Finding Cassidy

by Laura Langston

  Quinn had no time for guys. She wouldn’t understand.

  Jason didn’t understand either and he was my guy. Now more than ever. But he wanted the old Cassidy back.

  Except the old Cassidy had dissolved, and nothing would bring her back.

  Not even Jason.

  I went home, got undressed and crawled under the covers. I expected Jason to call. I hoped Jason would call. He didn’t. Okay, so I could have phoned and apologized for walking out, but I still smarted from his accusations. Melodramatic. Obsessive.

  I tossed and turned until sometime after 1 a.m., when I fell into a restless sleep filled with nightmares that Frank disowned me and that Jason had broken up with me. I even dreamt Jason took out an ad in the Victoria Mirror: “I am no longer going out with Cassidy the Separate Anonymous Melodramatic One. I do not date needy, no-name-brand women.”

  That one woke me up.

  Fortunately, the ad wasn’t in the morning paper, but that didn’t exactly reassure me. Maybe it would be in tomorrow’s paper.

  Determined to get the day off to a positive start, I decided to talk to Frank at breakfast and tell him about my search. Unfortunately, he had an early-morning meeting and wasn’t around.

  By the time I drove into the school lot, I’d worked myself into a major state. I figured for sure my dream was true—that Jason and I were over. Finito. I had to find him, reassure myself I was just being…not exactly melodramatic, but…

  Well, okay. Maybe a little.

  But this was Jason we were talking about.

  Hurrying inside, I was so intent on my search that it took me a while to notice there was something in the air. And it wasn’t just spring.

  Kids clustered, as they always did, in the foyer, outside the band room, blocking the entrance to the cafeteria. But they gave me only the briefest of glances. And no nasty, vaguely sexual names floated out to embarrass me. Clearly, I was no longer the flavour of the week.

  “Can you believe it?”

  “She’s weird anyway.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  The animated whispers told me someone had come along to end my fifteen minutes of fame. And I wasn’t sorry.

  I collected what I needed and headed to math, taking the long route past Jason’s locker. He still wasn’t around.

  Brynna was up ahead, and she was alone; I hurried to catch up. “Have you seen Jason?” I asked.

  “Not this morning.” She assessed me with her wide green eyes. “How are you, Cass?”

  Brynna was more sympathetic than the rest of them, and I knew she hadn’t been involved in the turkey-baster thing, but she was still a friend of Yvonne’s. “Okay,” I said warily.

  A group of girls walked past, their heads bent together. One of them said, “Those ugly Birkenstock sandals probably pulled her down,” and then broke into giggles.

  Unease nagged at me. “What’s happened?” “Didn’t you hear about Quinn?”

  My unease blossomed into full-blown panic. I shook my head.

  “She was caught stealing eggs from nests at Circle Lake.”

  Stealing eggs?

  “I guess whoever caught her surprised her enough that she fell and hit her head,” Brynna continued. “Mangled her foot pretty bad, too. She was in Emergency for a couple of hours last night.”

  It’s not too late. You can meet me at eight. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, but she’s supposed to stay off her foot for a while.” The second bell rang. Brynna stopped in front of her English class. “It’s totally weird. Nobody can figure out what she was thinking.” She disappeared through the doorway.

  She hadn’t been thinking. Just like she hadn’t been thinking back in grade eight. What kind of stupidassed plan was stealing eggs?

  About as stupid as destroying those suede jackets.

  Math dragged on forever. And forever filled with guilt. If I’d gone with Quinn, she wouldn’t have hit her head or wrecked her foot. She wouldn’t have stolen the eggs in the first place, because I wouldn’t have let her. And if I’d confronted her about her actions in grade eight, maybe she would have ditched her role as cause queen a long time ago.

  My guilt grew bigger.

  After math, I whipped into the office, batted my eyelashes at the secretary and told her an emergency had come up and I had to leave.

  Okay, so it wasn’t exactly an emergency, but I did have to leave. I had to go and see Quinn.

