PART 3
CASSIE
Sunday, Late at Night, Full Moon
Well, hello there, Diary
This is Cassie and it’s Sunday night.
So, what happened was, I just spent a weekend at Emily’s place, since her parents were away (as per usual). Lydia was in a melancholy mood, so we didn’t do anything illegal. We just invented recipes using the strangest ingredients in the kitchen plus some different kinds of old wine.
Also, Lydia set off the smoke alarm seventeen times. She’s been analysing how smoke alarms work.
It was Lydia’s birthday last week, and her father gave her this book which has instructions to make her become a famous author. Part of why Lydia was melancholy was that she can’t decide whether to keep using the book or not since, on the one hand, she hates her dad and she thinks the book is stupid but, on the other hand, she really wants to be an author.
Anyhow, I just got home from Emily’s and I thought of this diary. The reason being that it was a birthday present from my dad a few years ago. I remember that it was wrapped in green tissue paper when he gave it to me, with one of those curling, twirling ribbons, and I made fun of my dad because I knew a shopkeeper must have wrapped it and also because I was twelve and stupid.
Also, I remember that I saw the leather cover and realised it was a diary, and then I raised my eyebrows and kind of humorously threw the diary over my shoulder, saying, ‘You think I’m the kind of person who writes in a diary?’
Mum and Dad laughed and Dad just shrugged like, ‘Oh well, better luck next time.’ I put the diary in my bedside drawer and it’s been there ever since.
Hey, I guess you don’t know all these people, do you, Diary? Lydia and Emily and mothers and fathers and everything?
You don’t even know who I am.
I’m not the kind of person who writes in diaries.
That’s one thing to know about me.
PART 4
ASHBURY HIGH
YEAR 10
NOTICEBOARD
* * *
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
In order to know the road map of your mind, seek out the compass in your schoolbooks!
Spring Concert!
As the Autumn Term gets under way, Spring may seem a distant star. But it’s not! It comes just after Winter! At this week’s form assembly, we’ll ask for volunteers to participate in the Spring Concert: if you can sing, dance, juggle, or even ‘rap’ (only cheerful tunes, please), raise your hand at the assembly so your name can be included! (Air guitarists need not apply unless and until they learn to play the guitar.)
This has been a message from your Form Mistress
* * *
* * *
Protest in Mr Botherit’s English class today!
Do you value your life?
Then say NO to Mr B’s Ashbury–Brookfield Pen Pal Project! WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T WRITE A LETTER IN CLASS TODAY! If Mr B asks why, remind him that:
• The reason judo is compulsory here at Ashbury is so we can defend ourselves against Brookfield students.
• You can’t get in to Brookfield unless you have a criminal record.
• Brookfield students don’t know how to read or write.
* * *
* * *
A note to Mr Botherit’s English students!
I see that an uprising is in the works to do with my Pen Pal Project!
Guys, it’s true that the students at Brookfield seem ‘scary’, and they do have more tattoos and prison time than we have here. But isn’t this what life is all about? The Adventure of the Scary and the New?
I’ll let you in on a secret: Brooker kids are every bit as human as you are! Last year, my English class had a ball writing to them. Despite the rumours, nobody got their arms broken—indeed, my students learned a great deal about themselves, friendship and the Joy of the Envelope!
Don’t forget! Sharpen your pens and your wit, and I’ll see you in English today!
Mr Botherit
PS A word of warning: although your letters to Brookfield will be completely confidential, participation in the Pen Pal Project will count directly towards your assessment marks for this year.
* * *
PART 5
LETTERS
FROM
ASHBURY
ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT: Mr Botherit’s class
Letter from Ashbury student to Brookfield student as participation in the Ashbury–Brookfield Pen Pal Project
Dear Student at Brookfield
Please see the following!!!
1. My Name: Emily Thompson (aka Em).
2. My Interests: Well, there are too many to write out! My hand will fall off from the repetitious strain injury! But okay. You twisted my arm. I’ll choose the top three!
(a) Shopping
Shopping, shopping, shopping! HEY, DID I JUST USE UP MY THREE? OOPS!
Anyway, just kidding. ☺
Let me give you an idea of the kind of shopping freak I am. Okay, I’m walking along Pitt Street Mall with two shopping bags on my RIGHT ARM. I’m unbalanced! Hey! These bags are too heavy! The blood has stopped flowing to my knees! I’m about to tip sideways! Help!
