by Paul Tobin
Anyway, about those toads. There was suddenly nowhere to step without stepping on a toad.
“My dad is Spectro-9,” Kip said. The toads now numbered in the hundreds. They were gathered around my legs. They were racing toward me from all directions. They were perched atop a newspaper dispenser for the Polt Pigeon, our free weekly newspaper, and there were at least twenty toads hopping all over the roof of a parked car.
“Spectro-9?” I asked. The toads all croaked at the same time. Maybe in response?
“Head of spies for the Red Death Tea Society,” Kip said. The toads all croaked again. They were not very musical. They were comparable to our Polt Middle School Orchestra, which has won several awards, such as the “Good Try!” award and the “At Least Nobody Cried” award, the last of which was not strictly true.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked Kip. Was this a prelude to a kidnapping? Were the toads working for the Red Death Tea Society?
“I don’t want to be a spy anymore,” Kip said. “I’ve been watching you and Nate, and I feel bad. It’s almost like Maculte and Luria are trying to kill you.”
“It’s exactly like that,” I said, dodging a disintegrator ray, nudging some toads aside.
“So, I want to be on your side now,” Kip said. A traffic light, no more than three feet away, was caught in one of the rays from the pistols Luria was firing, and was disintegrated. I dove behind a parked car so fast that I thumped into it and dislodged several toads from its roof. Two of them fell on my head. And stayed.
“You want to be on my side?” I asked Kip. It didn’t seem to be a wise move on his part. My side was wearing soggy shoes on its feet, and toads on its head.
“The side of justice!” Kip said, making it sound dramatically noble. He raised one fist into the air and shook it at Luria, yelling, “The world does not tremble at your treachery, you scoundrels! We shall prevail!” He used the same voice he uses when acting in our school plays, such as when he’d played the lead in Loch Ness Locker Room, another play that Liz Morris and I wrote, this one concerning the Loch Ness monster trying out for our football team, the Crimson Pterodactyls. The play was a musical and should be considered a classic, even considering the fire that broke out, which was mostly not our fault.
The point is, Kip was obviously suffering from a bad case of overacting, and he had toads all around him, although I could hardly blame him for the thing about the toads, since I myself was suffering through the exact same crisis.
The car behind me fell to dust, victim of a disintegrator ray.
The helicopter swooped lower.
The winds were vicious.
More toads fell on my face.
Clip clop. Clip clop! CLIP CLOP!
It was the sound of my brother the zebra coming back down the street. Fast. I could only assume that Nate had somehow gained control of Steve and was riding to my rescue, seconds away from defeating the Red Death Tea Society’s helicopter and more importantly getting all the toads off my face.
Clip clop. Clip clop! CLIP CLOP!
“Delphine! Help me!” Nate yelled, hanging from my brother’s ear as the zebra raced past, disappearing into the distance.
The winds from the helicopter were almost battering me over. A motor scooter that was parked along the sidewalk tipped over, nearly crushing a group of toads that were forced to jump onto my face in order to avoid the toppling machine. There were so many toads. Too many toads. Hundreds of toads. All of them gathering around me. Gathering all over me. They smelled like wet toast, and I felt like I was sinking in quicksand, except it wasn’t sand: it was toads. Is “quicktoads” a thing? It seemed like it was, and that I was destined to be the world’s first victim.
“Get these toads off me!” I yelled to Kip, with the webbed feet of several toads slipping into my mouth when I spoke. Kip leaped to my rescue, or at least he tried, but the wind from the helicopter was so strong that it was blowing toads like leaves in the wind, and while it’s somewhat enjoyable to stand in a strong wind and let leaves whoosh all around you, it’s less fun when the leaves are replaced by irritated toads. Again and again, Kip was knocked back by all the toads whirling in the tremendous winds. He stretched out a hand, trying to reach me, but I was sinking lower, lower, plummeting into a pile of toads that was at least six feet deep, and I am five feet and two inches tall.
