Cassie

by Barry Jonsberg

  The answer is obvious.

  So, my three Goals are one big GOAL.

  Become beautiful and the rest will follow.

  This is Progress.

  Time for the Action Plans. What do I need to do to become beautiful? It occurs to me that beauty can be achieved in three inter-related ways: physical shape, adornments (clothing and make-up) and personal grooming (hair style, nail care and eyebrow maintenance). If we consider the last first, then correct adornments and perfect grooming are not difficult to achieve. They simply require money and style.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have either. But I can model myself on Demi.

  So, Action Plan 1: find out where Demi gets her hair cut, where she shops for clothes and what make-up she favours. I imagine it will be easy enough to get Demi talking about herself. Excellent. Style sorted!

  Next problem – money and how to get it. Theft is one option, but it’s not the easiest.

  So, Action Plan 2: get a job. I know I can land a job on Sundays at the local cinema – I virtually live there anyway – where I can serve popcorn and tear off ticket stubs and say, ‘Cinema 3, enjoy the movie.’ It’s not rocket surgery, after all, and the manager did say they needed a shift worker urgently. I’ll ring him today.

  This leaves Action Plan 3: change physical shape.

  Tricky, this one.

  Let’s examine the thorny issue of dumpiness. This should be easy to solve. Eat less. Exercise more. And it should be particularly easy for me given my mother’s culinary habits. My mother is a hippy. Okay, she doesn’t always dress like one. And she doesn’t do drugs and listen to sad rock stars past their use-by date. But she does work in a health food shop. One of those places that does four hundred different varieties of organic lentils. So she brings home stuff from the shop that no one wants to buy and is starting to go off, which means we always eat bizarre dishes with healthy, if inedible, ingredients. No recipes for Mum. She makes it up as she goes along. I remember once she served up a weird lumpy concoction and I said, ‘What’s this?’ and she said, ‘Bean stew.’ So I said, ‘I don’t care what it’s been, what is it now?’ I was proud of that.

  Incidentally, my dad died when I was two. Sometimes, just sometimes, when I stare at a plate of Mum’s cooking, I wonder if he simply lost the will to live …

  Anyway, I do my best to find inventive ways of not eating Mum’s cooking without hurting her feelings. It would be easier if we had a dog. With vegetarian tendencies or without taste buds. Preferably both. But Mum won’t hear of a pet.

  So that takes care of the dumpiness, right?

  Wrong.

  Whatever I do or don’t eat, I still have the body shape of a badly stuffed sausage.

  There’s always exercise, of course. Running. But, frankly, the image of a bloated, sweaty dwarf pounding the neighbourhood streets tends to dampen my enthusiasm. Not that I had any enthusiasm to start with.

  As for height, all I can do is wait and hope. Regarding freckles, random warts and snub nose, there’s only one viable option. Plastic surgery. And that takes money. Ideally, I need a well-paid career to fund that. But I failed Careers. So Action Plan 2: get a job, is the fall back. I don’t think I’ll get paid much at the cinema, but if I save virtually all of it in my ‘Plastic Surgery Emergency Fund’ [established already with cash hoarded from birthdays and Christmases], then, by my calculations, I will have saved enough money for a full body reconstruction by the time I’m fifty-two.

  I hope Raph can wait that long for me.

  Anyway, back to the evening routine.

  Five o’clock: abandon brain-storming session after storm fails to develop beyond a gentle breeze. And brain just fails. Hear Mum return from work and suppress shudder over thoughts of evening meal. Phone Amy, since she does have a brain and it’s always storming. Interrupt her biology homework – usually something simple like dissecting the pancreas of a wombat – to seek advice. She tells me to abandon ‘trivia’ and concentrate on schoolwork. Tell her to get a life. Hang up and wonder why we are friends. Conclude it’s a mystery, like crop circles.

  Five-thirty: watch television and plan meal-avoidance strategy.

  Six-thirty: join Mum for evening meal. Talk about her day and listen to amusing anecdotes about pulses.

  Holly

  But this evening was different.

  It started pretty much the same. Holly’s mum ladled green mush onto the plates and Holly arranged her features into a neutral expression. She picked up her fork.

