Once Upon a Toad Read Online Free PDF Page A

underwear, looking out. Then I gave her huge red lipstick lips and taped a sign to her back that said FLEABRAIN LOVES CONNOR.
    Olivia and Piper’s other favorite pastime, besides torturing me, was swooning over Connor Dixon, the boy next door. That’s another big difference between my stepsister and me—she’s boy crazy. Our bedroom was at the front of the house, and the window had a perfect view of the Dixons’ driveway, where Connor and his older brother, Aidan, spent a lot of time playing basketball. Olivia and Piper were always spying on them. Well, on Connor, mostly. They both had a huge crush on him. I knew Connor from the times I’d visited before, and also now from band, since he played the saxophone. Technically, I supposed he qualified as cute—I never really paid much attention to that stuff—but I didn’t think he was worth all the fuss the two of them made over him.
    Olivia shrieked when she saw what I’d done to her diorama, but she couldn’t tell Iz, of course, without her mother seeing the rest of it. Instead she snapped a picture of it with her cell phone and sent it to Piper. Both of them were spitting mad at school the next day.
    Funny, but hardly likely to help improve matters, my mother wrote back when I e-mailed her about it. Focus on the good things, Cat.
    The good things were Hawkwinds, my new friends, and Mr. Morgan and his delicate, shell-like ears. Also Geoffrey and Dadand Iz. I dutifully wrote my mother about all of these, and about Mrs. Bonneville and her list of rules because I knew she’d get a kick out of that. My mother has a really good sense of humor.
    I didn’t mean to complain, really I didn’t. I knew she needed to concentrate on her mission at the space station. But who else could I talk to? Iz had her hands full with Geoffrey and her job, and besides, she was living in her own little “Sisters are forever friends” world. It would be too awkward trying to explain to her what a twerp her daughter was, anyway. I knew I should probably talk to my father, but he’d been away the last couple of days collecting data on the spring Chinook salmon run in the Columbia River Gorge.
    By Thursday night my spirits were as soggy as the weather. The diorama had disappeared, but Olivia and I were still barely on speaking terms. After dinner Iz shooed us upstairs to do our homework. Which we did, sort of. Olivia was talking to Piper on her cell phone, and I was using Iz’s laptop to IM with A.J. With my earbuds in to block out my stepsister’s annoying voice, I could almost pretend I was back in Houston. This was what A.J. and I did every night—worked on our homework while we instant-messaged each other.
    I have a bad case of Olivia-itis, I wrote.
    Poor you, he wrote back, adding a frowny face.
    Need cure. Can u help?
    No known remedy. Will ask NASA to arrange immediate airlift.
    I had to laugh at that. A.J. always managed to cheer me up.
    Iz poked her head in the door just then and saw me smiling. “I’m soglad to see you two getting along,” she said. “One big happy family.”
    Olivia waggled her fingers at her sweetly. The second Iz left, though, she looked over at me and pretended to stick them down her throat. I stuck out my tongue at her and turned my attention back to the computer screen. A few seconds later I jumped when Olivia let out a loud squeal at something Piper had said. I pulled out one of my earbuds. “Could you maybe keep it down a little? I’m working on pre-algebra and it’s hard.”
    â€œI’m working on pre-algebra and it’s haaard ,” she mimicked in a high voice.
    I sighed and stuck the earbud back in. A.J. was right. There was no known cure for Olivia Haggerty.

CHAPTER 4
    On Friday morning Olivia sabotaged our bathroom schedule, hogging it until five minutes before the bus came. Usually Dad monitors the schedule closely, since she has a habit of doing