Once Upon a Toad (2 page)

Not that I really cared what she said, especially not to Piper Fleabrain.

I think it says a lot about a person, who they pick for their best friend, and the fact that Olivia picked Piper didn't exactly boost my opinion of my stepsister. Piper is one of those empty-headed popular girls that my middle school back in Houston is stuffed full of. Texas, Oregon—it doesn't matter, they're all the same. I swear they're made with cookie cutters in a bakery somewhere. All they care about is clothes and boys and makeup, and they talk in these high, squeaky voices that get higher and squeakier whenever someone male is nearby. It's enough to make a person, well, barf.

My best friend, on the other hand, may be a total nerd, but he's also the nicest guy on the planet. A.J. D'Angelo is the smartest kid in my school, and possibly in the whole state of Texas. He's a computer geek, which isn't surprising because both his parents work for NASA. Not as astronauts, but doing computer stuff. The whole family is scary smart. They live in the same building as my mother and I do, only we're on the seventeenth floor and they're on the fifteenth. I've known A.J. since the day we moved in, when I was six.

“All clear!” called my father.

Olivia and I climbed back into the van, still holding our noses, and a few minutes later we pulled into the driveway. My father tooted the horn to let my stepmother know we'd arrived, and the door flew open and Iz came running down the front steps, her long, curly blond hair bouncing behind her.

“I'm so glad you're here!” she said, throwing her arms around me, and for a brief moment I was glad too. Such was the power of Iz.
Then Olivia ungraciously set my suitcase down on my foot, and all of a sudden I would have given anything to be back in Texas.

My stepmother planted a kiss on the top of my head. “You grew again,” she said. “At least an inch.”

I smiled up at her. Iz knows that my greatest ambition in life—besides playing bassoon for a major symphony orchestra or doing something involving the outdoors—is to be taller. I'm really, really short. Vertically challenged, as A.J. puts it.

“Sorry I couldn't be at the airport to meet you,” Iz told me. “I had a shoot up on Mount Hood and I couldn't reschedule.”

My stepmother is a nature photographer. Even though deep down I still sometimes wish that my parents would get back together again, I have to admit that Iz and my dad are kind of a match made in heaven. The two of them have a whole lot more in common than my parents ever did.

My mother always tells me that what happened between her and my dad isn't my fault and it isn't my business, either. My business is just to know that they both love me more than anything and always will. I suppose she's got a point, but still, sometimes I wish things could have worked out differently.

“That's okay,” I told my stepmother. “I don't mind.”

This was true, and Iz knew it. She smiled and gave me another hug. “Wait until you see some of the shots I got. The mountain was out in all its spring glory this morning.”

Mount Hood is amazing. There's snow on it all year round, and you can see its white-capped peak from all over the city. It's like Portland's trademark. One of our traditions when I come here during summer vacation is to drive up to
Timberline Lodge and take the ski lift to the snow line. Iz takes our picture for the family Christmas card, and then we have a snowball fight. I love telling my friends back in Houston about this. They can't believe there's someplace that has snow in July and August.

Olivia really gets into the snowball fight—big surprise there, especially since I'm always her prime target—but that's about the only outdoor activity she likes. Nature is not Miss Prissy Pants's favorite thing. And Geoffrey's still at the stage where he wants everybody to carry him, so the two of them get left at home a lot when there's an outdoor adventure planned.

“Olivia, why don't you help your sister take her things upstairs?” Iz prompted.

Stepsister,
I thought automatically.

“While you girls are getting settled in,” she continued, “I'll get dinner on the table.”

“Um, someone needs a bath first,” said my father.

My stepmother plucked Geoffrey from his arms. “Bathwater's drawn and ready,” she said, and gave Geoffrey a kiss too, even though he still smelled faintly of barf. Mothers are amazing that way. “How about I scrub the G-Man while you set the table?”

“Deal,” said my dad.

Iz nudged Olivia, who glared at me as she picked up my suitcase again.

I followed her warily into the house.

CHAPTER 2

Upstairs, the first thing I noticed was that Olivia had redecorated. Again. Everything was blue this time, her favorite color. The second thing I noticed was that she'd stuck a line of duct tape right down the middle of the floor. Was this another lame April Fools' Day joke?

Apparently not.

“This is your half of the room, and this is mine,” she said, stating the obvious. She heaved my suitcase onto my bed, which I noticed she'd moved to the darkest corner of the room, by the wall. All part of the redecorating plan, apparently. “I don't know where you're going to put all your stuff. The closet is really full.”

Big surprise there.

“Mom asked me to clear a couple of dresser drawers out,” she continued ungraciously, “but I couldn't find any place else for all my art supplies.”

“Fine,” I snapped. My stepsister might as well have hung up a
big sign on the door that said
KEEP OUT
! “I'll just leave everything in my suitcase.” I didn't bother to add,
That way I'll be ready to leave at a moment's notice,
but I'm sure that was obvious too.

