CHAPTER 17

“Ouch! You’re on my hair!” whispered Olivia, elbowing me sharply.

“Quit it!” I elbowed her back.

“Shut up! You’re making toads!”

“You shut up!” I whispered.

“Get those things away from me!” she said between clenched teeth. “I mean it, Cat.”

The truce was over.

I fumbled around in the darkness for the escaped toads, then stuffed them into the pillowcase I’d brought with me from Connor’s laundry room for just that purpose. Olivia and I were wedged into the trunk of Connor’s older brother’s car, covered with a blanket. The blanket was itchy and smelled like Peanut, their dog, and there was barely room for one of us under it, let alone both of us plus Connor’s saxophone case.

So far I was less than thrilled with Connor’s Woodwinds to the Rescue plan. Not that I’d been able to come up with anything better.

“How else are you going to get over to the Kumars’?” he’d asked, when Olivia explained our predicament. “You can’t walk, you can’t take a cab—and the bus? No way. All of Portland is looking for you two.”

Aidan Dixon’s girlfriend lived a few doors down from Rani and Rajit, and since he went over to her house most evenings to hang out anyway, it was easy enough for Connor to concoct a reason to need a ride.

“I’ll tell my parents I’m thinking about auditioning for Hawkwinds,” he said. “They’ll be thrilled—my mom’s been bugging me about it. I’ll just tell her that the Kumars offered to practice with me.”

Getting Rani and Rajit on board wasn’t easy at first. Connor really had to lean on them hard to get them to agree to see me. They were still pretty ticked off about the talent show.

“She says if you just let her come over, she can explain,” he told them when he called, reading the note I’d prepared. “She promises.”

My friends softened when Connor told them about Geoffrey, and by the time he got around to Olivia and Area 51, Rani especially was her old self again. She asked him to put me on the line.

“Cat, are you sure you’re not missing a golden opportunity here?” she asked. “Olivia would look pretty good in a cage.”

I almost laughed at that. But I wasn’t quite ready to reveal my secret.

Afterward, Connor sneaked Olivia and me into the garage, then helped us hide in the trunk of his brother’s car. The plan was for us to stay there until Aidan went into his girlfriend’s house, then Connor would let us out.

I felt bad about leaving the laundry hamper full of toads in his basement, but I’d explain soon enough and Connor could probably get to them before his mother did. Mrs. Dixon is really nice, and the last thing I wanted was to give her heart failure or something.

Now we were bumping and swerving our away up to Council Crest, where the Kumars lived. I started to feel a little queasy, which reminded me of Geoffrey. I missed him so much, even if he was a little Barf Bucket.

“Is a saxophone really a woodwind?” Olivia whispered into the total darkness of the trunk, her words carrying the sweet scent of hyacinth.

It seemed like a random question, but I knew the way my stepsister’s mind worked. She was thinking about Connor and trying to figure out why one of the popular jocks like him would want to team up with band kids like me and Rani and Rajit. To Olivia, even though Connor played the saxophone, he wasn’t really a band kid. He was too cool for that.

“Yup,” I told her, spitting the toad that accompanied the word into the pillowcase. “It’s the only one that’s made of brass, though.”

“Ohhh,” she replied, as if to say, Well then, that explains it.

The car swerved again and I was thrown against her. She shoved me away, and I was just getting ready to shove her back when we came to a stop. We both froze as the engine cut off. Connor’s plan was about to be put to the test.

A couple of minutes later the trunk opened and he grinned down at us. “Come on,” he said. “They’re waiting for us inside.”

I left the pillowcase full of toads in the car—sorry, Aidan!—and followed Connor across the street, to where Rajit was holding the side door open.

“In here,” he said. “Quickly.”

We followed him inside and downstairs. His sister and Juliet Rodriguez were waiting for us in the rec room. “Hope you don’t mind,” said Rani apologetically. “She was working on a social studies project with me when you called.”

I shook my head. Having Juliet here wasn’t going to make what I had to do any easier, though.

“So what’s going on, Cat?” asked Rajit as everyone sat down on the big L-shaped sofa. “You and Olivia are all over the news. There’s a huge reward for your return.”

“There’s something you don’t know about me yet,” I told them miserably.

Juliet let out a small yip of surprise and Rani blanched as a pair of toads sprang from my mouth to the coffee table.

“Whoa,” said Rajit. “That explains a lot about the talent show.”

“Cool,” Connor said, staring at me in fascination. I blushed. He really was pretty cute, what with those deep blue eyes and that shaggy blond hair. If a person paid attention to that sort of thing.