WELL. You might think that the sensible thing would be to swap one bag to the other arm. Or maybe even stop for a café au lait?
But no! What do I do? I head straight out to buy myself TWO more shopping bags full of clothes or accessories or whatever takes my fancy!
And THAT’s how I balance myself out!
Oh, don’t get me started about shopping! Or else I’ll never finish this letter!
(b) Chocolate
Don’t get me started about chocolate either! Yummorama! My nickname might be Em, but it’s sometimes also Toblerone! I think this is a ‘play’ on Thompson, which is my last name.
I think it is an angiogram of Thompson, actually. But it might also give you a little clue about what my favourite chocolate is! Any guesses?
(c) Horses
Finally, I would like to end with ‘horses’. I have loved horses since I saw this old movie called International Velvet on TV, when I was a child. It starred Tatum O’Neal, who was a child actress in her time.
3. My Friends: Okay, this one’s easy.
I have two best friends. Lydia Jaackson-Oberman and Cassandra Jane Aganovic.
Maybe you’ve heard of Lydia Jaackson-Oberman? Lydia’s father is a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and since New South Wales is the most important state in Australia, that makes Lydia’s father the smartest man in the world!
That’s what Lydia says anyway and it kind of makes sense. Go figure!
But more important, Lydia’s mother is a famous celebrity: Marianne Jaackson.
I think there might be an accent on the name ‘Marianne’, such as would make it foreign? But I can’t remember and Lydia is ignoring me right now, even although I just threw a Tic-Tac at her! (She caught the Tic-Tac without even looking up from her letter, and ate it, and continued writing! Kooky! ☺)
I’m not sure why Lydia’s mother is a famous celebrity. She is certainly very beautiful or at least I get the impression from Lydia’s family photo album that she used to be beautiful. And, in the meantime, she once had plastic surgery and so therefore she is still practically a celebrity today.
Cassandra is my other best friend, Cassie.
Cassie’s mother is not a celebrity, she is just a lawyer who works in the same law firm as my parents do and she has very large bosoms. ☺
At any rate, the three of us girls are like the Three Scrooges! We have been best friends since primary on account of all the lawyers amongst our parents going to cocktail parties and, in their youthful days, having affairs with each other and so forth.
Everybody knows us as Cass, Em and Lyd, and in primary we used to even have a club called the Cassemlyds. Not a very original title, I know, but we were kids then. Can there be Siamese triplets? ’Cos that’s what we would be! Oh, don’t get me started!
4. My Favourite Holiday: Cannes Film Festival.
5. My Pets: I don’t think that horses should be called pets, but I do have two horses, Aristophanes and Cinque.
6. My Favourite Subjects at School: English! This is a lot to do with our teacher, Mr Botherit. I cannot explain it, but he really seems to care about his students more than most teachers.
7. My Favourite Colour: Aquamarine!
8. Parents’ Occupation: My parents are both lawyers. So my little brother and I are their merger and acquisition. William is the merger and I’m the acquisition.
Often my father does not arrive home until 4 am and my mother not until an hour after that! This is because they are partners of their law firm.
9. Things I Would Like to Change about the World If I Could: All horses should be allowed to come to school with you and just wander around shopping centres behind you and so forth; no more global warming.
Well, I have one other thing that I could tell you, and it is this: I am a person who has secret assignments. Like an FBI agent? ☺I get secret assignments that appear in my locker: they are written on scented notepaper inside envelopes sealed with red wax.
Kooky, eh! But that’s just what I’m like.
I can’t say any more about THAT little secret just now!
Well, whoever you are that receives my letter, I hope you also realise what an inspiring idea this is of Mr Botherit’s. I remember this time last year, when kids in a different English class in our year were writing letters to you guys at Brookfield. Well, I was jealous! I wanted to be one of them! Mr Botherit is dead-set-on-your-mark-get-ready-go when he says that schools that are close to one another should forge ties and I hope you are as keen as I am to get started with the forgery.
Okay, got to go! Looking forward to your reply! ☺☺☺
Yours sincerely
Emily Melissa-Anne Thompson (aka . . . have you been paying attention? . . . aka Em Toblerone!!!)
