Finding Cassie Crazy Read online

  Cassie

  Hi Matt

  Did you know that a good thing to do if you want to strengthen your fingers and help them to be flexible for your trumpet playing is to carry a squash ball around and just squeeze it occasionally? Anyway, it works for piano playing.

  I think I’m getting used to you being quiet. It’s kind of peaceful. It’s like you’re over there having a little sleep on the couch.

  Lots of love

  Cassie

  To Cassie Aganovic

  I know your name. (See above.)

  I know where you go to school.

  I know your friends’ names.

  I know your therapist’s name.

  I know everything there is to know about you, Cassie. And you keep on writing and telling me more.

  You want to explain to me how you got to be so absofuckinglutely stupid?

  Yours faithfully

  Matthew Dunlop

  Dear Matthew

  It’s good to hear from you again, and it’s good to know you’ve been paying attention.

  Emily and Lydia are now talking German to each other, which is profoundly rude of them. I wish I’d done German but my dad said I should take Japanese, but then the school stopped offering it because the teacher left, so I had to take Commerce instead.

  Well, as I said, Claire really wants me to find out some facts about you, so I guess I might just bring along your letters. She would so love them because she could analyse them and talk about your insecurities and so on, and my mum would be confused because even though she’s a lawyer in a big firm what she’s really most into is children’s rights. In particular, she thinks kids should be able to express themselves. So, as I said, she’d be confused because she’d think you have a right to say those things, but she might not like you saying them to me.

  Then she and the counsellor could get into a discussion about the copyright in your letters.

  Either that or you could write the answers and I’ll hand that in instead. Just tell me what you want to be when you grow up and the worst thing that’s ever happened to you and what you love most.

  Love

  Cassie

  PS I was just talking to Bindy Mackenzie again and she said she’s SURE that you play the trumpet. She said she was singing at the School Spectacular last year, and there was a guy called Matthew Dunlop who was a trumpet player, though he was fairly bad at trumpet playing and she wasn’t sure why they let him in. I said, ‘I thought you were just being witty, saying he played the trumpet,’ and she said, ‘No, I was only being witty when I said he’d blow the trumpet in your ear if he didn’t like you.’ She said it right off, just like that, as if she had never really stopped thinking about saying it and maybe laughing to herself quietly.

  Cassie

  Yeah, whatever.

  Okey doke.

  You wore me down.

  Here’s some infotainment for you:

  A for my Future Occupation: There’s a DC10 with my name on the captain’s seat someplace out in the blue beyond.

  B for the Worst Thing that Ever Happened To Me: A shark took a piece out of my board one time when I was surfing, and I’m not screwing with you when I tell you this. I was a kid and drowning, and this was down Jervis Bay way.

  I’ve got a shark tattoo on my shoulder to show my respect.

  C for the Thing I Love Most in the World: I would kill my mother and my sister and my mother’s sister for one of those Mint Aero Bars. Any time of the day.

  You can tell your counsellor that you are the most unfriggingbelievable wacked-out freak of all time.

  And you can tell Bindy bitch-face Mackenzie that I’m the best trumpeter in the southern hemisphere and she can’t sing for shit.

  Okay, so nice work with the blackmail.

  Now will you get on with your life and leave me alone to get on with mine?

  Matthew

  MATTHEW DUNLOP!

  Well, you outshone even yourself. You’re a surprise to everyone, Matthew. Your parents always believed in you, but never the general population. The general population always had doubts about you, Matthew, and look what you’ve done.

  Wow, you are so weird.

  I picked up your letter on the way to Maths which is why I’m writing on the back of this Maths exam. Can you please post the exam back to my teacher when you’ve finished reading so she can mark it?

  I haven’t answered many questions though, because I got tired after the first two and I decided to have a break and open your letter, and I got the shock of my life. You wrote a whole letter! A WHOLE INTERESTING AND SURPRISING LETTER!

  Wow. But the weirdest thing is this: why?

  I mean, why are you suddenly answering, like you think I’m blackmailing you by saying I’m going to show the letters to the counsellor? I wasn’t trying to blackmail you. I could have shown your letters to a teacher or to my friends (and you wouldn’t be alive to read this today if I’d shown them to my friends). I could have shown them any time, but I got the impression that you didn’t give a crap about anybody knowing and for some reason that made me protect you.

  Now it turns out that you got scared into being human by the threat of a counsellor. What’s with that? Are you phobic about the mental health industry?

  Imagine if a person was phobic about going to psychotherapy. How could the person get over their phobia? The person would have to go to a psychotherapist to get over it, right, and once they got there, they’d be over it.

  Anyhow.

  Catch ya

  Cassie

  Hi Cassie

  Look, okay, cut it out and give me a break. So, I’ve got an attitude problem.

  And the reason I’ve got an attitude problem is because of a situation, which, step up closer to the speaker if you like, and I’ll whisper a clue.

  No, piss off, it’s personal.

  Can we just leave it now though? You got what you wanted. You moved me up to a higher plane, and you got some deep thoughts out of me, so you’re the winner. Way to go, Cassie.