Olivia gave me a poisonously sweet smile and flipped on the radio. She knows how much I hate pop music, so I knew right away that this was another phase of her campaign to torture me into going home early. As she hummed along to some inane pop star warbling, “Gimme gimme all your luuuuuuuuv,” I heaved a sigh and took my iPod out of my backpack. Slipping in my earbuds, I turned the volume way up on Bach's Cello Suite no. 1 (the version featuring Yo-Yo Ma, one of my heroes) to block out the noise. I hung my bathrobe on a hook on the back of the door—amazingly, Olivia had left one free for me—slipped my pajamas under my pillow, and wedged a handful of things into the drawer of my bedside table. That pretty much took care of things in the unpacking department. The rest of my stuff I just left in the suitcase, which I shoved under the bed. I was itching to tell Olivia exactly what I thought of her, but Mom had made me promise not to pick a fight on my first day here.

“Dinner!” Iz called a few minutes later.

We held hands around the table while my father said grace. Olivia's fingertips barely grazed mine, and she whipped her hand away the second we said “Amen,” but Dad held on a little longer, giving me a warm squeeze. “It's really good to have you here, Kit-Cat,” he said, beaming.

I gave him a crooked smile. My father is the only one who calls me by that nickname. He's called me that since I was a baby. My real name is Catriona, but nobody calls me that except
Great-Aunt Abyssinia. Everybody else just calls me Cat.

Olivia thinks Cat is a stupid nickname, of course, but I like it. It suits me. Short and sweet, my mother says. I don't know about the sweet part—I try, really I do—but she's right about short. Being small is the bane of my existence. I'm barely five feet tall, shorter than anyone else in the family. Olivia is five foot eight already, plus she's three weeks older, which gives her the upper hand, or at least she thinks it does. She loves to introduce me to everyone as her little sister. Which is so ridiculous.

Iz dished me up some of her homemade lasagna. She always makes it the first night I get here because she knows how much I love it, and how much I love the garlic bread she fixes to go with it. Dad passed me the bread basket, and I reached in and tore off a piece and took a bite. I had to close my eyes it was so good, all warm and crusty and dripping with garlicky butter.

“I think it's wonderful that you came in time for the spring talent show,” my father said, his voice brimming with enthusiasm. “Did Olivia tell you she's going to do a tap dance routine this year?”

“No,” I replied, turning to my stepsister and crossing my eyes at her. Olivia glared and looked away. She knows what I think of tap dancing.

“She's now officially a Hawk Creek Tapper!” Iz said proudly.

“Great,” I murmured, trying to sound sincere.

After we finished our meal, I started to clear my plate.

“Hold on, honey,” Iz told me, jumping up and heading for the
kitchen. A moment later she poked her head around the door and grinned. “One, two, three!” she called, then sailed back in carrying a cake platter. She and my father burst into a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Olivia mumbled along halfheartedly until Geoffrey banged his spoon against his booster seat and hollered, “Cat! Cat! Cat!” Then she stopped singing and glared at me again.

My little brother doesn't say much. In fact, he only says three things: “Are we there yet?” “With a
G
!” (whenever anyone says his name), and “Cat.” This last one makes Olivia furious, especially since he doesn't say her name yet.

I can tell that Dad and Iz are worried about Geoffrey, but my mother says they shouldn't be. “Einstein barely said a word until he was four,” she assured me. “And he turned out okay.”

Iz set the cake down on the table in front of me. Twelve candles blazed brightly atop the chocolate frosting.

“Thanks,” I said, truly surprised. I hadn't been expecting anything—my birthday was last weekend, the day after Mom flew to Kazakhstan to catch a ride aboard a Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station. I was staying with the D'Angelos, finishing my last week of school before our spring break. A.J.'s family had a little party for me, and Dad and Iz had called, and sent a present and everything—the new iPod I'd been listening to up in Olivia's room.

My dad reached over and squeezed my hand again. “I know how disappointed you were about postponing the trip with your mother, Kit-Cat,” he said. “She says you've been a really good sport about it.”

I lifted a shoulder, not sure if the mini-tantrum and weeklong sulk really qualified me as a “good sport.”

Iz opened a drawer in the sideboard behind her and took out two small, brightly wrapped boxes. “We have another present for you,” she said, handing one of them to me. “There's one for you, too, Olivia.”

Uh-oh,
I thought, glancing at my stepsister. I could tell by the expression on her face that she had a bad feeling about this too.

I pulled the paper off slowly, then opened the box. Inside was a silver ring. There was some engraving on it:
SISTERS ARE FOREVER FRIENDS.
Between each of the words was a tiny aquamarine, the birthstone I shared with Olivia. Looking across the table, I could see that her ring was identical.

“I saw them in the gift shop up at Timberline this morning and instantly thought of you two,” my stepmother said happily. “Aren't they adorable?”

I didn't want to burst Iz's bubble, but for one thing Olivia wasn't my sister, she was my stepsister—big difference—and for another, forever friends? Was Iz completely clueless? Maybe this was an April Fools' Day joke too.

But it wasn't, of course.

“How do they fit?” she asked, and Olivia and I reluctantly slipped them on. “Oh good, they're just the right size.”

Iz looked so sincerely delighted that I knew there was no way I'd be able to take my ring off. Not as long as I was here in Oregon. It would hurt her feelings, and I loved Iz too much to do that. Unfortunately, that meant I was stuck wearing the thing for the next three months.

“Two beautiful rings for our two beautiful girls,” my father said, smiling at us. Olivia kicked me sharply under the table as he added, “Aren't
you going to blow out your candles and make a wish, Kit-Cat?”