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

knew I couldn’t be picky) who might be willing to take me in, at least temporarily, should a crisis arise.
    As fate would have it, Brenda Tuttle moved to Brookdale in mid-November. I noticed her right off because of her distinct style of clothing. For starters, her skirts were even shorter than mine. And she wore long, hoop earrings that reached almost to her shoulders. Her lips were painted a pale shade of whitish-blue, and she wore thick, black eyeliner all the way around her eyes (not just on the upper lids, but on the lower ones, too). I’d never seen anyone or anything like her, and quite frankly, I was fascinated. Just the same, I decided to play my cards carefully—I’d been rejected enough times to know how to protect myself. At the end of her second day, I hung out by the entrance that I’d seen her use the previous day and offered her a Camel.
    “Thank God,” she gasped as she took the cigarette from me. “I was worried sick that no one in this moronic junior high school smoked. What a moronic bunch of Goody Two-shoes!”
    “That pretty much describes it,” I said as I let out a long, slow puff.
    “I’m Brenda,” she said, glancing over her shoulder back toward the school. “You s’pose we should go ‘cross the street? My mom’ll kill me if I get into trouble on my second day here.”
    I nodded. “Sure. I’m Cass.”
    “Nice to meet you.” She smiled. “And I like your name. I’ve been trying to think of a cool nickname for Brenda, but haven’t gotten too far.”
    “How about just Bren?”
    She thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, maybe so. Maybe with a y, though. Bryn …” She said it slowly. “Yeah, that sounds kindacool.”
    By now we’d reached the other side of the street and were standing in the Baptist church parking lot—where my grandma used to go to church (when she did, which was rarely). I knew there were people inside who might recognize me, but I didn’t really care if they observed me smoking. In fact, I rather liked the idea that it would bother them.
    “Groovy top, Cass,” said Bryn. “You get that here in town?”
    I laughed. “Not hardly. I made it myself from an old tablecloth. You can’t find anything worth wearing in this stupid backwater town.”
    She laughed too. “I figured as much. I still can’t believe my mom made us move here.”
    “Your mom?” I thought this was curious, since it was usually the dads that seemed to run things back in those days—at least in our town.
    She flicked her ashes onto the ground and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, my mom’s a divorcee, and she got this job at the chemical plant that pays her almost as good as a man.”
    By now our cigarettes were both burned down to almost nothing. “What do you like to do after school, Bryn?” I asked, suddenly wondering how it was that one made a friend—especially a girlfriend. I’d never had a real friend other than Joey, and the things we used to do to fill the time seemed pretty juvenile and silly now.
    She frowned. “I don’t know. I just kinda hang out. My mom works graveyard, so she doesn’t like me making any noise while she sleeps during the day.”
    I nodded. “That makes sense. Well, do you want to go get a Coke or something?”
    “Sounds cool.”
    And that was pretty much how my friendship with Bryn began. It didn’t take long to learn that she wasn’t the brightest porch light on the block—at least not when it came to academics. But she was clever in some ways—like boys and smoking and drinking, stuff like that. I guess you’d say she had street smarts.
    I’m sure she was what my grandma would have called a “bad influence,” but I figured I’d already started to go bad all on my own by then. It just turned out that Bryn was already going in the same direction. I remember when I first met her mom. It was about a week after they moved to Brookdale. Mrs. Tuttle was a large, buxom, peroxide blonde, but not the kind men are necessarily attracted to. Oh,