The Divide Page 0,4

call it that." Her mother tried to smile.

Cassie hesitated for only a moment, but it was enough to catch her mother's attention. "Something's wrong," she said. "What is it?"

Anxiety flooded Cassie's stomach. She was enjoying this bonding time and didn't want to ruin it. But her mother seemed genuinely open to talking tonight. For the first time in Cassie's life, it seemed like all the secrets between them were finally out in the open, and their relationship had a clean slate. A new beginning, Cassie thought. That's what they were celebrating, right? That's what all these dumb paper cranes and daffodils were for, after all.

Cassie took a deep breath and looked carefully into her mother's eyes. "I've been wondering about my dad," she said.

Her mother immediately stiffened. Cassie noticed her jaw tighten, and then she took a long sip of her tea. The cup shook almost imperceptibly in her hand. Cassie was instantly sorry she'd said it. But when her mother set her cup of tea back down, she seemed to have recovered from the shock of the question. Or at least, she was trying to the shock of the question. Or at least, she was trying to appear as though she'd recovered from it.

When she finally spoke, the words came out stilted, but patient and kind. "I'm happy to tell you anything you want to know," she said. "All you have to do is ask." Relief settled into Cassie's shoulders. It occurred to her how long she'd been keeping her worries and questions tightly wound up within her body. She pushed herself to continue talking.

"I know he - I mean, Black John - was evil," Cassie said.

"But he's a part of me. And it's a part I feel I need to understand. Is there anything you can tell me about him?" There. She said it. It was out in the open.

Her mother focused hard on the paper crane in her hands. "You're absolutely right," she said, but she didn't answer the question, and she didn't look at Cassie when she said it.

Cassie watched her mother in careful silence. She honed in much too closely on the silver crane she was holding, folding and refolding it several times.

"The problem is that they make this paper much too thin and flimsy," she said. "It falls apart the second you touch it." Right before Cassie's eyes, her mother had completely checked out of their conversation. But Cassie was determined to not give up that easily, and after a few minutes of heavy staring on Cassie's part, her mother stopped ignoring her and briefly looked up.

"Is there something you want to ask me right now?" she asked, with a feigned nonchalance.

The look in her mother's eyes revealed a fear Cassie The look in her mother's eyes revealed a fear Cassie hadn't seen in her since she'd fall en ill. Her face turned pale and ghostlike, like she'd aged twenty years in those five seconds of silence. And, Cassie noticed, the silver tissue paper she held in her hand wrinkled and cracked beneath the crushing tension of her fingers, like she was squeezing it for dear life.

It was all too much for Cassie to handle. Her mother had just started feeling better. She'd just started to participate in life again. Cassie couldn't afford to wreck all that with her selfish questions. Her mother was fragile, far more fragile than Cassie ever would be.

"Never mind," Cassie said. "We can talk about all that another time. We have a lot to get done here." It had always been this way. Cassie was always the one who had to be the adult in their relationship, the one to keep her questions to herself because her mother couldn't bear the answers - or the truth. She was a fool to think it could be any different.

Chapter 3

"Spring is in the air," Melanie said to Cassie and Laurel, closing her gray eyes momentarily and taking a deep breath in. "You can almost smell it, can't you?" Cassie slammed her locker shut and inhaled, but all she could smell was the same school hallway scent of sweat, paper, and ammonia.

"It was a rough winter," Laurel said. "I think that has something to do with it." She had adorned herself appropriately this morning in a floral-print dress. "The spring equinox festival is going to be huge this year." There was a bustling excitement to their surroundings -

voices seemed louder, footsteps quicker, everyone appeared more lively and animated - everyone