Thank goodness! Terri thought.
They hadn’t seen her after all. She’d made it back to her room at the very last second.
Terri let out the long, deep breath she’d been holding in her chest. For a moment there, she thought she might explode! When she calmed down from her scare, she sat back down on her bed, thinking.
The last thing she’d discovered in Uncle Chuck’s room mystified her. Her father’s handwriting in the notepad. What could it mean? It was true, both her father and mother were zoologists—before the divorce they’d both even worked in the same laboratory, where her mother still worked now—and that meant that they were working on the same research projects, which Terri understood. But what bothered her was just the idea that not only her mother and Uncle Chuck but also her father too had been involved in the strange things going on around here; and Terri didn’t want to think that her father had something to do with the giant toads and salamanders.
But mainly it just made her sad. Seeing the handwriting only reminded her more of her father, and the divorce, and the idea that she hadn’t seen him in months and probably never would again, because he’d moved away.
Don’t think about it, Terri ordered herself. Thinking about it only made it hurt worse.
And, besides, she had plenty of other things to think about now, didn’t she?
She slipped out the piece of paper from her shorts, opened it up, and looked at it.
Now I’ll never forget those words from the boathouse, she thought, because I’ve got them right here in my hand…
Yes, she did. She’d written them all down.
And now that I have them, she realized, I can look them up in the dictionary and finally find out what they mean.
And next she went to do just that, sliding open her top desk drawer and rooting around. She knew she had a dictionary around here somewhere. Or then…
Maybe it was out in the den, where she kept her books during the school year.
Here it is, she thought, relieved. It wasn’t the dictionary she usually used, but at least it was a dictionary, a slim paperback with a brick-red cover.
She looked up the first word: reagent.
Oh no! she thought.
The word wasn’t there! Then she busily looked up the other words, mutation, transmission, genetic, carnivore, and—
None of them were in the dictionary!
««—»»
Just another disappointment, Terri thought, brooding now at her desk. And after all the trouble she’d gone to in order to get the words—sneaking into Uncle Chuck’s room, finding the briefcase.
All for nothing, she thought drearily.
Or—
Maybe not.
One thing she hadn’t considered. She looked then and saw that the dictionary she’d found in her desk was old, not the one she usually used. Then—
Oh, man!
She looked more closely at the dictionary and saw just how old it actually was. Right there on the cover, it said Elementary Dictionary, Preschool-Age 8.
It was a children’s dictionary, left over from way back when she was in the first and second grade.
Of course!
This was a dictionary for kids, not adults. And those words she’d written down were definitely adult words. So—
I’ll just have to get a bigger dictionary, she concluded. A dictionary for grownups.
She knew there must be one in the house somewhere. The only problem was finding it. Or maybe she could go to the town library—surely they’d have all kinds of dictionaries there.
But who knows when I’ll be able to do that? she glumly reminded herself. I’m probably grounded…
Then she looked up, at the sound of voices.
She walked to her door. Yes, she could hear her mother and Uncle Chuck talking in the kitchen, but their voices were muffled. Terri pressed her ear against the door and tried to listen.
Darn it!
The voices still couldn’t be heard well enough to understand.
Next, she put her hand on the doorknob and very carefully turned it, so not to make any noise. Then she pulled the door open to a narrow crack.
And now she could hear…
“Well, what I didn’t tell you yet,” Uncle Chuck was saying to her mother, “was that Terri got into the boathouse this morning. You must’ve forgotten to lock the door last night when you came up.”
“How could I have been so forgetful?” her mother scolded herself. “What did she see?”
“Not much, at least I don’t think so. I caught her in the office. The only thing she could’ve seen was the desk, and some preliminary notes.”
“But what about the backroom?” her mother fretted next. “She didn’t get into the backroom, did she?”
“I don’t see how she could have,” Uncle Chuck replied. “The door was locked.”
At least that’s one good thing, Terri thought to herself. They don’t know I used my library card to get in, and they don’t know I saw the stuff in the backroom…
“But I’m really getting worried,” her uncle continued. “Things are really getting dangerous.”
“I know,” her mother agreed.
“I mean, can you imagine? If she went to the boathouse and actually got into the backroom, and saw the specimen tanks? She’d be terrified. Or, worse, if she got in there and found the key…” Uncle Chuck paused as if troubled. “And opened the trapdoor?”
“Don’t even say it!” her mother said in the most dreadful voice Terri had ever heard.
The kitchen conversation halted for a few moments, as though Terri’s mother and uncle were thinking about things. Then her mother said, “What did you do? When you caught her in the boathouse?”
“I sent her to her room,” Uncle Chuck said. “Didn’t really know what to do.”
“The poor thing. She must be so confused; I never have even a minute to spend with her since the project, and with her father being gone, that can only make it worse for her.”
Terri continued to listen eagerly at the crack in her opened bedroom door.
“But I’m really getting worried now,” her Uncle Chuck said next. “I mean, they’re getting bigger.”
“I know, bigger each day. And they’re coming up into the yard at night,” her mother said. “I saw them last night—they were all over the place.”
The toads, Terri realized. She must be talking about the toads… And the memory never left her mind.
The big, bumpy toads with teeth.
“What are we going to do?” Uncle Chuck said next, and he sounded desperate. He even sounded…scared.
“What are we going to do,” he continued, “if those things get into the house?”
««—»»
Just the way he’d said it—those things—made Terri shiver. It made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight.
What are we going to do if those things get into the house?
The words chilled her to the bone. But could that be possible? Could those horrible fanged toads and salamanders actually get into the house? At first, Terri didn’t think so. But then she thought back to some other things she’d heard her mother and Uncle Chuck say.
They’re getting bigger…
Meaning the toads and salamanders, Terri had already figured. But how could they get bigger? This question nagged at her, until she started putting things together. Maybe her mother and Uncle Chuck were working on some kind of experiment that made toads and salamanders bigger, and grow teeth. Maybe some kind of new vitamin they’d invented at her mother’s laboratory—