Finding Cassie Crazy (21 page)

Dear Charlie,
Well, there has been a strange and possibly catatonic development here. And I will cut to the chase which is: wethink Cassie has gone crazy.

Okay, so, you know I asked about a boy at your school called Matthew Dunlop? And you said you didn't know him. At which point I thought:

It is clear that Charlie does not concentrate. Matthew Dunlop must be in his English class, and yet Charlie has not noticed this. That is an aspect of Charlie's character to work on. Concentrating.

Only then Seb wrote to
Lydia
, and said
he ALSO does not know Matthew Dunlop
!

So then Lyd and I looked at each other in the following way: IF THERE IS NO SUCH PERSON AS MATTHEW DUNLOP, WHO IS CASSIE WRITING TO?

And we got a secret fear in each of our hearts that Cass was writing to NOBODY. Which would mean that either:

(a) she's pretending she's writing to somebody, just to trick Lyd and me, or

(b) she's writing to an imaginary nobody and she thinks that he exists.

Lyd and I have grimly deduced that it is (b), because why would she do (a)? She has no reason to trick us, so far as we can see, and it would not be like her.

What do you think we should do? We are at a loss as our first inkling was to go straight to Cass and say words to the effect: ‘What the hell is going on?'

But then on the reverse hand, we are afraid that she might be in a fragile state and we could send her insane forever. Like when you wake up a person who is sleep walking.

So we are giving it time.

And in the meantime, we are going to ask you boys to check again, and make CERTAIN there is nobody at your school called Matthew Dunlop.

You could begin by breaking into the administration office and checking the school records.

Thank you very much.

Yours sincerely
Emily Thompson

Hey Seb
Are you sure there's no one there called Matthew Dunlop? I'm kind of freaked out by that, because Cass has been writing to him. Also getting letters from him. And now she even says she's meeting him.

Do you think it's possible that a person can have an imaginary penfriend? I'm fairly sure it's not normal.

Lydia

Dear Matthew
Okay, thanks for the meeting place co-ordinates. Hopefully they'll work out better this time. And maybe we can go and get a coffee or something? We won't exactly hang around the reserve for long, will we? It's pretty cold.

I have to say I'm looking forward to meeting you because my friends are being weird at the moment.

Anyway, see you tomorrow afternoon.

Cassie

Dear Emily
Well, I didn't need to break into the administrative records as per your suggestion, seeing as I'm a buddy of the school secretary.

This is on account of the times when I'm sitting in the admin block waiting to see the principal. I've told you about those times, right? Yeah I have, because I told you about the gas explosion incident, and that chick who I will never forgive since she defrauded me into the belief that there was gas in my school. You remember that incident.

Anyway, the short story is that I asked the secretary to type the name ‘Matthew Dunlop' into the computer and, as she is a kind-hearted lady, she checked every conceivable spelling she and I could come up, lasting pretty much the entire Maths period, on the variation of Matthew, Mattie, Matt, Maths, etc Dunlop, Doneloghp, Dunhill, Doneliving etc. And zero result.

I won't write any more because I know you need this info pronto. Good luck with it and I hope you girls figure out what to do about your friend. It's a weird situation, I agree and I don't envy you, and I think we should probably have another Date with a Girl and talk about it face to face.

See you
Charlie

Dear Lydia
You should trust me upfront. We figured out that we trusted each other last term, recall, so we've taken the first step in
forming the perfect team. You can now pass the ball to me, knowing you can count on me to score. Or to give it my best shot anyhow.

There's nobody at our school called Matthew Dunlop, Lyd.

I can confirm it's not normal to write to someone who doesn't exist. But you told me that your friend lost her dad last year, so I ask myself: is it so abnormal? If my old man snuffed it, I'd go lunatic on you. I'd watch football 24/7 and I'd look at the chair where my dad sits and I'd hear his voice telling the ref to get himself a day-job, and I'd go psycho.

From what you've said about Cass, she's maybe not over it? A year isn't long. Plus, you and Em both got penfriends at Brookfield who you like (sorry to be assuming things here), whereas maybe Cassie's own penfriend didn't work out? Maybe she got lonely. So she had to invent a new penfriend of her own.

I don't know, I've never even met her.

You never introduce your friends to me, Lyd.

You never even introduce yourself, in point of fact.

Whatever happens, I think you're pretty smart, and you'll figure it out.

Though I've got to say, you should let me help you out, up close and personal.

Seb

Dear Cassie
You know, I saw your name in lights last night. It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep, thinking all my trumpeting thoughts, and I get out of bed and I open the
curtains and I look into the night sky full of stars, and you know what I saw?

Your name.