Student at Ashbury High
Letter from Lydia Jaackson-Oberman of Ashbury High to A Person at Brookfield
DEAR PERSON AT BROOKFIELD
I am a fish.
You wouldn’t think so to look at me, what with the uniform, and the hair on top of my head and all that.
But it’s true, I’m a fish.
I’m not sure what type, but I think maybe a cod.
What are you?
My mother grew up in a pinball parlour, but then she dyed her hair purple, learned to fly a plane and the rest, as they say, is history.
My father, I never knew, except for this one time, when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘Am I a dog?’
‘Lydia,’ he said. ‘I apologise.’
We haven’t spoken a word to each other since.
He’s the smartest man in the world, my dad, but you can’t tell at all.
I’m having trouble concentrating because Tic-Tacs keep hitting the side of my head.
What should happen is this:
You should send me some dope and I should sell it. Or use it. We should do it regularly. You send it and I sell it. It would be a bit like drug trafficking.
I’ve heard that Brookfield has a marijuana plantation instead of a sports oval. So I guess it’s easy enough for you to get. Or are they strict about who can pick it? I hope not.
It was my birthday last week and my friends, Em and Cass, made a chocolate cake. It had a lot of bourbon in the mixture, so it was excellent, and also strange. But the point is, we look out for each other, Em and Cass and I.
They look out for me by baking me birthday cakes. I look out for them by supplying their dope.
Do you think you can get it here by lunchtime?
Yours
Lydia Jaackson-Oberman
PS Sorry about my name.
To student at Brookfield from student at Ashbury
Dear Brooker Kid
That’s what our English teacher calls you: ‘Brooker Kids’.
I think it’s pretty funny, so that’s how I have started my letter to you. I wasn’t even going to write at all, is the fact of the matter, but I just found it so funny when he said it that I wrote it: ‘Dear Brooker Kid’.
My name is Cassie.
In actual fact, I always think it’s funny when a teacher tries to be cool. Most people want to slap them across the face but I want to sit them down, like with a hand on their forehead, saying, ‘It’s okay, you’re a grown-up, you’re allowed to be a nerd, just breathe in and out, that’s all you need to do,’ and they would look up at me confused but also relieved and teary eyed.
Emily gets rapid breathing (you know when you have to breathe into a paper bag?) because she is highly strung. Lydia does not get rapid breathing because she is as cool as a cat. Em and Lyd are my best buddies, so that’s why I introduced them to you right there.
I’ll tell you something else that I find funny and that is this: counselling. I went to see a counsellor with my mother last night. You might think that’s kind of a private thing to reveal in a letter to someone like you, who I’ve never even met, but you must be forgetting what counselling is. It’s where you TELL A STRANGER ALL ABOUT YOURSELF. So telling you that I’ve been to see a counsellor is nothing. You’re not a stranger. You’re a Brooker Kid.
I never knew that you would get homework from counselling, especially since it’s expensive, and we should be able to give the counsellor homework instead of the other way around, but there you go. She leaned towards me too much, the counsellor, maybe her eyesight wasn’t so good, and she offered me a chocolate mint, and she gave me homework.
The homework is that I have to choose someone who is a perfect stranger, but who seems like a really nice person, and I have to tell them about myself. Does that sound safe to you? No. Not to me either. The counsellor said I couldn’t choose Em or Lyd as they have known me all my life, practically. Right away she wanted to get me out of the pattern, she said, the pattern being life with my two best friends. She figured this out from my five-minute explanation about Lyd and Em. I couldn’t believe it, and I can tell by the expression on your face that you can’t believe it either.
‘Find yourself a nice girl at school, honey,’ she said.
She was imagining somebody who wore glasses and a cardigan and who would nod along with whatever I said. I bet.
One person I was thinking of for my homework is this girl at my school called Elizabeth Clarry who seems pretty nice. We used to do athletics training together a few years ago.
The counsellor also gave my mother homework, which was to write a letter to my dad and express her emotions. I think that’s just stupid.
She’s not supposed to mail the letter or anything, just write it. My mother did her homework last night while she was drinking a bottle of wine. I found it on the kitchen table this morning, all purple stained, and I took it with me to school, because I thought she might get depressed if she found it in the middle of her hangover this morning.
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
PART 6
LETTERS
FROM
BROOKFIELD
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 s
hop 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.
Finding Cassie Crazy Page 2