The math was against me.
The toads were against me.
I couldn’t breathe.
I was struggling.
I was drowning.
My breath was . . .
. . . hey.
I wasn’t drowning?
So, as it turns out, if you take a pill that protects you against drowning in a flooded school, it also protects you against drowning in a pile of toads, should such an occasion arise. Still, I couldn’t move, because I was packed tight in the writhing mass of toads, trapped in a vise of toad legs, and toad bodies, and toad mouths making toad noises, none of which seemed to be the toads saying they were sorry for all the bother.
“Piffle!” I said, when more toad feet slipped into my mouth.
“Seriously?” I said, when a toad, waddling across my face, put its foot up my nose.
“Haa-chooo!” I sneezed, because I am apparently allergic to having a toad’s foot up my nose.
I went into a sudden burst of sneezing that scooted some of the toads back, allowing me to momentarily surface just in time to see that the helicopter had landed and Maculte and Luria were walking closer, carrying pistols in one hand and teacups in their other, and since they were drinking from the teacups I guessed I knew where I stood.
It wasn’t the tea for me.
It was the guns.
“Hello,” Maculte said.
Sir Jakob Maculte, the twenty-seventh lord of May-berry Castle and the leader of the Red Death Tea Society, would look very distinguished except for the odd gleam in his eyes. It’s the same gleam as that of a boy pulling wings off flies or tossing cats into a river, those same eyes you see in the documentaries about crazy dictators who destroy entire nations in their mad quest for power.
Maculte has gray hair.
Green eyes.
High cheekbones, with a wide, thin mouth almost forever in a smirk.
The fine teacup was held in long, almost skeletal fingers.
His skin is gray. Not pale, though. Just . . . gray. Like it absorbs light.
His voice sounds rather monotone, but with traces of a sneer. It’s a voice that makes me shiver. It’s a voice that grates on my nerves like toads on my face.
That’s what his voice normally sounds like, anyway. But right then as he opened his mouth to speak, his voice sounded like the high-pitched wail of a newborn baby. Or, more precisely, Maculte sounded like a man who’d been about to say something but was interrupted when a terrier leaped up and bit his butt at the exact same time that a bee landed on his neck and began stinging.
Bosper and Melville had come to my rescue.
“Thanks, you two!” I said.
And then sank back down beneath the toads.
My phone rang.
Liz again.
“Were you serious about that stuff before?” she asked.
“Yes. And I’m drowning in toads.”
“Hmmm,” she said.
It was then that I saw the note. It was one of Nate’s notes, the ones he writes and then leaves in places he predicts I’ll be. It was a struggle to reach it, because I had to move my arm through a huge mound of toads that was shifting in every direction, which is something . . . you will have to believe me . . . that a huge mound of toads does constantly. This meant the note was forever moving as one toad kicked it to the left, and then another toad kicked it to the right, and there was one toad that nibbled on it for a couple of seconds before I finally managed to grab it.
“You still there?” Liz asked on the phone.
“Yeah,” I said, unfolding the note.
Liz said, “Are there things you haven’t been te
lling me?”
“Yeah,” I said, spitting toad legs out of my mouth. The toads were glaring at me like it was my fault.
“It’s okay to have secrets,” Liz said.
“Is it?” I said.
“Yes. But not from your best friend.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So,” Liz said. “I want to know what’s been going on in your life. Why did you make that obstacle course in your backyard? Why did I find that ‘adventure kit’ beneath your bed? Why do you always warn me against drinking tea? I have more questions. Millions of them. You will come to my house and answer them. I can serve cake if you like. And we can talk about space travel. And we can talk about if Nate is your boyfriend, and we will—”
“Nnay uzz nahh buyy boyfwehh!” I said.
“Uh. What?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I had a toad’s leg in my mouth. I was saying that Nate is not my boyfriend. And I will explain everything. Especially if you serve cake. But right now I’m sort of fighting a deranged madman, so can it be later?”
