Tadpoles

Mary Allen carried a red, plastic bucket down the sidewalk. Her steps were slow and methodical, as the slightest imbalance would cause the water in the bucket to spill over the sides. Her shoes were muddy and Mary Allen dreaded slipping, but she made it across the road without any problems.

She continued through her neighborhood at the same pace until she reached a dirt path leading into the woods. The scrapes on her knees and forearms knew the dirt path well, and even though she had taken it many times, Mary Allen still had not memorized every root that crossed onto the path. She took a deep breath and clutched the bucket in both hands, hoping the weight would center her as she walked. It was hard to see the ground that way and she had to rely on looking ahead. Seven more steps, she decided, quickly giving up after four. She felt her arms grow sore and her shoulders started to ache. A level patch of dirt held the bucket while Mary Allen stopped, looking at the indents the handle had made on her palms. She could see every detail of the ribbed plastic embedded into her skin.

She peered over the top of the bucket. Hundreds of tiny black blots swam around frantically. Mary Allen knew she could not carry them much further, as the weight began to hurt her lower back. When she closed her eyes and focused hard enough, Mary Allen could hear running water. It was so faint that she could not tell if she imagined the sound into existence just by thinking about it. She pressed her eyes shut tightly, feeling her eyelashes brush against her cheek. The sound of water grew louder and she knew the stream must be close. She could tell where the stream snaked around her, diverging around the slabs of rock that made up the bank. She counted the steps it would take to get there. 21, 22, 23, she decided. The bucket and all of its contents were ready to continue. Mary Allen opened her eyes and grabbed the red handle carefully, tilting it slightly on the ascent.

A clearing distinguished the small stream from the rest of the woods. Although Mary Allen had seen some of the older kids clear the stream in one jump, a rotted wooden bridge stood above the nearly-stagnant water. She refused to go near the bridge, which had missing planks and bent, rusted nails jutting out of the sides. She decided to never try and cross the stream before she was old enough to make the jump.

Mary Allen reached the clearing in the exact amount of steps she had predicted. Excitedly, she looked around for someone to congratulate her. Almost entirely concealed by the bridge, she spotted someone wearing bright red sneakers in front of the stream. She recognized the scuffed, torn shoes of her neighbor, Danny, before she recognized his face. Danny heard Mary Allen approach but pretended not to notice her, skipping a rock across the water instead.

“Hi Danny!” Mary Allen announced eagerly, bouncing lightly enough for the water in her bucket to not spill. She hardly felt the weight anymore and did not realize she was still holding it while talking. The corners of Danny’s mouth trembled slightly as he fought off a smile. Mary Allen got a closer look at his face once he finally turned towards her. He had changed since the last time she saw him, dark hairs forming around his chin and upper lip. The area under his eyes seemed heavier and his tousled hair nearly covered his neck.

“Hey,” Danny responded calmly, skipping another rock. Mary Allen knew that he did not like to talk much and often found herself making up for it. She rode the school bus with Danny before he turned 12— he moved on to middle school about a year ago. Danny never sat with her and refused her offer to walk home together. She thought Danny hated her until he gave Stevie Adams a bloody nose for pulling her hair on the bus. Mary Allen knew then that he was just shy.

“What are you doing here?” she questioned loudly.

“I wanted to be by myself,” Danny said, gazing into the forest in a dramatic manner that Marry Allen found amusing. Although he wanted to be alone, he fought the urge to tell Mary Allen to leave, as he had yelled at the Merryling twins earlier when they tried to go swimming in the stream. Danny wanted her there and knew that if she did leave, he would have no else.

“Hm. Well, I’m here now,” Mary Allen said.

Danny held his last flat rock in his hand. He threw it rapidly in the opposite direction of Mary Allen, where they could both see it strike the water once before sinking.

“Fuck,” Danny muttered under his breath. Mary Allen heard him faintly and winced, furrowing her brow and lowering her chin to her chest. She hated it when he cursed and Danny knew it. He tried to hold it in around her, but sometimes he slipped up.

“It's alright. We can find some more rocks around here,” she added cheerfully. That time, Danny could not stop his smile, so he played it off as a bemused sigh.

“Yeah, sure. I didn’t expect anyone to be out here. And what the hell is in that bucket?” He stood up, grabbing the wooden bridge for support.

Mary Allen felt the bucket in her hands again as she looked away, afraid that the bridge would break as he pulled himself up. Her shoulders sank and she looked into the water, eyeless faces looking back at her.

