Once Upon a Toad

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  “Your great-aunt may not have a cell phone, but I do,” said Pearl, fishing it out of her purse. It was bright pink, naturally. “That friend of yours in Houston is one smart kid. He tracked me down somehow and had us on your trail in no time.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were home. Dad and Iz burst out the front door and came flying down the porch steps when they saw the Red Rocket pull into the driveway. The FBI was right behind them.

  “You’re safe!” they kept repeating, hugging and kissing us despite our collective odor.

  “Congratulations, girls,” said Agent Salgado. “You did an amazing job today.”

  Agent Reynolds nodded. “Foolhardy but brave. Your kidnappers are both in custody.”

  “As well they should be,” said Pearl, tucking her arm through Bald Elvis’s.

  “Warden’ll be throwing a party in the county jail,” he added in agreement.

  “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” asked Agent Salgado, taking out his notebook.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Go right ahead.”

  Everyone stared at me.

  “What?” I said defensively.

  Olivia poked me in the back. I turned around and she pointed to my mouth. “You’re not—you stopped—there aren’t any—”

  “Toads?” I looked at the ground in surprise. She was right. There wasn’t an amphibian in sight. “Hey, wait a sec,” I said, looking back at her. “No diamonds, either.”

  Nothing was coming out of either of our mouths but words.

  “When did it stop?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “We were so busy escaping I didn’t notice.”

  “Me neither.” I tried to think back. Were there toads in the Red Rocket? I wasn’t entirely sure, but I didn’t think so. I did remember that big one at the SUV, though, when I pulled Olivia out, the one that I thought maybe had—

  I looked over at Great-Aunt Aby. She spread her big hands wide, the picture of innocence.

  “Let’s get you kids cleaned up,” said Iz. “G-Man, you’re going straight into the tub.”

  As we started up the front steps, a taxi screeched around the corner of our dead-end street and pulled into our driveway behind the Red Rocket. The door opened and Dr. Dalton leaped out. Olivia froze. So did I.

  “Which one of you let the air out of my tires back at the zoo?” he screeched.

  Agent Reynolds edged quietly behind her partner.

  “Never mind,” the government scientist continued. “Olivia Haggerty, you are hereby ordered to accompany me to Area Fifty-one!” He flapped a document at her. “You, too, Catriona Starr.”

  Olivia and I exchanged a glance. I folded my arms across my chest. “You’re not taking us anywhere,” I told him flatly.

  Olivia folded her arms too. “Not today, not ever.” She opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. “Check it out—no diamonds.”

  “And no toads, either,” I said, hooking my fingers around the edges of my mouth and stretching it wide to show him. Cat Starr, Toad Huntress was gone for good.

  “Looks like the girls are cured, Dr. Dalton,” said my father, putting his arms around our shoulders. “Not much use to you now, are they?”

  The government scientist’s face got very red. He started to sputter. “It’s some kind of a trick.”

  “No trick,” said Agent Salgado. “It’s true. They’re back to normal.”

  Bald Elvis advanced toward him. “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” he told Dr. Dalton.

  “You can say that again,” said Great-Aunt Abyssinia, lumbering up behind the two of them. Dr. Dalton had to tip his head back to look up at her. “If I were you,” she said, glowering down at him, “I’d leave before someone plays a real trick and turns you into a toad—or worse.”

  Dr. Dalton quailed. Clutching his now-useless document, he backed away, muttering to himself as he climbed into the taxi. As it pulled out of the driveway, he rolled down the window and leaned out. “You haven’t seen the last of me!” he warned.

  My little brother pulled his finger out of his mouth. “Go away,” he said distinctly. “Nobody likes you.”

  We all turned to gape at him, and Iz burst into delighted laughter. She swung him up in the air and kissed the top of his head, which was about the only barf-free spot on him. “Well said, Geoffrey.”

  “With a G!” he crowed.

  “You bet, buddy,” said my father, putting his arm around me. “Come on, Kit-Cat, let’s go inside.”

  EPILOGUE

  A ripple of excitement ran through the crowded auditorium at Hawk Creek Middle School. Mr. Morgan rapped his baton on his music stand, then raised it in the air.

