Once Upon a Toad

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  A few minutes later we spotted Great-Aunt Abyssinia’s RV, and Pearl pulled in beside it.

  “Nice wheels,” called Great-Aunt Abyssinia from her folding chair by the campfire.

  She didn’t look the least bit surprised to see us. So much for stealth mode.

  “The Rocket gets me where I need to go, on time and in style,” Pearl replied. She switched off the engine and gave the dashboard one last pat. “Yes sirree, baby, you did real good.”

  She untied her scarf, checked her lipstick and hair in the rearview mirror, then got out of the car and crossed to where Great-Aunt Abyssinia was waiting.

  “Howdy, Pearl,” said my great-aunt.

  Pearl’s eyebrows fled under her stiff blond bangs again. “How did you know my name?”

  Great-Aunt Abyssinia grinned. “Says so on your uniform.”

  Pearl glanced down at her name tag and laughed. “So it does. Sorry, I’m a little jumpy. This day has been a little, uh, left of normal.” She extended her hand. “Pearl Slocum of the world-famous Pie-in-the-Sky Diner. Well, maybe not world-famous, but we do okay. And you must be the great-aunt these girls are so eager to find.”

  “I guess I must be,” said Great-Aunt Aby, rising to her feet. Like the redwoods, she towered over all three of us. Unlike the redwoods, she was dressed from head to toe in fleece. Purple fleece. I caught sight of her hiking boots and nearly laughed. They were sporting matching purple laces. Great-Aunt Aby had accessorized.

  My great-aunt shook Pearl’s hand. “Pie-in-the-Sky Diner, huh? Sounds like my kind of place.”

  “It is if you like pie,” Pearl replied. “We serve seven kinds, one for every day of the week.”

  “I’ll have to stop by sometime. I’m much obliged to you for bringing the girls to me.” She glanced over in my direction and ran a big hand over her own short locks. “Nice ’do, by the way, Catriona. Give it a shot of color and we could almost be twins.”

  Olivia snorted, and I stepped on her foot.

  “These two are in a heap of trouble,” Pearl told her. “But I guess you know that, what with them being all over the news and everything.”

  Great-Aunt Aby stared at her blankly. She hadn’t heard! My heart sank. What kind of a fairy godmother had I been saddled with? One that didn’t even watch the news?

  Pearl glanced back over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Perhaps we’d better go inside, Mrs., uh—”

  “Just call me Aby,” said Great-Aunt Abyssinia. She lumbered over to her RV and opened the door. “Come on in, then.”

  Olivia wrinkled her nose as we followed her inside. The remains of my great-aunt’s dinner—in a pan containing a blackened mess that looked like it might have been some sort of stir-fry—were petrifying on the stove.

  “You three hungry?” asked Great-Aunt Abyssinia.

  Olivia and I shook our heads vigorously.

  “Starved,” said Pearl.

  “Have a seat,” my great-aunt told us.

  The three of us squeezed in around the little dining table while Great-Aunt Aby took the pan and stuffed it inside the RV’s tiny oven, then rummaged in her cupboards and teeny refrigerator. Right, I thought scornfully. Like she really watches the Food Network. A few minutes later, though, she set down three plates of completely normal-looking bacon and eggs in front of us. Better than normal-looking, in fact.

  “Breakfast-for-dinner night,” she announced, cracking open a bottle of her green gloop and taking a big slurp.

  “I’d give you a job any day of the week,” Pearl told her, picking up her fork. “This looks mighty fine.”

  My great-aunt pulled up a stool and perched at the end of the table, like a circus elephant doing a balancing act. “So, fill me in.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could say anything, Pearl held up a warning finger. “Not at the dinner table.”

  I nodded, and nudged Olivia with my elbow.

  “So it all began right after you visited us, Mrs., uh, Aby,” my stepsister explained. “I woke up doing this”—she pointed to the buttercups and diamonds that littered her plate—“and Cat woke up doing, um …”

  “This,” I said, cupping my hands in front of my mouth to catch the inevitable toad.

  Croak.

  Pearl shuddered. “Puh-leez,” she said. “Some of us are trying to eat.”

