This is for CommunityInteractive's "W10: The Ripple Effect" contest. I don't think it fully covers the prompt, but I just wanted to try writing a literal interpretation.

--

"We lost a character."

Becca groaned into the phone, flopping back onto her bed. A pillow bounced up in protest and fell onto the ground, but Becca was too distressed to rescue it at the moment. "How could this happen?"

"I guess the bucket wasn't tall enough..."

"I told you it was too short! Any half-decent frog with four legs and a pinch of ambition could have escaped."

"I know, I know!" Abby's voice faltered before turning falsely optimistic. "Come help me look?"

Becca groaned again, rolling onto her stomach. Her bony elbows dug into the mattress, and she knew even before she opened her mouth that she would end up agreeing. She always went along with whatever Abby wanted to do, which was – 90% of the time – something she absolutely didn't want to do. "This is stupid. You should just change the ending or something."

"I can't change the ending! This is a historical remake!"

Abby's summer project this year had been a series of short films featuring frogs as the main actors, and they were currently working on Mary Hoppins. It was really Abby's project, but Becca had been recruited to help manage the cast because Abby was squeamish when it came to bugs and insects and the like. "Have a little artistic expression."

"Just help me find Mary!"

Becca's jaw dropped open, and she almost joined the pillow in falling off the bed. "Wait a second. You lost Mary? Our main character?"

"It wasn't exactly my decision for our star to disappear!"

Becca stuck her legs out from the bed and slid off slowly, melting down from the mattress into a puddle on the floor. She hated the summers here, too hot and sticky, and she doubly hated the idea of poking around in the marsh behind Abby's house for their lead actress, but it didn't seem like she had much choice in the matter. "Fine, I'll be there in-"

"Great! Thank you Becca! Thank you thank you thank you-"

Becca hung up the phone and dropped it on the floor before eyeing the closet and trying to calculate exactly how much effort it would take to get dressed and leave the house.

--

"This one," Becca said, holding up a frog she'd plucked out of the tall grass in the marsh.

Abby stepped closer, shoes squelching as they were relinquished by the mud, and gave it a good squint before shaking her head. "That's not Mary."

"Sure it is," Becca said, grinding her teeth together. The heat from the sun seemed to get caught in the marsh, sucked in by the mud along with everything else, and between the humidity and grass that tickled and scratched at her legs and knees, she was altogether more interested in getting out of the marsh than in finding the right frog.

"Mary has a little bump right here," Abby said, pointing to her own cheek to demonstrate. "The one in your hand doesn't have that."

"Just- I don't know, glue something on."

The look Abby gave Becca told her that what she'd suggested was some new sort of horrendous.

"Fine," Becca muttered, dropping the frog back into the mud, whereupon it hopped away with a disgruntled croak and a glare at Becca for suggesting a spontaneous facelift. To be fair, Becca had caught five frogs so far, and she was fairly certain that she was just grabbing the same one over and over again. So, the frog had a right to its share of resentment. "Why can't we just use a different frog?" Becca asked, bending down to inspect a bit of movement in the grass that turned out to just be a grasshopper. "I mean, isn't that how the movie ends? Where she used to be ugly but then she turns pretty in the end?"

"That's Nanny McPhee."

"Oh. What are you filming again?" Becca asked, standing up and stretching out her back. She swatted away a large fly before it could land on her arm. Then she lifted her right leg to take a step, only she had to wait a good three seconds before the mud let go of it, and she almost fell over due to the sudden shift in balance. She righted herself quickly and placed her right foot a little farther along, then lifted the left and repeated the process.

"Mary Poppins. They aren't at all the same thing," Abby admonished. She was somewhere close by judging from the volume of her voice, but Becca couldn't see her through the waist-high grass. She must have been crouched down somewhere.

"Maybe I'd have figured that out if I'd seen your film," Becca said, watching as a frog took a hop nearby. But she was pretty sure it was the same frog, so she didn't move to grab it.

"And you will see it – once I get Mary back," Abby said from somewhere beneath the grass.

"Uh huh." Becca looked back toward Abby's house. Even though it wasn't altogether that far away, she knew it would take a while to trudge through the mud. What she wouldn't give for a cool glass of lemonade. She regretted getting out of bed this morning. "Why did she leave again? The salary wasn't enough?"

"Ha ha ha," Abby said, enunciating each syllable so Becca would know that she didn't think it was very funny at all.

"What were you paying her? Three flies a day?"

"Just help me find her already, would you," Abby said, and Becca sighed before crouching down among the grass and spreading the stalks, looking for any movement and listening for the light croaking of the frogs beneath the buzz of insects and the chirping of nearby birds.

The natural buzz of the marsh soon included the forced rustling of grass, sudden squelching of mud, and excited shriek before Abby yelled, "I got her!"

Becca stood up to find Abby standing not ten feet away, covered in mud up to her elbows, and in one muddy hand, a frog.

Definitely the same frog Becca had already caught five times.

"That's..." Becca fell silent as she took in the clear joy on Abby's face, the excess mud slipping off and a thin layer caking on Abby's skin and clothes. Abby wasn't one to get dirty, and she certainly wasn't one to pick up amphibious creatures – Becca did all the staging – so Becca just decided to enjoy the moment. "...definitely Mary, nice job Abby."

In the end, Becca figured that people saw what they wanted to see. And nobody who watched the video would know that the lead actress had been switched out halfway through the shoot. But Becca would remember the only time Abby had ever dove into mud to capture the wrong frog. Who knew, maybe Abby would get used to it and start doing her projects all by herself without dragging Becca into them. Then Becca could sleep in and not have to-

"Ew! It moved in my hand! You take it!" Abby squealed, clearly about to throw poor Imposter Mary, but Becca moved closer and scooped the new frog from her hand.

"You're going to need a taller bucket," Becca warned as they started trudging back toward the house, to Abby's endless "I know"s. Becca smiled. It looked like she'd still be needed around after all, wrong frog or not.

People saw what they wanted to, and Becca was envisioning a cool glass of lemonade that she would first press against her sweaty brow for the sweet relief of a cold surface to wipe away the sticky marsh before sliding the straw between her lips and letting the sugary water slide down her throat.

Right after they found Imposter Mary an appropriately tall bucket so they never had to repeat the marsh search again.