Cassandra

by Kathryn Gossow

Before she leaves, Athena takes Cassie’s hand. ‘Here,’ Athena whispers. ‘Don’t use it all at once. I stole it from Father’s stash.’

  ~ 25 ~

  The Other Side of Green

  Halfway down the hill, out of sight of both houses, Cassie opens her hand and looks at what Athena has given her. A plastic lunch bag, rolled tight. She unrolls the bag and smells the sticky, sweet, pungent scent of the previous night.

  Cassie steals a packet of Tally-Ho papers from Poppy’s room. Her fingers fumble. No one has taught her to do this. She’s watched Poppy do it. First, it is too loose and the bits of green fall out of the roll. She learns to squeeze and roll at the same time. By Monday morning, two tight joints roll across her palm. She stashes them in her pencil case and leaves early for the bus. At the end of the driveway, well before the bus is due, she smokes half of one joint, puts it out, relights it and smokes the rest, then she sprays herself with Impulse.

  She closes her eyes. The sunlight seeps through her eyelids in patterns of orange and black and grey. Tiny wings sprout from her shoulders, flutter. Light. Breezy. The world is an open flower, blooming, and she, in the centre, is the stamen. Pollinating. Standing tall, waiting for the bee to bring life to her, to tickle her with its little hairy legs. Is that it now? That noise, a buzzing noise. Deeper. A big bee. Bigger than a tractor. Someone …

  Alex walks past her. She opens her eyes. Alex stands to attention facing the road. The school bus. The school bus drones closer. Shit. The bus. Dread groans out of her mouth. Her heart sprints like a hare. A herd of hares. Is a group of hares a herd? Not a swarm. A pest. Kapow with a shotgun.

  She climbs up the bus stairs, shrinking her wings back into her body. The smell of her trails behind her like a cape. She wraps the cape around her. Keep the smell hidden. Did that boy just turn his nose up and sniff. Sniff like a dog. She giggles, like lemonade all shook up fizzing in her belly, in her chest. Why is everyone looking at her? Slam. Fear crushes the fizz from her. She feels her backside. Are her knickers and her skirt caught up in her backside? Is that why he is looking at her? No. She sits in her seat, rests her head on the seat in front of her. The kids on the bus are like cows. Cows to the slaughter. School is a slaughter yard killing brains. They tell you school is for learning but really you know everything when you are born and school takes it all away and makes everyone the same. They don’t want you to know the real stuff. She knows the real stuff. She remembers what they want her to forget. She remembers … Gush. A tidal wave. Wow. All the world is thinking at the same time. That must be a lot of energy going out into the air. What does all that energy get used for? The sun flashes, the trees, shadow, the sun, the tree shadow. Slicing the glass. Like a guillotine. Thunk. Thunk. Slicing a space between everyone’s lives so they can see where they have been, but not where they are going. But she is special. She is Cassandra. Maybe the original Cassandra reincarnate, from Troy. Why not? Yes, definitely. She knows why people can’t see. She can see the guillotine slicing the paper. Cleaving the beginning of the book from its ending. She can’t forget any of this. She must remember. How could she forget? It is a revelation. Like the Bible. She is like a prophet. Is her face as red as it feels? Everyone is looking at her. No one is looking at her. Everyone is looking at her and pretending not to look at her.

  Fear pulls her back into a scrunched up piece of paper. Her heart thumps and thumps in her chest, like a rock song. Pounding in her ears. Remember why she has done this.

  Remember.

  The girl in front of her. A senior. Clara, Clara, faira, Clara, faira. Finer Diner. Words are funny things. Words come from somewhere, but who decided which word would be what? Why is the sky called the sky and not the ground or peanuts or flower? Human beings are smart. Smart and inventive. What made them think one day that they could invent an aeroplane? Clara turns a page of her book. Clara, Clara with hair the colour of poppies. The scalp beneath her hair is secretive. Scalps are very, very secretive. But Cassie knows. She knows how to seek out the secrets. The scalp opens up. Blood red. Clara. Cassie sits behind her every morning and afternoon. Clara reads science textbooks and books they have to read for English. Cassie has never spoken to her. She leans forward. Cassie’s heart is an eagle gliding through the sky. Wings as broad as a jet.

