she explained that she had wanted a whole bunch of things that people would n't let her have like her own snake -- a corn snake would do if they would n't let her have a real rattler -- and a plastic german world war two helmet , which did n't have to have a nazi sign on it if it upset them so much , but it had to look real , so that she could play with melvin jonson sometimes , and her parents had gotten mad at her for that and talked and talked about how that was bad until they made her cry , and a book called horrible ghost tales , and more importantly , her very own piece of a brain and she intended to get them all anyway .