Finding Cassidy

by Laura Langston

  Nothing in my life was the same anymore.

  Finnelli’s Fine Foods was in Cadboro Bay, a trendy little village half a block from the ocean. Traffic was so light, I managed the drive in five minutes. Pulling into the side lot, I parked beside Jason’s beat-up Toyota at exactly 9:27. Barring last-minute demands from Mr. Finnelli, he’d be out in three minutes.

  I had my head stuffed into the bottom of my purse—I was desperate for a mint or a piece of gum—when a knock on the window made me jump.

  Jason! He held up our Saturday-night tradition: a gold and green bag of leftovers from Finnelli’s bakery.

  I leaned over to open the door. “You scared me!”

  The tang of salty sea air filled the car. I heard the distant sound of waves pounding the shore. “Sorry.” Jason slammed the door behind him; the waves grew silent.

  “Pete gave you the message.”

  “Yeah.” He tossed the bag down and leaned over to give me a kiss. Cold lips. Hot mouth. Root beer. Jason. Oh, man, I’d missed him.

  I broke the connection first. “Look, Jase, I only have a few minutes. I’m sorry about what happened at your place this morning.” Bands of colour from the grocery-store sign flashed across his face. “I never meant to fall asleep. I should have gone home right away. Your mother probably figures I’m the spawn of the devil now.”

  And how do you know you’re not?

  Jason chuckled, tossed his hair back and reached into the bag. “Something like that.” He handed me a sugar-coated raspberry bomb. Finnelli’s speciality. Since the store was closed Sunday, Mr. Finnelli always cleared them out last thing Saturday.

  “She called my mom.” I bit into the sweet, yeasty dough.

  “Yeah.” Jason’s head was stuck in the bag. He surfaced with a lemon Danish.

  “She doesn’t want us to see each other anymore.”

  “That’s just plain stupid. Of course we’re going to see each other. At school and stuff.”

  And stuff. What did that mean? My stomach butter-flied. I licked a trace of raspberry jelly from the corner of my mouth. “Are you saying…that you only want to see me at school?”

  “No! God, no!” Jason reached over and gave me an awkward hug. He smelled faintly of apples and aftershave. The soft fleece of his team jersey tickled my nose.

  “My parents said we should cool it for a couple of weeks too,” I said as I sat up. “Cut down on phone calls. No time alone.” I rolled my eyes. “They have some nerve suggesting it after what they’ve done. Give me a couple of days to work on them. They’ll come around.”

  “It’ll take my mom a while,” he said. “She was pretty choked catching us in bed like that. And it didn’t help when she heard your news, either.”

  The butterflies in my stomach whirled and raced. “My news?”

  Jason chewed his Danish, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You know…the donor thing.”

  The butterflies exploded into a thousand fluttery wings. “How did she hear? Did you tell her?”

  “Of course not!” Jason scowled. “Geez, Cass, you should know me better than that.”

  I didn’t know anybody anymore. Not since my father had stopped being my father. I put down my half-finished raspberry bomb. I wasn’t hungry. “Then who did?”

  “Prissy’s mother. She went to the salon for a haircut and Mom was her stylist and I guess they got to talking. Prissy must have told her what you said at the party.”

  Oh, man, Mrs. Smart was an even bigger gossip than her daughter. If she knew, the entire city did. She probably knew about Dad’s illness, too. “What did your mom say?”

  “You know my mother. Something about how the rich live in a different world. Stuff about babies to order.”

  Babies to order?

  “That it was unnatural and wrong,” Jason added. “Like adultery, only worse.”

  Adultery, only worse? No way.

  “Forget it,” Jason added. “I have.”

  “I’m going to find him,” I blurted. “My father.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m…there’s a part of me that’s blank. Separate.” I struggled to find just the right words. “He’s a part of me, Jase. Or I’m a part of him. It’s like, I don’t know, where I fit in and all that stuff.”

  I wanted him to say, “You fit with me.” Instead he said, “Fitting in is overrated.” And then he shoved the last of the Danish into his mouth.

