That didn’t make her feel any better. “How would a Bufo americanus do in Iowa?” Taylor asked.
“Oh, he’d be very happy there in somebody’s nice garden, near a pond.”
Taylor nodded. “Thanks,” she said.
In a daze, she left the toad room. Why hadn’t she just found a box for him and taken him home?
But it was too late. He was probably already dead.
She sat down on a bench outside the entrance to the ecology exhibit.
How could I have killed a toad?
Diana came out of the souvenir shop and across the atrium. “Anything interesting in there?” she asked, sitting down beside Taylor.
Taylor stared at her. “It’s all pretty interesting,” she said dully.
“Then I might go in and have a look. Want to go in again?”
Taylor shook her head.
“Okay. Later, then.”
Alone, Taylor stared at the huge banners stirring in the air, until a small breeping sound made her look down.
And there.
There.
Was her toad.
Taylor scooped him up in her hand and raced back to the amphibian room. She held the little toad up to the picture that sat right over where she lived in Iowa. He was a perfect match.
“You’re coming home with me, dude,” she said. “I don’t care what it takes.” She may have failed at everything else, but she was going to save one small toad who’d somehow gotten into the wrong habitat. “But first things first. Let’s find you a box.”
Chapter 25
HACK-A-MANNA! He was back in a nest! Once again, he had been practically within a tongue-flick of the queen, and then the other girl—the nice one who had taken him to the grass and water—had snatched him up and talked to big people, and everybody had jabbered on and on, and now he was in a hard-walled nest he couldn’t get out of!
He dug and scraped with his diggers. He threw himself against the sides, but they pushed back, sending him tumbling across the pebbles.
Finally, Tad hunkered in the shallow water soothing his skinned places. Loneliness sat down on one side of him, and fear on the other.
* * *
Much later, the girl who had put him in the nest knelt down. She said something. And then funny little crickets rained on his head.
Tad ate them. Not because he wanted to. He had no appetite. But because his tongue came to life on its own and shot out.
The girl went away, and before long, Tad heard the bouncy music from his winter dreams. He began to rock from side to side. He’d danced to this song before. Back home. Making Buuurk laugh, then making the other toads clap and stomp. The music made him drop-dead homesick.
The girl scooped him up in her bare hands and held him near her face. Her eyes were the color of the pond on a sunny day. He saw himself in them.
He felt the music in the rocking way she moved. She put him down on the soft ground of her big room. Her feet danced around him, her toenails pink as impatiens blossoms.
As if they were being pulled by strings, Tad’s diggers began to go. He found himself shaking his belly, wiggling around just a little bit. When the music went all tinkly, he moved his feet just like the girl’s feet were moving. He could tell she really liked the music too. Wouldn’t it be nice, he thought, if she were the Queen of the Hop?
Chapter 26
TAYLOR WAS PRACTICING THE WATUSI when her dad came into her room. He watched her until the song ended, and then he clapped.
“Did you learn that today?”
“Yep.” Taylor was surprised at how much dancing was like running track. She had to keep her head in each moment and stay focused. And most of all, she got the same wonderful feeling after a while, as if she could fly. Her partner, Number 11, was really good, but he didn’t seem happy about getting paired with her.
“You’re a natural,” her dad said. “Good thing we named you Peggy Sue.”
Taylor laughed. “Dad, do you even know my real name?”
He gazed out the glass wall of her room at the desert sky. Then shrugged. “Bernadine?”
Taylor grabbed her balled-up socks and threw them at him.
“Thanks for helping me with the toad.”
They’d found a strong box in a service alley and gone to a pet store a couple of blocks from the hotel to buy some nesting material, canned crickets, and bottled water. She never thought her parents would be interested in a toad.
“Just don’t let housekeeping find him,” her dad said. “There are probably rules about keeping wild animals in hotel rooms.”
Yeah, he was really wild. He sat perfectly still by a chair leg—though earlier it had looked a little like he was dancing.
“Don’t worry,” she told her dad. “I have his box in the closet, covered with a T-shirt. Housekeeping won’t see him.”
“You want to call Eve?” her dad asked. “She got home from the hospital today. Then, as soon as your mom and I have showered, we’ll all go to dinner with the Mindersons. They have their kids along. Maybe we can play some miniature golf after.”
“Okay, I guess.…” Aliens had definitely taken over her parents’ bodies. Her real parents didn’t play miniature golf.
After her dad was gone, she squatted down and studied the toad. “Are you a rock and roller too, dude?” she murmured, gently touching his back.
Then she called her grandmother. She told Eve about the dance competition. “I won’t win. Some of the kids are really good.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Eve said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good.” Her grandmother changed the subject. “Did you know a big world ecology conference is going on in Reno?”
“It’s right here in our hotel!”
“Is it really? I was just listening to the news. John Verdun will be there. They say he’s the second-richest man in the world. He gave billions and billions of dollars to a conservation group.”
Taylor found it kind of hard to concentrate on what her grandmother was talking about. If the pond was gone, she wanted to know. She couldn’t bear waiting. So she sat up straight, bracing herself.
“Eve, is the pond still there?”
