Once Upon a Toad

  I pulled the poncho over us, hoping it would help conceal us from the searchers who I knew would soon appear. “Area Fifty-one, that’s what!”

  My stepsister looked at me blankly.

  “Are you telling me you’ve never heard of it?” I said in astonishment, ejecting toads right and left. “Don’t you ever watch science fiction movies? It’s where the government keeps aliens and UFOs and stuff. That’s why Dad was so worked up.”

  Olivia snorted. “Yeah, right. There are no such things as UFOs.”

  I pointed silently at the ground in front of us, which was covered with diamonds, toads, and enough flowers to open a florist shop. “There’s no such thing as this, either,” I reminded her.

  Olivia flapped an edge of the poncho at the toads to scatter them. She snorted again, but it was an uncertain kind of snort.

  “Fine then, don’t believe me.” I jerked my chin toward the back door, which had just flown open. “Go on, go ahead back inside. I’m sure Dr. Dalton will be delighted to see you.”

  Olivia fell silent. The lights by the back door came on, and we watched as the government scientist strode onto the deck. My father and Iz and the two FBI agents were right behind him.

  “They can’t have gone far,” said Dr. Dalton, scanning the yard. Fortunately, the pool of light by the deck didn’t reach as far as the rhododendron bush where we were hiding. “We have to find them!”

  “Don’t make a sound,” I whispered to Olivia as another pair of toads fell from my lips. “Not unless you want to spend the rest of your life as a biology experiment.”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  Agent Salgado stepped out onto the lawn. “We’re going to need a flashlight,” he told his colleague, peering into the darkness.

  “There’s one in the car,” Agent Reynolds replied, and holding her raincoat over her head, she cut around the corner of the house toward the driveway.

  Agent Salgado and Dr. Dalton started across the grass. I could hear their shoes squishing into the lawn. I looked over at Olivia and pressed my finger against my lips.

  “Awful lot of footprints out here,” grumbled the government scientist as Agent Reynolds reappeared with two flashlights.

  “That’s because an awful lot of people have been working this case,” she snapped. “Kidnappers, police, our team, and as if that wasn’t enough, now you.” Agent Reynolds seemed to hold the same low opinion of Area 51 as my father did. She handed a flashlight to Dr. Dalton. He pointed it across the yard toward the Dixons’ house.

  “It’s hard to see what’s what,” he complained.

  Thank goodness, I thought.

  Iz watched from the deck as the FBI agents and Dr. Dalton fanned out across the yard. My father trailed behind the government scientist. As they moved closer toward the rhododendron, Olivia squeezed her eyes shut. I held my breath as Dr. Dalton came to a stop right in front of us. I could have reached out and touched his shoe.

  Croak.

  I stiffened.

  “What was that?” cried Dr. Dalton, swinging his flashlight wildly. “Did you hear something?”

  “This is Oregon,” my father replied, sounding disgusted. “We have frogs.”

  If anyone knows the difference between a frog and a toad, it’s my father. He was sending us a message—he knew we were here!

  “Oh, right,” said the government scientist, with another forced chuckle. “All this water. I forgot.”

  “I’m going back inside,” Iz called from the deck. “Someone needs to stay by the phone in case the kidnappers call again.”

  “We’ll be right there, honey,” my father called back.

  Agent Salgado squelched over to join him. “Mr. Starr, do you have any idea which direction the girls may have headed?”

  “Not really,” my father replied, walking slowly away from the bush where we were hiding. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought he was leading them away from our hiding spot. “They both know the Wildwood Trail fairly well. I’d start there.”

  He was sending us another message! We had to stay away from obvious places like Forest Park and the Wildwood Trail.

  “Good idea,” the FBI agent said. “I’ll organize a grid search. They can’t have gotten too far.”

  He jogged back across the lawn to the house. My dad and Dr. Dalton followed at a slower pace in his wake. I waited until the door had closed behind them, then turned to Olivia. “We’re going to need some help,” I whispered, brushing away the inevitable toad. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.

