Jennifer Murdley's Toad

by Bruce Coville

  “Murdley!” cried Sharra. “What’s going on out there?”

  “Jennifer!” shouted Bufo. “Get us out of here!”

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing Ellen by the hand, she ran for her life.

  Five minutes later Ellen collapsed beneath a tree. “Enough!” she gasped. “I can’t run anymore!”

  “I think it’s okay,” said Jennifer, between deep rasping breaths. “I don’t see her anywhere.”

  “Jennifer,” said Bufo, using Mrs. Hopwell’s voice, “what is going on?”

  Jennifer was so startled at hearing her teacher’s voice that she almost answered. Then she realized what Bufo was doing. “Wait till we get back to the house,” she said, pressing her hand against her side. “I’ll tell you all about it then.”

  “Tell us now!” said Sharra from inside Jennifer’s sweatshirt.

  “At the house!” said Jennifer firmly, her resolve strengthened by the fact that it pleased her to defy Sharra.

  But when they reached the house, explanations were delayed by the fact that the children had to deal with Mrs. Murdley. Jennifer hadn’t been expecting that; even when she was late, she usually beat her mother home from work.

  Today was one of those rare days when Mrs. Murdley had arrived home first. Even worse, she was cooking, which meant that she had probably had a bad day. Mrs. Murdley hated to cook and only did it when she wanted to let off steam by slicing up some vegetables.

  “Where have you girls been?” she asked now, as Jennifer and Ellen came through the back door into the kitchen. Then she whacked the top off a carrot.

  “Just out,” said Jennifer.

  Mrs. Murdley frowned. “Jennifer, you know I want you to check in with us before you take off after school. Your father had no idea where you were. Not that he has enough sense to get worried about you.”

  Since Mrs. Murdley never complained about Mr. Murdley in front of her children unless she was feeling exceptionally cranky, Jennifer knew that now was not the time to tell her that Sharra Moncrieffe was a toad and that she, Jennifer, was probably responsible. As a lawyer, Mrs. Murdley would immediately start thinking about the possible lawsuits involved.

  On the other hand, thought Jennifer, if I get arrested for this, at least Mom will know what to do.

  The thought comforted her. Not a lot, but at this point, she would take what she could get.

  Gathering her courage, she asked, “Can Ellen spend the night?”

  Despite her mother’s mood, Jennifer knew the odds were good that she would agree to this request. Sensitive to neighborhood gossip that she was too busy with her career to be a good mother, Mrs. Murdley was always glad to have an outside witness to the times that she actually did cook.

  “If it’s okay with her parents,” said Mrs. Murdley, decapitating another carrot.

  “Thanks!” said Jennifer.

  She meant it; she really didn’t want to be left alone with Sharra and Bufo. Reaching up, she gave her mother a hug—which always made her feel tiny, since her mother was so tall. It also made her feel uglier than usual, since Mrs. Murdley was very beautiful.

  Jennifer thought it was very unfair that such a beautiful mother could have such an ugly kid. Of course, it wasn’t her mother’s fault. But it sure didn’t make things any easier.

  “Sorry about being late,” she whispered, when Mrs. Murdley bent down to kiss the top of her head.

  “It’s all right,” said her mother softly. “But don’t let it happen again. What have you got in the box?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Just an old toad,” she said casually.

  THUMP!

  “Sounds like a big one,” said Mrs. Murdley. “What are you going to do with him?”

  “I wish I knew!” said Jennifer.

  “All right,” said Jennifer, once they were safe in her room, “let’s think.” She took Sharra out of her pouch and set her on the bed.

  “Let’s not,” said Bufo, climbing out of his box and hopping over to his tank. “I’ve still got a headache from the bouncing you gave me on the way home. Have you got an aspirin I can lick?”

  Jennifer hesitated. She wasn’t supposed to get aspirin for herself. On the other hand, Bufo was basically an adult.

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  “Forget it,” said Bufo. “I was only kidding. They stick to my tongue. Give me a few minutes to recover. Then I want you to tell me about that woman you were talking to, what she looked like, how she acted—all the things I missed by being in that box.”

