Once Upon a Toad by Heather Vogel Frederick Read Free Book Online

“Maybe there is something I can do,” she said finally.
    â€œReally?” Hope bloomed in me as I wondered what she had in mind. Dropping something on Olivia from orbit, maybe?
    â€œI can’t promise anything, but I’ll try, okay?”
    â€œOkay.”
    She told me that she loved me, and I told her I loved her back, and we hung up. As I turned my cell phone off for the night, I realized I’d forgotten to ask her about the necklace.
    Nothing happened on Saturday except Olivia and I both got a long lecture from Iz, who managed to forge a frosty truce between us. I slept back in my own bed that night, ignoring Olivia’s silent treatment. By Sunday morning I started to worry that maybe my mother had forgotten. As we turned onto our street coming home from church, though, I spotted her solution sitting in the driveway. Its Arizona license plate read “ABYCNU.”
    Uh-oh, I thought. I knew that RV.
    My mother had called Great-Aunt Abyssinia.

CHAPTER 5
    The door to the RV flew open, and a large figure in a bright orange rain poncho emerged.
    â€œCatriona!” cried Great-Aunt Abyssinia, launching herself down the steps and swooping me up in a bear hug. She smelled like roses and something else—vinegar, maybe, or curry. It was a pungent combination, and my eyes started to water.
    â€œAnd you must be Olivia,” she said, putting me down and pouncing on my startled stepsister.
    Olivia stared up at her, openmouthed. Olivia is tall, but even she had to tilt her head back, because Great-Aunt Abyssinia is really tall, like Julia Child or one of the Harlem Globetrotters.
    â€œLet’s go inside out of the rain,” said Iz, unbuckling Geoffrey from his car seat.
    Once indoors, Great-Aunt Aby shook herself like a big wet dog, sending water flying everywhere, then removed her ponchoand handed it to my stepmother. Iz took it from her, looking a little bewildered, but then, my great-aunt tends to have that effect on people.
    â€œYou’re looking lovely as always, Isabelle,” said Great-Aunt Aby.
    â€œThank you,” said Iz, trying not to stare at my great-aunt’s hair, which was short and spiky and dyed traffic-cone orange, the same shade as her poncho. “You’re looking lovely yourself.”
    Great-Aunt Abyssinia grinned. “You know what they say, ‘A laugh a day keeps the wrinkles away.’”
    Behind me, Olivia snorted. Great-Aunt Aby had plenty of wrinkles. She might not be road-map-wrinkles-and-chin-hair old, but still, she was old . She wasn’t deaf, though, and I was pretty sure she’d heard Olivia even if she didn’t say anything. She just gave her a sidelong glance and then turned to my little brother.
    â€œThis young man can’t be Geoffrey!” she exclaimed, lifting her glasses from their resting place on her shelflike chest and peering down at him. He was hanging back behind Iz, clutching his blanket shyly, but he removed his finger from his mouth long enough to reply, “With a G !” as he always did when someone said his name.
    â€œSo I’ve heard,” said Great-Aunt Aby, nodding solemnly.
    Geoffrey pointed at the chain attached to her glasses.
    â€œYou like this, do you?” My great-aunt lifted it over her head and handed it to him. Looking over his shoulder, I saw that the chain’s links were actually rhinestone cactuses. It was just the sort of bizarre thing Great-Aunt Aby loved to wear.
    â€œFound it at a thrift store in Arizona,” she told us as Geoffrey’schubby little fingers traced the sparkling stones. “Though why anybody’d want to part with a treasure like this is beyond me.” She shook her head regretfully, then took it back from him and slipped it over her head once again, settling the glasses onto her large nose.
    Olivia’s gape had turned into a smirk. I could practically see the wheels in her head turning and could only imagine the mileage she’d