Dusssie by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page B

mean, I’m sorry I was such a—” I stopped myself from saying the word that came to mind. He might not appreciate it. “I’m sorry I was, um, so rude the other day—”
    â€œThat’s all right. We all have those days.” He had the greatest voice, correct yet breezy bright. “Sit down, sit down!” He gestured to the other chair at his table.
    Why not? I sat.
    â€œAnybody could see you were having a bad day,” he said, laying his soup spoon aside. “Don’t give it another thought. Did you finish your report on snakes?”
    That hurt, because I missed going to school, or at least I missed seeing my friends, especially Keisha and Stephe. I mean, they were still phoning, and sending me text messages and e-mails and stuff, but what was I supposed to tell them? Hey, c’mon over; send pictures of the new me with your cell phone; I’ll bead your hair and you can French braid my snakes?
    So all of a sudden I was by myself almost all the time. I didn’t even like to IM anymore. Being grounded drives me crazy, but this was even worse, because I was basically grounding myself. Now that I knew I was only half-human, I didn’t think I could ever come out of exile. I just had too many secrets. The only ones who knew the truth were the Sisterhood, including Aunt Stheno and Mom, and I didn’t want to talk with them—especially Mom—because they were freaks and they were sooo annoying and I didn’t want to be like them. But I needed somebody to talk with so bad that here I was chatting with a bony old guy in a deli.
    Letting him assume I had been working on a report, I nodded, and to be polite I asked, “Are you taking the herp, uh, herpes—”
    â€œHerpetology. Study of snakes.”
    I nodded like sure, I knew that. “Are you taking it?”
    â€œHerpetology class? Yes, I am. It just started this morning. Fascinating.” He sat up almost straight, beaming. “The professor gave us some cultural background. Did you know that almost all ancient peoples worshipped snakes?”
    My snakes must have picked up the words from my head. I felt crawlies under my hat, and in my head someone said, yesss!
    â€œThey almost all had a myth of the world serpent,” the old guy went on. “A giant serpent coiled around the world with his tail in his mouth. The rainbow was a sky-serpent drinking from the ocean. The mother goddesses wore serpents. Even to the classical Greeks, the serpent was a symbol of wisdom and healing …”
    My snakes were hissing all sunny yellow, Sssky ssserpent, yesss! Goddesss Demeter, healing, wisssdom, yesss!
    Next they’d be bobbing around under my hat.
    â€œUm, I gotta go,” I said, starting to get up.
    The old man lifted a skinny hand to stop me. “Am I boring you? We’ll talk about something else. I am curious, why are you here at this hour? Did you not have school today?”
    â€œI don’t go to school anymore,” I said.
    â€œYou don’t ? An intelligent young lady like you?”
    â€œI have a medical excuse.” This was true, or it would be in a few days. Talking to the psychiatrist, I had told him quite truthfully that I heard voices in my mind coming from the snakes that were growing out of my head instead of hair. He had asked me to take off my hat and show him the snakes. I had told him I couldn’t because that would kill him. Well, the Greek mythology stuff I’d found on the Internet said a gorgon was so ugly that just looking at one would turn a man to stone. Really made me feel good. Although actually, Troy hadn’t turned to stone just from looking at my snakes. He’d still been okay till I, you know, glared at him. If looks could kill and all that. But I felt pretty annoyed at the therapist, so I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to make sure that it never happened again. Never.
    So after I’d told him about the snakes and the