  As the secretary filled out the permission slip, I glanced at the call-in sheet sitting on her desk. Jason’s name was there. Beside his name was one word: sick.

  Great. Sleeping with me had made him sick.

  My afternoon had just gotten busier.

  After I saw Quinn, I’d go and see Jason.

  And that definitely qualified as an emergency.

  THIRTEEN

  The laughing kookabura has a call that sounds like a human laugh but it isn’t very funny when it hunts. It captures stuff and pounds it to death against a rock.

  Cassidy MacLaughlin, Grade Four Science Project

  Quinn’s black and white English Tudor house was in my old neighbourhood. It still had the same neat lawn and beautiful flower beds. Today they brimmed with red and white tulips. I climbed the stairs and rang the bell. Melodious chimes peeled somewhere deep inside. Quinn appeared. I watched through the window as she limped down the hall, wearing an oversized fisherman’s-knit sweater, lime green shorts and a great big tensor bandage on her left foot.

  “What do you want?” she demanded when she finally flung open the door. There was a patch of white gauze on the left side of her head.

  “Thanks, I’d love to come in.” I strode into the hall. “Sorry I didn’t call last night. Something came up.” Like sleeping with my boyfriend. Which might or might not have been a mistake.

  Quinn slammed the door. “You didn’t have to come here to apologize,” she muttered.

  “I’m not here to apologize. I’m here to ask you when you’re going to stop trying to save the world.”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she limped silently back to her bedroom. I followed. In truth, guilt was only part of the reason I’d come over. I also wanted to see what she’d found online. Maybe it was something that could break the confidentiality agreement.

  Quinn crawled into bed and propped her foot onto a mound of pillows. I gazed around her bedroom. It had lost the fluffy little-girl look I remembered. Now it was all sleek lines and shades of gold, brown and ivory. There was even a tube of Bobbi Brown lipstick on the bureau. The only thing remotely resembling the old Quinn was a pile of ugly clothes in the corner and several pairs of truly unfortunate shoes. Pulling her desk chair around to the side of the bed, I pointed to a photograph of a hot-looking guy. “Who’s that?”

  “Dean.” Quinn stared at me like I had the IQ of a slug. “He lives in Ladner. We’ve been going out for almost eighteen months.”

  Quinn had a boyfriend? I felt like I was in a funhouse at the fair looking in those crazy mirrors where everything’s distorted and unexpectedly different. Had she slept with him? “Nothing’s the way it seems,” I blurted. First it was my family, now it was Quinn. Even Prissy and Yvonne weren’t what I thought they were.

  “Whatever.” She looked bored. “What do you want, Cassidy?”

  “An apology.” The words popped out before I could stop them, breaking open the wound that had festered for years. “You broke into my locker and you stole that nail polish and—”

  “I didn’t break in—you told me your combination.”

  “And you snuck into the cheerleading practice and you dumped Purple Passion all over Yvonne’s and Prissy’s and Jasmine’s suede coats.”

  “I was thirteen,” Quinn muttered. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I was stupid. But those coats were real suede. Nobody should wear suede.”

  “That’s not the main reason you did it, and you know it. You were jealous. You hated me spending time with them. You wanted them to think I’d done it.”


  “They didn’t.”

  They didn’t because Dad had had the heart attack that very afternoon and I never did make cheerleading practice. But even if I’d been there, and even if somebody had connected the nail polish to me, they would have known I hadn’t done it. Why would I damage my friends’ coats? “It was a dumb idea,” I told her now.

  “Yeah, no kidding.” A thin smile teased her lips. “They just went out and bought new ones.”

  My face grew hot. “Have you no conscience?”

  “Look, I’m sorry. It wasn’t one of my better ideas. I admit that. And yeah, I probably was a little jealous,” she confessed sheepishly. “But I hated what they did to you. Shit, Cassidy, before your mom got that inheritance and before you started hanging out with Prissy, you cared about stuff like birds and animal rights. Then suddenly all you cared about was makeup and boys and cheerleading.”

  “I grew up.”

