Dear Cassie (34 page)

Navigating unlikely alliances with her new coworker, two very different boys, and possibly even her parents, Amy struggles to decide if it’s worth being a best friend when it makes you a public enemy. Bringing readers along on an often hilarious and heartwarming journey, Amy finds that maybe getting a life only happens once you think your life is over.

A Note from Lisa Burstein

A
s a thank-you to my awesome readers, I held a contest in honor of Dear Cassie being an epistolary novel, where entrants would write a diary entry in the voice of their favorite fictional character. The grand prize was one lucky entry being published in the back of the book. I chose four finalists and then people voted online for their favorites.
 

Read on for the the winning entry by Monica Fumarolo . . .

Inspired by the TV show Doctor Who

Amelia Pond was seven when a spaceship crashed in her yard and out climbed a time traveler: the Doctor. She was quickly taken with the man and crushed when he didn’t return like he’d promised. In his absence, people called her crazy for always insisting her “imaginary friend” was real. Twelve years later, he came back, bringing along danger and adventure. But that was two years ago, and he’d since vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. Now, the night before her wedding, Amy thinks of the excitement she experienced with the Doctor, not sure she’s really ready to settle down just yet.

People have said I’m mad for fourteen years, but I never really started believing it until now. Because now, right now, I should be excited. Ecstatic. Over the moon and completely happy because they say tomorrow is the biggest day of my life.

They would say that, though, because they also say I’m mad. That a man in a blue box didn’t really fall out of the sky and into my life
twice,
save all of humanity, change everything, then disappear again. If meeting the Raggedy Doctor and helping him save the world weren’t the biggest days of my life, then I really don’t think a wedding can top that.

Even if it is my wedding. Even if it is to Rory.

Amelia Pond became Amy Pond, and now I’m about to become Mrs. Amy Williams. I think I had an easier time accepting the fact that the Doctor landed outside this very house in a time machine that looks like a police box.

And that’s the thing that makes me start to believe that everyone else really was right about me all along. I mean, Rory really is
great
. He is a good guy and he loves me and he’s all kinds of dependable and reliable and stable. He even put up with an entire childhood of my forcing him to play Raggedy Doctor with me, trying to bring my imaginary friend to life just to make me happy. If he was willing to do all that, even when we were just kids, then I know that he’ll do just about anything for me.

I know that we’ll have a very nice life together here in Ledworth, with him as a nurse in hospital and me doing . . . something. I’m sure I’ll find something . . .

Only that’s not true. I’m
not
sure. Because as nice as Ledworth is, it’s just Ledworth. Here I’m the crazy girl who was a kiss-o-gram and stayed up all night in the garden when she was a little girl, waiting for a time machine to take her away because an equally crazy man who ate fish fingers and custard promised he would come back.

He did come back, technically, I suppose. He came, the Atraxi left, and there’s no longer an alien living in my house (I hope).

It was dangerous and insane.

It was brilliant.

And I want more of that. I want to have big adventures and do more impossible things and see more impossible places. I want to know who the Doctor is and why he came here and why he picked me and why he stopped and took the time for me and a crack in my wall.

I want to see more cracks in the universe, whatever that means. It sounds like something that only ever happens once in Ledworth if you’re really lucky, and now that it has, how can I ever dream of something so big happening in my life again as long as I stay here?

When I say it like that, though, it sounds all wrong. It sounds like I don’t even care about Rory, but I do. It’s just . . . It’s hard to say what it is exactly. I’m scared. I know I want to marry him. I do know that, but it’s tomorrow. Tomorrow. It’s really here. Years of dating, months of planning, and there’s nothing left to do but wake up in the morning, put on that dress, and walk down the aisle. It’s only a few hours away now.

What I guess all of this comes down to, though, is a plea for more time. More time for something to happen. The first time the Doctor left, it was hard. I suddenly felt even more alone here than ever before, even more so than when I was just the Scottish girl trapped in an English town. I still refused to give up on him, though. I waited twelve years and then something amazing did happen. And now it’s been another two and I think if I had more time, I could keep waiting if I knew for sure that it would mean incredible, impossible things were in store.

But wishing only does so much. It can’t make time machines show up or adventures unfold, so it’s probably just as well that I go to bed, because tomorrow it really is time to grow up.

Or maybe not. Because I just looked out the window, and you’ll never guess what’s in the garden. Or who.

Monica Fumarolo
is a Chicago-area native, two-time University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate, librarian by day, and aspiring writer by night who is thrilled to see her writing in print for the first time.