Finding Cassie Crazy (3 page)

And here's the funniest thing. It's all about me when I was a baby. I read it and the whole letter she just describes ME in my bassinet.

If I send my mother's letter to you right now, then I can be doing my homework.

You definitely don't know me, and you must be a real nice person because you're a Brooker Kid.

So I'm enclosing it.

Bye now

Cassie

Letter to Emily Thompson
Ashbury High School

Dear Emily

Well, I have to say your letter was a bit of a shock. Maybe it's a girl/guy thing? Do you want to ask your teacher if you can write to a girl in my class instead of to me? Or else, I've got a sister if you want to write to her? Just say the word if you do.

Seriously, what grade are you in? No offence, but do you realise you talk like an 85 year old?

You talk like the lady who works in the shop where I get my curry chicken pie every afternoon on the way home from school. She has white hair and every single day she says: ‘Ho ho! I know what you want, Mister Man! You want a sausage roll!'

And I always say, ‘No, actually. I want a curry chicken pie.'

That's EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Do you realise you talk like her?

Here's an example from your letter: ‘Don't get me started!'

That is an expression used by an 85-year-old woman in a cake shop.

And besides which, how come you don't want to get started? What will happen if you get started? Are you worried about using up your fuel or something? I mean, you already got started. Whenever you say that in your letter, it's when you've already got started. It's a weird expression if you don't mind me saying so.

I also have to say, and I'm only doing this for your own good, but you kind of prove the image of the private school girl from Ashbury High. I was reading the letter and what I was thinking was this: ‘

Fu-u-u-u-uck me.'

I'm telling you right off, I don't know what we're going to talk about if your favourite things are shopping, chocolate and horses. We could sing the soundtrack from
The Sound of Music
together, I guess, but otherwise, stuffed if I know. Can you think of any other interests, maybe?

I think you should talk about your interests with those friends of yours, Lydia and Cassie, and just leave me out of there.

One thing I can do, if you want, is explain to you why your friend Lydia's mother is a celebrity. I've heard of her. So you don't have to keep throwing things at your friend to find out. Say the word and I'm there.

I can't believe you've been best friends with Lydia since primary and you don't know why her mum's a celebrity.

Still, I have a supersonic memory, which not all other people have. So I've got to make allowances. The first memory I have is from before I was conceived, I mean, before I came into being. About a fortnight before.

It's a ‘kooky' thing about me, as you would say, like you and your secret assignments in the candle-wax envelopes.

I'll be straight with you, that's the only interesting thing that I found in your letter. Those secret assignments. Tell me what they are.

I can't think of anything else to say. As I mentioned though, I have a sister and if you want to write to her, you just say the word.

Yours sincerely

Charlie Taylor

Letter to Lydia Jaackson-Oberman

Dear Lydia

Happy Birthday for the other week.

It's great that you're a fish because I'm a heron of the kind that flies around the sky and then swoops down to the ocean and screws your brains out.

You thought I was going to say I was the kind of heron that swoops down and eats you, didn't you?

I was, but I thought that might be offensive.

My mother is a food processor and my father is a wall-mounted clothes dryer. I have a kid brother, too, but I don't know what kind of appliance he is yet. He's too small.

You're a freak, you know that?

I can't figure out when you're being serious and when you're not. Example: does your mother really fly planes? Why?

Other example: do you really want me to send you what you were saying you want me to send you? How much would you want me to send? We should talk about this. Suggest a place to meet.

I don't think you need to be sorry about your name. That can't be your fault, a thing like that. It would have to be the fault of your parents. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the name Lydia. I think it's cute.

Catch ya

Seb Mantegna

Dear Cassie
Eat shit and die, private school slag.
Yours faithfully
Matthew Dunlop

TO CHARLES TAYLOR

Dear Charles

This is what Mr Botherit wrote up on the blackboard as a suggestion for our responses to the letters from your class.

Try commenting on the letter! Was it: amusing?
interesting? Eg: ‘Thank you very much for your letter,
which was amusing.'

So, Charles Taylor:

Thank you very much for your letter, which was a BIG PILE OF CRAP.

This is the LAST and FINAL and SUPERLATIVE letter you will ever get from me.

The only reason I wrote to you in the first incidence was because I thought it was an assignment. I thought he was going to read the letters and give us feedback and incorporate the feedback into our assessment grades. And I am aiming to
come first in English this year so therefore I put A LOT of effort into that letter.

Now it turns out that he meant it when he exclaimed that there would be full confidence for our respect. EXCUSE ME. Full respect for our confidence. (You see what you have done to my English? You've got it all twisted.)

Anyway, I didn't believe that for one millimetre, about having confidence in our respect, but he just gave exactly the same speech today. The arsehole.