“Tonight,” Liz said. And she hung up.
“Tonight,” I said. “And you guys aren’t invited.” I was talking to the toads. They squirmed in response. Or at least they squirmed. They were extremely talented at squirming and it was making me feel squirmy. They smelled like soggy cereal and they felt like, well . . . soggy cereal. They certainly didn’t smell or feel like anyone who should be invited to a “cake and confessions” party with my best friend.
I heaved a big sigh.
It was relief.
Ever since meeting Nate, I’d been hiding things from Liz. It would be good to get them out in the open, even if she thought I was crazy. Which she would.
Speaking of crazy, I read the note in my hands.
It said,
"Delphine, I've calculated a 96.8 percent chance that you will be buried in toads when you read this."
“You . . . calculated . . . this?” I said, the exasperation in my voice making the toads stir uneasily. I was of the opinion that if you believe one of your friends is going to be buried in toads, you do something to stop it from ever happening; you don’t just write notes about it.
The note said,
"By now, you're also probably being attacked by the Red Death Tea Society. They are a nuisance."
“Yes,” I said. “They are. But at least they don’t let their friends get buried in toads.” Outside of my mound of toads, somewhere in the non-toad distance, I could hear Bosper calling my name, and I could hear the distinctive cry of Maculte being stung on his left arm (it sounds like . . . “Grgargh!”) and Luria on her right leg (it sounds like “Flargrah!”) and also of Maculte being bitten by Bosper on his right leg, which sounds like, “Argggh! This dog just bit my right leg!” Past these various cries of agony I could also hear the disintegrator rays being fired, several police sirens wailing, an assortment of car alarms, a roaring wind, Kip Luppert yelling, and the clip-clop sounds of a zebra running past.
It all sounded very chaotic.
I kept reading the note.
It said,
"I'm sure you've figured out by now that I dropped the 'Toad Finder' pill in the orange juice that you drank this morning."
“I had not figured that out,” I confided to a toad whose leg was in my mouth.
"So that's why you're covered in toads,"
the note said. There was a drawing of a toad, in case I did not know what a toad looked like, even though . . . as Nate had correctly predicted . . . I was entirely covered in toads and therefore had an excess of available reference.
"There's a reason for this,"
the note continued.
“It better be a good one,” I told the note.
The note said,
"For the last week, I've been putting carefully structured bosons in Polt's water supply. Bosons are subatomic particles, and I created these particular ones so that they'll adhere to toads. Now that the toads are covered in bosons, the particles will act as a force field geared so that the toads can't be harmed by any disintegrator weapons from the Red Death Tea Society. And, since the toads are now attracted to you by the 'Toad Finder' pill I put in your orange juice, you're effectively wearing a disintegration-proof coat!"
There was a smiley face on the note.
“I’m wearing a toad coat,” I told the note, wishing I had a pen so that I could draw a frowny face.
"Oh,"
the note said.
"And, one more thing. Here's a 'Power' pill, so that you'll be strong enough to move around in the toads."
There was a pill adhered to the note, with
"take this"
written next to it.
“Oh,” I said. “And, one more thing for you, Nate. If these boson things can deflect disintegrator rays, maybe you could, I don’t know . . . give them to ME, instead of giving them to toads and then making the toads stick to me.”
Still, it was nice to know that I was immune to the disintegrator rays, even if that meant I was covered in toads. I swallowed the “Power” pill and immediately felt a surge of strength bursting through my veins, making my muscles quiver with delight, as if I could bust down walls. I’d been stumbling along the sidewalk, barely able to stand, but now I felt like I could leap over a building or kick a car through a wall. A toad coat was no problem.
Wiping a few toads from my face, I thought about how it truly did feel like I could kick a car like a football, and I thought about how Maculte and Luria were firing their pistols at me, and it seemed like I could combine these two seemingly unrelated facts into one big solution.
I could kick a car at them.
