Sea Dreamer

Chapter One

I’m doodling on the front cover of my English exercise book.

Tomorrow, today, yesterday, what really is the difference? Only that yesterday was today and tomorrow will become today. Why can’t yesterday be tomorrow? Or tomorrow be yesterday? I sigh. No, that’s no good. It would always come back to the same thing. It would always end up as today, whenever it was.

I link my name and school and class together with circles, thinking these things, and listening to Miss McKenzie telling us about her heritage and how her family came from Scotland. And how, after much painstaking research, she has discovered she is related to the Queen of Scots.

‘She needs her head chopping off,’ whispers Rana beside me, stretching and yawning.

The classroom is hot, stifling. Sun shines through the wide windows, falls across the wooden floor. I smile sideways at Rana and continue to make circles round and round my name. And what about time? What connects all the little moments? What makes all the single seconds into a minute, an hour, a week, and a lifetime? Is it time itself, or the people of that time, or a particular event? Like Mary, Queen of Scots. Is she famous because of who she was and having her head chopped off, or is it because of the time in which she lived? I shake my head, shift about in my seat; it’s too hot to be thinking such complicated things. But Miss McKenzie’s voice continues to lull me, continues to sink down into me. My thoughts shift and I wonder about my own family. Not the ones of today, but the ones of yesterday. Yesteryear. I love that word. It makes me think of times past, of carriages and castles, wagons and pioneers, sailing ships and pirates.

‘Cassie, are you with us?’

I jerk, bring my dreaming mind back to the present and nod. ‘Yes, Miss McKenzie,’ hoping she isn’t going to ask me what she’s been talking about as I don’t have a clue. My report cards last year, year nine, carried the expression ‘a daydreamer.’ When my mother read it she said, ‘Staring into space won’t get you to university, Cassie.’ She has these wonderful hopes about me becoming a surgeon, like my great-grandfather, Weston Todd. I haven’t the courage to tell her I don’t want to be a surgeon, that I dream instead of being a poet. I’m sure her hopes and wishes about being a surgeon are really for herself and not me.

Miss McKenzie’s voice pulls me back on track again. ‘This then is your main project for the year. Find out as much as you can about your own family. Choose one side only. Either your mother’s or your father’s.’ She gives a soft laugh. ‘I don’t want you working night and day. When you’ve done that, I want it written up in whatever form you think most suitable. It can be as a diary, letters, an essay. The choice is yours. Marks will go towards your final grade for English.’ She looks around the room. ‘Any questions?’

No one speaks.

‘Good. Now turn to page seventy-six of your poetry books. Today I want you to listen to the rhythm, then we will discuss how the poet has achieved this.’

I know John Masefield’s Sea Fever off by heart; since hearing it two weeks ago it hasn’t left my head. Miss McKenzie has no need of the text either; she knows and loves it too well. With her hands clasped and her body utterly still, she begins.

‘I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by …’

I am water, lapping at the edge of our rock wall. Deep and blue. Silvering the sun, sinking the sky. I am water …

The bell rings.

‘Cassie. Come on,’ urges Rana.

I blink. What? Oh. The classroom is half-empty. I pick up my bag, stuff in my books and follow her to the door.

On the way out of the school gates I say, ‘Imagine discovering a criminal in your family. Someone who had been really awful.’

Rana stops, flicking her dark hair. ‘That’d be great. Do you reckon you could have?’

‘No, of course not. At least I don’t think so.’

‘You’re a snob, Cassie Everston. It’d be cool. Imagine telling old Miss McKenzie your nearest and dearest was some bloodthirsty murderer.’ She cackles, curls her fingers, and puts them around my neck. ‘Like Jack the Ripper,’ she hisses.

I brush her hands away. ‘No, I didn’t mean I wouldn’t want one in the family. All I meant was …’ My voice trails off. What did I mean? Part of me longs to be related to someone who had dared to be different, dared to step off the straight and narrow, even if it meant being a criminal, while the other part wants someone glorious and good.

‘Hang on,’ interrupts Rana, leaving me and dashing over to Wendy Forrester.

As I wait, the sun warm on my back, I push away the idea of having a criminal in my family, and instead let threads of the poem rise again in my head. And all I ask is a tall ship …

‘Hi Cassie,’ calls Clare. I wave without thinking, and then hope Rana hasn’t seen me. Rana hates Clare Scott and thinks I do as well. I like Clare, but I don’t want to have an argument with Rana about it, so I pretend. Clare is in the top class, whereas Rana and I are in the second highest.

