Read Cassie for Free Online Page A

on the chair next to Fern and leaned in to Cassie’s wheelchair.
    â€˜How did you sleep, poppet?’ she asked.
    Cassie twisted her head, smiled and gave a low gurgle. Her hand, fingers bent as if they’d been broken and mended very badly, lifted and waved. Ivy glanced at Fern.
    â€˜She says she had a great night’s sleep,’ said Fern. ‘Just as well, because frankly I was in a coma. And now we both feel refreshed and ready to rock and roll, don’t we kiddo?’
    â€˜Are you sure you don’t want to just rest today?’ asked Ivy.
    â€˜What ya reckon, Cass? Rest or party?’
    Cassie beamed as her body convulsed. Her eyes stayed on Ivy who noticed how deep a brown they were. And sparkly. Little flashes of light danced in her pupils.
    â€˜Looks like that’s a vote for party,’ said Fern. ‘I’ll just get these breakfast dishes done and then we’ll take my car. See what this place has to offer for a couple of tourists from the NT. Sound okay, sis?’
    â€˜No, it doesn’t,’ said Ivy. ‘No way are you doing these dishes.’
    Holly
    Raph McDonald turned up for the twelve-thirty showing.
    One minute Holly was doing an EFTPOS transaction for an elderly couple who had chosen to see a very violent road movie and the next Raph loomed, like a vision, on the other side of the counter. Holly’s mouth dried up and her tongue turned rubbery and died. She stared blankly at him for a moment or two, doing a terrific impersonation of someone hit round the back of the head with a baseball bat. He smiled at her and his teeth glinted.
    â€˜Hey!’ he said. ‘How are ya, Hayley?’
    Being directly addressed by Raph McDonald jolted the dead muscles in her tongue back to life. Like those medical shows where they stick a couple of plates onto someone’s chest and go, ‘Clear, pow!’
    I like the name, Hayley, thought Holly . It’s a good name.
    â€˜Hi, Raph,’ she replied, heart thudding. He was with a few of his mates from the school basketball team. Like him, they were tall, lean and muscled. But they weren’t in his league. Holly had tried out once for the girl’s basketball team at school. She’d discovered she’d need a stepladder to get even close to shooting a basket. ‘What can I get you?’ she asked.
    Raph bought tickets for a movie Holly had watched the week before. She’d only watched it because she’d seen everything else on the program. It was about a group of boys who stuck their heads down toilets and rode down main streets in shopping trolleys and lit their flatulence in amusingly inappropriate places. Holly didn’t find it funny, but the rest of the audience did. They screamed with laughter. As she was the only girl in the entire place, she put it down to the gender divide.
    Raph bought enough popcorn and coke to sustain a third world village for months. Holly leaned over the counter and glanced from side to side, as if checking for spies.
    â€˜Would you like a free choc-ice, Raph?’ she said.
    â€˜Sure,’ he said. ‘That would be cool.’
    Holly laughed. What a witty guy! Raph kept a dead pan face.
    â€˜Only for you, though,’ she said. ‘I can’t do it for your mates. It could cost me my job.’
    â€˜Sure,’ he repeated. ‘Thanks, Hayley.’
    Holly watched as Raph and his mates staggered to the cinema entrance under their load of consumables. He glanced back at her once, then said something to one of his friends and laughed. She sighed as she dug into her purse for a five dollar note.
    The prices at the candy bar really were outrageous.

    Fern and Ivy bought bread and a variety of dips and nibbles from a deli in the city centre and walked to a park, just up from the river. They spread a blanket on the grass, put the food onto plastic plates and arranged plastic cutlery and foam cups. Fern poured milk into one of the cups and