  ‘Clara,’ she says.

  Clara lifts her head from her book and turns. ‘What?’ Her eyebrows squeeze together.

  ‘You should never, never ever …’ Cassie shakes her head. She needs to look serious. Clara needs to know this is the most important thing she will ever be told. ‘Never go to a town called Dubbo.’

  ‘Weirdo,’ Clara says and returns to her book.

  Tears boil behind Cassie’s eyes. Sadness squeezes her. No, no, no.

  She taps Clara on the shoulder. Clara shrugs her off, her head still in her book.

  ‘Clara,’ Cassie says. Her mouth seems too narrow. Her throat closes up. ‘You have to listen. I am not joking.’

  Clara leans away, deeper into her book.

  Cassie flings herself back in her seat. Never mind, if they will not listen to her, so be it. Stuck-up bitch. She will suffer in the end. That is for sure.

  Cassie looks across the aisle. Brett. Ugly, ugly Brett. His nickname should be Ugly. Husband, two kids, housework, farming. He will die of something or other to do with his bowels. Boring. She could tell him to eat more fibre. Eat more fibre. Eat more fibre. She chants in her head. Eat more fibre, eat more fibre, eat more fibre, until he looks at her and frowns at her and she smiles back and says, ‘Eat more fibre,’ but he probably doesn’t hear because she says it quietly and the bus is noisy and he is all the way across the aisle. Besides, he has to die of something. He can’t live forever. Same with Clara. Same with her. How would she die? Does she want to know?

  Jamie walks down the aisle, his bag banging against the seats. Jamie. A flash of stage lights. Wham. Jamie will play in a band. His heart will sing. For a night or two. Nothing will come of it. The band isn’t going to be famous. He will get a job with the council digging up roads and filling them back in. Sometimes he will get his guitar out at parties. Around the fire. He will play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ and the parties will drink around him and laugh and flirt and ignore him. He will be happier when he admits he’s gay. Cassie giggles to herself. What if she just told him now?

  She digs around in her bag. She finds her English book. She rips a piece of paper out of the back of it. ‘You will …’ the bus bumps and the pen speeds across the page, ‘… be happy when you …’ What was she going to write again? She shakes the pen, she needs an f, what does an f look like? Oh, oh, ‘… fall in love with Simon.’ Is there already a Simon at school? She does not want to confuse him with the wrong Simon. She can’t think of one. No Simons. She folds the note and clutches it in her hand, ready for an opportunity.

  Her nails dig into her palms. The piece of paper squashes into a tight ball. She shoves it in her pocket.

  Philip, fat Philip, feet lost to diabetes. Narelle in a garden with bees buzzing around the lavender, sun shining, children giggling. Laura, tell Laura not to cry, my love for her will never die—no that is a song. Michael, fighting with his voice, his fist thumping tables, no it’s not good enough he will say. A dull ache roots itself in the back of her neck. Charmaine, lost in a car park, watch out for that man, he is watching you, he likes these opportunities. But she will live. He will let her live. It is some other kick he wants.

  The ache becomes a throb spreading up the back of her head. She closes her eyes. It is too much. How does she switch it off? She needs a pill. Something to switch it off. Neutralise it in her blood. Would Athena know? Is there such a thing? The light seeps into the cracks between her closed eyes. She squeezes them tighter, spreads her hands double to block out the light. The light brings the messages. Like the firelight at the party. The sunlight is too much. Her stomach turns and toast and vegemite r
ise closer to her throat. It wants out. The demon in the smoke is sick of her. Has made her sick. Wants to leave. When it leaves the visions will stop. End it all. She retches. The diesel exhaust fumes crawl through the cracks in the window seals. Curl into her nostrils. Putrid. She has to hold it in. Until she gets off the bus. The vomit knocks at her throat. Can’t wait, it says. Can’t wait.

  She races to the front of the bus, her hand over her mouth. ‘Stop,’ she wants to say, but spew comes up instead and she catches it in her hand and her shoulders heave and the bus stops and as she hurls herself down the stairs another flood rises and she spills the vomit from her hands, down her shirt and the rest comes out onto the dirt.