  Her eyes flashed angrily. “Or you grew down. To their level.”

  I was silent. There was no reasoning with her when she was this belligerent.

  “Why didn’t you report me?” she asked.

  Why didn’t I? “At first I didn’t want to believe you’d done it,” I said, struggling to remember. “And then, well, after a while, I didn’t care anymore.” That wasn’t true. I did care. I cared enough that I’d wrapped my anger around me like a cloak, used it to distance myself from Quinn, who, in all honesty, embarrassed me with her weird clothes and her fanaticism.

  I changed the subject. “Brynna said you were caught stealing eggs at Circle Lake last night.”

  “Yeah. And it would have been great except the damned security guard came along and scared the shit out of me.” She frowned. “When I fell, I hit my head on a log and sprained my ankle.”

  “Why don’t you stop and think before you do stupid things?”

  “This wasn’t a rash decision like those dumb coats. I thought this through. But at some point, you have to stop thinking and start doing. You could have been there with me.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  Quinn looked reproachful. “Murder waits for no one.”

  I snickered. “Isn’t that just a little…” My tongue tripped over the word, “Melodramatic?”

  Quinn sniffed. “Truth is never melodramatic.”

  I’d have to remember that line for Jason.

  “Here’s the thing.” Quinn leaned forward. “If we remove the addled eggs, the geese will lay more. It’s instinctive. Then they’ll sit on the eggs until they’re hatched. The scientists won’t know anything’s different until the baby goslings are running around.”

  “The scientists aren’t stupid. They’ll figure it out.”

  Quinn’s dark eyes shone with excitement. “Not necessarily. Not as long as we’re careful.”

  We’re? “Count me out, Quinn. Nature can right itself.”

  “Not if humans keep getting in the way.”

  Quinn was right. What could I say? I felt horrible about what I’d done to those eggs. Okay, so I’d only held them while Tom did the dirty deed. But as far as I was concerned, that was like holding someone’s head while the murderer pulled the trigger.

  “Mom thinks if I feel that strongly, I should drop environmental studies,” Quinn continued. “Maybe write a letter to the editor.” She wrinkled her nose. “Like a letter’s gonna save the lives of a bunch of goslings.”

  I giggled at the look of disgust on her face.

  “I won’t let those goslings die.” Her eyes flashed. “As soon as I get a chance, I’m going back. Only this time, I won’t get caught.”

  I admired her guts. “There are a couple of nests—”

  “—on the far side of the lake—”

  “—that are kind of out of the way—”

  “—and they don’t watch them as much,” Quinn finished with a grin. “I know. I’ll concentrate on those two.” She gave me a pointed look. “Will you help?”

  Something told me if I said yes, I’d be crossing a line. This was about more than the geese. This was about our friendship, too. I hedged. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Cass, you’re a birder. I thought you cared about them.”

  I didn’t answer. You’re a spotter. You’re collecting ticks on a sheet. Tom was wrong. I was more than that.

  “I know you care,” Quinn continued. “You act all stupid like Yvonne and the rest of them, but deep inside is the old Cassidy who didn’t live for makeup and designer clothes and stuff like that.”

  The old Cassidy was gone. And that reminded me. “What did you find online?”

  Quinn looked away, shifted her foot on the pillows. “It’s that chat room I mentioned before.” She brought her gaze back to me. “I made some connections I think you can use.”

  She sounded like Ms. Martin. “I don’t need connections.”

  Quinn talked over me. “Listen, Cass. I had to pretend to be you last night because they won’t let anyone in this chat room unless they’re a donor offspring and…” She stopped, an embarrassed look on her face. “Well, someone had questions about your search. I really need you to log back on tonight and answer them. Just this once, okay?”

  Once upon a time her actions would have been enough to unleash my inner bitch for an entire week. Now I could hardly work up a yawn. “That’s fraudulent,” I said.

  “So sue me. It was for a good cause. I mean, two of those guys found their donor fathers. And they were talking about how they did it.”

