The Mask That Sang Read Online Free Page A

know a lot of families.”
    Mr. Gregor was smiling at Mom with nothing but goodwill on his face. Mom shot him a look that could have meant anything. “Okay, maybe,” she said.
    Cass picked up the suitcase with her clothes in it and headed back inside, leaving them there to work it out.
    It was time to see her room again. And now it really was hers.
    Just like last time, she started to hear that buzzing hum as soon as she set foot in the hallway. Like those voices were trying not to laugh, like they had a surprise in store.
    â€œI know the surprise,” Cass told them. “I saw the room already, remember?”
    The voices did gymnastics around her, mischievous echoes from far away.
    She hauled the suitcase onto the bed and unlatched it. She would find just the right place for every piece of clothing. Which ones would she hang up? Which ones would she put in drawers? And which drawers for which kinds of clothes? Cass had never had all the drawers to herself before.
    She turned toward the dresser, and the voices suddenly surged.
    â€œOkay, okay!” Cass told them. Apparently those voices were as excited about putting her clothes away as she was. “Which drawer do you want first?”
    She held her hand in front of a drawer. The voices hummed enthusiastically. She hovered by the next one, and they buzzed just a bit more. And Cass was playing right along, getting crazier by the minute, like this was normal.
    They practically turned themselves inside out when her hand stopped next to the first drawer on the right-hand side.
    â€œYou like this one?” Cass asked the voices.
    She slid the drawer open.
    There was something in tissue paper. Cass pushed the paper back to reveal what was inside.
    Then she screamed.
    ™
    They came running, Mom and Mr. Gregor.
    Mom hugged her hard. “What’s wrong, my darling? What happened?”
    Cass was feeling stupid now, sitting on the floor, heart still beating fast. “In the drawer. Sorry. It scared me.”
    She didn’t mention how the voices had swelled almost to a triumphant yell in her head, and how she’d realized they were coming out of the thing that was in the drawer. That thing had been singing to her all along.
    Mr. Gregor was peering into the drawer with some kind of awe on his face.
    â€œI think it’s a false face.”
    Cass slowly got to her feet and approached the drawer again. The voices had backed off a little now, as if they realized they had scared her. They were friends, not enemies.
    Mom was staring at it. “It’s an ugly face.”
    â€œFalse face. An Iroquois healing mask,” Mr. Gregor said. “There’s a large Aboriginal population around here. I don’t mean to be personal—are you of Aboriginal descent?”
    â€œNo.”
    Cass was inching closer, and she reached out her hand to the mask. She couldn’t quite touch it yet.
    The face was carved from some kind of wood, misshapen, its mouth curving up into a kind of distorted, knowing half-smile as if it held all of the strange jokes of the universe inside. Its eyes were not quite circles, not quite ovals, not even quite the same size. What they were, though, was brilliant, uncanny white against the red of the face. If they could move, Cass thought, they would be rolling, looking at everything at once. The forehead was all wrinkles, like that mask was planning something huge. And framing that otherworldly face was a mass of crazed black hair, piled inside the tissue paper that had been cradling the mask.
    Cass stared at it, hardly able to tear her eyes away. She had the strangest feeling that she almost recognized it. The mask grinned back knowingly as if it could see inside her too.
    â€œHot, hot, hot!” sang the voices. She had found where they were hiding. She had won the game.

chapter five
    By the time they’d unloaded everything and hauled it into the house, Mom was starting to talk to Mr. Gregor like he