The Hop (9 page)

TAD WOKE UP IN A PANIC. His diggers scrabbled against something slick and hard. Rain much colder than any he'd ever felt before was thundering down on his back. Human hands tossed and tumbled him with the carrots. He felt the dirt he'd slept in being rinsed away from soft parts between his legs and belly, from the cracks between his diggers, from the crevices around his eyes.

As he was lifted, dripping, with a batch of carrots and lettuce, shaken three times, and put down on a board, Tad stared up at an enormous sky of many glaring white suns.

The board began to jiggle as a sharp thing came flying down.
Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop! Chop!

Bits of carrots exploded around Tad like the end of the world.
Chop! Chop! Chop!

He leaped under the ruffle of a large leaf of lettuce. And there, like a gift, was a little gray slug. Even in his terror, Tad's tongue snapped out. It was a one-blink bite.

He backed farther into the lettuce as human voices called to one another and the sharp thing sliced and diced all around him.

A hand plopped down on a cucumber that was twice as big as Tad and, right in front of his eyes, hacked it into slices. Tad nearly fainted.

Then radishes were diced with dazzling speed, always the sharp thing going, going, going.

Tad tried to stay still, to be as small and lettucey-looking as he could possibly be. His terror wouldn't let him think.

Everything moved so fast. Some pieces of fruit fell on his head. Fingers tossed them all together, Tad being tumbled with everything else, upside down and right side up, until he thought he was going to be sick. Then he was scooped up with lettuce, carrots, cucumber, radishes, and fruit, and dropped in a bowl. He took cover again under a crispy leaf.

Peeking out, Tad saw a few acornlike things rain down from above, and then everything went dark.

TAYLOR PUT DOWN THE PHONE after talking to room service. She'd ordered a pepperoni pizza and a garden salad to be sent to room 3810. She'd never talked to room service before. She'd tried to make her voice sound grown-up and not shake even a little bit.

She sat on her bed hugging her knees, wishing she could talk to her grandmother. But her grandmother was in the hospital trying to get her strength back, and Taylor didn't want to bother her. She imagined Eve's house growing dark as the sun went down. Empty and quiet. If Taylor could magically transport herself home, what would she see? Had the awful thing already happened?

She wandered through the silent suite. It was so strange being all alone. She wasn't exactly scared. She knew she could call her mom.

The sun was starting to go down, and the desert sky was pretty shades of purple, pink, and blue. Although it was still plenty light, Taylor turned on the lamps.

She drifted into her parents' bedroom. Her mother had laid out their rock-and-roll clothes. Taylor stepped into the black flats, the ones her mom was wearing in the picture on the poster. She did a few steps of the rocking kind of dance her mom had done with her dad, then she put the shoes back where she'd found them.

She cinched a wide belt over her jeans and shirt. It was too big on her.

When a knock sounded on the door and a voice called, “Room service!” Taylor whisked off the belt.

The room service person put a tray on the table between the couch and the TV. Taylor picked off a crispy curl of pepperoni and sucked on it, then poked around in her salad looking for things she liked. She'd ordered the salad mainly because the description on the menu made her think of all the things she and her grandmother had planted.

Taylor saw it a split second before it moved.

She screamed, leaping back, banging her leg on the coffee table. The toad bounced right into the middle of her pizza, then hopped again, brushing the can of a soft drink. It scrabbled against the damp napkin, trying to get off the tray.

What was a toad doing in her salad?

Man, it had scared her.

“It's okay,” she said, her voice shaking. “It's okay, little guy.”

It froze, its mouth pressed to the edge of the tray. Taylor could see its heartbeat through the thin papery-looking skin.

Her heart was pounding too. What should she do?

Should she call room service? But what would
they
do? You never knew about people. Sometimes they were mean to small animals.

Should she call her mother? But her parents were in the middle of a rehearsal. They wouldn't want to deal with a toad crisis.

She didn't want it hopping around getting stepped on or lost under the furniture. It could get hurt wandering around a hotel.

She'd seen a little park with a fountain a couple of blocks away as they drove in. She could take him there. He would have water and could catch bugs.

But should she leave the hotel by herself?

Her mother had said not to let anybody in but room service. But she hadn't actually said not to leave the room. And it would just take her a minute. She'd be back before her parents even knew she was gone.

Taylor went into the bathroom and got a washcloth and dampened it, hoping she was doing the right thing. When she came back, the toad had turned around the other way. “Now, it's going to be all right,” she said. “Don't you worry.”

When her shaking hand clamped around him, she felt him scrambling, his feet in the air, struggling so much she almost dropped him.