  He jumped for the edge of the tank, then climbed over the side and went to sit under his umbrella.

  “I think we should take Sharra back to her parents’ house now,” said Ellen, glancing at Bufo nervously.

  Jennifer’s stomach twisted. Even though it wasn’t really her fault Sharra was a toad, she had a feeling she was going to get blamed for it. But she also had a feeling that Ellen was right.

  Sharra didn’t share that feeling.

  “No!” she cried. “No! No! No!”

  “All right,” said Jennifer, patting Sharra on the head with her forefinger. “Calm down. No one’s going to force you.”

  “Don’t do that!” snapped Sharra.

  “Well excu-u-u-use me,” said Jennifer, drawing her hand back.

  They sat in gloom for a moment, the only break in the silence the annoying buzz of a fly.

  Suddenly Sharra’s tongue shot out—ZAP!—and nailed the fly.

  “Good work,” said Bufo.

  “Aahh!” cried Sharra, jumping around on the bed as though someone had just lit a match underneath her. “Aahhh! Aahhh! Aaaahhhhh! I ate a fly! I ate a fly! I didn’t want to! I didn’t mean to do it! Aaahhh!”

  “Oh, quit beefing,” said Bufo. “They’re good for you.”

  “Aaahhh!” said Sharra.

  “Don’t worry,” said Ellen in a soothing voice. “It was a very natural thing to do.”

  “Aahhh!” cried Sharra. “Call the doctor! I ate a fly!”

  “Do you really want us to call a doctor?” asked Jennifer.

  “Yes! NO! Just do something!” Suddenly Sharra stopped moving. “If you ever tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you,” she said, her voice trembling with passion.

  Jennifer had just been thinking how much fun it would be to tell the rest of the fifth grade about Sharra Moncrieffe eating flies.

  “Promise you won’t tell,” demanded Sharra.

  Jennifer sighed. “My lips are sealed,” she said, raising one hand in a sign of pledge.

  “Mine, too,” said Ellen.

  “Sheesh,” said Bufo. “You’d think there was something wrong with eating a fly.”

  “Shut up!” snarled Sharra. Then she hopped across the bed, crawling halfway under the pillow, and squatted there glaring at the rest of them.

  “We do have to let your parents know where you are,” said Ellen, after an uncomfortable silence.

  “I don’t want them to know.”

  “If we don’t say something, they’re going to call the police,” said Jennifer reasonably. Inside she was wondering who the Moncrieffes would call once they found out their daughter was a toad.

  “So what?” said Sharra, who was clearly in no mood to be cooperative.

  “Well, sooner or later the police will come over here and start asking questions.”

  “So? You’re not going to tell them what happened.”

  “Of course not,” said Jennifer. “But Ellen probably will. She can’t keep a secret to save her life.”

  “Hey!” cried Ellen. “I can too keep a secret.”

  “Name one,” snapped Jennifer.

  Ellen glowered at Jennifer.

  “All right,” said Sharra. “You’ve made your point. Go ahead, call my parents.”

  “You’ll have to talk to them,” said Jennifer.

  Though Sharra resisted, Jennifer finally convinced her. Which is how the three of them, Jennifer, Sharra, and Ellen, wound up out in the hall, Jennifer
dialing the number, Sharra squatting next to the receiver, and Ellen keeping watch for Skippy or Jennifer’s parents.

  Jennifer had to admit that Sharra handled the moment well, chatting with her mother as if nothing at all was wrong. But as soon as the call was over, she lapsed into a stunned silence. Jennifer immediately began to feel guilty again. She recalled how Sharra had wept all the way home, muttering about dreams. When they returned to Jennifer’s room, Sharra sat in silent gloom on Jennifer’s pillow, her bulging eyes glazed over.

  “At least this happened on a Friday,” said Ellen, trying to sound cheerful.

  Jennifer knew what she meant. They never would have gotten Sharra’s parents to let her stay over on a school night.