“I'm sorry. What the heck is in that bucket,” he corrected. Mary Allen placed the bucket down and stood up straight again. With her best posture, she still fell short of reaching Danny’s shoulders.

“Tadpoles!” she beamed.

“What?” Danny looked into the bucket. Sure enough, hundreds of black tadpoles filled the water. There were too many of them for such a small opening. The smell hit Danny when he kneeled to get a closer look. He reeled back onto the dirt, his foot narrowly missing the bucket as he stumbled. “Why do you have that?”

“Because,” Mary Allen giggled, moving the bucket to a flatter surface before helping Danny up. She was not strong enough to lift him but still grabbed his arm as he stood. “There was a big puddle in my yard from the rainstorm yesterday. When I woke up today, there were millions of these things swimming around in it.” She explained.

Danny regained his balance as he listened. The bucket was far from him now, but through the thin red plastic of the bucket, he could still see the tadpoles. They were clumped together into rounded, indistinguishable masses

“I knew I had to save them. The puddle was going to evaporate, and they would have nowhere else to go,” Mary Allen continued.

“Is that why your shoes look destroyed? Didn’t those used to be white?” Mary Allen looked down at her muddied legs. Her shoes had been completely white once, laces and all. She had been so careful about keeping them clean.

“I had to, picking them up was impossible! It took hours,” she declared proudly.

“You picked them up?”
“With a gardening shovel. That’s all I could find.”
“And it really took that long?”
“I had to get each of them one at a time, or else they would slide out.”

Danny needed to see the tadpoles one more time. He knew it would be a vain attempt to count them and confirm Mary Allen’s efforts. With his last look, he noticed the glaring issue with her story.

“There’s no way these were only in that puddle for one night. They are already turning into frogs,” Danny said.

Mary Allen thought he was kidding. Another look into the bucket revealed that the tadpoles had all sprouted legs. Their bent, webbed feet kicked the water as they moved. Mary Allen never noticed that before. She was positive the puddle had been empty the night before.

“I guess so. But I brought them all here so they could live in the stream. Wanna help?”

Danny hesitated. At first, he thought the whole idea was absurd. Her willingness to help everyone and everything fascinated Danny. He wanted to tell Mary Allen how stupid she was for ruining her clothes and wasting her time on creatures that could never thank her. However, he knew better than to upset her.

The first time they spoke to each other, Danny made her cry— he never apologized for it. She offered him half of a ham sandwich on a day he forgot his lunch. The only reaction he could think of to this bubbly stranger, a girl who ignored his dirty glares and angry remarks, was to throw the sandwich on the ground. He never cared about the cries of the noisy third graders that he threw rocks at during recess. He didn’t think twice about yelling at Janice Merryling for spraying him with water as they waited in line for the water fountain. He sprained Tommy R’s arm by pinning him against a wall and nearly snapped Tommy H’s glasses in half after he dropped them onto his desk; he thought nothing of it during his week off in suspension. But Mary Allen stuck with him. She tried to hold back her tears and apologized in a quiet, choked-up voice before picking up the sandwich and leaving. The next day, even when her friends told her not to, she brought him a turkey sandwich instead, summing his behavior up to hating ham.

Mary Allen waits for his response eagerly, twirling a strand of her hair around her thumb.

“Fine,” Danny says, picking up the bucket in swift, even movement.

Mary Allen watched him happily, unable to decide if she should hide her excitement or not. More so, she was amazed at how easily Danny carried the bucket. She never thought of Danny as especially strong. Watching him carry the tadpoles with ease made it undeniable that he had grown a lot since they were in school together. While the bucket dragged against the ground in her arms, Danny held it level at his knees. Mary Allen hoped that no one would ever pull her hair again, as she knew Danny would give them much worse than a bloody nose.

“So how do you want to do this, just fling them in?” Danny brought the tadpoles to the edge of the stream and swung them slightly toward the water, rotating his arm like a pendulum.

“No!” Mary Allen giggled as the bucket returned to Danny’s side. Her gentle laugh reminded Danny of the sandwich and his poor choice of a joke. She didn’t seem to mind, though. He hoped she had forgotten about it entirely, while he never could.

“Then what?”
“I don’t know, really. Maybe I should wait for Joyce and Janice, they would probably want to see the tadpoles before I release them.” Mary Allen surveyed the clearing and the entrance of the path she had come from. “I thought they were coming today.”
“I dunno,” Danny shrugged, remembering the twins he had scared off earlier.