  When it is all out she spits long strands of thick saliva and uses the back of her hand to wipe the clammy cold sweat from her forehead. She rests her head on the bus. Nausea throbs through her. The world around her is a spongy bubble, pressing on her, letting go, pressing on her, letting go …

  ‘You feeling better?’ the driver asks, laying a hand on her back. His energy bursts through her spine and she writhes beneath his touch. Bastard. It is all his fault. The smell of that bus making her sick. He did it on purpose. Never mind, a surprise is in store for him in a few weeks. It won’t be good, but no point in warning him. Let his wife be the bearer of bad news. No one pays any attention to her warnings anyway. She learned that on the bus.

  The driver moves his hand. ‘Well, better out than in. You’re lucky, Mrs Lever was passing. She said she’ll take you home to your mother.’

  Cassie looks out to the side. The old lady smiles with perfect false teeth. ‘Here you go, dear, a hankie.’ An angel with perfect teeth and a magic hankie.

  Cassie wipes her mouth and her hands with the hankie. ‘I’m sorry,’ she croaks, straightening, her legs wobbling beneath her, the earth shifting, shifting, shifting into the future.

  ‘That’s perfectly fine.’ Mrs Lever leads her to the white car. ‘We all get caught out sometimes. Your brother got your bag for you.’

  The woman’s voice bounces through Cassie’s brain.

  Cassie climbs into the front seat, the sheep skin seat cover wrapping around her. It feels like clouds. How does she know what clouds feel like? Must be from when she was with the gods, learning her prediction skills the first time. She hears Alex behind her, putting her bag on the back seat. Mrs Lever closes the car door and Alex’s face appears at her window. He shakes his head. He looks like her mother telling her she ate too much chocolate and deserved to be sick. He leaves a shadow and a shimmer where he has been, like a ghost. She looks away.

  Mrs Lever straps herself into the driver’s seat. ‘You just relax. I know how to get to your place. I used to visit your Aunty Ida when we were just young girls. We are all missing her at the Ladies Auxiliary. The last cake stall just didn’t seem right without her cakes.’ The bus pulls out and passes them. Mrs Lever starts the car engine. ‘It must be nice having her stay there with you. Only until she is back on her feet, of course. How is she doing? No, you don’t say anything. Just sit back. Let me know if you are going to be sick again. I’ll stop the car in a jiffy.’

  Cassie pulls herself into a tight hunch, her shoulders hugging her ears. Vomit creeps up her throat. Keep it in keep it in keep it in, she chants and Mrs Lever’s chatter turns into nonsense she can’t understand. A vision of Natalie sprints into her mind and stands jogging before her. She won’t see Natalie today. She was looking forward to telling Natalie what she knew. Natalie would get a kick out of knowing she would be powerful and rich. Like someone out of a Sidney Sheldon novel. She wouldn’t have to see Paulo. That’s the upside.

  At home, her mother helps her in her pyjamas and washes her face and hands with a warm washer. She puts her into bed with an empty ice-cream container and a glass of water. ‘Keep your fluids up,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to get Ida up and wash her sheets—again. And she wants her hair put in curlers. Of all things.’

  Later she overhears her mother tell Poppy that Cassie slept for the rest of the day. But Cassie slept not a second. She lay, unable to move, her muscles too lethargic to be restless, her mind racing, rushing from place to place like an ocean in a storm. Every face she ever saw lives out a life from beginning to end, tragic lives, mostly mundane lives, occasionally lives that soar momentarily, all end the same. In a grave. In a crematorium.

  The next day Cassie stays at home. Her mother says, ‘Just in case,’ and later in the afternoon Athena arrives.

  ‘You greened out. A whole joint is too much, especially for a beginner,’ she whispers. ‘You should start with less, until you build your resistance. And probably you shouldn’t go to school stoned. Anyway, what do you remember?’

  Cassie shakes her head. ‘That’s the shittiest part. I don’t remember any of the visions. I know there were heaps, and full-on detail, but now they’re gone.’

  Athena swings her legs off the bed. ‘Well, smoke less next time, all right?’

  ‘Are you leaving already?’ Cassie asks.

  Athena shrugs. ‘I might have a chat to your mum before I go.’