  ‘I had a phone call this morning after I dropped you at the bus stop,’ said her mum.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Holly. She re-arranged the stuff on her plate as if hoping to uncover something edible or, at least, recognisable. Couscous was certainly present and the stringy bits were probably alfalfa sprouts. But the green mush defied identification. Had Mum sneezed into the pan? Holly continued to stir. Maybe friction would cause some of the ingredients to evaporate. She remembered something about that from science.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ivy Holley, placing a bowl of salad and a plate of wholemeal bread on the table. At least her salads were conventional. Generally, speaking, Holly could get by on salad sandwiches. ‘From my half-sister, Fern. You remember Fern?’

  Holly screwed up her freckled nose in concentration. She hadn’t heard of her aunt in years. A Christmas card every year wasn’t really enough to get a fix on her. There was a blurred memory. From years ago. Some kind of family reunion, but the details were hazy.

  ‘Vaguely. Doesn’t she live up North?’

  ‘Yes. Darwin.’

  ‘Mum? Could I have a glass of water, please?’

  Ivy turned to the refrigerator. Holly was grateful. She often wondered why her mother didn’t tell her to get the water herself. As soon as her mum’s back was turned, Holly slipped a bag-covered hand from her pocket and picked up a large portion of the food from her plate.

  This was genius in action.

  She’d got the idea from the deli staff at the local supermarket. They always selected produce with a bagged hand and then turned the bag inside out, so the food wasn’t touched. It had been simple enough to get her own supply of freezer bags. With practised skill, she turned the bag inside out and stuffed it into her pocket. It took seconds. Later, she’d empty it out into the garden. She’d seen a movie once where a prisoner was digging a tunnel and that was how he got rid of the soil he’d excavated, by emptying it onto the exercise yard through the legs of his trousers.

  Holly helped herself to salad, piling the leaves onto the empty space on her plate. Ivy put the glass of water next to her.

  ‘So what did Aunty Fern want?’ asked Holly.

  ‘She wants to stay with us for a while.’

  ‘Cool.’ Holly buttered a couple of pieces of bread. She piled one high with salad and put the other on top of the remaining mush. There was a limit to how many times you could do the bag trick and hiding food under bread or lettuce leaves wasn’t foolproof, but it was better than nothing. She bit into the sandwich.

  ‘So, what? She’s having a holiday?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Ivy put a forkful of food into her mouth and chewed with apparent enjoyment. There’s no accounting for taste, thought Holly.

  ‘She’s split with her husband.’

  ‘Bummer.’ There was something else from that blurred memory and Holly had to think to chase it down. ‘They have a kid, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes. A daughter. Cassandra. She’s a year younger than you. She’s coming as well.’

  But there was something else. Holly could only have been about six when that family reunion, or whatever it was, took place and she could remember virtually nothing. But …

  ‘She’s got cerebral palsy,’ said Ivy and a few more hazy pieces slotted together in Holly’s head. A wheelchair, twisted limbs and a shrieking noise, like nails down a blackboard. ‘Actually, severe cerebral palsy. She’s quadriplegic.’

  ‘What’s cerebral palsy?’

  ‘Well, Fern say
s it’s a condition where the brain’s messages to the body are disrupted, sometimes destroyed. What it means in Cassandra’s case is that she has no control over her body. She can’t talk, she can’t feed herself, she can’t walk.’

  Holly thought. She was so lost in her thoughts that she ate a spoonful of the food by mistake. When she realised, she brought the mush together in a tight wad at the back of her throat and swallowed quickly. It went down as a solid lump. An image of a cat’s fur ball sprang to Holly’s mind, but she squashed it. It was the only way to keep the lump down.

  ‘How long are they staying here?’

  ‘Until Fern finds a job and somewhere to live. A few weeks. Maybe a couple of months.’

  Months? Holly forgot about the lump in her stomach. This wasn’t a holiday. This wasn’t even re-location. This was invasion. She nearly took another mouthful of food, but caught herself in time.

  ‘But, Mum! We’ve only got one spare bedroom. This house is tiny.’

