Toad Rage - Morris Gleitzman [33]
“They're all depending on you, Goliath,” he said.
Goliath didn't say anything, and Limpy realized that Goliath was struggling with a voice wobble of his own.
Limpy squeezed Goliath's shoulders, then turned and hopped out of the bathtub.
He didn't say goodbye.
No point upsetting them both.
The girl was lying facedown on the bed, sobbing into her pillow.
Limpy hopped up onto the bedspread and nudged her arm with his shoulder.
She rolled over and opened her eyes.
Limpy hopped round in circles a few times so she'd know it was him and not just any cane toad who happened to be passing.
For a long time she just stared at him, blinking through her tears.
Then her face broke into an amazed grin.
“What are you doing here?”
Limpy could tell she'd recognized him.
Now, he thought, for the tricky bit.
He hopped over and touched her hand with his toenails, careful not to scratch her this time. Then he mimed his own hand hurting, sucking it and blowing on it and waving it around like a truck had just run over it.
He only had to do it for a while before he saw her eyes widen and her mouth fall open and delighted understanding creep across her face.
The Games officials understood immediately. It took them a while to believe her, though. Limpy watched as the girl talked animatedly to them and pointed to him and to her hand and mimed a small amount of poison flowing through her blood.
At least, he imagined that's what she was doing. It was pretty hard to see from inside the plastic bag the officials had put him in. The plastic bag had previously had some sort of orange smoked fish in it, and the sides were all smeary and hard to see through.
Limpy rubbed till he had a clear patch.
He watched as the officials kept shaking their heads, right up until the girl grabbed a handful of newspapers and waved them threateningly under their noses.
Then, unhappily, they nodded.
The lab was very bright.
Limpy squinted, partly from the lights and partly from fear.
He knew what could happen to animals in labs.
Please, he begged silently as a man in a white coat put him on a white bench. Please let this human know how to get poison out of a cane toad without any cutting or lethal injections.
Trembling, Limpy wondered if he should help the man.
Squirt at him, just a bit.
He decided not to.
The man put on rubber gloves and plastic goggles and squeezed one of Limpy's glands. Pus plopped into a glass bowl.
Limpy felt so weak with relief that he didn't even struggle when the man put him into a glass tank and put a lid on it.
Instead, he watched through the side of the tank as the man did things on the bench with glass tubes and bits of equipment Limpy didn't recognize. Not much lab equipment got chucked out of cars in North Queensland.
The girl and the officials watched too.
Finally, the man in the white coat turned to the girl.
“You're clear,” he said.
Limpy didn't understand at first, not until the girl came grinning over to the tank, took the lid off, and gave him a big kiss.
Later, after Limpy had got over his disappointment about the girl putting the lid back on the tank and leaving without him, he decided it was time to escape. Later still, after he'd climbed up the wall of the tank about a million times and tried to push the lid off about a million times and fallen on his head about a million times, he realized he couldn't.
Then the lab filled up with humans in white coats, all staring up at a telly on the wall.
On the screen, Limpy saw the girl.
She was in the middle of the stadium, soaring over a crossbar that looked even higher than before.
All the humans in the lab started cheering and hugging each other.
Then they left.
Limpy smiled.
He was glad the girl had made them cheer. She must have done well.
Perhaps she'll come back and kiss me again, thought Limpy hopefully. And then take me back to Goliath.
He waited, not hoping too hard in case she didn't.
A long time passed. Even though he didn't want to, Limpy found himself thinking sadly about Charm.
Then he realized with a start that