  “All right,” said Bufo, “you’ve done your duty to little Miss Perfect’s parents. Now I want to know the details of what happened in that beauty parlor.” He sounded nervous, which made Jennifer a little nervous, too.

  “Well, you heard it all from inside the box, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Of course I heard it,” said Bufo. “I just couldn’t see anything. That’s why I want more details.”

  But before Jennifer could answer, her father’s deep voice came booming up the stairs. “Jennifer, Ellen, come to supper!”

  “We’ll have to tell you later,” said Jennifer.

  “Now!” demanded Bufo.

  “Don’t leave me here with him!” cried Sharra.

  “Later,” said Jennifer again, scooping up Sharra and returning her to the sweatshirt pouch.

  Between Jennifer’s nervousness and her mother’s bad mood, supper was a tense affair, enlivened only by the moment when Skippy stuffed a pair of string beans into his nostrils and cried, “Look! Super boogies!”

  “I want boogies, too!” cried Brandon, who until that point had been refusing to even look at his beans.

  Mr. and Mrs. Murdley were not amused. After supper Mr. Murdley announced that Mrs. Murdley needed a break, and he was taking her out to a film.

  “Which means that the four of you are going to be very, very good for the next few hours, doesn’t it?” he asked in a voice that could only be answered with words like, “Yes,” and “Certainly,” and “Of course we are.”

  He also told Jennifer and Ellen they could babysit for Brandon, which meant that they would be getting a little money when he got back. Usually the job would have gone to Skippy, but he had been banned from babysitting for two months after the haircut he gave Brandon the last time he took care of him.

  Sharra was extremely quiet when Jennifer extracted her from the sweatshirt pouch and deposited her on the bed.

  “I think she’s gone into shock,” said Ellen nervously.

  “Story time!” said Bufo, climbing over the edge of his tank. “It’s time for you to tell me the details of what happened this afternoon. Jennifer, this is important!”

  Jennifer looked at him in surprise. But before she could answer, Skippy burst into the room. “Jennifer, have you seen my math book? I could have sworn—”

  He broke off when he spotted Sharra squatting on Jennifer’s pillow. “Hey, you got another one! Or is this one yours, Ellen? What is this? Are toads a new fad or something?”

  Crossing to the bed, he scooped Sharra into his hand.

  “Put her down, Skippy!” cried Jennifer.

  “Cool it, Jen. Sheesh, I never saw anybody get so cranky about toads. What’s the big deal? A toad is a toad.”

  “Not always,” said Jennifer. “Anyway, be careful of her.”

  “Why?”

  “Ah—we think she’s pregnant!” said Ellen desperately.

  Skippy held Sharra away from him and looked at her appraisingly. “Could be,” he said. “She’s kinda chunky.”

  Sharra let out an indignant squawk. Skippy jumped and almost dropped her. “These things make the weirdest noises,” he said. “What kind of toads are they, anyway?”

  “She’s a rare breed,” said Jennifer. “Very expensive. That’s why I told you to be careful.”

  “Sister, dear, you are getting weirder by the day,” said Skippy, lifting Sharra toward his face to examine her more carefully. He poked a finger at her nose. “Man,” he said approvingly, “she sure is ugly.”

  With a cry of indignation, Sharra lunged at Skippy.

  “Hey, what—?” he cried.

  Those were the last words out of his mouth before Sharra’s toady lips connected with his.

  SEVEN

  “You Owe Me!”

  When the smoke cleared, there were still two toads in the room.

  Sharra was not one of them. Skippy, however, was. No longer tall and red-haired, he was now small, brown, and covered with warts. Jennifer was not altogether sure that this wasn’t an improvement. Unfortunately, she was fairly confident her parents would not see the matter in that light. Disgusting as Skippy might be, she was certain they would rather he were a boy than a toad.

  Skippy would almost certainly share that opinion, once he had figured out what had happened. At the moment, he was totally oblivious to his new shape. “Whooo-ee, what was that all about?” he cried. Coughing, he waved a warty little hand in front of his face.