Of course his reaction made Olivia jealous, and she spent the next couple of minutes talking nonstop, trying to produce as many diamonds as she could.

I picked up four of them and held them out to my friends. “Help yourselves,” I told them. “There’s more where these came from. Olivia’s like a gum ball machine. We can double or triple any reward out there.”

Warily eyeing the toads that proliferated with my speech, they each selected a gem.

“So is this thing real?” asked Rajit.

I shrugged. “Why else do you think they want to take her to Area Fifty-one?”

“Is that cool or what?” crowed Connor, who I was beginning to think was a little dim.

“No, it’s not cool,” I snapped. “Would you want to spend the rest of your life in some lab in the desert, being poked and prodded by scientists?”

Olivia shuddered.

“Uh, no, I guess not,” he admitted.

“All right, then.”

“We’d better do something about the toads,” said Rani, glancing around the rec room. “They’re kind of getting out of control.” She darted over to a cupboard on the far wall and returned a minute later with an armful of trash bags.

“So how did this happen?” asked Rajit, taking one from her and using it to trap my latest offerings. “The toads, I mean. Well, that and Olivia, too.”

I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I replied, grabbing a bag and opening it up just in time. I held it under my chin as I talked. “We both just woke up on Monday morning like this. And by the way, I had no idea that it would happen when I played my bassoon, too. Honest. I didn’t mean to wreck the talent show.”

“Oh, yes you did,” said Olivia, spitting something into her hand. Two daffodils and another diamond.

I smirked at her. “Well, your part in it, yes. My part in it, no.”

“Catbox,” she muttered.

“You deserved it.”

“C’mon, you two,” said Juliet.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Rajit.

“Hang on a sec, I’m going to call my friend A.J.,” I told him, pulling Connor’s cell phone from my pocket. “He’s in on this too.” Thirty seconds later I had A.J. on speakerphone.

“This is Mission Control,” he intoned in a fake announcer voice.

“Shut up, A.J. You’re on speakerphone. I’m here with a bunch of band friends.”

“Oh,” he said sheepishly, his voice bouncing back to its normal tone. “Hi, band friends!”

“Hi, A.J.!” they chorused back.

“They want to know what the plan is,” I told him.

“Do they know about the, uh—”

“Toads?” I asked, bending over the trash bag again. “Yup. And I told them—well, some of them—that Olivia and I have to find my great-aunt and that she’s at Redwood National Park.”

Rani and Rajit and Juliet looked surprised to hear this.

“I’ll explain later,” I whispered to them, then continued, “She’s still there, right?”

“Hasn’t moved an inch,” said A.J.

“How does he know that?” asked Juliet.

“We’re tracking her on GPS,” I replied, stretching the truth. I didn’t want to get into the whole NASA connection just yet.

“I still don’t get it,” said Olivia. “Why are you so obsessed with finding your great-aunt?”

“You just have to trust me,” I told her again.

She shook her head. “Nope. I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain what’s going on.”

I sighed out a toad. “The thing is, Great-Aunt Aby might be able to help us with all this.”

“With all what?” asked Rani.

My friends were all looking at me expectantly.

“The toads,” I said, gesturing toward the trash bag in front of me. “The diamonds. Geoffrey. Everything.”

Olivia laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Your great-aunt Aby, the crazy, orange-haired giantess—”

“She is not a giantess!”

“I saw her,” said Connor. “She kind of is.”

I sighed again, scooping up the inevitable toad before it had even hit the coffee table. I knew that I’d promised my mother I wouldn’t say anything, but what else was I supposed to do? How else would anyone believe me?

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “She’s not exactly my great-aunt.”

“So who is she, then?” asked A.J.

“She’s, uh, well—actually, she’s my fairy godmother.”

The room went dead silent, except for a furious croak from the bag I was holding.

“That’s it,” said Olivia, standing up and brushing off the petals that had accumulated on the legs of her jeans. “I’m going home.”

“Olivia!” I protested. “You can’t! What about Dr. Dalton?”

“I’d rather deal with him than with a lunatic!” She snorted. “Fairy godmother? Do you think I’m stupid?”

Yes, I thought, but wisely held my tongue. This wasn’t the time to pick another fight. “Hold on a sec,” I pleaded. “I know it sounds insane, but will you just think about it for a minute? Is it any crazier than what’s happened to us these past few days? I mean, look at us!”