  ‘I know, chicken. But they’re family and they’re in trouble. We have to help.’

  There was no answer to that.

  ‘When are they arriving?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  Two days. It wasn’t much time to get used to the idea.

  ‘Look, chicken,’ said Ivy. ‘It’ll take some getting used to. I know that. But I need your help. I need your support. Having Cassie here is going to be stressful. I can’t pretend otherwise. But we need to remember that, despite her disability, she’s a normal kid. I mean, mentally. There is nothing wrong with her mind. It’s just her body that doesn’t work properly.’

  Holly thought about that. It was a terrifying notion. A normal person trapped in a body that wouldn’t do what it was told. She couldn’t get her head around it.

  ‘Of course, Mum. I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Excellent. And we can start on Saturday. There will be cleaning and tidying to do. We’ll have to get that spare room sorted, throw out the junk, wash the sheets, make it a fit place to live.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Ivy got up from the table and gave her daughter a big hug.

  ‘I knew I could rely on you, chicken. It’ll be okay. I promise. Hey. How about some more couscous?’

  Panic fluttered for a moment in Holly’s stomach. At least, she hoped it was panic.

  ‘I’m full, Mum. It was great, though. Listen, I’ll scrape the plates and do the dishes, okay?’

  ‘You’re special, Holly Holley.’

  ‘I know.’

  And first into the wheelie bin was going to be a tied bag filled with pale green mush. Holly was comfortable with her madness, mainly because there was method in it.

  Cassie

  This room is strange. I don’t like it.

  Mum has put up the bells. I lie here and I can see them. They twist in the air, catch the last of the light, tinkle like laughter.

  Mum is somewhere off to the left, wrapped in darkness. She is worried. I can taste it.

  I’m worried too. Worry tastes like metal. This is especially sharp.

  I’m scared.

  Holly

  My name is Holly Holley and this is my bedtime routine.

  Nine-thirty: shower.

  Nine-forty: brush teeth, comb hair, lay out school clothes for tomorrow.

  Nine-fifty: snuggle into bed with Gladly, my cross-eyed bear. (No one knows about Gladly. No one will ever know. He is a Raph substitute.)

  Think about Raph until I drift off to sleep.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight I think about a girl in a wheelchair. A girl who can’t control her body. I think about how she will change my life, if only for a month or so.

  I’m scared.

  2

  Holly

  Holly was stunned.

  It was just as well she was sitting in school assembly or she would have fallen over. Mr Wilson, the principal, was trying, with complete lack of success, to call the rabble to order when Demi Larson strolled down the aisles of seated students and stopped in front of Holly. She smiled, crouched and whispered in her ear.

  The whole school hushed and watched. Demi spoke for a few moments, patted Holly on the shoulder and made her way back to Kari and Georgia, the other members of that select group known as ‘The Demi Set’.

  Mr Wilson took advantage of the quiet to start his whole-school address.

  But Holly found it impossible to pay attention.

  She was stunned.

  Though that didn’t stop her smiling or her heart from hammering wildly.

  Holly

  My name is Holly Holley and I suppose I should have expected Amy’s reaction.

  ‘A sleepover at Demi Larson’s?’ she whispers over Mr Wilson’s mumblings. Then – I swear it’s true – she stifles a yawn. Honest! ‘I’d take a good book if I were you.’

  Sometimes I think Amy is just jealous. She never sounds jealous, it’s true, but I reckon that’s an act.

  Take a book, indeed! But that gets me thinking. What will I take? What is the custom with sleepovers? Do you take food? And what about sleepwear? I certainly can’t take my pyjamas with Eeyore, Pooh and Piglet on them. Maybe I can dip into my Plastic Surgery Emergency Fund and buy something silky from Kmart. I am so absorbed in this train of thought, that I almost don’t hear Amy’s whispered comment.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘I thought you had guests arriving on Saturday night.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I wail.

  Nine hundred faces turn towards me.

  ‘I am not irreligious, Holly Holley,’ the Principal drops into the ensuing silence, ‘but I think you’ll find that’s worth an after-school detention.’

  Holly

  Holly opened the car door for her mother when she arrived home.