  ‘Oh,’ Cassie claps her hands together, ‘I do remember something.’

  ‘What?’ Athena says.

  Cassie buries her face in her hands. ‘A note,’ she says through her fingers and pulls her hands away. ‘I wrote a note … to a boy, about his future. It’s …’ She bites her lip and looks out of the corner of her eye. ‘I had it in my hand … and then …’ She jumps from the bed and riffles through her schoolbag. Takes everything out and puts it back in again. ‘No,’ she says, sitting on the floor.

  ‘Maybe you dropped it,’ Athena says.

  ‘My pocket!’ Cassie springs to her feet.

  In the laundry, on the windowsill, sits a pile of loot from pockets throughout the weeks: bobby pins, loose change, chewing gum, and a scrunched up piece of paper.

  ‘This is it.’ Cassie lifts it from the sill.

  ‘You make your mother empty your pockets?’ Athena says. ‘Can’t you empty your own pockets?’

  ‘I was sick,’ Cassie says.

  ‘Well, what’s it say?’ Athena asks.

  Cassie stares at the note and laughs. ‘I have no idea.’

  Athena takes the note. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Your writing is worse than usual.’

  ‘I think it is a foreign language.’ Cassie laughs and throws the note in the bin.

  After Cassie walks Athena up to the back fence, her mother tells her the colour has come back into her cheeks. ‘Go and spend some time with Aunty Ida,’ she says.

  Ida, dressed in slacks, her hair curled and stiff with hair spray, sits in her new wheelchair, the television blaring, a game show, all sparkle and fake smiles.

  ‘Turn it off, Cassie dear, it’s giving me a headache.’

  Cassie turns off the television. The silence rattles around the room. ‘Do you want me to read to you?’ Cassie picks up the Mills and Boon from the coffee table.

  ‘No, no, not that trash. My Bible’s on the table by the bed.’

  ‘Bible? Okay.’ Since when did Aunty Ida read the Bible?

  Cassie settles into the seat by her aunt. ‘Do I start from the beginning?’ she asks.

  ‘No, Mrs Lever suggested these.’ Ida passes her a handwritten list.

  Cassie opens the book. The fresh pages, thin and delicate, smell of church.

  She takes a breath. ‘(Exodus 15:26), He said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.”’

  Ida sighs and laughs, brushing a wisp of hair back into place. ‘I think it is too late for me.’

  A knot in Cassie’s stomach tightens. ‘Too late for what?’

  ‘Never mind. Put the
telly back on.’

  Cassie turns on the TV. An ad for shampoo sings at them.

  ‘What do they mean, the things I read?’

  ‘They mean if you live without sin, you might get healed.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right, the doctor said you’d be fine. Your burns are almost better.’

  Ida turns to her, her head bobbing like a doll on a dashboard. ‘Of course, I’ll be fine. Haven’t you got homework to do?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Alex appears at the door, his hair damp and his pyjama legs dragging on the floor. ‘The Goodies are on.’

  ‘Change the channel then,’ Ida says.

  Alex turns the dial and plonks himself on the floor in front of them.

  ‘There’s a bit in the Bible,’ Cassie turns to Ida, ‘about the future.’

  ‘The future?’

  ‘Yeah, plagues and stuff that might happen.’

  ‘The Book of Revelations.’

  ‘Yeah, do you believe it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know if I believe any of it.’

  ‘But you go to church most Sundays.’

  ‘Where else would I go?’ Ida’s voice trembles.

  ‘So,’ continues Cassie slowly, ‘what would you say if someone said they could tell the future?’

  ‘Somewhere in the Bible it says something like beware of false prophets, they look like sheep but really they are wolves. Something like that,’ Ida says.

  ‘So … does that mean people can’t tell the future?’ Cassie bites her lip.

  ‘I think it means people should be careful of the devil’s interference,’ Ida replies.

  ‘So don’t try and predict the future?’ Cassie asks.

  ‘Mrs Lever would say follow the Ten Commandments and pray to God for his protection and guidance.’ Ida taps the Bible with crepe fingers.

  ‘And you would say …’ Cassie says.

  ‘I would say it’s too late for me.’

  Cassie turns back to the TV. Alex stares straight at her.