"Duncan,.Lois.-.Summer.Of.Fear" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

On Monday of the following week we had the memorial service for Aunt Marge and Uncle Ryan, and on Tuesday the boxes containing their personal possessions arrived from Springfield. Dad and Peter carted them up to the attic and stored them there against the day when Julia might feel like opening them and going through the contents.
"Not now," she said. "I just can't do it now."
Dad said, "Of course not, honey. Nobody expects you to do anything right now except eat and sleep and try to get used to your new family."
They were standing in the hallway outside the door to the den and I was seated on the den floor, cutting out the material for my new dress. Their voices came to me as clearly as though they were in the same room.
"That part isn't hard," Julia said. "You're so good to me, Tom, I'm used to you already."
The scissors slipped from my hand and tumbled soundlessly into a mound of pink cloth. Had that been Julia speaking, my cousin Julia? That throaty voice, rich with warm affectionЧcould it have been the same one that had risen in furyЧ"You vigrous, rat-fanged varmant!"Чa shriek of rage that had shrilled through the front yard?
AndЧ"Tom"! She had called my father "Tom." Why not "Uncle Tom" as she called my mother "Aunt Leslie"? True, it was Mother who had been her mother's sister, but I had called Julia's father "Uncle Ryan" even though he was no blood relation. "Tom" sounded so strange from the lips of a girl so little older than myself, so oddly familiar, almost rude.
But my father did not seem to find it so. He laughed, a pleased little laugh, and I could picture him ruffling her hair, the way he did mine when he was feeling fond and friendly.
"We're not 'being good,'" he said, "we're just 'being family.' We love you, Julie, and we want you to be happy."
Julia went upstairs then and Dad came into the den, looking for the paper. He gave me a playful tap with his foot as he went by and then paused and said, "What's that you're making?"
"A dress," I said, "for the dance. It's the end of this week."
"Pink?" Dad said. "Since when does a carrot-top like you start wearing pink? I thought it was against the law or something."
"Why shouldn't I wear something different once in a while?" I said irritably. "The material was on sale and it's pretty so I bought it."
"Don't get your back up," Dad said, locating the paper and settling himself into a chair to read it. "It's fine with me whatever you wear. You're the one who's always screamed if somebody gave you something pink."
He was right. I had never worn pink. It didn't go with orange hair and freckles. I sat staring down unhappily at the soft piles of rose-colored material. Why I had bought it I simply couldn't imagine. There had been other colors just as pretty that would have looked fine on me. And the patternЧwhy had I chosen a style so full up top? It was sure to bag, and altering it would take forever. In order to have it in time for the dance, I would have to make the dress according to the pattern, and go looking as though I were wearing somebody's misfitting hand-me-downs.
As it happened, I need not have wasted time worrying. I never wore the pink dress, and I did not go to the dance.
When I woke on Friday morning I knew that something was wrong, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I squirmed uncomfortably in my bed, feeling hot and unpleasant and strangely scratchy. I would have liked to have closed my eyes and gone back to sleep, but the morning sunlight reached from the window across the room and fell, light and lemony, upon my face. It was its touch upon my eyelids that had wakened me, and I knew it would not permit me to fall asleep again.
With a sigh I got out of bed and stumbled groggily across the room to the bathroom. I reached for my toothbrush, glanced into the mirror over the basin, and froze. The face that looked back at me was not my own. It was a grotesque mask, bloated and red and ghastly!
For a moment I could not move or speak. I simply stood there staring. Then I gave a strangled gasp and closed my eyes. It couldn't be true, I thought. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, every girl's worst fear come trueЧto rise in the morning and find that in the night you had changed into some sort of dreadful creature, inhuman and repulsive!
It's the lighting, I told myself frantically, or the mirror or something! I kept my eyes closed a few seconds more and then opened them, and it was not a dream and it was not the lighting. The beady little eyes, peering out from slits in the swollen face, were my eyes, and the curly mass of bright-colored hair that framed the face was also mine.
With a little sob I turned away from the mirror and rushed out of the bathroom.
"What is it?" Julia was sitting up in bed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Is something the matter?"
"Yes," I choked. "YesЧsomething is."
"What's wrong?"
"Don't look at me," I said. "I don't want anybody to look at me!"
I opened the bedroom door and ran out into the hall and down the stairs.
"Mother!" I cried. "Mother!"
She was in the kitchen, standing at the stove, with her back to the doorway. As I rushed in she turned and her eyes widened.
"Good Lord," she exclaimed, "what's happened to you?"
"I don't know," I said shakily. "Mother, I'm scared! What could it be?"
"It looks like hives." She shoved the frying pan off the burner and came over to look at me more closely. "Yes, I'd swear it's hives. I had an aunt who used to get them whenever she ate strawberries. The thing is that people who are susceptible to hives usually start getting them in babyhood. I can't imagine having them for the first time as a teenager."
"What can I do about them?" I asked. "How do you get rid of them?"
"I'll call Dr. Morgan," Mother said, "I think he'd better look at you. If it is hives there may be something you can take for them, and if it isn't we want to know what you do have. Go get some clothes on and I'll call and see if he'll see you before the regular office hours."
So I went back upstairs to dress and found Julia still in bed, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, I hurried past her, not speaking, and hauled some clothes out of the bureau and went into the bathroom to dress. There I received another shock, for the ugly red splotches were not confined to my face. I had them all over my body, some of them studded with great white lumps that resembled mosquito bites but were much larger, and my feet were so swollen that I could not wedge them into my shoes.
I stuck my feet into a pair of floppy bedroom slippers and went back down to the kitchen. Bobby was there now, shoveling down cereal, and he let out a low whistle and said, "What's the matter with your face?"
"Mother thinks it's hives," I told him, trying not to cry.
"I talked to the nurse," Mother said. "Dr. Morgan will see you, but they want you to come in the side door so you won't expose the people in the waiting room if this turns out to be something contagious. Come on, I'll drive you over."
An hour later we were home again, assured that I was not contagious. What I had was hives, as Mother had suspected, and Dr. Morgan had prescribed a medication that was to be taken every four hours and told me to take baths with baking soda in the water.
"It's an allergic reaction," he said. "Can you think of anything unusual you may have eaten in the past twenty-four hours? Have you taken any medicines? It's strange that you have no history of anything like this before."
"No," I told him miserably. "I'm not taking medicine and I haven't eaten anything I haven't eaten a hundred times before. How long will I be this way?"
"Not long, I hope," he said kindly. "This medicine is usually quite effective. Twenty-four hours should do it. If it doesn't, phone me and I'll change the dosage."
"Twenty-four hours!" I cried. "But there's a dance tonight! I've been counting on going for weeks!"
"That's a shame," Dr. Morgan said, "but it's not the end of the world, now, is it? At your age there's always another dance."
I could have kicked him. In fact, I really might have if my poor swollen feet hadn't been wedged so uncomfortably into the slippers.
When we got home Julia was finally up and dressed, and I broke the news to her as soon as I saw her.
"What I have is hives," I told her, "and they're not going to get better before tomorrow, so the dance is off. I'm going to call Mike at work and leave a message for him at the pool office. I wouldn't let him see me like this for anything."
"I've seen people like that before," Julia said. She regarded me with interest. "The mountain people call it 'the crud.' What does it feel like? Does it hurt much?"
"No," I said, "but it itches like crazy." I turned to Mother. "Where do you keep the baking soda?"
"I'll get it for you." She frowned thoughtfully. "I hate to see Julia miss this dance, Rae, just because you aren't going to be able to go. Isn't there some way she can go without you? It's such a nice chance for her to meet some young people. Couldn't she go with Carolyn and her date?"