  ‘Hiya, chicken,’ said Ivy, brandishing a plastic bag full of mysterious ingredients. ‘Got some beaut stuff from the shop today. I think the meal tonight is going to be one of my best.’

  ‘I can’t wait. Do you want help preparing it?’

  Ivy Holley climbed out of the car, frowned and took a closer look at her daughter.

  ‘Are you all right, sweetie?’ she said. ‘Not feeling ill, or anything?’

  ‘Mum, I need a favour.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it. Well, let me get in the door, chicken. I’ve been rushed off my feet all day and I need to get this stuff into the fridge.’

  Holly helped. She unpacked all kinds of things she didn’t recognise and put them away without comment. Judging by what she could see, it seemed a remote chance that anything edible would be on offer tonight. But that was a normal state of affairs. Ivy sat at the kitchen table and took off her shoes. She put one foot up on her knee, massaged her toes and sighed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘The favour. It must be a big one.’

  ‘It is. How did you know?’

  ‘You’ve washed up the breakfast dishes.’

  Holly sat opposite her mother and put her hands on the table. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Mum, I’ve been invited to a sleepover.’

  ‘That’s great, chicken.’

  ‘Tomorrow night.’

  Ivy Holley stopped rubbing her feet.

  ‘But that’s when Fern and Cassie are arriving. You can’t go tomorrow, sweetie. Just put it off for a week.’

  ‘I can’t, Mum.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can’t? It’s a sleepover, not a one-night-only concert. Just ring your friend and change the date.’

  Holly stood and paced. Her mum didn’t understand the situation. In all likelihood, she’d never understand the situation. But it was important to be reasonable. She would have to explain patiently. Under no circumstances should she tell her mother she doesn’t understand.

  ‘Mum. You don’t understand. It’s Demi Larson. She’s the one who’s invited me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And this opportunity will never come again. You get one chance, if you’re very, very lucky. If I don’t go now, I’ll never be invited a
gain. Never. And my whole life will be ruined.’

  Mrs Holley raised an eyebrow, but Holly pressed on.

  ‘No one turns down an invitation from Demi Larson. No one.’

  ‘Who is she? A member of the Royal family?’

  ‘More important than that.’ Holly stopped pacing. She had only one card up her sleeve and it was best to look her mother in the eyes while she played it.

  ‘Look, I’ll spend all day tomorrow cleaning and tidying. I’ll make sure the place is immaculate. I’ll stay up all night tonight if you want. But I have to go tomorrow, Mum. Please?’

  ‘I don’t understand this, Holly.’

  Holly stiffened. Her mum only ever called her Holly when she was annoyed. This wasn’t going well.

  ‘If this Demi person isn’t prepared to be flexible about a sleepover date, then she can’t be much of a friend.’

  ‘She isn’t. Yet. That’s the point. And she never will be if I don’t go tomorrow.’

  Ivy rubbed her forehead.

  ‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘It’s not a question of helping out with the cleaning and tidying. That’s not the most important thing. They’re family, Holly. I want you here when they arrive. Is that too much to ask?’

  Tears filled Holly’s eyes and she bunched her hands into fists.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes it is.’

  There was silence, apart from the faint ticking of the kitchen clock and the muffled sound of Ivy’s foot tapping against the floor. Then she stood.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Go off to your sleepover. I’m having a shower.’

  ‘I’ll work hard on the cleaning, Mum.’

  ‘Forget it. I don’t want your help, Holly.’

  ‘Mum! That’s silly.’

  Ivy stopped half-way through the kitchen door. She turned back.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and her voice was sadder than Holly could ever remember. ‘You’re probably right. But that’s the way I want it.’

  And she left.

  Holly cried. She cried for loss of hope and the ruins that were her life.

  Fern

  Fern Marshall blinked. The road ahead was a straight line that cut the world in two. It was easy to understand why people fell asleep at the wheel on trips like this. She barely had to move the steering wheel from hour to hour. After a while, she felt as though she wasn’t moving at all; that instead it was the landscape itself scrolling past her window. Blinking helped to give her depth of vision, for a time at least.