  “I’m not so sure.” Isn’t it funny how the people who don’t care about fitting in sometimes end up being the most popular. Jason was a good example of that. But for me, this wasn’t a popularity contest. “It’s about family, Jase. I mean, I share this guy’s DNA. He’s my father—or something.”

  Jason lifted a cinnamon bun from the bag. “You’ve already got a father, and he’s a great guy.”

  “When’s the last time you saw your father?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with nothing.” Suddenly it mattered. “But when?” I pressed.

  “Last week. When he was over to see Pete.” His blue eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “I don’t mean your stepfather. I mean your real father.”

  He took a huge bite of the cinnamon bun. “My stepfather is my real father.” His words came out in a fine spray of cinnamon and sugar.

  “I mean the guy who fathered you.”

  Jason’s face hardened. He swallowed a chunk of bun, licked his fingers, took his time answering. “If he wanted to see me, he’d make the effort. I’m not going to.”

  He still hadn’t answered my question.

  “Besides, parents are nothing but trouble.” A cheeky grin split his face. “I’ve got one and a half, and look at the hassles in my life. You’ve already got two. Why go looking for more?”

  “I just have to, that’s all.”

  His smile slipped. “Whatever.” He changed the subject. “Listen, I have to go, too. Mom’s expecting me to pick Pete up right after work.” Disappointment tugged deep in my belly. I hadn’t missed one of our Saturdays in months.

  We had a real routine. I’d meet Jason after work, and he’d bring doughnuts. We’d pick out a movie, retrieve Pete from Mrs. Crenshaw’s place. We’d bribe the kid with bedtime stories and too many raspberry bombs. He’d go to bed, then we’d snuggle on the couch until Mrs. Perdue came home from her Saturday-night date. I wondered if I’d ever spend a Saturday night there again. “Say hi to your brother.”

  “Sure.” Jason folded up the bag. “By the way, Mom’s screening my calls. If you need to reach me, call Mike and he’ll let me know.”

  I kissed Jason goodbye and watched him get inside his car and start his engine. Only after he’d waved and pulled out of the parking lot did I cry.

  I cried because it was only 9:45 and I didn’t have to leave for another fifteen minutes. I cried because Prissy Smart’s mother was a stupid, gossipy old cow. But mostly I cried because Jason didn’t understand.

  He didn’t understand why I wanted to find my father, and I had been so sure he would.

  I hardly slept that night. Jason was my guy, my other half. We always understood each other.

  Not this time.

  By the time Sunday rolled around, I knew I had to convince my parents to let Jason come over so we could talk things out. But I also had to warn them that Mrs. Smart had blabbed about the donor insemination.

  Okay, so technically I’d blabbed first, but I’d been in a drunken stupor in a private home. Mrs. Smart was perfectly sober—one assumed—and gossiping not only in a public place, which we all know is the lowest of the low, but in a hair salon, where gossip was like cockroaches in New York: dirty, plentiful and impossible to avoid. Clearly, a little verbal extermination was in order.

  My parents would not be pleased that people knew. I mean, they’d kept the news from me for years. It wasn’t like they wanted to share it. And Dad had said, “No one needs to know.”

  Unfortunately, the opportunity to tell them never presented itself. And by the time Grandma and Grandpa M
ac pulled up in their rental car that afternoon, I had a bigger worry.

  How could I sit down and pretend everything was the same?

  My heart somersaulted as I watched Mom and Dad rush out to greet them. Big Mac looked like a lovable old crane with long, gangly limbs and tufts of white hair poking out of his pink scalp. Little Mac looked like a sparrow beside him—rounded body, short little legs and quick bursts of energy.

  They were as different from Nana and Granddad as Target was from Sak’s. But I loved them with a fierceness that almost took my breath away.

  Except they weren’t mine. We weren’t even related.

  Maybe that would make it easier to pretend.

  And maybe, I thought as Grandma walked in the door and pulled me close, it wouldn’t.

  “You’ve grown.” She gave me another squeeze before tugging on Big Mac’s jacket. “Hasn’t she grown, Bill?”