“Not to worry,” she crooned, shaking almost as much as he was. She wrapped him in the moist cloth, trying not to squish him, and gently deposited him in her backpack.

“We'll just take a little walk,” she said, making sure she had her key card before she left the room.

It was spooky in the vast corridor of the hotel all alone, waiting forever for the elevator, staring out at the dusk, and watching the city of Reno rise up to meet her. The elevator stopped with a bounce that made her stomach bounce too.

In the enormous lobby, there were doors on all four sides. From far away, Taylor thought she could hear the music from her parents' rehearsal. She stood in the middle of the lobby, turning around to study each door. Which one had they come in earlier? That would be the way to the park.

“Oooops,” somebody said, crashing into her. “Sorry.”

“That's okay,” she said, but the woman was already gone.

Although the lobby was jam-packed, Taylor had never felt so alone.

TAD CROUCHED IN TERRIFIED STILLNESS. He had been picked up by a human and put in some kind of dark nest! And now he was swaying along bumpity-bump. He rose up on his diggers and peered out of an opening. The music he'd heard in his winter dreams thudded somewhere far away, and he felt a wisp of hope. Was it possible, in spite of everything that had gone wrong, that he had somehow gotten to the right place?

He saw humans, more humans than he had ever imagined. And, most amazing, he saw a flat toad drifting in the air, only this toad was as big as a human. He saw another one! And another one! They were flying through the air everywhere.

Then he got turned a different way and he saw…could it be? Only a few hops away. The queen!

“Oh kiss me, moonbeams!” he cried. It was truly the queen. As Seer had promised, she wore the special shapes that marked her as the human he was to kiss. She was dark on top, like a crow, and she
was
looking right at him.
“Queen!” he cried. “Over here! Over here!”

She waved.

He waved back. “Quick!”

She came close as if knowing what was supposed to happen. She was so near. She bent down, her face only inches from his, looking at him with dark eyes. She said something he didn't understand. She was only a tongue flick away.

Moondoggies!

He tried not to think about what would happen. He thought only of home and the pond. Of Seer and his friends.

He took aim.

Then the nest jerked and he tumbled to the bottom. By the time he scrambled back to the opening, the queen was gone.

Nooooo!
He had to get back to her. He dug and scrambled, hopped and lurched, trying to break free.

But he just swayed out into the night air, getting farther and farther from her every second.

He watched through the opening, trying to mark the path he was taking so he could find his way back when he got out of the nest. But soon all the shapes and lights became blurs, in spite of his efforts to keep them straight. He was in a humanville without end, coverings everywhere. He saw none of the markers that he usually used to find his way around. No iris spear chewed off at the top by a rabbit. No interesting stones half buried in the grass. No sandy path pointing the way up Cold Bottom Road.

He was terrified—though he had to admit that the gentle, rocking rhythm as the human carried him along in the nest didn't feel scary. But she was taking him away from where he needed to be.

Soon he heard a sound like hard rain on the pond back home. The rocking stopped, and Tad was set down with a bump.

Human hands lifted him out into the warm night air.

He had never seen anything like it. Enormous lit-up shapes loomed over him. Lights pulsed and chased each other. Beams of color moved like blowing tree branches.

Tad was deposited, gently, on the edge of a gigantic spewing pond. Water shot up into the sky until it touched the stars. And when it splashed back down, the drops of moisture felt wonderful on his back.

He sat frozen, trying to imagine he was the color of the covering on which he sat. He hoped he was becoming invisible.

But the human was talking, and she seemed to be talking to him. Her face was close to his, as the queen's had been, and Tad saw himself reflected in her pale eyes. What could she be saying?

He thought maybe she was encouraging him to do something. But what? Not get in the spewing pond, he hoped. He was a garden toad, not a water frog.

A cricket sang nearby. He was very hungry. But he'd have to get in the grass to catch the cricket, and he'd have to move to get in the grass, and he was too terrified to move.

He felt the girl's fingers closing around him. He tried to escape, but it was too late.

She put him in the grass and kept on talking. Did she want him to eat a cricket?

Tad's tongue flicked out. The cricket had a strange taste, but it made him feel stronger. He hopped through the grass. He found three Japanese beetles and four mosquitoes. And the next time he noticed, he was alone. The human had left.

She had been a kind human, taking him to food and water. But where in creation was he? He turned in a circle, looking at the bright shapes piercing the pale, tired-looking stars.

He had to get back to the place of flying toads, the place of the music. He had to get back to the queen. And so he began. One hop, and then another.

And another.

And another.

And another.