath, he wasn't at all worried when she picked them both up and put them in her sports bag.

“Y
um,” said Goliath, “shoes.”

Limpy sighed.

He took a deep breath and tried to explain to Goliath that when a person has let you spend the night in her bath at the Games village, and shared her mushrooms on toast with you, and let you sit up late watching telly with her, and is now taking you in her bag to meet the Games Mascot Committee, it's pretty ungrateful to eat her shoes.

Goliath spat out a lace and thought about this.

“You're right,” he said after a bit. “I'll eat her socks.”

Limpy was about to snatch the sock from him when the bag tilted violently and they both went sprawling into a damp towel.

From the way the bag was moving, Limpy guessed the girl was carrying them up some steps.

The Games Mascot Committee is probably so
important, he thought, they have their meetings up on a roof where snakes can't get them.

He'd seen the committee on telly the night before. They'd certainly looked important, sitting behind a long table showing off kookaburra pencil cases and echidna bath mats and platypus car-seat covers to a big crowd of people with cameras and notebooks.

Limpy felt his warts tingling with excitement. He hoped when he met the committee his mouth didn't get so dry with nervousness that his mucus dried up. Mum always reckoned a cane toad didn't look his best unless he had a bit of mucus on his lips.

Suddenly Limpy heard the muffled sound of applause and the chatter of human voices and the clicking of cameras.

He felt the girl unzip the bag.

Stack me, he thought. She must be going to introduce me to the Mascot Committee in front of the people with the cameras and notebooks.

Limpy hurriedly practiced his smile. He needed one that would win the hearts of humans everywhere. It wasn't easy in a dark bag without a swamp to check your reflection in.

Then suddenly the bag wasn't dark anymore. The girl had opened it and was reaching in. Heart thumping, Limpy pushed himself toward her groping hand.

But her hand slid past him and grabbed Goliath.

“Uh?” grunted Goliath, spitting out a mouthful of towel.

Limpy watched in horror as the girl lifted Goliath out of the bag. Through the open zip he could see lights on tall poles and human faces gawking. On a stage the girl held Goliath close to her cheek and smiled sweetly at the cameras.

Please, Limpy begged Goliath silently. Don't blow it. Don't attack anyone with a stick. Not today.

Limpy's view out of the bag was suddenly blocked by a human body. Limpy stood on tiptoe and saw it was the bloke in the suit with the clipboard. He was looking cross, as usual, and trying to grab Goliath from the girl.

He and the girl said some angry things to each other.

Limpy couldn't see a Games Mascot Committee anywhere.

The bloke was pulling Goliath's legs. The girl was hanging on to his arms. “Hey,” yelled Goliath indignantly. “Take it easy. Watch my back.”

Limpy was about to leap out of the bag and try and explain to them that just because Goliath looked tough, that didn't mean he was made of steel-belted rubber.

Then the bag began to fall.

Limpy hung on to the towel but it didn't do any good.

The bag hit the ground with a thud and Limpy's head bashed into his knee and suddenly he was out in the glaring lights, skidding across a shiny surface.

“Help,” he yelled. “New mascot over here.”

Nobody heard him, and when he'd stopped sliding and his head had stopped spinning, he realized why. The bag had fallen off the back of the stage and he was lying among some potted plants out of sight of the crowd.

In the distance, he could hear the girl and the clipboard bloke still arguing. And another voice, much closer.

“Fog,” it said.

Limpy looked up.

A human toddler in a nappy and a T-shirt was looking down at him, wide-eyed.

Oh no, thought Limpy. That's all I need. A kid getting terrified and everyone blaming me. I'll never get to be a mascot if they think I'm cruel to kids.

“It's okay,” he said to the toddler. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

The toddler grinned, dropped the teddy bear it was holding by one leg, grabbed Limpy's leg, and toddled off, dragging Limpy behind it.

“Fog,” chortled the toddler.

Limpy sighed.

He resisted the temptation to give the toddler a tiny little spray.

Instead, as he was sliding along on his back, he looked around.

He was in a huge space, almost as big as the stadium but with a roof. There were shops everywhere on many different levels. It didn't look like the committee meeting place he'd seen on telly.