  And then he hugged me and Grandma turned away, but not before I saw the telltale shine of tears in her eyes.

  Dad led her into the kitchen, where she chirped on about the weather and the flight and all the other stuff travellers say when they arrive anywhere. Then her words came to a sudden end. There was a second of silence before she let out a heart-wrenching wail.

  Big Mac turned three shades of red. I led him into the family room, where Dad had started a fire. The flames in the massive floor-to-ceiling fireplace threw a peach glow over his wrinkled face as we sat across from each other. “Dad made coffee.” I spoke louder than necessary to try and drown out Grandma’s sobs. “He’s probably getting it right now.” I knew coffee was the last thing on anybody’s mind, but it was one of those flat-out socially acceptable lies that Big Mac seemed to appreciate.

  “Sounds good.” His kindly grey eyes peered out at me over his bifocals. “How’re you doin’, Dee Dee Bird?”

  I’m fading. I am no longer me. I am now Cassidy the Separate. “Okay, I guess.” Grandpa Mac was the one who had originally given me the nickname. When I was eleven months old, he’d taken me to the park where I’d pointed to a tree and yelled, “birdeee, birdeee.” It was my very first word.

  “Things are tough now, huh?”

  You don’t know the half of it. “I…” What to say? “Yeah.”

  He smiled gently, and his old face was as familiar and dear as the freckles on the back of my arm. “Now, there’s no sense in worrying, Cassidy. That does no good at all. Just yesterday, your grannie, she was talking to some official over at the University Medical Center, and he said even if you do have the gene, they’re making strides all the time. What with stem cell research and all. By the time you hit your daddy’s age, well, they’ll probably have a cure.”

  He thought I was a carrier. Oh, God, thinking before speaking was a royal pain in the ass. “We don’t know for sure yet…if I am…a carrier.”

  Just then, Mom walked in with a tray of coffee and goodies. Her hands were unsteady; the cups and saucers clattered as she put everything on the coffee table. Big Mac was adding his third teaspoon of sugar to his cup and I was three bites through a chocolate florentine when Dad and Little Mac came into the room and sat down, side by side, on the couch.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather have a rest?” Big Mac asked Grandma. “It was a long flight.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  That was another flat-out, socially acceptable lie. Grandma Mac didn’t look fine. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot, her freckled face was blotchy, her nose was red. Maybe it was because he was sitting right beside her, or maybe it was because I was looking for it, but Dad looked more like Grandma than he’d ever looked before. He had the same short legs and thick torso, the same square, freckled face and the same haunted look in those oh-so-familiar almond-shaped eyes.

  She’s not my grandmother. She’s never been my grandmother. Why didn’t I see it before?

  Mom started talking, filling the air with store details no one cared about. The rest of us silently drank coffee, ate florentines and stared anywhere but at each other.

  Eventually, Grandma cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Grace, but before I lose my nerve there’s—”

  Something smashed into the bay window. Glass splintered and hit the floor.

  Grandma Mac gasped.

  Grandpa Mac swore.

  Dad jumped up to see what had happened, then stumbled and dropped his coffee cup. Mom hurried to his side.

  With a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach, I stepped over the broken cup to the cloth-covered object.

  It was a white towel weighted down with rocks. Inside was a turkey baster filled to the brim with clear, slimy goo.

  NINE

  Birds normally live in things called flocks. Living in flocks means they stick together. They have friends. One flock member is always the boss.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  Clearly, we couldn’t hide my news from Big Mac and Little Mac.

  I mean, we don’t live in the kind of neighbourhood where people chuck things through windows. Especially not turkey basters filled with slimy goo. And it didn’t help that Mom took one look at it and blurted, “Oh my God, who knows?”

  Obviously someone with a really good arm. And probably not Prissy’s mom, either. The only thing she threw around was money.

  Big Mac and Little Mac huddled on the couch, looking stunned and more than a little shaken. Luckily, my aunt Colleen picked that moment to phone and make sure they’d arrived safely. While the grandparents talked (could I still call them grandparents?), Mom cleaned up the glass, Frank arranged for a window replacement and I got on my cellphone.