  That was when he realized what had happened to him.

  “My hand!” he screamed. “What happened to my hand?”

  This was followed by a brief pause while Skippy examined the rest of his body. This examination was followed by a series of screams, interspersed with such phrases as, “Gonna die, Jennifer,” and “What are you three, witches?” and “Get me outta this!”

  The only one who was actually happy about this development was Sharra.

  “It couldn’t have happened to a better brat,” she said. Then she shook her hands and said, “Oooh, I’m all pins and needles, like when your leg goes to sleep. Except it’s all over me! Ooooh!”

  “I’ll teach you!” cried Skippy, jumping at Sharra. It was a solid, toadlike leap, but Skippy wasn’t used to his new shape, and Sharra easily dodged it. He went sailing past her calf and landed on the floor behind her.

  “Jennifer!” he cried pitifully. “What’s going on here?”

  “And is it catching?” muttered Ellen nervously.

  “Ah—it seems to be a temporary condition,” said Jennifer.

  “You mean I’m going to turn back?” asked Skippy, his voice flooded with relief.

  “I think so. Sharra did.”

  “How did she do it?”

  “She passed it on to you,” said Jennifer, who didn’t like where this conversation was going.

  “Passed it on?” asked Skippy.

  “You’re it,” said Sharra, who was still patting her arms to check that she was really herself again. “It’s like playing tag. I got it from that crazy talking toad of Jennifer’s.”

  “What talking toad?” asked Skippy.

  “I believe she’s referring to me,” said Bufo, who was now crouched on the edge of Jennifer’s desk.

  “Did you used to be a person, too?” asked Skippy.

  “Good heavens, no!” cried Bufo. “Perish the thought. A person, indeed. Yetch. I would think you would be glad of the transformation, Master Skippy. I mean, think how much less destructive toads are than humans. We don’t pollute. We don’t have wars. We don’t cause forest fires. About all we do is eat nasty bugs.”

  “Don’t remind me,” cried Sharra, which caused Jennifer to snort in spite of herself.

  “I’m a t-o-o-o-ad!” moaned Skippy, his voice still filled with disbelief. Suddenly he scrambled under the bed.

  “It’s the shock stage,” said Sharra, when Jennifer began to move toward the pillows. “He needs some time to himself.”

  Jennifer figured that if anyone should know what Skippy was feeling, it was Sharra, so she decided to leave him alone. Besides, she was in no hurry to get him thinking about everything that had just been said.

  “While your brother is contemplating his lack of a navel,” said Bufo, “I think it’s about time you gave me some info
rmation. I’ve been trying to get you to tell me what happened to make you start running this afternoon.”

  Jennifer hesitated. Now that the incident was over, she wondered if maybe it had simply been her imagination getting out of hand.

  Ellen had no such reservations. “I think that woman was a witch,” she said.

  Bufo’s eyes bulged out even more than normal. “Tell me more,” he insisted. “Everything you can remember.” Then he listened with uncharacteristic silence as Jennifer and Ellen described the events in the beauty parlor.

  No one spoke for a moment after they were finished. Outside a cold wind blew at the window. Colored leaves swirled along the sidewalk, flashing bright in the puddles of light from the streetlamps, then looking almost like bats when they plunged back into the darkness.

  “You were probably right,” said Bufo at last.

  “That she was a witch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bufo, is there something that you ought to tell us?” asked Jennifer, who was starting to feel more frightened than ever.

  Bufo glanced around nervously.

  “Bufo!”

  “She may be after me,” said Bufo, his throat expanding and contracting rapidly.

  “Why?”

  “You can’t live as long as I have without making a few enemies,” said Bufo.

  “You probably can’t go three days without making enemies,” replied Sharra.

  Jennifer was torn between telling Sharra to shut up and agreeing with her.

  An hour or so later Jennifer returned from putting Brandon to bed to find Skippy sitting in the middle of her floor, his warty face creased with a big smile.

  “I’ve got it!” he cried triumphantly.

  “Got what?” asked Jennifer nervously.