Dusssie by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online

into the apartment, and of course I had to see what was in it right away. A little key hung by a jewelry chain from the padlock. I opened it.
    â€œHats!”
    Or head coverings, anyway, lots of them, wrapped in white tissue paper. There was a big puffy-crowned hat with a ruffled brim, all royal blue crushed velvet. There was a wide-brimmed, denim hippie hat with embroidered daisies. There was a real sunbonnet like from Little House on the Prairie , only in posy-print electric lavender. There was a silky sort of modesty wrap like Muslim girls wear. There was a big shawl in bright-colored stripes with long, beaded fringe. There was a Cat in the Hat hat. There was a fake fur hat with dangling purple ermine tails. Just to mention a few.
    Sssweeet , hissed one of the corn snakes. I was starting to be able to tell them apart in my head.
    Looksss like a prey item , remarked a king snake.
    â€œShut up,” I told him. His comment smelled like a gerbil cage but the fake fur hat was the sweetest. They were all way cool, all the hats, which was as bizarre as the box itself. What I mean is, usually when I get a present, I feel good and everything because somebody gave me something, but almost always it’s the wrong color or the wrong size or just not for me, you know? But these hats were perfect. All of them. I never would have thought of them, yet they were so me. It was like somebody was reading my mind.
    And there was no card or anything to say who had sent them.
    As I unpacked them, my mother watched with her eyebrows arching higher and higher until she looked like a McDonald’s sign. “My sister?” she wondered aloud.
    I think we both knew better, because Aunt Stheno is kind of resentful most of the time, like, she and Mom don’t get along that great. But I ran for the phone anyway. “Aunt Stheno,” I demanded when she answered, “are you the one who sent me a big box full of hats?”
    No. No, she hadn’t. She wished she could have, but bookkeepers, unlike certain famous “sculptors,” don’t earn that kind of money.
    So much for Aunt Stheno.
    After I hung up, I looked at Mom. The hats had to come from somebody who knew what I had to cover up. And my heart swelled, because I thought I had the answer. “Mom,” I said, kind of choked up because I’d been feeling so hateful about her, “it was you, wasn’t it?”
    She shook her head. “Dusie, when was the last time I gave you anything you actually liked? No, it wasn’t me.”
    What was I thinking? Of course my annoying mother couldn’t do anything right.
    But if it wasn’t her or Aunt Stheno, who was it?
    By the worry line deepening between Mom’s eyes, I could tell she was wondering the same thing. Which just made me pissed at her, because the hats were great, so what did it matter where they came from, really? I stopped thinking about it, just grabbed one hat after another and tried them on in front of the full-length mirror. I settled on the blue crushed velvet hat as my absolute favorite and stood there staring at myself.
    I looked almost kind of cute with the snakes covered—
    Crap. No matter what I did, it was all going to be cover up, cover up, from now on. Lying all the time, pretending to be—I was so never going to be normal. Only half-human. Hiding my head, hiding my—
    Guilt.
    Even if I never did anything else horrible, look what I’d already done.…
    My happy mood had evaporated, but I kept staring in the mirror, at the blue hat.
    â€œMom,” I said without turning around, “can we go to the hospital and visit Troy?”
    I heard a crash, like she’d dropped something.
    â€œNobody’ll see the snakes if I keep my hat on,” I said.
    Actually I wasn’t sure I would keep the hat on if I could get a minute alone with Troy. Maybe I needed to make the snakes apologize and take back what they had done to him. No, that seemed lame