“Joyce and Janice are twins, but Janice has braces so you can tell them apart. Do you know them? ”

“Yeah”

“Why don’t you ever play with us then?”

Because they piss me off, Danny thought to himself.

“I think they’re annoying,” he said instead.

“Fine, then it's just us and the tadpoles,” Mary Allen joined Danny at the bank of the stream. She peered into the water, where rocks lined the bottom like a stepping stone path. Her reflection wavered slightly on the water’s surface as it moved downstream.

“What if you dumped them in from up there?” Danny asked, gesturing at the far end of the clearing. Mary Allen broke away from her reflection and followed where he pointed. The wooden bridge looked back at them both, a few planks appearing moments away from breaking.

“I don’t think so, I’d never go near that thing,” Mary Allen declared. She waited for a laugh from Danny to reveal that he was joking.

Danny focused intently on the bridge. He said nothing, and Mary Allen imagined that he was counting the steps it would take to make it across. She refused to consider trying.

“What if I dared you to do it? Then you would have to.” Danny sounded more serious than before.

“Oh, really?” Mary Allen questioned. She took dares seriously, as if they were a superstition. She would only back down if the task was too difficult, conceding to the conditions of defeat. “And what if I still don’t do it?”

Danny thought for a moment as Mary Allen waited. She put one hand on her hip and took one step forward, transferring her weight to that front leg. She thought it was funny, mimicking the stance of how middle school girls argue with each other.

“If you don’t cross the bridge,” he began, forgetting entirely about the tadpoles, “then you have to kiss me.”

“What?” she questioned.

“I dare you to cross the bridge, and I mean all the way across, not just a couple of steps. And if you don’t, you have to kiss me.”

Mary Allen had given up a lot when she couldn’t complete a dare. She gave up her favorite rhinestone bracelet to a third grader after refusing to push her friend down a slide. For a month, she had to give her pudding cup away at lunch after she failed to steal a thumbtack from her history teacher’s desk drawer. Danny’s dare was not unheard of— a host of Mary Allen’s friends had been given the same dilemma. She had never been asked before and Danny was the last person she would expect to ask.

She let out a sigh while thinking. The sound of running water grew louder— the stream seemed to speed up in front of them. Mary Allen hated how it sounded, as if it were going to flood over the sides of the bank and sweep her away. She felt her heartbeat increase rapidly with the pace of the water, a sensation that had never scared her so much before. Danny watched her expectantly, waiting for a response. Mary Allen went to take the bucket. The pain in her arms and back returned as she stepped closer, a reminder of what carrying the bucket before had done to her. The inside had become completely full as the tadpoles seemed even bigger. They had eyes now, dark circles suspended in their clear, gel-like heads.

She tried to read Danny’s expression. With only the bucket between them, she noticed how much taller Danny actually was. The bridge stood daunting as ever, and at that moment, Mary Allen swore that she saw it move with instability.

“Fine,” she mumbled, giving no indication as to what she had chosen. The water in the bucket rippled in Mary Allen’s hands, alerting her that she was shaking with nervousness. To her own surprise, she moved past Danny and put the bucket down at the edge of the stream. Danny watched as she turned to face him, standing close enough that he could see her cheeks flush. Mary Allen reached up as far as her feet could propel her and kissed Danny on the cheek. She moved quickly, taking a step back towards the stream in embarrassment.

“Come on, a real kiss Mary Allen. That didn’t count,” he said as Mary Allen realized she had run out of room to step back. The stream roared behind her, moving so fast that it sounded like a tidal wave in her head.

“I can’t go on that bridge, it’s dangerous,” she expressed quietly.

“You have to choose, it’s one or the other.”

“I can’t, though.”
“That’s not how a dare works.”
Mary Allen’s face felt hot and her breath grew unsteady. Without warning, she rushed at Danny and kissed him again, holding her position a few moments longer so he would have nothing to complain about this time.

The bucket sat abandoned by the stream. It shook as dirt-colored frogs spilled over the sides, fat and fully grown. It was impossible to tell which webbed limbs belonged to which frog as they tumbled out of the bucket uncontrollably. Some hopped away as they fell to the ground while others didn’t move, being trampled over as more escaped. There were at least a hundred of them out when the buck tipped over, releasing another wave of frogs that dispersed in all directions. The ground became entirely brown as the frogs showed no sign of stopping. The stream became consumed with frogs, swept away by the current as more fell in.