Sasha's Secret

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘Definitely,’ he promises. ‘Won’t be a patch on you, though!’

  He puts an arm round me and pulls me close, and I rest my head on his shoulder, smiling in the darkness.

  A black cab turns into the street and pulls to a halt beside the gates. A girl gets out, a teenage girl with long red hair and what looks like a wickerwork cat basket in one hand. She pays the driver and I see her clearly for a moment, her face bright in the headlights. If I had to choose one word to describe her, it would be trouble – but the exciting kind. The kind you would open the door to, invite right in.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Jake whispers, and I shake my head, as clueless as he is.

  The girl pushes open the iron gate and walks towards the house, and I wonder if she’s visiting Louisa Winter, or perhaps if she’s here to audition for the band.

  I have no way of knowing – and that’s OK.

  Sometimes the story goes on without you.

  I close my eyes and picture a different future, one without a spotlight shining on me. I picture a girl who isn’t perfect, a family who don’t need her to be, a new baby sister who thinks she’s awesome and a boy with tawny-blond hair who likes her just the way she is. There will be meds to take and exams to pass and sometimes bad things will still happen, but I’ll cope.

  ‘Cold?’ Jake asks. ‘C’mon, I’ll walk you home.’

  I slide down from the wall, brushing leaves the colour of burnished gold from my skirt, and Jake takes my hand in his.

  As we walk, the indigo sky explodes suddenly with soft pops and bangs and bright waterfalls of fireworks. Next week it’ll be Bonfire Night, and someone in the park must be partying early. I laugh and lean into Jake, the two of us gazing upward, inhaling the heavy smell of smoke and sulphur, watching the cascade of light.

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  perfectly_imperfect_sometimes Ever get fed up with pretending to be something you’re not? Me too. Let’s get real! Sasha x

  Afterword

  My daughter had absence seizures for a number of years. I saw first-hand how hard it was to navigate adolescence while battling them, and although Cait eventually grew out of the condition, she asked if I would write about the subject to help other kids feel less alone with it. This book grew from that request, and from talking to other teens and pre-teens coping with absence seizures.

  Anxiety is another issue many struggle with, and one that can sabotage things if ignored. Sasha tries to hide her problems, but comes to see that asking for help is the only way forward. If there’s something worrying you, I hope you too will be brave enough to ask for help from a parent, teacher, counsellor, doctor or friend.

  Take care,

  Cathy x

  If you need support, information and advice, here are two helpful organizations:

  – the Epilepsy Society: www.epilepsysociety.org.uk

  – Young Minds: www.youngminds.org.uk (for help with anxiety and other mental health issues)

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  Read on for an extract from

  Sami’s Silver Lining

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  Cathy Cassidy

  SAMI’S SILVER LINING

  The sun rises slowly over the island in a blur of red and gold – I think it will be the last thing I ever see.

  My breathing is raw, ragged, and I’m struggling to keep my head above the crashing waves. I think that I have swallowed half the Aegean Sea, that I might as well stop fighting, give in to it, let myself sink down beneath the surface and die.

  I am cold, so cold my limbs feel like ice, and the salt that crusts my lips feels like frost. The island looks closer now, but it might as well be a million miles away because I have no more fight left in me – I have nothing at all. Another wave lifts me and carries me forward, leaving me face down in the shallows. My hands claw at wet, gritty sand, and I lie exhausted, frozen, gasping for air.

  All is lost.

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  1

  Lucky

  They say I am lucky, the luckiest boy alive. They say that I must be brave and strong to have survived the hardships life has thrown at me, that I have been given a chance for a new beginning and must grab that chance with both hands.

  I am lucky, lucky, lucky … or so they tell me.

  I didn’t choose any of this, and new beginnings feel empty and hollow when you have nobody to share them with.

  Well, I have my aunt, my uncle and two grown-up cousins I’ve barely met. But although they have opened their arms and their hearts to me, I cannot do the same. I cannot let myself care any more, because I am not as strong as people think. I am broken, useless, like a piece of damaged pottery that looks whole but can never be the same again. I look OK on the outside, but inside I am flawed, fractured.

  I am not what people think.

  I am a fifteen-year-old boy held together with glue and good luck. There will come a time when my luck runs out, and I will fall apart. The world will see that I was damaged and hurting all along, and perhaps people will understand me a little better. Of course, it will be too late by then.

  Sometimes I wish that we had never left Syria, even though our city was a war zone, and everyone an enemy. The government my father and mother once respected had turned against the people, and rebels took to the streets to fight back. Then came the extremists, like vultures feeding on carrion, bringing harsh new laws that dragged us all back to the dark ages. We prayed for the west to help us, but when help arrived it came in the form of western bombs that rained down from the skies and destroyed what was left of the place I once called home.

  Sometimes I wish that we had stayed in the refugee camp, even though we were crammed three families to a tent, each tent so close they were almost touching. So close that sickness spread faster than wildfire.

  I wish we hadn’t taken passage on that boat to Kos, but my father said it would be one step closer to Britain, where my mother’s brother lived. Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna would give us shelter. Sometimes I wish I had stopped fighting then and sunk beneath the waves of the Aegean Sea, the way my father, my mother and my sister did.

  I was the lucky one.

  I swallowed down my grief, carried it inside me, but it was like a parasite that gnawed away at everything that was good. Eventually I got to the mainland and joined a long line of people who were walking across Europe. I walked until the soles of my boots were worn away, until I had gathered a group of kids around me, who like me were travelling alone. We stuck together because it was safer that way, but still we faced danger every day. We grew tough and cynical and ruthless, and we cried silently at night for all that we had lost. At a camp on the Italian border, charity workers tried to find us places to live. I told them I had family in Britain, and after a long wait they managed to trace my uncle and aunt and get me added to the last consignment of unaccompanied refugee minors to be allowed into the UK.

  All I knew of my aunt and uncle were the stories my parents had told and a vague idea that they ran a tailor’s shop in London. In fact, they didn’t live in London at all, and the tailor’s shop was actually a dry‑ cleaner’s, but the charity that was helping me back then tracked them down anyway.

  I remember the first time I saw Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna, standing on the pavement outside the shop to welcome me, the nephew they hadn’t even known they had. They were older than my parents, but Dara had a look of my mother all the same: dark wavy hair, stern brows, eyes that glinted with the promise of mischief.

  ‘My little sister Yasmine’s boy!’ my uncle said, anguished. ‘After all this time, how can it be? You are welcome here, Sami. We are family, yes?’ He threw his arms around me and I felt the dampness of his tears against my cheek.

  I was safe.

  I was lucky.

  I was home.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published 2019

  Text copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2019

  Illustrations copyright © Erin Keen, 2019

  Photographs on pages 24, 75, 177 and 193 copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2019

  All other photographs copyright © Shutterstock

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Cover illustrations by Erin Keen

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-241-38141-0

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