Finding Cassie Crazy (22 page)

Emily's secret assignment
Well, okay.

Hi you guys of ten years from now. I just hope that we are now sharing an apartment with views of the Harbour Bridge. On New Year's Eve, we can sit on our balcony and dangle our
legs over the edge, swinging our painted toenails and drinking our pina coladas.

Also, I hope our apartment building has a
connoisseur
and carpet that feels soft under bare feet, and I hope we are always calling out, ‘Oh, Cass, Matt Damon wants to know why you never call him back? Are you afraid of the long-distance phone bills? Ha! Isn't he funny, when he knows how rich we all are?'

My mind is like the streets of Hong Kong.

Well, this is very strange, writing to the future, and I would like to say thank you to Lydia for giving us this Significant secret assignment. It will hopefully lead to Cass telling us what happened to her. I don't know how it will lead to that, I only know that Lydia's secret assignments always lead us in the right direction.

Most of all I would like to send a special message to Cassie, which is to say it broke my heart when I saw you in the reserve last night, all by yourself in the rain.

Hey Lydia, I bet you are a best-selling world-famous author by now.

Well, okay, I think we have to do something to help Cass, and the assignment is to say: what am I afraid of?

I know.

My Auntie June has developed an allergy to chocolate so that now it gives her migraines. It's my greatest fear that I will get an allergy to chocolate like that.

You guys, just excuse me, while I talk to myself for a minute: EMILY OF THE FUTURE! DON'T YOU DARE BE ALLERGIC TO CHOCOLATE. AND IF YOU ARE, EMILY, JUST EAT IT ANYWAY.

JUST EAT IT AND TAKE A PAIN-KILLER FOR YOUR HEAD!!

Good.

Okay, well, I only want to say that I love you two, a lot, and I think we will be best friends forever and I don't think we need to worry about that. The fact is, girls of the future, if we're not best friends today then we may as well just throw ourselves off the balcony, instead of sitting there swinging our toenails.

I don't really know how I can have anything to say here since the real problem is—

I will now try to figure out what the real problem is.

The real problem is obvious: that Cass should tell us everything and then we can look inside her head. Then maybe she would not have ended up alone in the reserve like that. I just think that if everyone is
completely themselves
, then we will all be okay. I am trying my hardest to be myself and concentrating etc, but I don't really know if myself is myself or if myself is good enough or—

Wow. Suddenly I am crying. I can't believe it. I'm in a German class and I am secretly crying.

That's what that mark is: a tear from me. In the future they will be able to make a little baby Emily out of the DNA in that tear mark.

Okay, I am now going to try harder to do the assignment: what am I afraid of? I'm afraid that Charlie doesn't like me. I'm afraid that he doesn't really like the way I look. I saw a photo of him before I met him, so I knew the way he looked. He's cute. He has hair the colour of a crème brulée.

Sometimes I accidentally catch a glimpse of myself when I think I look pretty and I realise that my face is too round. I don't think I'm fat but I think I might be on the
verge
of it. I do exercise every now and again, to hold it off.

I used to sometimes think that Cassie would never be unhappy because she's skinny, but I have learned that this is wrong.

I'm afraid that Charlie likes this girl at his school called Christina. And now I have a message for you guys of the future: FIND CHRISTINA AND KILL HER.

Something amazing just happened in my mind.

Listen to this. We met a girl called Christina from Brookfield at the Blue Danish last night.

Christina
, I just this moment, suddenly, thought,
Christina!

Because WHAT IF THAT CHRISTINA IS THE CHRISTINA WHO CHARLIE LIKES?!?!?

It could be, you know. She was beautiful, there is no denying it.

And there we were, wasting time talking to her when we should have been going straight to the reserve to rescue Cassie, my poor little Cassie, sitting under the tree in the rain. I am going to start crying again.

It is all Christina's fault that Cassie was in the rain there.

Finally, thank you, Cassie, for sending back an answer to my text message this morning. If you remember, I had sent you a message yesterday asking ‘R U OK?'

And today, you sent back a smiley face. And I know you hate smiley faces so I know you did that just for me and that's how kind you are.

Cassie: you deserve nothing except kindness and the following smiley faces. Even though you hate them. But you might have changed in the future.

☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺

Signed, Sealed and Delivered
Emily M.A. Thompson
Emily Melissa-Anne Thompson
(Sorry it was more than one page.)

Lydia's secret assignment
My greatest fear is losing my friends. I feel like we're losing Cassie and I want her back.

Mostly, I want to know what that guy said to Cass, to make her stay in the rain and cry.

I want her to tell us so we can help her.

And so we can find the guy and kill him.

Cassie's secret assignment
Hey Lyd and Em. Nice to see you in the future.

Thanks for coming to find me last night. Maybe I would still be there now if you hadn't. You guys are mad.

I know you don't actually want to hear what I'm afraid of. You want to hear what happened with Matthew in the reserve and I'm really sorry that I can't tell you out loud. And I think probably, Lydia, you set up this whole secret assignment so I would write out what happened and then
maybe it would break my not-talking spell, and I would tell you. But I don't think it's going to work. Sorry.

I'll tell you now on paper, though, because I guess in ten years it won't seem so important.

But right now, I feel stupid. For letting myself get so badly fooled.

Matthew Dunlop was my Brookfield penfriend. Which you already know. And I guess he was using a fake name, since you guys have found out that there's no one at Brookfield of that name.

He was kind of strange at first, but then gradually he became friendly and honest. Ha ha.

I felt grown up when he wrote to me. Like he was someone I could help, and maybe one day he would help me. I think I had a kind of crush on him, even. He was definitely flirting anyway. And I thought about him late at night. I imagined our conversations and how he might touch my arm while he talked.

We actually arranged to meet before—on the last day of school before the holidays and, Lydia, I'm sorry I didn't turn up at the Blue Danish that night. I felt bad for letting you down but for some reason I couldn't leave the reserve. He didn't show up that time, and I think a part of me was saying,
Uh, Cassie, can you really trust this guy?
but the rest of me wanted to believe he was my new friend.

Maybe even a boyfriend.

I am such a loser.

Anyway, so I hung around at the reserve until some stupid time like eleven o'clock when it was pitch black and freezing.
Okay, I'll keep writing fast and maybe the pen will write the words for me.

Matthew, or whoever, told me he was there but that we must have missed each other. Now I realise he was probably planning on doing what he did last night but I was there talking with Liz Clarry at the meeting time, so he must have seen me with her and turned back.

Yesterday, I was so excited about meeting him. I don't know if you noticed, I was kind of jittery and stupid. I forgot to take an umbrella with me, that's how jittery I was, I just had my raincoat, but I had the idea that we would probably meet and then just get on a bus right away to go into Castle Hill.

I was standing there, with this file of material from my mother under my arm, trying to stay sheltered under branches, thinking what an idiot I'd look when he saw me, standing there getting drenched.

I heard him calling in a low-down, lethargic, sort-of friendly voice, ‘Cassie Aganovic or am I mistaken?' and I started looking around but I couldn't see anyone.

And then there he was, a few metres away from me—he'd come from an unexpected angle. He was taller than I expected: his letters made me think of someone short, for some reason. But he had the hood on his jacket over his head, pulled down almost to his eyebrows, and he was carrying a black umbrella.

I said, ‘Hey, so I guess you're Matthew.'

It was dark and noisy, with the rain on his umbrella and the trees all around us creaking in the wind.

I guess I had a feeling right away that something wasn't right because he could see I was standing there getting
drenched and he didn't offer to share his umbrella. In actual fact, he seemed to be holding the umbrella really low over his head and it was making it really hard to see him. But at the same time, he was kind of chuckling and I thought maybe he was just shy.

Ha.

Then he put one hand flat over his mouth, with a finger tapping kind of thoughtfully on his nose, and he said, ‘It is so cool to meet you, Cass.'

I just smiled and said, ‘I forgot my umbrella.'

‘I mean,' he said, as if he hadn't heard me, ‘I feel like I know you so well. All those funny letters of yours—I just
love
those letters. Your crazy therapist with her tapes of applause. And your funny lawyer mother accusing the therapist of copyright breach. Remember? And the way you drive along and you mouth the words,
Are you, by any chance, a
Volvo
driver?
And the other drivers are going,
What? what?
'

He was doing a kind of exaggerated pantomime of one of the stories I'd told him in my letters. I thought,
I guess he really did like my letters, to know them so well
. But I felt even more embarrassed.