Rana says she doesn’t like Clare because she’s stuck up. But I really think it’s because Clare’s clever, good at sports and comes from a rich family. In Rana’s eyes, Clare has everything she doesn’t, and as well Rana hates the fact that she is quite old to be in year ten. She’s already over fifteen, and by the end of winter she will be sixteen. Not that it’s her fault. When Rana was five and had just started school, she got measles and mumps then glandular fever, so she didn’t start school properly until the following year.

Rana returns. ‘Mean cow,’ she says, not elaborating.

We walk in silence. Lately something seems to have got into Rana. We’ve been best friends forever. Her mother knew my mother. They went to primary school together, then secondary, but after that they drifted apart, until they met in the main street of Bridgetown one day, with the both of us. Rana was two years old, I was ten months.

According to my mother, Rana climbed out of her pushchair, came over to my pram and stared at me. I smiled and held out my fuzzy yellow duck and when Rana took it I clapped.

We pass a crowd of boys from the North Boys’ High who are shuffling around the corner. One of them shouts, ‘Hey! Rana.’

Rana turns in his direction, opens her blue eyes wide.

‘What’s happening tonight?’ he calls.

‘Nothing with you,’ she says, sliding her arm through mine, pulling me close and smiling coyly. ‘What a jerk,’ she gripes, but I know she’s secretly pleased with the attention.

Ever since I can remember, Rana has been popular with boys. It’s never worried me; I’ve got used to it. But it’s been even more so since she started high school. She’s got the loveliest face. Her skin is pale, translucent with a soft sheen, her eyes big and shimmering blue, while her eyelashes and eyebrows are thick and black. At different times I’ve tried to work out who she looks like, her mother or father, but if I’m truthful I have to say it’s neither. Perhaps her looks come from one of her great-grandparents. Between Christmas and the start of this term she shot up; now she’s a whole head taller than me and much more slender.

The best thing about me is my hair. At the moment I’m growing it. It’s reddish brown and wavy. I dream of when it will be long. When it will stream down my back, like the mysterious slow-moving water at night.

‘I’m going to the movies with Bevan on Saturday,’ says Rana, out of the blue, like it’s an everyday thing.

I gasp. ‘Not Bevan Kidd? When did this happen? You didn’t tell me.’ I feel shocked, not because she’s deserting me, but because Bevan and his friends are troublemakers.

‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’

‘I thought we could start our family trees.’

‘Boring,’ says Rana, giving a pretend yawn.

‘But we’ve always done things together on Saturday nights.’ As soon as I’ve said this, I feel its childishness. As though I’m eight years old, swearing to eternal friendship, Rana dripping blood from her finger into mine.

‘What’s on?’ I ask, pushing away my hurt at her casualness.

‘Horse Raiders. It’s meant to be totally gruesome.’ Rana pulls a weird face and I laugh. I can never stay mad at her for long. ‘Anyhow,’ she says, ‘my family’s boring. Mum’s lot comes from down south somewhere. Don’t know about Dad’s.’

‘I think the project’s a great idea.’

‘You would, Cassie.’

At that moment our bus trundles around the corner.

‘Come on,’ orders Rana, ‘let’s get the front seat before Clare.’

But we’re too late. As we climb on board, Rana nudges my arm. ‘Look at her!’

My heart sinks. Clare is sitting next to Mac Rollerston. She is smiling and talking to him.

‘What a toad,’ exclaims Rana, her eyes dark and stormy.

And for once I agree with her. I really like Mac and know that Clare’s got every chance with him. Ten times more than I’ll ever have. I’ve never breathed a word to Rana about the way I feel for Mac. I’ve hidden it, like the few poems I’ve written, under my mattress. I’d hate anyone to see them; the same goes for anyone knowing about Mac.

‘I suppose he’s top of her to-do list,’ says Rana, leading the way to the back of the bus. She throws her pack onto the seat, sits down and glares out the window.

It’s not that Rana wants Mac for herself, it’s just she doesn’t want Clare to have him.

Travelling up the steep winding hill away from Bridgetown, I turn and look out of the window. Far below I see the harbour and its elastic blue water stretching between the shaggy green hills.

‘You want to come and help choose what I’m going to wear Saturday night?’ asks Rana.

‘Okay,’ I say, knowing that if I don’t she’ll think I’m jealous. And I’m not. At least not of her going out with Bevan, but I am put out because she didn’t tell me sooner.

The bus jerks around the stubborn corner leading to the top of the hill and, for a second, I can see the two sides of the ocean, the harbour side and the inlet side. Mirror, mirror on the wall. Then, before I can blink, the mirror image is gone and the