CHAPTER 12

The four of us huddled on the sofa, staring at the TV screen. Geoffrey was oblivious, of course, focused only on his bucket of toads, but the rest of us couldn’t tear ourselves away. The TV crew had caught everything that had just happened and was now filming the reporter as she stood on our front doorstep.

“Stay tuned for more of this breaking story,” she announced solemnly. “Up next: an eyewitness report from tonight’s astounding incident at Hawk Creek Middle School. Was it really a diamond or wasn’t it?”

“I can’t believe this is happening!” moaned Iz. “This is exactly what I’ve been worried about.”

“Do you think I’ll get to be on TV?” asked Olivia hopefully.

I turned and stared at her. My stepsister was actually enjoying this! I knew she liked being the center of attention, but this was different. Didn’t she know what this could mean, not only for her, but for our entire family? Hadn’t she seen what happened to celebrities who were hounded to pieces by the paparazzi?

Worse than that, though, when people got wind of the valuable stuff Olivia was producing, there was bound to be trouble. Had she already forgotten the lab assistant at the hospital who’d tried to pocket one of her diamonds?

I shook my head in disgust. This was all just a game to her—like one of her stupid Barbie dioramas. “Photo Shoot Barbie,” maybe, or “Magazine Cover Barbie.” With Olivia as the star, of course, posing for the camera. She was completely clueless!

The phone in my dad’s office started to ring. So did the cell phone in Iz’s messenger bag on the table in the hall, and so did the one in the pocket of my dad’s pants. He pulled it out and glanced at it. “Seattle number,” he said, frowning. “More reporters, probably. The wire service must have picked up the story.”

Iz ran around the bottom floor of our house, turning off the lights and closing all the curtains and shades. Once the living room was dark, she peeked out through a crack in one of the blinds.

“The news van is still parked at the foot of the driveway!” she fretted. “They’re not going away.”

“They’ll get bored soon enough,” my father assured her. “Especially when all they get from us is ‘No comment.’”

But the news media wasn’t ready to let up, and the phones rang off the hook the whole time Olivia and Geoffrey and I were getting ready for bed. Finally my dad called the police to complain, then unplugged the phones and shut off all the cell phones too.

By the time the ten o’clock news came on, the story had gone national. The stone that the little kid had picked up in the cafeteria had been verified as a diamond, and Olivia was a sensation, her school picture plastered over all the channels.

“I hate that picture,” she grumbled as a narcissus fell from her lips to the living-room coffee table. “My hair is awful. I look stupid.”

“That’s because you are stupid,” I told her as she scooched down the sofa away from me—and the inevitable toads. I moved closer, just to spite her. “Don’t you get it? This is not a good thing, Olivia. Somebody’s going to want those diamonds, just like that guy at the hospital. They’re going to come for you.”

“That’s enough of that,” Iz said sternly, swatting at the toads with an afghan. “Time for bed.”

But I noticed she made sure to lock all the windows and doors before following us upstairs.

There was another uproar, though, when Olivia flat-out refused to share a bedroom with me.

“Be reasonable, sweetheart,” said Iz. She looked exhausted; it had been a very long day.

“What if Cat talks in her sleep?” Olivia protested amid a fretful flurry of forsythia. “I hate toads!”

“It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose!” I retorted, but I couldn’t help smirking as the resulting toad hopped down from my bed and over to her side of the room.

Olivia shrieked and flung one of her pillows at it and the other at me. “I hate you!”

“I hate you, too!” I shouted back.

“Girls!” said Iz. Our fight had woken Geoffrey, who trailed into our room rubbing his eyes. He lit up when he saw the toad-covered floor.

“Frog!” he shouted happily, chasing after them.

“Tim!” called Iz. “Some help in here, please?”

While my dad put the toads outside and Geoffrey back to bed, Iz tried to calm Olivia down. It wasn’t any use. The end result was that I slept on a sleeping bag in my little brother’s room, which was fine with me. I was as glad to be away from Olivia for the night as she was to be away from me. And as for Geoffrey’s snoring, well, that’s what earplugs were for, right?