Why did she bring us here, Limpy wondered, if it wasn't to meet the Games Mascot Committee?

He didn't understand.

As the toddler dragged him into a shop, Limpy waited anxiously for the girl to come and rescue him again.

A thought nagged at him.

What had his Uncle Preston's last words been? The ones he'd said just before he was flattened by a funeral procession?

That's right.

“Never trust a human.”

“Y
uk,” said Goliath, “toothpaste.”

Limpy sighed.

He took a deep breath and tried to explain to Goliath that when a young athlete has paid a lot of money to a shopping center security guard for your freedom and then smuggled you back to the Games village in her bag and hidden you under her bed so an angry bloke with a clipboard can't get his hands on you, it's pretty ungrateful to eat her antiseptic foot cream.

Goliath spat out a Band-Aid and thought about this.

“Why should we be grateful?” he said. “She was meant to be taking us to meet the Games Mascot Committee and all we ended up with was sore backs.”

“It wasn't all bad,” said Limpy. “That shop the toddler dragged me into was full of tellies. I was there for
ages before the security guard found me. You can learn a lot of useful stuff about humans from telly, even if you don't speak their language. Did you know there's a very famous person on telly named after one of our dead uncles?”

“Who?” said Goliath. “Roly?”

“No,” said Limpy. “Bart.”

Goliath looked impressed. He stopped eating the stuff in the bag. Limpy took the foot cream away from him in case he got hungry again.

“But she still didn't take us to the committee,” said Goliath, “did she?”

Limpy sighed again.

Goliath was right.

Why hadn't she?

Limpy was still puzzling it over when the bag was pulled out from under the bed. The girl lifted him and Goliath out and offered them dinner.

“Here,” she said. “I got you these from the parking lot.”

Limpy wasn't hungry, not even for the radiator-grilled grasshoppers she held out to him.

Then he noticed the telly was on and saw what was on the screen. The girl and the clipboard bloke fighting over Goliath at the shopping center.

“That's me,” yelled Goliath through a mouthful of grasshopper.

Limpy stared.

Not at his cousin being stretched on the screen. At the expression on the girl's face in the room now as she watched. Everyone on the screen looked angry or shocked or upset, including Goliath. But the girl's expression now, as she watched the chaos, was delighted, gleeful, ecstatic.

Suddenly Limpy understood.

She'd planned the whole thing. She'd taken him and Goliath to the shopping center on purpose to upset the bloke with the clipboard. To pay him back, probably for making her do something she didn't want to do.

She hadn't been doing them a favor; they'd been doing her one.

Boy, thought Limpy, perhaps Uncle Preston was right about not trusting humans.

The shopping center bit finished on the telly and Limpy saw the girl smiling down at him fondly. She didn't look selfish or dishonest. She just looked like a friendly human who'd rescued him twice.

Then Limpy realized what must have happened.

Of course, he thought. She didn't trick us. She just hasn't understood. She hasn't got it. She hasn't grasped that I want to be a mascot.

On a shelf above the telly, Limpy saw, was a set of the fluffy mascot toys.

He decided it was worth one more try.

He hopped up onto the shelf and sat between the platypus and the echidna, trying to look as much as possible like a mascot.

The girl laughed, lifted him back down, and offered him another grasshopper.

“Give up,” mumbled Goliath with his mouth full.

Limpy ignored him, hopped back up, and took his position again with the other mascots.

This time the girl didn't laugh.

She stared at him and the other mascots for a long time, frowning.

I think she's getting it, thought Limpy. I think she understands.

He decided she was.

What was it Uncle Roly had been saying just before he was flattened by that caravan?

“Life's a long, hard journey, young Limpy,” he'd said. “But you'll get more out of it if you look on the bright side.”

L
impy looked on the bright side for the rest of that evening, and all night in front of the telly, and most of the next morning, right up until the girl put him and Goliath back into her bag, put the bag back under the bed, and left without them.

Limpy managed to open the bag zip from the inside and scramble out from under the bed just in time to hear a vehicle driving off.

“What's happening?” said Goliath, appearing next to Limpy with a mouthful of sock fluff.

“She's left us behind,” said Limpy, numb with disappointment.