It seemed to take forever until her grandmother said, “The pond is still here. I’m on the deck right now watching a heron.”
A little sigh of relief stirred Taylor’s bangs.
“How about everything else?”
“Well, while I was in the hospital, they did some more work in the woods down by the road.”
Taylor thought she had braced herself for bad news, but sadness settled in a big knot in her stomach. It was happening.
“I’m sorry,” her grandmother said.
“I’ve gotta get ready for dinner now.” Taylor didn’t want to talk anymore. Not even to her grandmother. “But I’m bringing you a surprise,” she said. “Something for the garden.”
After she hung up, Taylor stood staring out the window. The sun was almost down. The desert and mountains faded hazily into the twilight. The little toad sat by her foot, seeming to stare out over the desert too. His jewel-like eyes turned up to hers, and he said breep very softly.
She squatted down by him. “Let’s put some music on,” she said. “It will cheer us up.”
Taylor watched herself dance in the mirror of her closet door. The little toad was backlighted by the last of the hazy sunset. He almost looked like he was doing the same dance steps she was doing. And then he went off on some moves of his own.
He was really good. Taylor sank to the floor, staring at him in the mirror. “A desert mirage,” she said out loud. “It’s gotta be.”
Chapter 27
WATER HAD SLOPPED OUT OF THE LITTLE POND, and Tad felt the wall of his nest softening. He began to scratch with his diggers. He worked and worked, tearing away at the stuff, pushing with his rear end to make an opening. First there was a little hole, big enough for him to stick a digger through. Then there was a bigger hole. But a
s the hole got bigger, the stuff got stiffer, and he felt it scraping his skin.
Finally he slid his body through and hopped toward the stars. It felt wonderful to be free. The Toad-in-the-Moon gazed back at him, and Tad felt encouraged.
He hoped to someday find his way home and tell Seer how big Mother Earth was. He hoped home would still be there. He wished his friend Buuurk was beside him right now. If wishes were fishes, then hop toads would fly. That’s what Seer always said. Tad would give anything to sit by Seer and ask him about the thing Tad felt growing behind his eyes. Would it keep getting bigger? When would he dream again?
The girl was sleeping nearby, her arm dangling down. As Tad hopped closer to the stars, he passed very close to her hand, which was bigger than he was. Toads were supposed to loathe being picked up by humans, so why did he never pee on her when she picked him up? Even though she kept taking him away from the queen just when he was about to kiss her?
With his face near the stars, Tad stared down at the bright, colorful lights. Some were huge blocks of brilliance that thrust up into the night sky. Some were weaving red and white snakes.
Amid all the lights and all the coverings and all the humanvilles, where were the gardens? Were there any toadvilles as far as the eye could see?
Tad turned. He had to get going.
He made his way to a crack in the girl’s room that looked big enough for him to get through. Earlier, the girl had come this way when she had taken him outside. Somewhere out there was the queen.
He tried to burrow underneath, but the crack pinched him. So he threw himself forward, but he was still stuck. So he scrambled backward. Forward, backward. Forward, backward. He was getting more and more stuck and more and more flattened. In a panic, he made a desperate lunge backward and—thank the green grass!—he was unstuck.
But he was still in the girl’s room and there was no other way out.
He wished he could find a way to tell her to take him to the queen. When she woke up, he’d try, somehow, to make it clear.
He climbed up to sit beside her, to wait for her awakening. She smelled nice. Actually, she smelled sort of familiar. Like borage, which was his favorite garden smell.
And she looked nice too, for a human. She was a pretty color. Her skin was like the rose petals that the hoppers had used to soothe his painful back in Toadville-by-Birdbath. Her hair gleamed like moonlight. She didn’t have any warts, though, and that was too bad.
As he sat with one of his hands resting on a strand of her hair, he imagined kissing her. He remembered when the idea of kissing a human had seemed so nasty it made him want to throw up. But now it didn’t seem that bad.
It was a nice thought. A little exciting, even. He could practice the kiss on this girl.
But what would happen? Was it possible his kiss would turn her into a higher, toadly being? He would like that. He was lonely and needed a friend. But how would she feel? She might be afraid to change.
He sat for a long time, his hand on a soft tendril, wondering.
Chapter 28
“THIS WILL TOP THE LOOK OFF PERFECTLY,” the costume lady said. She bent down and cinched a wide turquoise belt around Taylor’s waist. She turned Taylor’s shoulders so she was looking in the three-way mirror of the dressing room. “Waddaya think?”
Taylor tried not to roll her eyes. Great bunches of puffy pettycoat ruffles made her skirt flare out. The ruffled white top made her shoulders look bigger. And the belt made her waist look pinched in.
Taylor felt like she was turning into something else. An hourglass, maybe.
Why couldn’t she just dance in her shorts and T-shirt? But her mom and dad were standing in the doorway, smiling at her in the mirror, so she guessed she could live with the look.
Actually, whatever was fastest she could live with. The little toad had gotten out of his box in the night again, and she had woken up to find him on her pillow again, tangled in her hair.
He’d dug a hole in one corner of his box. She’d put him back she didn’t know how many times. If he escaped again, he might get stepped on or squashed by a housekeeping cart.