  “I see,” said Great-Aunt Aby, her eyes glinting behind her glasses. She plucked the toad from my hand and inspected it, then opened the door of the RV and released it gently onto the step. As it hopped off toward the woods, Archibald twitched his tail and leaped down from his perch on the bookshelf. “No, Archie,” said my great-aunt, quickly shutting the door of her RV again. “Toad would definitely disagree with you.”

  She flicked a glance at Pearl and Olivia, who were plowing their way happily through their bacon and eggs. She plucked a book from her shelf and flipped through its pages, muttering to herself. Then she turned to me. “Could I have a word in private with you, Catriona?”

  I followed her outside.

  “I take it you’ve spoken with your mother,” she whispered.

  I nodded again.

  “Good. Not exactly the way we meant to tell you, but it couldn’t be helped, what with the space mission and all interfering with our schedule.”

  I lifted a shoulder.

  “How much does Pearl know?”

  “I just told her that you’re my great-aunt,” I replied, prodding with the toe of my sneaker at the toad my answer produced.

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way for now. How about Olivia?”

  “Uh …”

  “I see. Well, couldn’t be helped either, I suppose. Not under the circumstances.” Great-Aunt Aby laid one of her large hands on my shoulder. “I’m sorry that we were never properly introduced,” she said. “There’s actually rather a lovely ceremony involved.” She slipped a finger through the chain of my necklace and tugged it from its resting place under my hoodie. “Your mother and I would have presented you with this together,” she said, “and explained its history, and yours.”

  I looked at her expectantly.

  She blinked at me with her enormous, magnified eyes. “Not just yet,” she replied to my unspoken question. “Your mother’s been looking forward to the ceremony for many years, and I don’t wish to deprive her of her part in it. And it’s completely irrelevant information at the moment.”

  I must have looked disappointed, because she paused, then sighed. “Well, I guess I can explain one thing.” She opened the book that she’d brought outside with her. I recognized the emerald green cover and worn binding—it was the same book she’d consulted the day she visited us back in Portland.

  “Here,” she said, passing it to me and tapping her finger against one of its pages. “I meant to help, truly I did.”

  I quickly scanned the page. It was an old fairy tale about two stepsisters. The nice one got the gift of diamonds and flowers, and the rude one got stuck with the toads.

  “But that’s not what happened,” I told her, frowning. “You messed up, big-time.”

  “It happens occasionally,” admitted Great-Aunt Abyssinia. “No real harm done, though.”

  “No harm done?! Great-Aunt Aby, look at me!” I pointed to the pile of toads at my feet. “Do you have any idea what I’m going through here? Thanks to your stupid mix-up, I’ll probably never be able to go back to school again. And I’ll have to give up the bassoon!” I paced around the campfire angrily, heedless of the toads I was scattering under the giant trees. “Olivia will be fine, of course. She and her diamonds will be welcomed with open arms wherever she goes. The school will probably build a new gym or library in her honor or something.” I stopped and looked at my great-aunt accusingly. “There’s been a whole bunch of harm done, Great-Aunt Aby—and the worst of it is, my little brother has been kidnapped!”

  “I know,” said my great-aunt sadly, hanging her head. She looked like a remorseful Saint Bernard caught swiping a steak off the gril
l. “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “What is the plan, then? I say it’s time to wave your wand, or whatever it is you do, and hurry up and fix this!”

  “That’s not exactly the way it works.”

  “Well, make it work!” I told her. “I want Geoffrey back, and I want my life back!” I stalked back inside and slid into my seat. Olivia and Pearl were smearing jam—or what looked like jam, though it was an odd brown color—onto their toast.

  “So, we have diamonds, toads, and a missing brother,” said Great-Aunt Aby, following me inside. “Got it. I think I’m up to speed.”

  “Do you think we should call their parents and let them know that the girls are safe?” asked Pearl.

  I shook my head. “Nope,” I said, heedless of what else came out of my mouth besides words. I was done worrying about toads. “The FBI is tapping our phones, trying to trace calls from the kidnapppers.” I explained briefly about the note I’d given Connor, too. There’d been nothing on the news yet to make me think my father had received it, though.