  “Really?” Now that was information I could use. My excitement lasted about a tenth of a millisecond. “Except he and my mother signed some stupid confidentiality agreement.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Quinn said. “If the donor signed his name, you’ve got him. And if anybody can help, the people in this chat room can. They have more information than the CIA.”

  “I’ve never done the chat-room thing before,” I said. Instant messaging yes, chat rooms no.

  “I could come over tonight and show you.”

  I hesitated. Tonight I was going to talk to Frank about the search.

  “Come on, Cass. I’ve been stuck here all day. I need to get out. And you need to find your donor.”

  I could talk to Frank after Quinn left. “Okay,” I said. “Come by any time after seven-thirty.”

  I went from Quinn’s to Jason’s place. Lord knows, I’d missed enough school in the last week to put a serious dent in my marks, but making things right between Jason and me was worth another slip in my grades.

  Parking in his driveway, I was struck by a more worrisome thought: I wasn’t allowed anywhere near his bedroom. It was the one condition our mothers had imposed on us when they’d lightened up.

  What if he really was sick and not just home because sex with me had revolted him? What if I had to go into his bedroom to wake him up and apologize for walking out?

  I needn’t have worried.

  I glimpsed Jason’s ratty black T-shirt through the window as I walked up his back stairs. He held a can of soup. I tapped on the door. He turned in slo-mo, giving me plenty of time to assess things. His hair stuck up like a bunch of porcupine quills; his skin looked like a clay face mask; his heavy-lidded eyes stared blankly in my direction.

  This didn’t look like a guy who was mad at me. It looked like a guy who didn’t even know who I was.

  “I’m sick,” he said as soon as I let myself in. Moving like an arthritic ninety-year-old, he turned back to the can of soup.

  “I heard.” I took the can opener from his hand and gave him a gentle shove in the direction of a kitchen chair.

  He sat down. “You shouldn’t be here. I’m probably contagious. I’ve been puking.”

  We’d shared enough contagions the night before that I was probably about twenty-four hours away from the flu myself. But I wasn’t ready to mention the subject of “last night” yet. “Maybe soup isn’t such a good idea.”

  “But I’m hungry.” The words came out in a little-boy
whine.

  I opened the can, dumped half the contents into the waiting bowl and punched some numbers on the microwave. Then I grabbed two slices of bread from the loaf on top of the fridge and popped them into the toaster.

  “My mom’s gonna call you,” Jason said as he watched me. “She’s got a hair stylist’s convention in Vegas next weekend. She wants to know if you can babysit Pete. Her regular sitter’s away and I can’t afford to miss any more shifts at Finnelli’s.”

  I retrieved the soup and made sure it was hot enough before I put it on the table. “I guess.”

  Jason misunderstood my hesitation. “I know it’s a lot to ask, since Pete might have the flu by then, too.”

  “It’s okay.” The toast popped. I buttered it, put it beside Jason’s soup and sat down.

  I’d babysat Pete once before, when Jason and I had first started going out. I’d taken him to the waterslides, fed him pizza and then bought him all four Captain Underpants books. Overkill, sniffed Mrs. Perdue, who decided soon after that I was a pretentious rich snob with disgusting taste in books and, worst of all, I was out to corrupt her son. For the longest time, I thought she was worried about my influence on Pete. But then she started using the words “corruption” and “breasts” in the same sentence, and it was obvious that it was Jason she was worried about.

  “But I guess worries have a way of fading when one is given the option of a weekend in Vegas.

  When Jason started on his second piece of toast, I said, “So if I keep my obsessive, melodramatic tendencies under control, maybe we can hang out together after Pete goes to bed Saturday night?” I struggled to keep my tone light, easy.

  Jason winced. “I’m sorry, Cass. That came out all wrong. And you didn’t stick around long enough for me to explain.”

  “That’s why I came over. I wanted to apologize for leaving last night. I was too upset to…you know…to talk about it. And I was hurt because this is a huge deal for me, Jason, and I’m not going to give up the search for my father. Not for you or for Frank or for anybody. It’s too important. You need to understand.”