Finding Cassie Crazy (2 page)

Sunday, Late at Night, Full Moon

Well, hello there, Diary

This is Cassie and it's Sunday night.

So, what happened was, I just spent a weekend at Emily's
place, since her parents were away (as per usual). Lydia was in a melancholy mood, so we didn't do anything illegal. We just invented recipes using the strangest ingredients in the kitchen plus some different kinds of old wine.

Also, Lydia set off the smoke alarm seventeen times. She's been analysing how smoke alarms work.

It was Lydia's birthday last week, and her father gave her this book which has instructions to make her become a famous author. Part of why Lydia was melancholy was that she can't decide whether to keep using the book or not since, on the one hand, she hates her dad and she thinks the book is stupid but, on the other hand, she really wants to be an author.

Anyhow, I just got home from Emily's and I thought of this diary. The reason being that it was a birthday present from
my
dad a few years ago. I remember that it was wrapped in green tissue paper when he gave it to me, with one of those curling, twirling ribbons, and I made fun of my dad because I knew a shopkeeper must have wrapped it and also because I was twelve and stupid.

Also, I remember that I saw the leather cover and realised it was a diary, and then I raised my eyebrows and kind of humorously threw the diary over my shoulder, saying, ‘You think
I'm
the kind of person who writes in a
diary?'

Mum and Dad laughed and Dad just shrugged like, ‘Oh
well, better luck next time.' I put the diary in my bedside drawer and it's been there ever since.

Hey, I guess you don't know all these people, do you, Diary? Lydia and Emily and mothers and fathers and everything?

You don't even know who I am.

I'm not the kind of person who writes in diaries.

That's one thing to know about me.

ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT: Mr Botherit's class

Letter from Ashbury student to Brookfield student as participation in the Ashbury–Brookfield Pen Pal Project

Dear Student at Brookfield
Please see the following!!!

Well, I have one other thing that I could tell you, and it is this: I am a person who has secret assignments. Like an FBI agent? ☺I get secret assignments that appear in my locker: they are written on scented notepaper inside envelopes sealed with red wax.

Kooky, eh! But that's just what I'm like.

I can't say any more about THAT little secret just now!

Well, whoever you are that receives my letter, I hope you also realise what an inspiring idea this is of Mr Botherit's. I remember this time last year, when kids in a different English class in our year were writing letters to you guys at Brookfield. Well, I was
jealous
! I wanted to be one of them! Mr Botherit is dead-set-on-your-mark-get-ready-go when he says that schools that are close to one another should forge ties and I hope you are as keen as I am to get started with the forgery.

Okay, got to go! Looking forward to your reply! ☺☺☺

Yours sincerely

Emily Melissa-Anne Thompson (aka . . . have you been paying attention? . . . aka Em Toblerone!!!)

Student at Ashbury High

Letter from Lydia Jaackson-Oberman of Ashbury High to A Person at Brookfield

DEAR PERSON AT BROOKFIELD

I am a fish.

You wouldn't think so to look at me, what with the uniform, and the hair on top of my head and all that.

But it's true, I'm a fish.

I'm not sure what type, but I think maybe a cod.

What are you?

My mother grew up in a pinball parlour, but then she dyed her hair purple, learned to fly a plane and the rest, as they say, is history.

My father, I never knew, except for this one time, when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.

‘Dad,' I said. ‘Am I a dog?'

‘Lydia,' he said. ‘I apologise.'

We haven't spoken a word to each other since.

He's the smartest man in the world, my dad, but you can't tell at all.

I'm having trouble concentrating because Tic-Tacs keep hitting the side of my head.

What should happen is this:

You should send me some dope and I should sell it. Or use it. We should do it regularly. You send it and I sell it. It would be a bit like drug trafficking.

I've heard that Brookfield has a marijuana plantation instead of a sports oval. So I guess it's easy enough for you to get. Or are they strict about who can pick it? I hope not.

It was my birthday last week and my friends, Em and
Cass, made a chocolate cake. It had a lot of bourbon in the mixture, so it was excellent, and also strange. But the point is, we look out for each other, Em and Cass and I.

They look out for me by baking me birthday cakes. I look out for them by supplying their dope.

Do you think you can get it here by lunchtime?

Yours

Lydia Jaackson-Oberman

PS Sorry about my name.

To student at Brookfield from student at Ashbury

Dear Brooker Kid

That's what our English teacher calls you: ‘Brooker Kids'.

I think it's pretty funny, so that's how I have started my letter to you. I wasn't even going to write at
all
, is the fact of the matter, but I just found it so funny when he said it that I wrote it: ‘Dear Brooker Kid'.

My name is Cassie.

In actual fact, I always think it's funny when a teacher tries to be cool. Most people want to slap them across the face but I want to sit them down, like with a hand on their forehead, saying, ‘It's
okay
, you're a
grown-up,
you're allowed to be a nerd, just breathe in and out, that's all you need to do,' and they would look up at me confused but also relieved and teary eyed.

Emily gets rapid breathing (you know when you have to breathe into a paper bag?) because she is highly strung. Lydia does not get rapid breathing because she is as cool as a cat.
Em and Lyd are my best buddies, so that's why I introduced them to you right there.

I'll tell you something else that I find funny and that is this: counselling. I went to see a counsellor with my mother last night. You might think that's kind of a private thing to reveal in a letter to someone like you, who I've never even met, but you must be forgetting what counselling is. It's where you TELL A STRANGER ALL ABOUT YOURSELF. So telling you that I've been to see a counsellor is nothing. You're not a stranger. You're a Brooker Kid.

I never knew that you would get homework from counselling, especially since it's expensive, and we should be able to give the counsellor homework instead of the other way around, but there you go. She leaned towards me too
much, the counsellor, maybe her eyesight wasn't so good, and she offered me a chocolate mint, and she gave me homework.

The homework is that I have to choose someone who is a perfect stranger, but who seems like a really nice person, and I have to tell them about myself. Does that sound safe to you? No. Not to me either. The counsellor said I couldn't choose Em or Lyd as they have known me all my life, practically. Right away she wanted to get me
out of the pattern
, she said, the pattern being life with my two best friends. She figured this out from my five-minute explanation about Lyd and Em. I couldn't believe it, and I can tell by the expression on your face that you can't believe it either.

‘Find yourself a nice girl at school, honey,' she said.

She was imagining somebody who wore glasses and a cardigan and who would nod along with whatever I said. I bet.

One person I was thinking of for my homework is this girl
at my school called Elizabeth Clarry who seems pretty nice. We used to do athletics training together a few years ago.

The counsellor also gave my mother homework, which was to write a letter to my dad and express her emotions. I think that's just stupid.

She's not supposed to mail the letter or anything, just write it. My mother did her homework last night while she was drinking a bottle of wine. I found it on the kitchen table this morning, all purple stained, and I took it with me to school, because I thought she might get depressed if she found it in the middle of her hangover this morning.