It was like the stars joined up and spelled out the word for me.

It was like a sign. You're somebody special, Cassie. I can tell from your cursive handwriting, the way you join up the ‘s's in your name. The stars had trouble with that pair of ‘s's, but you make them flow like sand on a desert wind. I'll see you this afternoon.

Matthew

Okey dokey! We will now leave a few blank pages for you to write a first-person, present-tense account of a
significant
event in your life!

Think
way
back into your past now. You ready? When did your event take place?

Yesterday.

Great! Now put yourself in the
space
of the event and go for it . . .

It's Thursday afternoon and the bell is ringing for afternoon roll call. It's been raining all day.

Everyone's getting ready to go home and the girls who had to run across the oval at the end of last period are wringing the water from their hair and getting checked out by the guys. (Their uniforms are see-through from the rain.)

Em and I are trying to act excited for Cass because she's meeting her penfriend tonight. We're smiling these exaggerated smiles which we can't get off our faces.

‘What do you think he'll look like?' Em tries.

‘I haven't got a clue.' Cass tips her chair back, almost falls and straightens back up again. Em and I grin at her like crazy people and she tilts her head sideways, like to check that we're okay.

We hang around the balcony for a few minutes to see what she'll do. ‘Where are you meeting him?' I say.

‘None of your business,' she says.

We're planning to secretly follow her and see what she does.

But then she says, ‘What are you guys doing?'

‘Going to Castle Hill,' Em says (improvising) and Cass says she'll walk us to the bus stop.

Em wants to get off at the next stop and go back, but Cass has already disappeared into the rain, so we decide we may as well go have a coffee and figure out what to do.

It's wet and loud in Castle Hill: everyone is going to a movie and Thursday night shopping, shaking umbrellas and stamping in puddles, and we find our way to the corner couch at the Blue Danish.

We get coffees and Em starts going through it again, as if she can work it out like one of those trick logic questions. (
Bill gets home from work. He finds Glenda lying dead on the floor. He sees a puddle of water. Some broken glass. How did Glenda die?
)

‘Cass has been writing to Matthew Dunlop at Brookfield,' Em explains. ‘We find out that there is no Matthew Dunlop at Brookfield. Cass says she's going to meet Matthew Dunlop. What's going on with Cass?'

Glenda is a goldfish!

‘She's a goldfish,' I try.

Em frowns like she's considering this.

‘Maybe Matthew Dunlop's a real person but he doesn't go to Brookfield,' she says, ‘and he somehow got hold of her first letter on its way over to Brookfield and he's been writing to her ever since?'

‘But then he would have had to keep finding ways to get to the school mail all the time,' I say, ‘to keep getting Cass's letters and replying.'

So now we start saying crazy things, like maybe Cass has been pathological all along and imagining that every story she
ever told us has been a lie, and then Em gets serious and says: ‘I don't think she's ever lied to us. And I think this is our fault. Instead of being there for her, we've just been going on about Brookfield boys. So she had to invent her own.'

I look around the café, and notice Liz Clarry at the table next to us, and realise she's with a girl in a Brookfield uniform. So I think I'll check one more time.

‘Is there anyone at your school called Matthew Dunlop?' I say to the Brookfield girl.

‘Not that I know of.'

Then Liz says something weird. ‘How's Cassie?' she says. Like she knows something.

‘What do you mean?' pounces Em.

Liz shrugs and says, ‘I saw her on the last day of term before the holidays, and she didn't seem like herself.'

‘How do you mean?' I say.

‘I don't know,' Liz starts pulling on her ears, like to make herself remember. ‘I was running in the reserve and I saw her sitting under a tree, and it was cold and dark, and I just thought it was strange to be sitting there like that. But maybe I imagined something wrong because the reserve at night makes everything seem sinister, you know?'

‘I know,' says Em, getting chatty now, ‘I hate the reserve at night, it's like a graveyard, it's so sinister, it's omnivorous.'

‘Ominous,' agrees Liz, calmly. Cass and I are never brave enough to correct Em's vocab mistakes.

Then Liz introduces the Brookfield girl and it turns out they're waiting for some Brookfield guys. The Brookfield girl, whose name is Christina, says, ‘When Paul and Jared get here, we can ask if they know Matthew Dunlop, if you like?'

And I say, ‘No, that's okay,' because I think it's pretty clear that he doesn't exist and I'm sick of having it confirmed.

Then we all go back to our own conversations, and Em and I keep talking about what we should do, like how it's not Cassie's fault, and we have to be gentle but make her admit it, so then she can start getting better, and maybe we should tell her mother, or even call up the counsellor she's been seeing.

And then it hits me suddenly, out of nowhere: the reserve.