“Incoming!” I yelled out to Bosper and Melville. Bosper immediately went bounding to the side and Melville buzzed herself a few more feet into the air, though I could hear the reluctance in her voice, because she really does enjoy stinging people.
Then, I kicked a car.
It made a noise like “brrrCRUNCH” and slid back a couple of feet, no more.
But now my foot was caught in the car door. I’d kicked right through it.
With my foot stuck, I tumbled onto my back, irritating a few toads.
A zebra went racing past my head, clipping and clopping, stepping on my hair.
“Steve!” I yelled.
But then I saw another zebra. And another. There were zebras all over. Well, there were only five of them, but that’s a lot of zebras to find on the streets of Polt on a warm sunny afternoon, or really anytime at all.
“What now?” I said.
“Stripy horses!” Bosper said, bouncing in place, excited.
“They’re not technically horses,” Nate called out from one of the zebras, hanging off its ear. “Though horses and zebras do both belong to the Equidae family, and to the Equus genus. Despite this, they are different species, with horses being E. ferus caballus, and zebras E. quagga. The difference is—”
“Not pertinent, Nate!” I said, pulling my leg from the car door. A group of toads, patiently waiting for me, immediately jumped back onto my leg. I scrambled to my feet, eager to get back in the fight, but I still wasn’t accustomed to my new strength and basically shot myself off the sidewalk like a cannon, smashing backward into a mailbox and wrenching it from the sidewalk.
“Bzzz?” Melville asked, flying closer.
“I’m fine!” I said as all the toads hopped back to me, sticking to me like glue. It was the strangest definition of “fine” I’ve ever spoken.
Picking up the crushed mailbox, I hurled it at Maculte. My aim, as expected, was perfect. There’s a section of my obstacle course where I stand on an unsteady platform and throw various things (baseballs, shoes, etc.) through a tire that’s hanging from our most climbable oak tree. At first I was not particularly talented, although the broken window wasn’t really my fault, owing to how it shattered so easily. After a few days of practice, though, my aim was better, and so it was no great chore to toss a mailbox at the leader of the Red Death Tea Soc
iety.
“Hah!” I said, watching the mailbox zoom closer to Maculte.
“Don’t be absurd,” Maculte said, disintegrating the mailbox with a blast from his pistol.
“I’m wearing a coat made of toads!” I said. “How can I not be absurd?” Using my new tremendous strength, I leaped to the attack, looking like a comet, except instead of trailing glowing gas and dust I was trailing a stream of perplexed amphibians. It was all very dramatic, especially with my red hair, and it would’ve been even more sensational if I hadn’t misjudged my jump and landed on Kip Luppert and knocked him out.
“Oh,” he said, in a resigned sort of way as he fell. I suppose if he’d been watching me for the past few months then he would’ve known that, sooner or later, I’d be accidentally knocking him out. It’s sort of my thing.
“Piffle!” I said, sprawling, with toads popping off me like popcorn.
“Bzzz!” Melville said, hurrying past me to attack Maculte and Luria, because she knew I was vulnerable. But my bee was still twenty feet away from the leaders of the Red Death Tea Society, and I could see Luria raising her weapon to fire, and I could see what was going to happen.
I was going to lose Melville.
It’s true that my bee is incredibly good at dodging. Insects see time at different speeds. To them, humans seem slow and plodding, which is why they’re so good at dodging us. But . . . the disintegrator ray moved at the speed of light, and there’s no dodging that, no matter how talented you are.
Luria’s finger was tightening on the trigger.
Melville was still nineteen feet away from her.
Speeding to her doom.
Luria’s finger was squeezing.
Melville was eighteen feet away from her.
I yelled, “Melville! Look out!”
She stopped and looked back to me, saying, “Bzzz?”
Yelling at her was the worst thing I could’ve done. Now she was hovering in one spot, looking back to me, wondering what I was worried about.
Luria’s gun was making the “wzwzwzwz” noise they make at the instant they’re about to fire.