The Hop (11 page)

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?

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.”

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 as 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.