  Matthew

  Dear Matthew

  Hello. I just had a really great weekend at Lydia’s place. We painted the walls of Lydia’s room and I used my wall to write a song, and then I painted over the song with many layers of black paint, and one day someone will strip it back and think that a caveman wrote the song. So that’ scool.

  I love Lydia’s house. It’s huge with passageways going everywhere, and she’s got a doll’s house in the window of her bedroom.

  We went shopping in the city on Sunday and Em got obsessed with the talking dog outside the QVB. You know the one that promises it’ll say thank you if you put a coin in it for the deaf children or something? Well, Emily realised that you don’t have to put a coin in. You can just stand there and stare at it, and it still says ‘THANK YOU, RUFF, RUFF.’

  The weirdest things get Emily upset. Like one time we were making dinner together, including rice, and the rice kind of got ingrained into the saucepan, so it was all these little circles which we couldn’t wash off. Em started going crazy. She couldn’t stop scrubbing the pan, and she was practically crying about it.

  Lydia’s a lot more normal and would never cry about rice in a pan. But even she’s crazy. She really wants to be an author and it scares her sometimes, thinking that she might never get published. She gets depressed because she always writes half novels and then gets bored and starts another novel. Sometimes she even stops after one sentence, like, she’ll write: ‘Once upon a time there was a man who lived inside an empty packet of Twisties.’ And then she loses inspiration and scrunches up the paper.

  Plus, sometimes Lydia gets her stories mixed up with real life. For an example, she thinks her mother’s a drug addict and her father’s a sleaze. I think that’s what they were a bit like when she was younger and she just hasn’t noticed that they’ve grown up now.

  Her mother can be flaky. But she’s really just being flamboyant.

  It’s freezing. My feet are cold.
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br />   Lydia’s dad is okay. He just makes nerdy dad jokes, such as whenever he turns on the under-floor heating, he says: ‘You hear that, girls? That’s the sound of the electricity company applauding.’ He means because it’s expensive to run under-floor hearing.

  Also, he likes to get us to stare at these pictures (you know the ones with the squiggly patterns?) until a shape emerges. Like a tiger or someone doing a ski jump? After a while, we always pretend we can see it, but we never can.

  Emily painted squiggly lines all over her wall of Lyd’s bedroom and then called in Lydia’s dad and told him she had painted something behind it which he could see if he stared long enough. But he could tell she was making it up.

  Love

  Cassie

  Cassie

  Okay, so you’ve got no plans to piss off. I get it.

  I can tell you this. The thing about me is that I’m a loser. I’m no good at anything, except maybe playing the trumpet. I’m good at that, I guess like you’re good at piano. And I guess it’s the only thing that keeps me, like, gives me a reason to live.

  You seem kind of wacked out, but you keep skipping Science or whatever to go to the movies, and that’s okay, but it means you must be kind of smart. I could not skip Science because I’ve got to go to every class because if I don’t do okay in Science I’ll never get to be a pilot, which is all I want out of life.

  Just to play the trumpet and fly a plane. Is that so much to ask for?

  Plus I think it’s stupid, getting yourself in trouble unnecessarily. There’s a guy in my class who is about to get thrown out of the school if he doesn’t get his act together, and the other day he just went into Castle Hill shops for half the day, instead of going to this important across-the-form English test we had to do. I don’t know. I just think he’s a moron. And that’s an example.

  And let me tell you what happened: this is not a sob story and it’s not bull. I got into trouble recently, and that’s what I meant when I said ‘a situation’. The trouble was with a girl who goes to your school.

  I got into a relationship with this girl and maybe you even know her so I won’t say her name. She’s really pretty with sparkling eyes and kind of soft skinned. I was wacked out in love with her, like my heart could hardly stay up in my chest. So she talked me into meeting her at lunch a month or so back, in that reserve which is at the back of your school, and I went. I’m such a moron, but my heart was, you know, wacked. So I went, and we’re there, don’t get offended, but we’re there on the grass, getting it on, I apologise for offending you, talking about doing it with another girl.

  But that’s what was going on.

  And your school principal was walking through the reserve and she found us, and right off this girl turns on me and tells this bullshit story about how I forced her. Like I forced her to come to the reserve with me, and I threatened to break up with her if she didn’t, blah blah, which was such a lie.

  I still miss her sparkling eyes though. You know?

  But you guessed it, I was going to represent my school in the School Spectacular again this year, on the trumpet, and now, no chance. Your principal told my headmistress and it’s all screwed. She turned the screws. It’s a screwed-up world. You know? She banned me from playing.

  I guess some parts of your letters seemed real to me, like how your hands get too cold to play the piano and all that crap. I don’t know, sometimes I forget how much I hate you and it just seems like you are a nice story I’m reading.

  But every time I get to the end of your letters I think about what bitches go to Ashbury and I think that you are one of them.

  Matthew

  Hi Matthew

  Well, that was the longest letter I ever saw from you and thank you for writing it.

  I don’t know who that girl was, but why don’t you tell me and I can hate her for you. I’m sorry she was such a bitch but I promise that not all Ashbury girls are bitches, so don’t let her ruin our reputation.