  I’d opened my big mouth in the first place. I needed to find out who wouldn’t let me forget it.

  Prissy wasn’t home. Neither was Yvonne, Jasmine or Brynna. I couldn’t reach Mike, so I took a chance and called Jason’s place. No one picked up.

  Who had done this terrible, vile thing? I’d find out tomorrow at school. Meanwhile, I had to tell my parents I’d blabbed.

  They didn’t say anything at first, although Dad turned red when I repeated the little ditty I’d sung at the party, and Mom’s lips got so thin they practically disappeared.

  Then Dad had to tell Big Mac and Little Mac the details of my conception. Feeling freakish and embarrassed, I watched for some kind of reaction, but they didn’t give their feelings away. They nodded, they listened, they looked at me occasionally, but they didn’t say a word. After Dad finished, Grandpa Mac asked, “So Cassidy won’t get Huntington’s?” When that was confirmed, Grandma Mac burst into a fresh round of tears. “Thank God, thank God,” she kept repeating.

  As far as I was concerned, it was over too soon. Where was their anger, their disappointment? Their curiosity about how I felt being a no-name-brand kind of person?

  All Big Mac and Little Mac seemed to care about was whether the issue would affect Dad’s job as deputy mayor. Would the news of my conception result in some kind of political fallout?

  Dad told them that the only fallout he expected was the ability to do his job as the Huntington’s progressed.

  Then Grandma asked if the turkey baster was a sign that some fundamentalist group was about to burn crosses on our lawn or something. Dad laughed and said more likely it was kids being stupid. “People are far more open to reproductive technology than they used to be,” he said.

  So that’s what I was? A product of reproductive technology?

  I barely had time to figure out how that made me feel when Little Mac dropped a bombshell of her own—a bombshell that reinforced my belief that all of life comes down to a series of events. And in my family, at least, the really significant ones were clearly tied to sex.

  Grandma MacLaughlin had never been married to Dad’s—I mean Frank’s—father. All these years she’d led us to believe she’d married the man and then left him because he was a drunk. But she hadn’t married the guy at all. She’d slept with him. Once. And never seen him again.

 
Shame had made her keep the secret all these years. Now she was wracked with guilt.

  “It was an indiscretion,” she repeated, running a finger under the collar of her too-tight cream blouse. “An indiscretion. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  Frank sat, stone-faced, tapping out some kind of silent rhythm with his fingers.

  An indiscretion’s better than a date with a turkey baster, I thought.

  Little Mac burst into tears again.

  Then I realized I’d spoken the words out loud.

  As you can imagine, it was a real Jerry Springer kind of night. A night blurred with explanations, recriminations and tears. And a badly overcooked chicken.

  That chicken could have been why I had a stomach ache when I left for school the next morning. But when I pulled into the parking lot and Max caught sight of me, and he smirked and nudged Scott and they started laughing, my stomach ache only got worse.

  I walked into the school foyer. Heads turned. Eyes widened. Muffled giggles broke out. More than once, the stares and giggles were accompanied by whispers of “sperm” or variations on the same, none of which I care to repeat.

  Avoiding direct eye contact, I headed straight for Prissy’s locker. I ran into Jason halfway there. “Did you hear what happened?” I pulled him into the alcove of Mrs. Sutter’s computer class.

  “Yeah.” He looked embarrassed. “Someone said it broke the window.”

  “It was wrapped around a five-pound rock. Of course it broke the window. But never mind. Who did it?”

  “I’m not sure. There was a group of guys…They were being stupid. No one’s taking responsibility.”

  “Which guys?”

  He hesitated just a fraction of a second too long. “I’m not sure,” he repeated.

  “You know. Why won’t you tell me?”

  He practically winced. “Let it go, Cass. It’s not worth worrying about.”

  He was protecting them. On the heels of that thought came an uglier one. “Were you there?”

  A nasty red flush crawled up his neck. “First you think I tell my mother about your…your…donor thing…and now you think I’d do that?” He flipped his blond hair back. “What’s gotten into you?”