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cell started ringing. First it was Hunter wanting to know whether I was feeling any better. I told her I just had cramps. She said I was missing all the excitement, everybody was totally freaked after what had happened to Troy Lindquist, like, was it going to happen to somebody else? I had to make an excuse and get off the phone, I felt so bad. Like, guilty. And then Catie with a C called, and Stephe, and Keisha, and I kept feeling more and more miserable. It was weird. You’d think I’d be glad to hear from my friends, but instead I felt more and more awful because I wasn’t one of them anymore and they didn’t even know it. They treated me the same as before, and after a while I couldn’t stand it. I turned off the phone.
    I couldn’t read anymore, either. I just wandered around the apartment for I don’t know how long. Finally, I went to Mom’s bedroom and borrowed her big antique hand mirror—everything Mom owned was either ultramodern or antique, nothing in-between. I took the mirror to the kitchen table. Also a notebook, a fluorescent green gel pen, and Snakes of North America .
    Milk snakes, corn snakes, all the snakes my mother had mentioned were North American snakes, and it would make sense if all the snakes on my head were American, so to speak, because I was. I bet all the snakes on my mother’s head were Greek.
    I held up the mirror by its engraved silver handle to look at my snakes, and there they all were, heads up, looking back at me. A babble of snaky voices burst out.
    There she isss!
    No ssscales!
    I stuck out my tongue at them. They all flickered their forked tongues like mad.
    She’sss tasssting usss!
    She callsss that fat thing a tongue?
    She’sss sssmelling usss!
    She’ll find out we’re classsy sssnakesss!
    No hognossse sssnakesss on thisss head!
    No worm sssnakesss .
    No low classs—
    Blah blah blah, yada yada yada. I rolled my eyes.
    How doesss she do that?
    Enough already. I set down the mirror, opened the book, and started looking through the pictures. All the weight on my head shifted forward as the snakes looked, too, shading my face like the bill of a baseball cap.
    â€œThere’s one of them,” I muttered, recognizing bright red-black-yellow-black bands. I started reading.
    Lampropeltisss triagulum elapssoidesss? complained the regal voice in my head. What sssort of name isss that? I am Ssswift-Ssstrike, I am Ever-watcher, I am Doom-Dealer. I am—
    Scarlet king snake. I should have known. I kept reading.
    I have ssscales ssso sssmooth they ssseem shiny and polished , bragged the king snake, picking up the words from my mind, I guess. They were the words I was reading in the book. I have red dorsssolatera bandsss. I can be differentiated from the poisssonouss coral sssnake by remembering the ssslogan “Red by black meansss friend of Jack.” I have an undivided anal plate .
    â€œYou don’t have any anal plate. Unless it’s buried in my head.”
    I am noted for my ophiophagousss inclination , he said, hesitating only slightly. He didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what that meant. But he was still bragging.
    She , the scarlet king snake corrected me.
    Sure, okay, fine, whatever. My scarlet king snake was female. I jotted some notes, then flipped pages, looking for more of my snakes.
    Four hours later I was still there, and the list, with lots of scratch-outs and corrections, looked like this:
    Scarlet King Snake, 1, female, bossy, look up “ophiophagous.” King snakes eat small mammals, birds, fish, frogs, love turtle eggs. Ick .
    Milk Snake, 1, similar to K.S., doesn’t really suck milk from cows. Whirs tail & strikes if provoked .
    Eastern King Snake, 2, bright yellow & black. Robust neck and jaw muscles. If molested will bite w/ great determination. Aaagh
    Corn Snake, 3, docile , (yay!) kept as pet, bright yellow w/ orange blobs, eats rats in corncribs
    Pine Woods Snake, 1,