  But I’m really sorry you won’t get to play the trumpet at the School Spectacular this year. That seems kind of a harsh punishment, considering it’s the thing you love most.

  Since you told me a secret, I want to tell you a secret.

  The thing I love most is singing, actually. You know how I’m kind of musical and I really don’t mean that in a showing-off way, it’s just something I inherited from my mother. Well, so, you know how I’m musical, I love to sing, and I always had this very secret dream to be a singer. Like, on stage.

  But I get such serious stagefright like you wouldn’t believe. I’m not a scared kind of a person. Okay, I’m fairly quiet but not because I’m scared to talk, just because I don’t always want to.

  And the thing is this: I just wish I’d put my hand in the air, to volunteer, I mean, at the start of this term when they asked for volunteers for our school’s Spring Concert. All the time, my mind was going Put your hand up, Cassie, put your hand up. But I stared at my hands and they just sat there, being quiet.

  Sorry I told you that. I guess it’s just meant to show I have sympathy with you not being able to play the trumpet when you want to. Maybe you should go and talk to the principal and just explain how important it is and ask if you can have another punishment? Something like that?

  See you

  Cassie

  Dear Cassie

  Well, I tried what you suggested and now I’m in even worse trouble.

  Sorry, I know it’s not your fault. You are an angel with the wings of a DC10, I know it, and I can tell from your handwriting that you’ve got a pretty face and cute ears. I kind of think sometimes about kissing you, behind your ears.

  Anyhow, I feel bad about all those threats I used to send to you, is all.

  So, what happened was, I went to the principal and I said what you suggested, and the principal just sat behind her desk there with this smug little smirk of an expression on her face, and before I’d even finished she was shaking her head. So I got so pissed off, and I just couldn’t control my temper, you’ve seen my temper, it’s not me, okay? It’s not who I am. You know that now, right, Cassie?

  Sure you do.

  Anyway, a little voice in my head was saying, Matthew! Shut up! Play it cool! but I was using every four-letter word in the dictionary, and I guess those are not actually dictionary words. But I used them and I added strawberry flavouring as well, and the upshot is that I’m not allowed to take trumpet lessons any more.

  As in, I do my trumpet lessons at school with the music teacher because my parents can’t afford to pay for them, my dad’s just a factory worker and my mum just does some telephone sales from home, and now it’s like the world’s slammed the door in my face. I’m like hammering on the door with both my fists and the world is behind it, shaking its head.

  Ah Cass, I don’t know what to do. I’m screwed up, mixed up, messed around, dive-bombing, crashing and burning. You know. I’ll never be a pilot.

  I’d kind of like to hold your hand.

  Matthew

  Hi Matthew

  Well, you’ve changed a lot. I’m kind of freaked out.

  I wish I could help you. I mean, that’s so terrible, that you can’t have trumpet lessons any more. I can’t believe they would do that to you.

  Maybe you should go and apologise to the principal or something? I mean, I know I wouldn’t want to do that, because of the indignity and everything. But maybe it’s worth it to suffer some indignity for the sake of your trumpet playing?

  Best wishes

  Cassie

  Dear Cassie

  Okay, here’s what happened. I went and apologised, like you told me to, and the principal was like a witch and said, ‘Nice try, mister’ as if she could tell I was only doing it to get my trumpet lessons back. She made me hand my trumpet in, so now I don’t even have that any more, and maybe if I hadn’t gone back to apologise she wouldn’t have recalled that it was a school trumpet.

  My parents got divorced a while back, and my mum hates my dad�
�s guts, but actually I’d prefer to be living with my dad than my mum. My mum’s never home because she goes to work in her factory, and my dad has to go around the country looking for work. It’s not his fault that he lost his job, and he can’t afford new shoes so his feet are all blistered and chafed. My mum wants me to change my name because it makes her want to spit when she remembers that I have my dad’s surname, and she can’t stand to see me walking around her house knowing I’m half my dad. She wants me to tell the judge that I hate my dad, which I can’t bring myself to do because it’s like lying in a courtroom. That’s like blasphemy. There’s nothing I hate worse than a liar.

  The only person I really liked having around is my nan but she went and died last year, of a weak heart, and it’s like as lonely as a drip of water now. As lonely as one single drip of water in a laundry, falling DRIP into a rusty sink.

  You’re a nice person, I guess, and I’m an arsehole, the way I kept threatening you when you first started writing. So, okay, step up closer to the mike for a moment and I’ll say I’m sorry. But I only say that word in a whisper.

  Matt

  Hey Matthew

  So now you’ve got me feeling kind of guilty. Talking about how I’m a nice person and everything, when I don’t really think I’m that nice.

  I didn’t take those threats of yours seriously and I just liked messing with your mind. You seemed to hate getting letters from me so that’s the reason why I kept writing. I just liked how mad it got you.

  You know, my mother is a lawyer, and I think I maybe mentioned that she used to do a lot of work with kids and protecting their rights and so on. So, if you want, I can ask her for some advice about your situation with the trumpet and all that.

  Catch ya

  Cassie

  PS I thought you said your dad was the factory worker and your mum did telephone sales?