Cassie Binegar Read Online Free PDF Page A

you thought of the poem.”
    â€œMaybe she did answer you,” said Margaret Mary after a moment.
    Gran smiled and put her arm over her eyes.
    Cassie, angry with the both of them, turned over onto her belly and watched the hermit crab. Wishes? Cassie had many wishes. She wished to be away from here, back home where everything stayed the same. She wished for everything to be perfect. But right now, under the bright sun, Cassie wished most to be the hermit crab, happily carrying his space around with him.

6
Kaleidoscope
    I T WAS ON THE W EDNESDAY after Gran’s arrival that Margaret Mary ceased to be a comfortable mystery to Cassie. It was Margaret Mary’s first dinner at Cassie’s house, and if Margaret Mary’s raucous laughter had not fit with the character that Cassie had wished her to be, it became clear that Margaret Mary herself was not as she had first appeared to be. For neat and combed, saying “Mum” for Mom, using phrases like “very regrettably,” and wearing her lace-edged socks, Margaret Mary also knew all the questionable words in the dictionary.
    â€œHair ball!” she shrieked, collapsing on Cassie’s bed, her finger still marking the place in Webster’s.
    Cassie, standing in front of her mirror and trying in vain once more to make her curly hair lie down like Margaret Mary’s, was astounded. And upset. She had gone through a lot of trouble with her family, preparing for Margaret Mary’s first visit.
    â€œPut on your shoes,” she had hissed to her mother.
    â€œCould you wear a dress, Gran?”
    â€œPlease wear your tweed jacket?” she pleaded to her father.
    â€œWho are we trying to be?” demanded John Thomas.
    â€œBrainless,” whispered James.
    â€œI may wear a dress,” her Gran muttered stubbornly. “I may not.”
    Cassie had walked to Margaret Mary’s house to get her, and Margaret Mary’s mother had opened the door, looking wonderfully serene. She wore a clump of luminescent pearl earrings that looked as if they might glow in the dark. She had a spray bottle and had been cleaning her plastic plants. The room smelled faintly of cleanser.
    Margaret Mary, dressed in a pink dress, surprised Cassie right away. She had cursed twice on the way to Cassie’s house. One damn and two hells in a row. Cassie had spent a good part of their walk mulling this over, trying to fit the new Margaret Mary into her picture of the old. She had not managed it by the time they got to Cassie’s front door.
    â€œOh good, your mum’s got no shoes,” said Margaret Mary when she was introduced. And as Cassie frowned at her mother, Margaret Mary sat down on the rag rug and removed her shoes.
    And now, in the upstairs room, padding about in her socks, Margaret Mary didn’t even look like Margaret Mary anymore. She was a stranger.
    â€œOh yes, I am very fond of the word hair ball ,” repeated Margaret Mary. “Remind me, won’t you? I’ve no pencil. Two words it is. Comes between hair and hairbreadth.” Margaret Mary leaned over the dictionary, intently studying her new word.
    â€œYour socks,” said Cassie weakly, having no idea what to say to this new Margaret Mary, “they are wonderful.” And with a sigh, Cassie took Margaret Mary down to dinner, only the smallest hope remaining that Margaret Mary would civilize Cassie’s family.
    But Margaret Mary proved a traitor. She loved fish, for one thing.
    â€œWe never have it,” she explained to Cassie’s father. “It makes my mother break out in the bumps and honk a lot.”
    â€œNo fish?” asked James, amazed. “What do you eat then?”
    â€œLots of casseroles cooked in slop sauce, very regrettably,” announced Margaret Mary, thereby removing Cassie’s last hope for an elegant dinner.
    Margaret Mary also loved Cassie’s house.
    â€œIt’s lovely,” she commented in her clipped