  The other four Hawkwinds and I sat poised, awaiting his signal. We were a quintet now, instead of a quartet. Connor Dixon had been practicing like crazy ever since what he called our Woodwinds to the Rescue adventure, and Mr. Morgan had finally relented and let him join. Connor still wasn’t all that great, but at the rate he was improving, he soon would be.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted my family in the front row. Great-Aunt Aby was seated at the end, taking up two chairs and blocking the view for several rows behind her. Geoffrey was on her lap, clutching his blanket with one hand and playing with the rhinestone cactus links of her eyeglass chain with the other. Iz beamed at me proudly, and Olivia waggled her ring finger. She’d gotten the silver and aquamarine band back from her mother the day we rescued Geoffrey and hadn’t taken it off since. I waggled mine back at her. We might never see eye to eye on everything, but the two of us were getting along a whole lot better these days.

  Mr. Morgan’s baton came down, and my friends and I launched into the opening bars of “Sheep May Safely Graze,” part of my favorite Bach cantata. It was one of the first pieces I ever played with the Houston Youth Symphony. As the first dreamy notes of its melody floated out over our audience, I actually heard a few sighs of delight. It has that effect on people.

  My father held up his cell phone. Back in Houston, my friend A.J. D’Angelo was relaying our final recital of the year—via a legitimate NASA satellite link, not the FGPS—to the International Space Station.

  This time next week my mother and I would both be home in Texas. I couldn’t believe my stay here in Oregon was almost over. Three months had seemed like an eternity when I’d first arrived, but the rest of the school year had flown by after what had indisputably been the strangest week of my life.

  It had been a relief to settle back into a normal routine. Olivia and I were in the spotlight for a while in the news and around Portland, but everyone gradually lost interest when they realized there was nothing to see but us—just two ordinary middle school stepsisters.

  Eventually most people stopped believing anything had ever happened. “Publicity stunt,” some called it. “An elaborate hoax, like Sasquatch,” said others. “Spontaneous adolescent aberration” was the final verdict from the specialists at the research hospital, who’d poked and prodded at us a bit, but in the end were completely baffled. With no evidence of diamonds or toads, the only diagnosis they could offer was “perfectly normal.”

  Even my Hawkwinds friends weren’t convinced that Great-Aunt Aby was really my fairy godmother. I was pretty sure they thought I’d made that part up, in spite of the diamonds and toads, and I’d decided not to try and convince them otherwise. It was better that way. A.J. knew the truth, of course, and so did Olivia, but my great-aunt’s secret was safe with them. Especially Olivia. She was still a little intimidated by Great-Aunt Aby, particularly after I told her what had happened with my mother and the feathers.

  After her short, disastrous career as Diamond Girl, Olivia was heartily sick of the limelight. Especially once she’d gotten an up-close-and-personal look at the downside of being a celebrity. No “Photo Shoot Barbie” or “Magazine Cover Barbie” dioramas for her. She even traded in her spangled Hawk Creek Tappers costume for a spot in our middle school’s chorus instead.

  Her friendship with Piper Philbin
cooled as well, thanks to Piper’s boneheaded move at the Penguinarium, and the fact that she made the mistake of calling me Catbox on our first day back at school. Olivia really lit into her for that.

  “She saved my life, you fleabrain!” she told her.

  There was no more duct tape on the bedroom floor or hints about me going home to Houston, either, and Olivia even made room for my clothes in her closet.

  From time to time my stepsister still got out her glue gun and Barbies, but she had bigger projects to focus on. The diamonds had seen to that. Not only were all of our college savings accounts fully funded now, but a construction crew had also started on the new master bedroom suite in the attic. Olivia and her mom were spending a lot of time together these days looking at paint chips and fabric samples and stuff like that, and Olivia even offered to help me redecorate my new bedroom, once Dad and Iz moved upstairs.

  Funny thing about the diamonds, though—most of them had disappeared. I don’t mean stolen, I mean disappeared as in vanished! Poof! Gone!