  “No fair!” said Olivia when she spotted it. “I want to call Piper.”

  “Absolutely not,” I said, powering it off. “Besides, I can’t use it now anyway. The first thing the FBI will do is track our cell phones.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “I watch a lot of TV.”

  Olivia regarded me. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered. “You don’t even like me.”

  “True,” I replied evenly. “But I do like Geoffrey, and if you disappear to some zoo cage in Nevada, we may lose our chance at getting him back.”

  My stepsister fell silent again. “Do you have a plan?” she asked finally.

  “No, I’m making this up as I go along. In music it’s called improvising.” I grabbed Olivia’s hand again. “Come on, we’ve got to keep moving. They’ll be back in a minute.”

  We crawled cautiously out from under the rhododendron, taking care not to step on any toads. Keeping to the shadows, we made our way over to the Dixons’ backyard.

  “Stay here,” I told Olivia, shoving her under their deck. “I’ll be back in a sec.” I grabbed a pebble and flung it up at Connor’s window. At least, I assumed it was Connor’s, since I could hear saxophone scales coming from it. If he kept practicing like that, he might eventually produce something worth listening to.

  There was no response.

  I flung another one.

  Still nothing.

  C’mon, Connor! I willed him to hear me as I threw one more. This time a face appeared, frowning. He looked out, then opened the window and stuck his head through, looking around suspiciously.

  “Hey!” I whispered, making sure to stay out of range of the back porch light. I didn’t want the toads to alarm him.

  “Who is it?” he demanded.

  “Shhhh!” I replied. “It’s Cat and Olivia. We’re in trouble and we need your help.”

  “Trying to evade those stupid reporters? Man, what a pain!”

  “Something like that.”

  “Hang on,” he said. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  I fished my stepsister out of her hiding place. “You’re going to have to do the talking,” I told her. “Unless he’s been living under a rock for the past twenty-four hours, he already knows about the flowers and stuff, but the toads might freak him out.”

  “They freak me out,” she retorted.

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up!”

  I sighed. This was getting us nowhere.

  “Oh, all right,” Olivia said. “What should I say to him?”

  “That he’s the man of your dreams and you want to marry him.”

  “Cat!”

  “Sorry—couldn’t resist. Tell him about Area Fifty-one—he’s a guy, he’ll know exactly what it is and why you don’t want to go there. Tell him we need to use his cell phone and that we need a place to hide.”

  “Don’t you think this will be one of the first places they’ll search?”

  She had a good point. “Yeah, so we’re not going to hide here for long. I have an idea, but I need to make a phone call first.”

  Olivia’s forehead wrinkled. “I still don’t get it,” she said. “Where are we going to go? This is the FBI we’re talking about, Cat. They’re gonna find us.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “But there’s no point making it easy for them.” I didn’t add that if we could find Great-Aunt Abyssinia first, the rest of this might all go away.

  The
back door opened and Connor appeared. I gave Olivia a shove. “Be convincing,” I told her.

  She was. Two minutes later we were holed up in the Dixons’ basement.

  “You’ve gotta be really quiet,” Connor told us, pointing to the ceiling. “My parents are right upstairs watching TV, and I’m supposed to be up in my room practicing my saxophone and doing homework. If they find out about this, I’ll be grounded until I’m thirty.”

  I nodded vigorously, then mimed talking on the phone.

  “Oh yeah, right.” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to my stepsister.

  “Thanks, Connor,” Olivia said. She’d barely taken her eyes off him since we came inside. Not that he noticed. He was too fixated on the flowers and sparkling stones that fell from her lips every time she spoke to notice the sappy expression on her face.

  Olivia picked up a diamond and handed it to him. “We really, really appreciate your help,” she said, showering him with more petals.

  “No problem,” Connor replied, brushing them away. He turned the gem over, examining it. “Is this thing real?”

  Olivia nodded proudly.

