Read Online Oddest of All by Bruce Coville - Free Book Online

thing. Part of him—not his brain, but something deep in his gut—feared that whatever caused the weird mutation might be contagious.
    That fear didn’t stop Dennis from returning to the swamp the next afternoon. But then, he had done that nearly every day for the last six years. For some reason he felt at home there—certainly more at home than he ever did in school, where some oaf was always ready to tease him about his looks, or, more specifically, about his bulging eyes.
    He had long ago given up complaining to his mother about the teasing. “Oh, Dennis, what nonsense!” she would scoff. “You’re a
very
handsome boy.” Which, oddly enough, he knew to be almost true. All he needed to be as handsome as a prince was eyeball-reduction surgery.
    In the swamp he could forget about his looks, about school, about teasing, about everything that bugged him in his daily life. The only thing he couldn’t ignore was the smokestacks of the Bingdorf chemical factory on the far side of the swamp—the only blot on an otherwise beautifully untamed view. Even though everyone in town was sure the plant was dumping its toxic wastes here, no one had been able to prove it. According to his mother, most people didn’t want it proved, preferring jobs to clean water. And since old man Bingdorf owned not only the factory but also the swamp, he was able to get away with it.
    Dennis forced his eyes away from the distant silhouette of the hated factory. Today he had come to the swamp for a more specific purpose than simply losing himself in the buzz and pulse of life that surrounded him whenever he was here. Having bombed his third bio test in a row, he was determined to catch the mutant frog. The need for extra credit had grown to emergency proportions!
    Squatting a few feet from the murky water, holding himself motionless, Dennis cast his glance in all directions. He gasped. Barely an arm’s length to his right squatted the five-legged frog—and next to it a frog with eyes on its shoulders! The eyes blinked, causing Dennis to cry out and stumble backward. At the sound of his voice the frogs leaped away, disappearing with a
plunk
under a mat of algae.
    Dennis wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed—or relieved.
    Â 
    When he told his mother about the mutated frogs that night she frowned and said, “I’ve been reading about that problem in other places, Den. They’re pretty sure it’s caused by chemical pollution. Around here, that would mean the Bingdorf factory, of course. Not that old man Bingdorf would care. He’d sell his own children if he thought he could get a decent price for the chemicals they were made of. But you’d better stay out of the swamp, Dennis. I don’t want three-legged grandchildren!”
    Though Dennis rarely rebelled against a parental order, he couldn’t resist the weirdness of what he had seen—or the chance for that extra credit in bio. So the next afternoon found him back in the swamp, frog hunting again. At least, that was the reason he gave himself. The truth was, he would have gone even without the lure of the mutants. The swamp was just too important to his peace of mind for him to abandon it so easily.
    His defiance of his mother’s orders paid off when he spotted the five-legged frog again. This time it was sitting alone. Gathering his courage, Dennis crept forward, hands cupped and ready. But just as he was about to lunge for it, the frog leaped away.
    Dennis splashed into the swamp after it.
    Aside from the fact that it would make his mother angry, going into the water didn’t seem dangerous. He had waded into the swamp plenty of times before and knew it was less than two feet deep here.
    At least, it had never been more than two feet deep in the past. To his shock, Dennis now found himself up to his thighs in water.
    Even worse, his feet were stuck in the muddy bottom.
    No, worse than stuck. He was