  The ones in the SUV were never found, nor were the ones that Dr. Dalton had confiscated. It was as if they’d melted into thin air. The only ones that stuck around were the ones in Olivia’s diorama of Geoffrey’s room and the ones we’d given to our friends.

  “They were the only ones created with a truly generous spirit,” Great-Aunt Abyssinia told us, with a significant look at my stepsister.

  My great-aunt had hit the road again the day after Olivia and Geoffrey and I returned home. So had Bald Elvis, who hitched a ride back to Las Vegas with Pearl.

  “We promised you a round-trip vacation, remember?” she told him, patting her beehive. They’d left in a cloud of dust and with the strains of “It’s Now or Never” blaring on the Red Rocket’s radio.

  Three weeks later we got a postcard from them. On the front was a picture of the Tunnel of Love Wedding Chapel. On the back was a note: “Just married! Thanks for the wedding present. Love, Pearl and Herman.”

  Herman? I’ll always think of him as Bald Elvis.

  The two of them bought the Pie-in-the-Sky Diner from Frank with the diamonds we’d given them, and last we heard, they’d added an eighth pie to the menu in honor of Great-Aunt Abyssinia. It’s called the SuperGloop Special. Pearl had grown fond of my great-aunt’s disgusting green breakfast drink on that wild road trip.

  I took another, more sedate road trip when Great-Aunt Aby showed up again on Memorial Day weekend and whisked me back to the redwoods.

  “Can’t have you cheated out of a proper look at one of our nation’s finest parks,” she told me.

  The two of us had a great time. We hiked all over and went to ranger programs and saw Roosevelt elk and made s’mores every single night. The best part, though, was what happened on our last morning together.

  Great-Aunt Aby woke me early, just before dawn. “Shhhh!” she whispered. “Don’t wake Archibald.”

  As if anything could, I thought darkly. It turns out Archie snores almost as loudly as my little brother.

  We dressed quietly and crept out of the RV, then onto a trail I didn’t recall seeing before. The forest was quiet, except for the occasional birdcall, and its thick carpet of pine needles muffled the sound of our footsteps as we walked along. I didn’t know when I’d seen anything prettier, what with the trees shrouded in the early-morning mist and the rhododendrons in full bloom, their bright blossoms glowing like gems.

  The trail grew steeper, and soon we were huffing and puffing. After a while Great-Aunt Aby turned off onto a side path I would have passed right by if she hadn’t spotted it. She sure had sharp eyes for someone who called herself a senior citizen.

  Again we climbed. Finally the path leveled off, and a few minutes later we emerged into a clearing. There was a flat tree stump in the center of it. I followed my great-aunt over to it and sat down, panting.

  I reached for my water bottle and took a sip, then looked at my surroundings. Redwoods, taller than any I’d seen the entire weekend, ringed the clearing like a circle of silent guardians. The grass underfoot still glistened with dew, but the sun was rising higher now, melting away the mist, and shafts of light streamed through the canopy of green overhead like sunlight pouring through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral. The branches of the redwoods stretched so high they seemed to touch the clouds, and I wondered idly if my mother could see them from outer space.

  “You bet,” said Great-Aunt Aby, reading my mind again, a practice I still found kind of unnerving. “And in a minute she’ll be able to see you, too.”

  She rummaged in her day pack and pulled out her new laptop. After the fiasco with Geoffrey, my mother had insisted she get one. Plus an e-mail address too: ABYCNU@FGmail.com. No more going completely off the grid.

  “A.J. helped me with this,” she explained as she booted it up and clicked away at the keyboard. Suddenly a familiar face appeared on-screen.

  “Mom!” I exclaimed.

  “Surprise!” she replied. “Happy belated birthday, honey!”

  We waved at each other, beaming.

  “You cut your hair!” my mother said, and I nodded, running my fingers through it. Iz had taken me to her salon after the kidnapping to fix the mess I’d made of it with the nail scissors. It looked a little better, but I still didn’t like it very much. “It looks cute, honey.”

  I shrugged.

  “We decided we didn’t want to delay the ceremony any longer,” Great-Aunt Aby told me, her big teeth peeking out and looking particularly pleased with themselves.