The trash bag I was holding bulged with amphibians. Olivia was ankle-deep in flowers. Connor and Juliet were on their knees picking gems out of the pile. Rani and Rajit were scampering around the room as they tried to collect the toads still on the loose. The Kumars would probably be finding reminders of my visit for weeks to come.

I was suddenly struck by how ridiculous the whole situation was. I started to laugh. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and pretty soon I was howling. I hadn’t laughed in days, and it felt good. No, it felt great. But laughing wasn’t such a smart idea. Each burst produced not just one toad, but a gush of them.

“Cat! Stop!” shrieked Rani, rushing to position her trash bag under the amphibian waterfall. Watching her frantic efforts made me laugh even harder. I laughed so hard that tears sprang to my eyes.

“Please, Cat!” begged Juliet.

I pressed my hands to my mouth, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t hold it—or the toads—in.

Finally Olivia reached across the coffee table and slapped me. Hard.

I stared at her, stunned.

“Sorry,” she said, not looking sorry at all.

“I want this to stop,” I whispered shakily. “I want to be normal again, and I want Geoffrey back, and my mother said Great-Aunt Aby can help.”

“Fine,” my stepsister snapped. “Have it your way. We’ll go find this stupid fai—this great-aunt of yours.”

“Can you give us a hand with the toads first?” asked Rajit. “If my parents come home and see this, they’re going to, uh—”

“Croak?” offered Rani, suppressing a slightly hysterical giggle.

I grinned.

“Don’t you start again,” warned Olivia.

I shook my head vigorously and began to help with the toad roundup. A few minutes later we had things back under control, and the Kumars’ rec room was pretty much back to normal.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” A.J. announced over the cell phone speaker. I could hear him tapping away at his computer keyboard. “It’s nine p.m. You have exactly thirty-six hours until the handoff at the zoo. There’s a bus leaving Portland for Grants Pass tomorrow morning at six thirty a.m. It makes a few stops and gets in around two. You’ll have to hang out there for an hour or so, and then you’ll catch another bus to Crescent City, which is the closest town to the national park.”

“How are we going to get tickets?” I asked. “Won’t the police have our pictures posted everywhere?”

“I’ve already bought them for you,” he said smugly. “I’ll e-mail them in a minute, and you can just print them out. That way you don’t need to worry about any nosy ticket agents.”

“Wait a minute,” said Rani. “How do you even know there’s going to be a hand-off at the zoo? Word of this is bound to get out, and if there’s some big manhunt for you two, it will be all over the news, and if the kidnappers think Olivia is missing, why would they show up?”

She had a point. Time to improvise, I thought. I took out my pad of paper and scribbled a note to my father. “Do you have an envelope?” I asked Rani. She nodded and ran out of the room, returning with one a minute later. I stuck the note inside, sealed it, and wrote FOR TIMOTHY STARR in big letters on the front, then handed it to Connor. “See if you can get this in our mailbox without anyone seeing you.”

He frowned. “With all those reporters and police crawling all over the place? Good luck.”

“Dude, I’m counting on you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Rajit printed out our bus tickets. Olivia stared at hers, chewing her lip. “Won’t they be on the lookout for two girls traveling together, though?”

“I know how we can get around that,” said Connor. “They’re looking for two kids, not five of them. What if Rajit and Rani and I go with you as far as the bus station? We can all carry instruments and say that it’s a band trip, or that we’re going to a woodwind ensemble competition or something.”

“I don’t play an instrument,” Olivia pointed out.

“And I can’t go home for my bassoon,” I added.

“You can use my old flute case,” Rani told me.

“And you can borrow my clarinet, Olivia,” Juliet offered. “I’ll leave it here with you when I go home tonight.”

I looked over at Connor. “How are you going to get back here tomorrow morning?”

“No problem,” he said. “I can get a ride from my brother.”

“At six in the morning?”

“I’ll tell him we have Hawkwinds practice and bribe him with my allowance.”

“Just don’t try and bribe him with a diamond,” I warned. “You’ll give us away.” I turned back to his cell phone, and A.J. “So what are we supposed to do once we get to Crescent City?”

“I haven’t totally figured that out yet,” my friend replied. “There’s a shuttle bus into the park, but the schedule is kind of sporadic. You might have to rent bikes or something.”

I looked over at my stepsister. Miss Prissy Pants wasn’t really the athletic type. “Great,” I muttered, catching what came with it in midair.

Cat Starr, Toad Huntress, had gotten pretty quick on the draw.