Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels) by Melody Carlson Page A

finger-pointing from the pulpit going on.
    But my mind had difficulty focusing and holding on to the preacher’s words. More and more, it seemed my thoughts were sort of jumbled and scrambled, and I felt seriously worried that my daddy’s recent blows to my head might have permanently damaged my brain some. And since intelligence was still important to me, this possibility concerned me a lot. To think, I’d been so careful to avoid things like alcohol and drugs to preserve my faculties, but more than likely what little sense I’d possessed had been knocked out of me at the tender age of fifteen. Like most things in life, it just didn’t seem fair.
    After church, the Crowley’s younger son, Tim, and his wife and baby came over for supper. I liked his wife, Suzy. In fact, she didn’t seem all that much older than me, and she immediately began joking with me about the tragic shopping conditions in Snider, scandalized that her mother-in-law had actually taken me to that “sorry JCPenney store” to get school clothes. “You should’ve called me, Mom,” said Suzy. “I’d have driven Cassie over to Dayville and done some really good shopping there.”
    “Well, I s’pose we could take all those things back,” said Mrs. Crowley uncertainly.
    “Oh, that’s too much trouble,” I said, feeling sorry for the older woman.
    “Well, sure, why not?” said Suzy. “I could leave little Timmy with my mom and go pick Cassie up from school tomorrow and then we could take those old-lady clothes back to Penney’s and get her some new things.” So it was settled, and Mrs. Crowley didn’t even seem to mind—not too much, anyway.
    Suzy picked me up after school the next day as promised. “How’d your first day go?” she asked as I climbed into her car.
    “Okay, I guess.” I slumped down into the bucket seat, longing to disappear from the planet altogether.
    “That bad, huh?”
    I glanced over at her. “How’d you know?”
    She laughed. “Well, it wasn’t that long ago I was going to school there, and I know how it is with new kids. And I don’t s’pect it helps any that your face looks like you got hit by a truck.”
    I reached up to touch my nose, no longer so badly swollen, but still discolored some. “I guess not.”
    “But I also remember that kids forget stuff and things can change. So maybe if you just hang in there, everything will start to look better before long. And you’ve only got about six more weeks of school, anyway. Things might look a whole lot different by next fall.”
    I nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
    Suzy took charge of our little shopping expedition, and to my surprise I found myself actually relaxing a little and almost having fun. She reassured me that her in-laws were really good people, just a little stodgy and old-fashioned.
    “Maybe that’s what I need,” I said, only partially realizing the truth at the time. “I just hope I don’t let them down.”
    “Well, just work hard and don’t act too disrespectful, and everything should be fine.”
    And so I did. And somehow I managed to make it until the end of the school year without embarrassing myself too badly. Well, other than being relatively stupid when it came to simple things like caring for and feeding livestock, but the Crowleys (and their animals) were patient with me. When Mr. Crowley read my report card (whether it was the mercy of my new teachers, or being in a smaller school, I had somehow maintained my four-point average) he was so pleased that he took the three of us out for dinner, something they almost never did. And that evening, they invited me to call them Eunice and Roy, and in some ways we were feeling almost like family.
     

Nine
     
    L ooking back now my time spent living with the Crowleys, even though it was brief, seems like a much-needed vacation from the troubles of my strange and crooked little life. And it was a complete departure from my wild and wicked ways that could’ve led me who knows