Sometimes

Chapter twenty-one

I got a text from Cassie early Monday morning to say that she needed to speak to me urgently.  Thinking it was just another Cassie style emergency, where the emergency was actually her having trouble deciding which shoes to wear, I replied saying I’d meet her outside the front of College like usual.  I tried ringing her on my way there, but I just got her voice mail.  That scared me for a second; Cassie always answered her phone.  But then I rationalised, and decided that she was probably using both hands to apply the last layer of make-up before College started.

    I knew something was wrong, however, when I spotted her pacing around outside the entrance to College.  She was hunched over, her hands deep in the pockets of her purple trench coat, with a pained expression on her face.  When she saw me the look grew.

    “Harriet.  I need to speak to you.”

I nodded and let her pull me to what was fast become our gossip bench.  “Go on.”

    “It’s bad news.”  Her eyes were flitting between me and the point behind my shoulder so rapidly that I almost turned around to see if anyone was behind me. 

    “Tell me, Cass.  You’re worrying me.”

She managed to smile then and I almost decided that she was going to tell me something meaningless like Mike getting kicked off of the football team, but then the smile disappeared again.

    “Cass?”

She pulled at the zip of her coat, dragging it up and down, up and down.  “My mum found out about my belly button piercing.”  Her voice was devoid of all emotion and I was confused.  I’d at least been expecting her to go off on one about how horrible her mum was, but then when the silence followed her words to the point that I could hear the birds and the other students, I frowned.

    “What happened?”

She sighed and blew the hair off of her face.  “I was getting changed and Mum walked in on me.”  Her expression clouded over then and a feisty look appeared.  “I’ve always told her that I wanted a lock on the door but she’s all about safety and ‘we don’t have secrets, Cass.’” 

    “So she saw the piercing and then flew off the handle?”

She nodded. “That’s an understatement though.  She went crazy, saying how I was dishonest.  That’s bull for a start.  I never, ever, do anything wrong and the one time I go behind her back, she starts treating me as if I’m some huge disappointment.”  She gripped the side of the bench so hard her knuckles turned white, making her pink nail varnish even bolder.  “It’s so unfair!  If she’d just let me have it done in the first place then I wouldn’t be in this mess and she wouldn’t have had to give me a massive lecture on trust.”  She blew the hair out of her face again with another sigh.  “She’s so annoying.”

I rubbed her arm.  “It’s not that bad.  At least she knows about it now.”

Cassie snorted. “She says I’m not allowed to keep it but I told her tough.  I’m not a child anymore, H.  I’m seventeen!”

I nodded sympathetically.  “She’s just angry because it’s the two of you.”

    “Because I’m an only child?” Cassie shifted on the bench so she was facing me again.  “Or because Dad walked out?”

    “You’re all your mum’s got, Cass.  Maybe she’s sad that you kept it from her.”

    “I had no choice,” she replied.  “She wouldn’t let me do it, so I had to go behind her back.”  She patted the material of her coat over the piercing as if it were something precious.  “I’m not getting rid of it.”