Plus my friend Lydia told me that she has already started up a drug trafficking scheme in her letters to your school, and she does not appear to me to have been arrested, so therefore it must be true: NOBODY IS READING THE LETTERS.

Which brings me to the point: why would I keep writing to you? That seems to me like an incompetent waste of my time.

And no, I do NOT want to write to your sister. How sexist of you to think that just because I like shopping it means that all girls like shopping and that's the only thing girls talk about. My friends Lyd and Cass both HATE shopping, and guess what, they both happen to be girls. So you are therefore proved wrong.

You are so old-fashioned you need EXIT MOULD sprayed under your arms.

And furthermore, if you just imagine for one MOMENT that you might show anyone this letter, you'll be face-to-face with a lawsuit so brutal you'll never eat another chicken pie.

And I
think
I have a few more connections in the legal world than you do.

Ciao, Roma

Emily Thompson

PS There's nothing wrong with the expression ‘Don't get me started'. It's expressive and humour filled. I can't believe you think it's incorrect to use that expression when a person has already got started. You don't understand satire or irony or sarcasm or effectiveness. That's Brookfield High all over, I guess.

PPS AND YOU CAN TALK. ‘Just say the word.' JUST SAY THE WORD? What kind of an expression is that? WHAT WORD WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SAY ANYWAY?

MORON?

Letter from Lydia Jaackson-Oberman to Seb Mantegna

Dear Seb

In one letter only you have blown my cover. You are right.

I am no fish.

Bravo, my friend, bravo.

It was nice of you to say Happy Birthday, but I notice you didn't send me any kind of gift. Are you one of those careful drug traffickers? I've heard about them. I don't think they have a very good reputation. The way to break the law is to be really upfront and open about it. I know this because my dad's a judge.

I'm sorry, but my mum does not fly planes. She drinks a lot though, so she's often flying. And she's part owner of a film studio, which will cater to all your film needs: sound recording, editing, lighting and really bad TV commercials. Plus it has a great makeup studio, which is second on the right after the reception desk. Keep it in mind if you ever need a makeover.

I have decided to tell you about the morning of my birthday, which, as you know, wasn't long ago.

This will be me telling you about the morning of my birthday:

The scene is the Breakfast Pyramid.

The Breakfast Pyramid is built out of frosted glass and is reached by a tunnel from the back door of our house. It is filled with Egyptian treasures, such as ashtrays.

The mother,
Mum
,
dressed in a tissue-paper nightgown, sits at one end of the breakfast table. The father,
Dad
, dressed in a suit and tie, sits at the other end. They are both buttering
croissants in a very deliberate way so that croissant flakes are floating all around the pyramid.

Occasionally, there is a thud as the family dog,
Pumpernickel
,
hurls himself at the frosted glass, trying to get someone's attention. There is an outside shot of Pumpernickel backing away from the Pyramid to line up and take another hit at the frosted glass.

END OF SCENE

So that's the end of me telling you about my birthday morning.

(But then on the way to school I reminded my dad what day it was and he spun the car in the middle of the highway, took a right into a one-way street doing about 180 k, parked in a disabled spot outside Dymocks, picked up a book for my birthday, and then jumped back into the car. I just wish I'd had a camera with me and I could have taken a photo of my dad's car in the disabled parking spot and sent it to the papers.)

I don't think we should meet.

I think this will work better by mail.

I have decided that we have to tell each other the dreams that we had the previous night. Well, last night I had a dream that I was a snail. Nothing really happened, I just sat there being a snail and sometimes stretching my neck a bit. That's it.

What did you dream?

See you

Lydia

Dear Matthew Dunlop

Thank you very much for your letter. I loved it.

So anyway, how have you been? You didn't give away much in your letter.

Mr Botherit told us that sometimes boys have trouble expressing their feelings and he hopes the boys in our class can work through that in their letters. Also, he hopes we keep it in mind if we're lucky enough to get a boy for a penfriend. Those were his words:

Lucky enough to get a boy.

Does he mean it's unlucky if you get a girl for a penfriend?

I am one of the lucky ones. I got a boy. YOU. And you are a champion. Don't let anybody tell you any different, k?

I don't think you have that much trouble expressing your feelings, but you should try to share more. You could tell me what your favourite subjects are and what you do to relax after school. Do you soak your feet in tea-tree oil?

Don't feel under any pressure though, because I like you just the way you are.

After I sent that letter of my mother's to you, I felt pretty
bad, like what was I thinking? Betraying my mother's privacy and everything. I confessed to her, but she didn't mind at all. She said she left the letter out on purpose because she really meant it as a message to me, reminding me how cute I was as a baby. And she's happy for me to share that around with my friends, she said. So that's lucky.

Well, it's been fun. I can't wait for your next letter.

Love

Cassie