Toad Rage - Morris Gleitzman [19]
He'd seen the committee on telly the night before. They'd certainly looked important, sitting behind a long table showing off kookaburra pencil cases and echidna bath mats and platypus car-seat covers to a big crowd of people with cameras and notebooks.
Limpy felt his warts tingling with excitement. He hoped when he met the committee his mouth didn't get so dry with nervousness that his mucus dried up. Mum always reckoned a cane toad didn't look his best unless he had a bit of mucus on his lips.
Suddenly Limpy heard the muffled sound of applause and the chatter of human voices and the clicking of cameras.
He felt the girl unzip the bag.
Stack me, he thought. She must be going to introduce me to the Mascot Committee in front of the people with the cameras and notebooks.
Limpy hurriedly practiced his smile. He needed one that would win the hearts of humans everywhere. It wasn't easy in a dark bag without a swamp to check your reflection in.
Then suddenly the bag wasn't dark anymore. The girl had opened it and was reaching in. Heart thumping, Limpy pushed himself toward her groping hand.
But her hand slid past him and grabbed Goliath.
“Uh?” grunted Goliath, spitting out a mouthful of towel.
Limpy watched in horror as the girl lifted Goliath out of the bag. Through the open zip he could see lights on tall poles and human faces gawking. On a stage the girl held Goliath close to her cheek and smiled sweetly at the cameras.
Please, Limpy begged Goliath silently. Don't blow it. Don't attack anyone with a stick. Not today.
Limpy's view out of the bag was suddenly blocked by a human body. Limpy stood on tiptoe and saw it was the bloke in the suit with the clipboard. He was looking cross, as usual, and trying to grab Goliath from the girl.
He and the girl said some angry things to each other.
Limpy couldn't see a Games Mascot Committee anywhere.
The bloke was pulling Goliath's legs. The girl was hanging on to his arms. “Hey,” yelled Goliath indignantly. “Take it easy. Watch my back.”
Limpy was about to leap out of the bag and try and explain to them that just because Goliath looked tough, that didn't mean he was made of steel-belted rubber.
Then the bag began to fall.
Limpy hung on to the towel but it didn't do any good.
The bag hit the ground with a thud and Limpy's head bashed into his knee and suddenly he was out in the glaring lights, skidding across a shiny surface.
“Help,” he yelled. “New mascot over here.”
Nobody heard him, and when he'd stopped sliding and his head had stopped spinning, he realized why. The bag had fallen off the back of the stage and he was lying among some potted plants out of sight of the crowd.
In the distance, he could hear the girl and the clipboard bloke still arguing. And another voice, much closer.
“Fog,” it said.
Limpy looked up.
A human toddler in a nappy and a T-shirt was looking down at him, wide-eyed.
Oh no, thought Limpy. That's all I need. A kid getting terrified and everyone blaming me. I'll never get to be a mascot if they think I'm cruel to kids.
“It's okay,” he said to the toddler. “I'm not going to hurt you.”
The toddler grinned, dropped the teddy bear it was holding by one leg, grabbed Limpy's leg, and toddled off, dragging Limpy behind it.
“Fog,” chortled the toddler.
Limpy sighed.
He resisted the temptation to give the toddler a tiny little spray.
Instead, as he was sliding along on his back, he looked around.
He was in a huge space, almost as big as the stadium but with a roof. There were shops everywhere on many different levels. It didn't look like the committee meeting place he'd seen on telly.
Why did she bring us here, Limpy wondered, if it wasn't to meet the Games Mascot Committee?
He didn't understand.
As the toddler dragged him into a shop, Limpy waited anxiously for the girl to come and rescue him again.
A thought nagged at him.
What had his Uncle Preston's last words been? The ones he'd said just before he was flattened by a funeral procession?
That's right.
“Never trust