Kylie goes to sit by her bedroom window in search of cool, fresh air, and instead discovers a toad sitting on the sill. A crab apple tree grows just outside her window, a wretched specimen that hardly ever flowers. The toad must have found its way along the trunk and the limbs, then leapt into her window. It’s bigger than most of the toads you can find near the creek, and it’s amazingly calm. It doesn’t seem frightened, not even when Kylie lifts it and holds it in her hand. This toad reminds her of the ones she and Antonia used to find in the aunts’ garden each summer. They loved cabbage and leaf lettuce and would hop after the girls, begging for treats. Sometimes Antonia and Kylie would take off running, just to see how fast the toads could go; they’d race until they collapsed with laughter, in the dust or between the rows of beans, but no matter how far they’d gone, when they turned around, the toads would be right on their heels, eyes unblinking and wide.
Kylie leaves the toad on her bed, then heads off to look for some lettuce. She feels guilty and foolish about having listened to Antonia all those times when they forced the toads to chase them. She’s not that silly anymore; she’s got more sense and a whole lot more compassion. Everyone is out and the house is more peaceful than usual. Sally is at a meeting Ed Borelli has called, to plan for the opening of school in September, a reality none of the office staff cares to recognize as inevitable. Antonia is at work, watching the clock and waiting for Scott Morrison to appear. Down in the kitchen, it’s so quiet that the water from the dripping faucet echoes. Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrinks to the size of a fly, but one that has no head, and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground.
Standing there in the kitchen, Kylie can barely remember some of what mattered so much only a few hours ago. All she knows is that if she waits much longer, the cake will begin to go stale, or ants will get to it, or someone will wander in and cut a piece. She’ll go to Gideon’s right now, before she can change her mind.
There’s no lettuce in the refrigerator, so Kylie takes the first interesting edible she spies—half of an uneaten Snickers that Gillian left to melt on the counter. Kylie’s about to rush back upstairs, but when she turns she sees that the toad has followed her.
Too hungry to wait, Kylie guesses.
She takes the toad in her hand and breaks off a tiny sliver of the candy bar. But then the oddest thing happens: When she goes to feed the toad, it opens its mouth and spits out a ring.
“Gee.” Kylie laughs. “Thanks.”
The ring is heavy and cold when she holds it in her hand. The toad must have found it in the mud; damp earth is caked over the band so thickly it’s impossible for Kylie to see this gift for what it really is. If she stopped to examine it, if she held it up to the light and took a good look, she’d discover that the silver has a strange purple tint. Drops of blood are hidden beneath the patina of dirt. If she hadn’t been in such a hurry to get to Gideon’s, if she realized what it was she had, she would have taken that ring out to the backyard and buried it, beneath the lilacs, where it belongs. Instead, Kylie goes ahead and tosses it into the little Fiestaware saucer on which her mother keeps a pathetic example of a cactus. She grabs the cake and pushes the screen door open with her hip, and as soon as she’s outside she leans to place the toad in the grass.
“There you go,” she tells it, but the toad is still there, motionless on the lawn, when Kylie has already turned the corner onto the next block.
Gideon lives on the other side of the Turnpike, in a development that pretends to be fancier than it is. The houses in his neighborhood have decks and finished basements and French doors leading to well-tended gardens. Usually it takes Kylie twelve minutes to get there from her house, but that’s if she’s running and not carrying a large chocolate cake. Tonight, she doesn’t want to drop the cake, so her pace is measured as she walks past the gas station and the shopping center, where there are a supermarket, a Chinese restaurant, and a deli, side by side, as well as the ice cream parlor where Antonia works. Then she has a choice; she can walk past Bruno’s, the tavern at the end of the shopping center, which has a pink neon sign and a nasty feel to it, or she can cross the Turnpike and take a shortcut across the overgrown field, where everyone says a health club will soon be built, complete with an Olympic-size pool.
Since there are two guys coming out of Bruno’s, talking to each other in too-loud voices, Kylie opts for the field. She can cut through, and be two blocks away from Gideon’s. The weeds are so high and scratchy that Kylie wishes that she were wearing jeans instead of shorts. Still, it’s a pretty night, and the foul smell of the puddles at the far end of the field, where mosquitoes have been breeding all summer, is replaced by the scent of chocolate frosting from the cake Kylie’s about to deliver. Kylie is wondering if it will be too late for her to stay and play a game of one-on-one—Gideon has a regulation basketball hoop set up in his driveway, a gift of guilt from his father, right after he divorced Gideon’s mother—when she notices that the air around her is growing murky and cold. There’s a black edge to this field. Something is wrong. Kylie starts to walk faster, and that’s when it happens. That’s when they call out for her to wait up.
She sees exactly who they are and what they want when she looks over her shoulder. The two men from the tavern have crossed the Turnpike and are following her; they’re big and their shadows have a crimson cast and they’re calling her Baby. They’re saying, “Hey, don’t you understand English? Wait up. Just wait.”
Kylie can already feel her heart beating too hard, even before she starts to run. She knows what kind of men they are; they’re like the one they had to get rid of out in the garden. They get mad the way he does, for no reason at all, except some pain deep inside that they’re not even aware of anymore, and they want to hurt somebody. They want to do it right now. The cake hits against Kylie’s chest; the weeds are thorny and scratch at her. The men let out a whoop when she starts to run, as if she’s made it more fun to track her. If they’re smashed, they won’t bother to run after her, but they’re not that drunk yet. Kylie throws the cake away, and it splatters when it hits the ground, where it will be food for the field mice and the ants. She can still smell the frosting, though; it’s all over her hands. She will never again be able to eat chocolate. The scent of it will set her heart racing. The taste will turn her stomach.
They’re following her, forcing her to run toward the darkest part of the field, where the puddles are, where no one from the Turnpike can see her. One of the men is fat, and he’s fallen behind. He’s cursing at her, but why should she listen? Her long legs are worth something to her now. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the lights of the shopping center, and she knows if she keeps on going in the direction she’s headed now, the one who’s still after her will get her. That’s what he’s been telling her, and when he gets her, he’s going to fuck her brains out. He’s going to make certain she never runs away from anyone again. He’s going to take care of that little pussy of hers, and she won’t ever forget it.