Plus, she’d dreamed rock and roll all night long and felt crabby and tired this morning as she stood waiting while her parents paid for the Peggy Sue costume.
“So did you practice last night?” Number 11 had on black trousers, white socks, and a pink shirt. Taylor wouldn’t be the only one who looked silly.
“I practiced every single dance we’ve learned this week,” she said.
“Well, let’s try to win. You’ll get the crown, and I’ll get a fifty-dollar gift certificate.”
Taylor would love to claim the sparkly crown, even if it probably wasn’t real diamonds. But she didn’t think she could dance that well.
“Maybe you should ask for a different partner,” she said. “It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“Nah,” he said. “They don’t let kids switch. Whoever signs up on the same line as you, you’re stuck with.”
“Hey, Peggy Sue.” Diana rushed out of a dressing room wearing a poodle skirt.
It was hard for Taylor to remember that everybody thought her name really was Peggy Sue.
Diana twirled around, making her skirt flare out. “Isn’t it over the moon? I can hardly wait.” She touched her tiara. “Though it is going to be hard to give up this pretty thing.”
“So what did you do during your year-long reign as Queen of the Hop?” Number 11 asked. “Work for world peace? Save the whales? Go on the Today show?”
Diana stuck her tongue out at him and told Taylor, “He’s just jealous because he and his partner came in second last year.” She turned back to Number 11. “And if you must know, when I got home I was on TV! And this lady interviewed me for a feature story in a local magazine. I wore my crown and sash and got to talk about all sorts of things.”
“You were on television?” Taylor gasped.
“Yep. I was the ‘Good News’ segment one week. Ten whole minutes—except there was a cat food commercial in the middle.”
Ten minutes! Taylor had worked really hard for a ten-second sound bite to save the pond. And hadn’t got it.
If she won the crown, she’d probably get all kinds of interviews. And when they asked her what she wanted to accomplish during her reign, she could tell everybody about the pond. If it was still there.
She spun to Number 11. “I think we should go for it,” she said. “Really try our best. We could practice together after lunch. Maybe you could help us if you wanted to,” she told Diana. “Me especially.”
But she had to go check on the toad first.
As she and her parents passed through the atrium, carrying Taylor’s petticoats, the long banners with the toad logo fluttered gently. New posters of endangered species stood along one wall. A snout-nosed piggy-looking creature, with hair like dandelion fluff, seemed to glare at her. CHACOAN PECCARY, the label said. There was a beetle, a gecko, a soft-looking bird with a funny beak, and lots of other creatures.
Taylor would have liked to stop and look, but she didn’t have time. She tugged on her dad’s hand. How could grown-ups be so slow? “Hurry,” Taylor said. “I need to see how the toad is doing.”
Inside the suite, the housekeeper had tidied up, washed the cups in the little kitchenette, and made Taylor’s bed.
Taylor opened her closet. It was empty.
The little cardboard house with water and bugs and everything, was gone. There was just a clean spot on the floor, with Taylor’s T-shirt beside it.
Trembling, Taylor searched the whole suite, but her toad was gone too, of course.
It was her fault.
She shouldn’t have spent so much time yakking with Diana and Number 11. She shouldn’t have let her parents dawdle in the lobby.
“He’s gone for good this time, isn’t he?” Taylor asked, her voice cracking.
She saw the truth in the glance her parents exchanged as her dad reached out to hug her.
“Try not to fe
el bad, honey. You did everything you could,” her mother said.
Chapter 29
THAT MORNING, AS USUAL, the girl had carried Tad to his nest as the sun came up. Her hands had smelled like the garden, and they were so soft. They had carried him just right, too. They hadn’t squeezed, yet he knew she wouldn’t drop him.
“Take me to the queen!” he cried as he always did, looking into her eyes. “Before it’s too late!”
But she’d settled him gently back in the nest he’d escaped from the night before. Then she shook out some crickets, filled his pond, and put his nest in darkness. Like she always did.
Tad began struggling to get out once again.
He had just gotten one digger through the nest when something roared, coming closer, going away, coming closer again. Then suddenly Tad was washed with sunlight.
Was the beast going to eat him?
It just sniffed him mightily and backed up. But a big human was staring down at Tad. She shot out something in human talk, shook her head, and raised her big ugly foot over him.
* * *
When he came to, he was in darkness, and one of his diggers throbbed with pain. Tad felt part of his nest crumpled around him, and he was being dragged along inside what seemed to be a giant sack. Some things rattled and other things crunched together, and sticky stuff dripped on his head.
He heard a ding! and then he was dragged a little farther. A strange feeling made his warts prickle. He was falling, even though he was sitting still. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Falling and falling. He had to get out!
Light came through a tiny hole in the soft, stretchy skin of the giant sack. He ripped at the hole with his good digger. When he had an opening big enough to scramble through, he tumbled out. He landed beside a human foot, the same foot that had stomped him. He was in a room that was going down, down, down until, suddenly, it stopped with a sickening bounce, and he almost lost his stale-cricket breakfast.
The Hop Page 9