  “Cool.” Connor shoved it in his pocket. “I’m going to leave you guys down here for a few minutes. If my parents don’t hear saxophone music soon, they’ll get suspicious.”

  He sneaked upstairs, closing the cellar door behind him. I grabbed the phone away from Olivia and walked over to the laundry area. She trailed behind me as I punched in A.J.’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

  “I’m so glad you’re there!” I said in relief, the words tumbling out of me. So did a couple of toads, which I scooped up and stuffed in the laundry hamper. “I’m in trouble and I need your help.”

  I put him on speaker so Olivia could hear, and explained as quickly as I could about our escape from Dr. Dalton. She kept chiming in too, and the laundry hamper was nearly full of flowers and toads by the time we were done. Olivia was getting good at snagging the gems, though, which she tucked into the pocket of her jeans.

  “I knew it!” A.J. crowed. “I knew there really was an Area Fifty-one!”

  I sighed. “That’s not the point.”

  “Okay, okay, I know. But still, Cat—Area Fifty-one!”

  “A.J.!”

  “Sorry.” He was quiet for a few seconds, thinking. “The first thing you need to do is find a safe hiding place until I figure out how to get you down to the redwoods.”

  “Huh?” said Olivia. “Why are we going to the redwoods?”

  I ignored her. “What do you have in mind?” I said to my friend.

  “Someplace the feds won’t think of looking,” he replied. “They’re gonna be all over the Dixons’ house any time now, once the search dogs arrive, so you’ve got to get out of there.”

  “I know,” I said glumly. “But where can we go?”

  “Not a public place—half the city will be looking for you, and with Olivia’s face plastered all over the news, you’ll be way too easy to spot. Are there any other friends you trust?”

  “Piper Philbin,” said Olivia.

  “Not Piper Philbin,” I replied.

  “Oooookay,” said A.J., sensing this was a bit of a sore point for us. “Any other ideas?”

  We thought for a bit.

  “Maybe Rani and Rajit,” I said finally.

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “The dork twins?”

  “They’re not twins, and they’re not dorks,” I retorted. “They’re talented musicians, and they’re my friends.”

  “Dorks,” Olivia muttered, picking petals off her lips. I threw a toad at her and she yelped. “Knock it off!”

  “You knock it off!”

  “You and your stupid toads!”

  “Hey,” said A.J. “Don’t you think maybe you’d better concentrate on the mission here?”

  Olivia and I glared at each other.

  “Truce?” I said finally, bending over the hamper. A toad plopped in right on cue. Olivia eyed it with disgust, then nodded grudgingly.

  “By the way,” said A.J., “you haven’t really explained why you’re so desperate to find your great-aunt. What’s she got to do with all this?”

  “You’re looking for Great-Aunt Aby?” said Olivia, surprised. “Why?”

  This was so not the time to bring up the whole fairy godmother thing. I whooshed out my breath—along with another toad. “Guys,” I told them, “you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “Ouch! You’re on my hair!” whispered Olivia, elbowing me sharply.

  “Quit it!” I elbowed her back.

  “Shut up! You’re making toads!”

  “You shut up!” I whispered.

  “Get those things away from me!” she said between clenched teeth. “I mean it, Cat.”

  The truce was over.

  I fumbled around in the darkness for the escaped toads, then stuffed them into the pillowcase I’d brought with me from Connor’s laundry room for just that purpose. Olivia and I were wedged into the trunk of Connor’s older brother’s car, covered with a blanket. The blanket was itchy and smelled like Peanut, their dog, and there was barely room for one of us under it, let alone both of us plus Connor’s saxophone case.

  So far I was less than thrilled with Connor’s Woodwinds to the Rescue plan. Not that I’d been able to come up with anything better.

  “How else are you going to get over to the Kumars’?” he’d asked, when Olivia explained our predicament. “You can’t walk, you can’t take a cab—and the bus? No way. All of Portland is looking for you two.”

  Aidan Dixon’s girlfriend lived a few doors down from Rani and Rajit, and since he went over to her house most evenings to hang out anyway, it was easy enough for Connor to concoct a reason to need a ride.

