Cassandra

My high school freshman year has so far been a blast, one much better than my middle school years. Having teachers that were there for me, and developing bonds with friends, it is pretty abnormal to say I admire school. But only one person has ever actually bugged me, and I just can’t stop thinking about her, no matter my motivations to.

It revolves around this one girl who I sat next to during my English classes. Cassandra Renold her name was, or just Cass for short. She was very intelligent, acing every test, homework assignment, you name it. But what made me know that she was truly different from other people, was the fact that she was mute. It’s not like she wishes not to talk, she just can’t, not even scream or cry. Supposedly, she had a tumor in her larynx when she was a toddler, making it hard for her to breathe. As a result, they had to remove it, her voice being taken to save her life.

She was still perfectly capable of telling her thoughts through writing, but what caught my eyes the most were her drawings. She always drew in class when she was done with work. However, her drawings were just, grim. Each drawing always had an aura of negativity around it. One drawing contained a burning house, another showing a dead tree, anything involving death. I was surprised Cass was never sent to guidance once for her drawings.

Soon though, something strange began to happen around Cass. Whenever she finished a drawing, an event would happen similar to it. A burning house, a factory was burned to the ground, killing everyone inside. A dead tree, famine in a farm, causing starvation in a rural area. Her drawings literally came to life, and I was the only one who noticed! Everyone else thought it was a simple coincidence, but I knew there was something peculiar about Cassandra. I would never know it would soon affect me though.

In January, before the break, she came up with a drawing, she said it was a gift, for us beginning to become friends due to my artistic talent too. But what she drew made my heart skip a beat: I was in a hospital bed, my head a net bandages, some of it a faint grey I can tell was blood. I knew something bad was going to happen to me, and there would be no way I can stop it. Not wanting to make it even worse though, I pretended to be happy about my “gift,” thanking Cass for the drawing. That afternoon though, as I was walking home from school, I was on the street when I forgot to notice a pothole where my slipped. As a result, I fell and everything came to black with a loud hum.

Some time afterward, I woke up in hospital bed, my head being covered in bandages, save for my eyes, nose, and mouth. I also had a throbbing feeling in my temple, knowing that my gift became reality. The doctor supposedly said that a car hit me, its driver having been drunk and going past the red light on the street I was on, striking me in the process. He also said it was a miracle I survived, only needing some stitches on my head, needing to be in the hospital for the next few weeks, just to make sure my wound healed.

After the hospital and break, I noticed something wrong: Cass was missing, but no matter what I said, everyone denied her existence. How is it that Cassandra wiped off the face of the earth in a matter of weeks and no one cares about her existence? Being a logical person, I decided to use the one source I can rely on: the Internet. After typing in Cassandra, most of the results are irrelevant, but one caught my eyes, a Wikipedia article on the Greek figure Cassandra:“A common version of her story is that, in an effort to seduce her, Apollo gave her the power of prophecy—but when she refused him, he spat into her mouth to inflict a curse that nobody would ever believe her prophecies.”