  “I can get a message through if need be,” said Great-Aunt Aby, and I knew she was referring to the FGPS. She reached for her broom, and for a moment I thought she was going to mount it and fly away, but she merely began sweeping up toads. “Connor strikes me as a resourceful boy, though. Let’s be patient a while longer.” She emptied the dustpan out the RV’s door. “We need to hit the road for Portland soon. Long drive ahead of us.”

  “Would you like to borrow the Red Rocket?” said Pearl.

  “Nice of you to offer, but you’d be surprised at the speed I can coax out of this RV,” my great-aunt replied. “I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for the girls, Pearl. I don’t want to impose on your generosity any longer.”

  “Oh, you’re not imposing,” said Pearl.

  “Nevertheless, you’re free to leave,” insisted my great-aunt.

  Pearl laughed. “You aren’t going to get rid of me that easy, Abyssinia,” she told her. “This is more excitement than I’ve had in decades. Besides, now that I’m in it this far, I have to stick around and see how everything turns out.” She winked at Olivia and me, then turned back to my great-aunt. “So,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”

  CHAPTER 21

  Las Vegas, apparently.

  “Omigosh!” I said, sitting up and staring out the big picture window of the RV. I’d been asleep on one of its dining benches when the sound of a car backfiring woke me up.

  My exclamation sent a toad flying across the table to the bench on the other side, where Olivia was sleeping. It landed on her pillow, right by her face.

  Croak.

  My stepsister cracked open an eyelid and screamed. Diamonds and daffodils scattered in every direction as she flopped around in her sleeping bag like a beached seal. In her panic to get away from the toad, she slid off the bench and onto the floor of the RV with a thud.

  “Girls!” scolded Pearl, hoisting herself up onto her elbow and scowling at us from her makeshift bed on the sofa a few feet away. “What in tarnation is going on?”

  “Toad!” cried Olivia, pointing frantically at the creature that was still squatting on her pillow.

  “LOOK!” I cried, popping out another one as I pointed frantically at the window.

  The two of them turned and gasped. The giant redwood trees had completely vanished. In their place a vast cityscape of neon sprawled out before us, blinking and flashing against the night sky. Hotels and casinos, billboards and pyramids, the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower—I even spotted a pirate ship in a lake-size fountain, and a roller coaster atop a high-rise. Every single square inch was bathed in garish light. I wondered fleetingly how many lightbulbs it took to run a city like this. Millions? Billions? It was as over the top and eye-boggling as Olivia’s gem-encrusted version of Geoffrey’s bedroom.

  “Holy sweet whistling Annie,” whispered Pearl. “What are we doing in Vegas?”

  Great-Aunt Abyssinia poked her head around the half wall that separated the driver’s seat from the rest of the RV. “Ah, sorry, girls—just a little detour,” she said sheepishly, wrestling with a large map. “I made a wrong turn a ways back.”

  Wrong turn? We were in Nevada! Great-Aunt Aby had messed up again!

  “Where’s my car?” asked Pearl, sounding anxious.

  “Safe and sound,” my great-aunt replied, jerking her thumb toward the back of the RV. “I hitched her to the back.”

  Someone behind us honked, and my great-aunt stuck her spiky orange head out the window. “Hey!” she boomed. “Cut me some slack! Senior citizen here!”

  I fished around under the table for my backpack, unzipped its outside pocket, and grabbed my cell phone. I didn’t care if he was sleeping—A.J. needed to know about this. We were in serious trouble here.

  Woke up in Las Vegas! I texted.

  Waaaaaaaa? he texted back a moment later.

  Occupationally challenged FG. I added a frowny face.

  Maybe we should chip in and get her a new wand.

  Ha, ha, I texted back. She doesn’t use one. Just a map from AAA. How far away from Portland are we, anyway?

  Lemme check. There was a short pause, and then: A thousand miles. You have to be at the zoo in six hours. You’ll never make it!

  “We’re a thousand miles from Portland,” I announced, flipping the cell phone shut and returning it to the pocket of my backpack. “We have to be at the zoo in six hours. We’ll never make it.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Great-Aunt Aby sarcastically. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Catriona?”