Liz said she saw Cass in the reserve on the last day of school before the holidays. And that was the day that Cass was supposed to meet me and she didn't show up. She told me she was meeting someone. And that's where she was? Sitting under a tree at the reserve?

‘What if she's at the reserve right now?'

Em looks at me and looks out the window at the dark sky and pouring rain.

‘Maybe that's where she goes,' I say, ‘to meet her imaginary friend?'

Em shakes her head and whispers, ‘She couldn't be that crazy.'

But she's reaching for her mobile and phoning Cass at home, and getting no answer, and trying Cass's mobile but it's switched off. She sends a text message to Cass: ‘R U OK?' But there's no answer to that either.

Then we both realise right away: we have to go to the reserve. And we can't believe we've been sitting here wasting time.

It's pelting down and the wind is so strong that the rain slants right under our umbrellas and into our faces. We get a taxi back to the school and run into the schoolyard: the wind
tries to yank my umbrella out of my hand, and Em's umbrella is turning inside out.

It's so black, we can hardly see into the trees when we get to the reserve. I expect Em to hesitate because she's scared of the dark, but she just swings open the gate, runs straight through and hits her head on a branch.

Then we're standing there, with the rain drumming on our umbrellas, and slapping against our bare legs and the mud squelching up around our shoes.

My eyes start to adjust to the shadows, and I see shiny trees and spindly branches waving in the wind.

Then Em says, ‘She's there.'

Em is tripping along through the mud and finally I see it too—a blurry blue figure, sitting on the ground beneath the tree.

As I get closer, I see that it's Cass, and a terrible coldness digs into my shoulders like fingernails because she's hunched over, and rocking in such a strange way.

I realise it's because she's crying. There's a closed umbrella lying at her feet and all around her are little fragments of torn paper. We crouch down on either side of her. We're both trying to hold our umbrellas over her, so that they're getting tangled, and there's no point anyway, she's already completely drenched. Her face is streaming with rain water and tears.

She's clutching a black folder to her chest and I have this feeling we have to get that off her but her fingers hold it tighter. We help her to stand up and kind of jog with her out of the reserve and flag down a taxi.

Em tells the driver Cass's address and explains how to get there. Cass just leans against the door, dripping rain water onto the seat.

At first there is silence except for the taxi's windscreen wipers.

Then Cass says: ‘I didn't think he was coming.'

‘Who?' says Em.

‘Matthew. My penfriend. I didn't think he was coming.'

So now it's time to tell her.

‘He wasn't coming,' Em says, slowly, ‘because there's no such person as Matthew Dunlop.'

Cass laughs a bit and says, ‘Well, I met him tonight.' She gives us a strange smile.

Em and I both say: ‘He was there?' Then, before Cass can answer, Em leans forward and tells the taxi driver to get into the right lane.

‘Cassie,' Em says, leaning back again, and forgetting to switch from her bossy voice, ‘there's no such person as Matthew Dunlop. There's no one at Brookfield with that name.'

‘Yes there is.'

‘We know that there's not,' she tries to be gentle again. ‘Charlie and Seb both confirmed it for us.'

Cass opens her eyes for a moment, and then she smiles again and says, ‘Of course. He wouldn't use his own name.'

Em and I glance at each other.

‘Are you saying that he's a real person?'

‘Yes, Lydia, he's a real person.'

Then Em and I ask the same question in a whisper. ‘Cassie, what did he do to you?'

Just as the taxi turns into her street, she straightens up her shoulders, turns to us and says, ‘He didn't hurt me or anything, okay?'

We wait, and she stares at each of us for a moment, like she's making up her mind. And then she says: ‘He just wasn't all that kind.' And then she is silent.

Cass's house is pitch black because her mum is still at work.

We take her inside and straight into the bathroom and Em starts filling up the bath, and I find some bubble bath and all three of us watch as I pour in half the container. Cass is sitting on the edge of the bath, still dripping rain water onto the floor, shivering.

Em and I come out into the living room, and Em starts talking at a hundred miles an hour, but I hardly even listen to her.

I'm thinking about standing in this living room with Cass and Em, and Cass's dad using his favourite expression.
Now you're cooking with gas!
It didn't sound nerdy like it would from my dad. In his Croatian accent. And the way he really meant it. Like when Cass came home with a better report card than usual. Or like when she was ten and had been secretly working on gymnastics. She called her dad downstairs and made us all stand back and did a back flip right in the middle of the living room floor.

And all I can think now is this: how can a person take such a long journey from the day she finds out that her father is dying and end the journey, all this time later, alone in the dark, crying silently, her whole body hunched against the rain?

I hate myself for letting it happen.