Dusssie by Nancy Springer

Author:Nancy Springer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497688735
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween

I ate lunch—leftover paella, leftover London broil, leftover General Tso’s chicken, scrambled eggs, a can of tuna. I felt bummed, depressed, fat, fit to splat, yet I couldn’t stop eating till I felt like I’d swallowed a pig.

Then I waddled to the sofa, where I collapsed and turned on the TV. I wanted to forget about my weird, messed-up life by watching cartoons or something, but the indigo snake commanded, Sssnake show!

And they all started yammering.

Sssnake man!

Python!

Boomssslang!

Sssidewinder!

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I complained. We’d caught a couple of segments of the animal channel the night before, that was my mistake. I was in no mood to watch any insane biologist dancing with reptiles. I whammed the power button to kill the TV, jumped up, yanked on my coat and an ugly head scarf, and slammed out.

I started walking with no idea where I was going. Thinking about Troy had me so bummed that even going nowhere felt better than sitting still. There was nothing much to see except chichi restaurants, big snooty art galleries, and expensive stores. And skyscrapers in the distance, dark against a smoggy gray sky.

My mood was pretty dark and pretty gray, too. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and something rotting, maybe the Hudson River. I wished I’d thought to bring along my iPod so I could listen to music and not think. I wondered what Troy was thinking about me inside his stone skull. I wondered whether Troy’s parents cried about him a lot. I wondered whether they visited him every day. I wondered whether they would keep him in the hospital or take him home and stand him in a corner. My snakes stopped hissing about the TV and went quiet, maybe rocked by the rhythm of my walking, maybe listening to my thoughts.

Sssome thingsss you can control, sssome thingsss you can’t, said a gentle dandelion-yellow voice, a corn snake. No ussse worrying.

Like I said, sometimes they weren’t so bad. “Corny,” I grumbled, but I did feel better. Walking seemed to be a good idea.

Dusssie, said one of the little garter snakes, tell usss a ssstory.

“Huh?” What was this?

A ssstory! said several voices at once. Ribbon snakes, queen snakes, milk snakes.

The garter snake elaborated, A ssstory about what it’sss like to have legsss.

No! Tell usss about intessstinal parasssitesss, demanded a king snake.

Whoa. Who did they think I was, their mother? I was just a girl—well, I used to be just a girl—not a storyteller. “You tell me a story,” I said, just to argue.

For once they all shut up; there was a silence in my mind. I walked aimlessly, watching the wind scuttle scraps of paper along the gutters like white rats, feeling so clueless that I guess my snakes sensed it. In a moment, a voice said, Very well. I will tell usss all a ssstory.

It was the smooth green snake, which was a surprise, to me at least. She hardly ever said anything.

She continued, I will tell usss the ssstory of the Ssserpent Mother and the Jewel of Wisssdom.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.