  “Adventure!” I cried, my voice rising along with the toad count. “The clock is ticking! Have you forgotten about Geoffrey?” I wondered if I should call NASA again and get them to patch me through to my mother. But what could she do besides yell at Great-Aunt Aby from outer space?

  “How could anyone forget the G-Man?” my great-aunt replied. “Charming boy.” She glanced back over her shoulder again and gave me a stern look. “Now, clean up those toads and let me drive.”

  As the RV lurched down the Las Vegas Strip—the backfiring was coming from us, I soon realized—Olivia and Pearl rushed to the big picture window in the living-room area to gawk at the sights. I unzipped my sleeping bag in a fury, climbed out, and began tracking down my latest crop of toads. If anything happens to my little brother because of Great-Aunt Aby’s bungling, I thought, stuffing them in my backpack because the trash was full, I’ll … I’ll … I sat back on my heels. Just exactly what would I do? What could I do, after all? I was just a twelve-year-old toad spitter, when it came right down to it.

  The thought was sobering. Not only was I just a toad spitter, but I was a toad spitter stuck in the middle of the desert with a waitress named Pearl, an incompetent fairy godmother, and a stepsister who was on Area 51’s most-wanted list. Plus one enormous cat. I glanced at Archibald, who was regarding me with his unblinking green eyes.

  The odds of this being a successful rescue attempt were not good.

  “Look!” cried Olivia. “Gondolas!”

  A diamond clinked against the window as we lurched to a stop outside a hotel that looked like it belonged someplace in Italy. The RV backfired again, and I wondered gloomily if I should add “engine trouble” to our long list of handicaps.

  I looked over at Olivia as Great-Aunt Aby consulted her map for the umpteenth time. My stepsister was still gaping out the window. She was actually enjoying this! Lamebrain.

  Struck by a wild idea, I reached down and picked up the diamond on the floor by the window, then slipped it into the pocket of my jeans. What if I were to make a dash for the airport? Surely someone would fly me to Portland in exchange for something as valuable as this. I could easily get to the zoo in time if they did, and surely I could dig up a blond wig and pass for Olivia. At least one of us would have a chance at rescuing Geoffrey that way.

  Time to improvise! As soon as this thought flashed through my head, there
was a sharp movement from the driver’s seat. I turned to see Great-Aunt Aby adjusting the rearview mirror. Maybe she really can read my thoughts, I thought as I caught a glimpse of her magnified eyes staring at me.

  Before she or anyone else could stop me, I grabbed my backpack, opened the side door of the RV, and sprinted into the night.

  CHAPTER 22

  I ran back down the Strip in the opposite direction from the RV, then turned onto a side path that crossed an open expanse of lawn. It felt good to run. I’d been feeling cooped up for days: in my room at home, on the bus, and then in the Red Rocket and the RV. My backpack jounced as I sped down the sidewalk, causing the toads it contained to croak wildly in protest. I ignored them and ran on.

  I hurdled a hedge and cut across a manicured garden, ran through an archway, and found myself indoors. It was unlike any place I’d ever seen indoors, though. It was more like being outdoors—only a fake outdoors. The large, open plaza was surrounded on all four sides by the high walls of a fake Italian building. Graceful arched windows looked down on the restaurant tables spilling out onto the cobblestones below. All of it was spread under a soaring, painted blue sky.

  This is a hotel? I thought. Whoa.

  I slowed to a walk. The plaza was thronged with people, and I figured I could blend in with the crowd, then look for a taxi to the airport once I was sure I’d thrown Great-Aunt Aby off my trail. As long as I kept a low profile and didn’t spill any toads, I’d probably be all right.

  I felt a flicker of guilt at having ditched Great-Aunt Aby. I knew my mother definitely wouldn’t approve. But I thrust the feeling firmly away. Getting back to Portland and saving Geoffrey was the only thing that mattered now.

  I was warm from running, so I peeled back the hood of my sweatshirt. I took the glasses from the pocket of my backpack and put them back on, though, just in case. My picture was still plastered all over the news alongside Olivia’s, after all.

  You’d have never known it was the middle of the night by the number of people who were out. There were college students and retirees, businessmen in suits, people in shorts and swimsuits, and a few in glamorous evening wear. There were even people in costumes, including an Elvis impersonator.