Finding Cassidy by Laura Langston Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t mine. Aunt Colleen. My cousins Peter and Jenna. I wasn’t related to any of them.
    Did they know? My mind sought memories, bits of conversation. Grandma had always said I was a generational throwback, with my blond hair and tall build. Grandpa Mac talked about recessive genes. They couldn’t know. Or maybe they knew and they’d lied to me too?
    What was worse?
    I grabbed the photo albums from my top shelf. The first few were filled with pictures of me as a baby and a young child. Pictures of me with Mom and Dad. I mean Frank. I looked for a clue. Was that guilt in Mom’s eyes as she bathed me? Why was Dad—Frank—not smiling as I took my first step? Was he disappointed that I wasn’t really his?
    A gust of wind rammed my window; the lights briefly dimmed. I was used to power outages. Wegot them a lot at this time of year. Besides, what was temporary darkness when my parents had kept me in permanent darkness for years?
    I looked at the pictures of me with Nana and Granddad Hunt. Was that love in Granddad’s eyes, I wondered as I studied the pictures of my third birthday party? Or pride of ownership?
    My hair was so blond back then it was almost white. As a young kid, I’d yearned to have dark hair like Mom. When I was twelve, I saved up my allowance and bought a box of hair dye. L’Oréal’s sable brown. I still remember the colour. I didn’t ask; I just dyed it one night when they were out. I remember being so surprised when they came home and hardly reacted. But it didn’t make one bit of difference. I still felt like an outsider at times.
    Because I was one. I understood that now.
    By the time I reached the fourth album, red-hot rage filled me. I grabbed a pair of scissors from my desk and methodically pruned myself out of every single picture in album four. That was the year of the Caribbean cruise. The year of my school trip to Whistler. Frank had chaperoned, and there were lots of pictures of us together.
    When I saw the one of us goofing around on the slopes, I burst into tears again.
    We’d been so happy that day. He’d taught me how to do hop turns; he’d bought everybody pizza for lunch. He’d been the coolest dad on the trip. And now he was gonna die.
    I wiped my tears. Except he wasn’t my dad.
    I kept cutting. I lined my single self along the vanity, across the desk, on the nightstand. For a few seconds, I felt better. I had freed myself from the lie in album four. Only fifteen more albums to go.
    But the smiling images silently mocked me. Frank has Huntington’s. You don’t know who you are.
    Desperate to turn off my mental dialogue, I turned on the television. I clicked through forty-plus channels. I watched polar bears climb ice floes in the Arctic, Rachel tell Ross off, and Donald fire a skinny businesswoman from Arkansas.
    But when Emeril grabbed the turkey baster, I thought of all the jokes about sperm and turkey basters and I had to turn the TV off.
    I stared around my room. My own eyes stared back. Wherever I turned, there I was. All alone. Cassidy the Separate.
    I snatched up the images and put them on my nightstand. It was like playing with the paper dolls Grandma Mac used to make me. She’s not really your grandma. Never mind! I pulled the pictures of Jasonclose and surrounded my single self with him until I wasn’t alone anymore.
    Until I belonged.
    Until I remembered who I was.
    I was Jason’s girlfriend. That hadn’t changed. That couldn’t change. The only thing that stopped me from being all his was that I hadn’t slept with him. So tonight I would. Sleeping with him would make me forget about Frank’s illness; it would make me forget I was some half-orphan-type person. It would give me a place to belong.
    It was such a good decision, I’m surprised it took me so long to make it.
    Anticipating it made me jittery and nervous and hot and cold at the same time. It also gave me a purpose. Because if I was going to have sex with Jason, I needed new underwear. And for