  She was right; the ceremony was lovely. Solemn, but joyous at the same time. I’d been half expecting something weird, but it wasn’t at all. In fact, the only weird thing in the clearing was the sight of my great-aunt in hiking shorts and kneesocks.

  At her request I unclasped my necklace and held it in my upturned palm. Then my mother began to speak, and her voice had that same oddly formal tone as the note she’d left behind under my pillow.

  “Juniper for the protection of Catriona Skye Starr,” she said as Great-Aunt Aby ran her finger over the etched image on the front of the charm. “Gold for strength and wisdom. A circle to keep her from ever straying far”—my great-aunt traced her finger around the edge of the gold disk—“and a chain to forever bind her.”

  “Bind her to my heart and keep her safe from harm; help her learn the value of this ancient golden charm,” said Great-Aunt Aby, picking up the necklace, which flashed in the sun. “Each link in the chain will hold her fast, as it has for a thousand suns; each link in the chain will hold me, too, from now till our time is done.”

  “Hold fast!” said my mother, smiling at me as Great-Aunt Aby replaced my necklace and took me by the hands, giving them a reassuring squeeze.

  “Hold fast!” she echoed.

  “You are linked forever to your family, now, Catriona Skye,” my mother continued.

  And then she blew me a kiss from outer space and Great-Aunt Aby hugged me, and that was that. No wand, no flying sparks, no fairy dust.

  After we said good-bye to my mother, my great-aunt put her laptop away and we hiked back down to the RV, where she made me a special belated-birthday breakfast.

  “I got the recipe from one of those shows on the Food Network,” she told me, whipping up a perfectly normal—and delicious—coffee cake. “Figured if we’re going to be spending more time together, I’d better step up my culinary game.”

  We toasted each other over generous slices, me with a glass of orange juice and Great-Aunt Aby with—what else?—SuperGloop. As I fed a piece of coffee cake to Archibald, I happened to glance up at the shelf above the table. There was a new addition to the snow globe collection.

  “Hey!” I said, spotting a tiny gold plaque on the front of it that read DIAMOND GIRL AND TOAD SISTER.

  “Never mind that for now,” Great-Aunt Aby replied, reaching for it with a large hand. She shoved it behind the Red Riding Hood one, but I managed to catch a glimpse of the two figures inside. I frowned. The
tall one had curly blond hair and the smaller one was dark-haired. She was holding something lumpy and green, while the taller one held something that glittered.

  Archibald blinked at me and twitched his tail.

  “Have some more coffee cake,” said Great-Aunt Aby, passing me the platter.

  Later that night, as we sat around our final campfire toasting a few last marshmallows, I ran my fingers idly through my hair. “I wish I had my long hair back,” I said with a sigh. “I’m sick of looking like a boy.”

  My great-aunt’s eyes glinted behind her glasses. “Are you now?” she said softly. “Be careful what you wish for, Catriona. Very careful. Beauty is as beauty does.”

  I snorted. “That’s what mom always says.”

  “A wise woman, your mother.”

  “So, what was all that about me being linked to my family?” I asked, changing the subject. “During the ceremony, I mean. Mom always told me she didn’t have any family except for you.”

  “Did she, now?” replied Great-Aunt Aby mildly.

  “I mean, I get the feeling there’s more to the story.”

  She looked amused. “There’s always more to the story, Catriona,” she replied. “That’s the wonderful thing about stories. But your mother needs to tell you this one.”

  That was nearly a month ago, and I’d been waiting for the rest of the story ever since. As Mr. Morgan pointed his baton at me and I raised my bassoon to my lips for the cantata’s final movement, I reminded myself to ask my mother about it next week, when I saw her back in Houston.

  “I’m going to miss you,” said Rani after the concert as we gathered in the cafeteria for brownie sundaes. She gave me a hug.

  I hugged her back. “I’ll miss you, too,” I told her. “Maybe you can come visit me in Texas sometime.”

  “That would be cool!”

  “No fair! I want to come too!” said Rajit.

  I looked up at him. When had he gotten so tall? He must have gone through a growth spurt this spring. And had his eyelashes always been so thick?