  “I’ll tell my parents I’m thinking about auditioning for Hawkwinds,” he said. “They’ll be thrilled—my mom’s been bugging me about it. I’ll just tell her that the Kumars offered to practice with me.”

  Getting Rani and Rajit on board wasn’t easy at first. Connor really had to lean on them hard to get them to agree to see me. They were still pretty ticked off about the talent show.

  “She says if you just let her come over, she can explain,” he told them when he called, reading the note I’d prepared. “She promises.”

  My friends softened when Connor told them about Geoffrey, and by the time he got around to Olivia and Area 51, Rani especially was her old self again. She asked him to put me on the line.

  “Cat, are you sure you’re not missing a golden opportunity here?” she asked. “Olivia would look pretty good in a cage.”

  I almost laughed at that. But I wasn’t quite ready to reveal my secret.

  Afterward, Connor sneaked Olivia and me into the garage, then helped us hide in the trunk of his brother’s car. The plan was for us to stay there until Aidan went into his girlfriend’s house, then Connor would let us out.

  I felt bad about leaving the laundry hamper full of toads in his basement, but I’d explain soon enough and Connor could probably get to them before his mother did. Mrs. Dixon is really nice, and the last thing I wanted was to give her heart failure or something.

  Now we were bumping and swerving our away up to Council Crest, where the Kumars lived. I started to feel a little queasy, which reminded me of Geoffrey. I missed him so much, even if he was a little Barf Bucket.

  “Is a saxophone really a woodwind?” Olivia whispered into the total darkness of the trunk, her words carrying the sweet scent of hyacinth.

  It seemed like a random question, but I knew the way my stepsister’s mind worked. She was thinking about Connor and trying to figure out why one of the popular jocks like him would want to team up with band kids like me and Rani and Rajit. To Olivia, even though Connor played the saxophone, he wasn’t really a band kid. He was too cool for that.

  “Yup,” I told her, spitting the toad that accompanied the word into the pillowcase. “It’s the on
ly one that’s made of brass, though.”

  “Ohhh,” she replied, as if to say, Well then, that explains it.

  The car swerved again and I was thrown against her. She shoved me away, and I was just getting ready to shove her back when we came to a stop. We both froze as the engine cut off. Connor’s plan was about to be put to the test.

  A couple of minutes later the trunk opened and he grinned down at us. “Come on,” he said. “They’re waiting for us inside.”

  I left the pillowcase full of toads in the car—sorry, Aidan!—and followed Connor across the street, to where Rajit was holding the side door open.

  “In here,” he said. “Quickly.”

  We followed him inside and downstairs. His sister and Juliet Rodriguez were waiting for us in the rec room. “Hope you don’t mind,” said Rani apologetically. “She was working on a social studies project with me when you called.”

  I shook my head. Having Juliet here wasn’t going to make what I had to do any easier, though.

  “So what’s going on, Cat?” asked Rajit as everyone sat down on the big L-shaped sofa. “You and Olivia are all over the news. There’s a huge reward for your return.”

  “There’s something you don’t know about me yet,” I told them miserably.

  Juliet let out a small yip of surprise and Rani blanched as a pair of toads sprang from my mouth to the coffee table.

  “Whoa,” said Rajit. “That explains a lot about the talent show.”

  “Cool,” Connor said, staring at me in fascination. I blushed. He really was pretty cute, what with those deep blue eyes and that shaggy blond hair. If a person paid attention to that sort of thing.

  Of course his reaction made Olivia jealous, and she spent the next couple of minutes talking nonstop, trying to produce as many diamonds as she could.

  I picked up four of them and held them out to my friends. “Help yourselves,” I told them. “There’s more where these came from. Olivia’s like a gum ball machine. We can double or triple any reward out there.”

  Warily eyeing the toads that proliferated with my speech, they each selected a gem.

  “So is this thing real?” asked Rajit.