Dryvetyme Onlyne

Cassandra (Cassy) MacLeod:

With an intense energy that’s coupled with a razor-sharp wit, this firebrand makes herself known wherever she might be. With a blazing temper that’s matched only by the color of her hair, this 16-year-old loudmouth has spent her entire life telling people just what she thought about them. Born to workaholic yuppies who, after divorcing when she was barely 2 years old, gave her anything and everything except themselves, Cassy was truly raised by afternoon and primetime television programs. She is truly a textbook, latchkey kid – every child psychologist’s dream client. Thank God she had her Granny and Pop – her Dad’s parents.

Cassy’s father (Donald) is a MBA-holding, Senior Vice-President for an auto parts company who had recently relocated to Northern California to be closer to his company’s home offices. His ex-wife, Cassy’s mother (Rachael), is an orthopedic surgeon who’s just moved back to her hometown of Boston, MA after 15 years of living in Greenville, NC. Donald and Rachael met while attending Duke University together back in the early-‘80s: he was Greenville born-and-bred who set off to college to study general business while working nights at the same auto parts store he worked at in High School and she came from Old Boston Money down to the South so she could study Biology and rebel against her parents’ dreams, plans, and wishes. He was her proletarian grease monkey; she was his gorgeous ticket out of the trailer park. After they both graduated in 1985, they got married and quickly jumped into their work: she started medical school and he stepped into the white collar, corporate side of the auto parts business. They soon lost track of each other amidst their busy schedules, though doing their professional best to keep up the right image to their parents and employers. In an effort to rekindle what might be left of their marriage, Cassy was conceived in 1991, but it was all to no avail, with divorce coming merely 2 years later. They remained in Greenville, deciding to live close together for Cassy’s benefit, but she only saw the presents, never her parents.

Her parents had always confused her, especially once she became old enough to realize that they came from vastly different places. Before their death right after the turn of the new millennium, she spent great amounts of time in her childhood with her dad’s parents, looking through pictures, watching old videos, and sifting through all kinds of memorabilia. And she regularly spent summers either in Boston or at long-term camps, all on her mother’s parents’ dime. Which was her true heritage – the money or the memories? In time, knowing that she possessed greater affection for the time spent amongst the dusty tomes of the MacLeod family, it was easy to make the decision to move to California with her Dad. She might not really know Dad when wearing his corporate “uniform,” but she does know about the loudmouth he was when he was in high school and early college – he played baseball, listened to rock music, drove a loud truck, and generally “raised hell,” as her grandmother always put it. While she knew she’d miss her mother, she realized that moving to Northern California might give her the chance to meet the father she’d never had, but was still trapped inside. There was something in there that looked just like her, even down to the red hair.

Granted, the move wasn’t an easy one – going to high school with a bunch of pampered, snot-nosed brats made her first semester out with Dad one of the worst of Cassy’s life. She may have always been given everything by her parents, but Granny and Pop preferred to let her run around and play when at their house. Their passing in her early adolescence was the primary factor in the racheting-up of her natural abrasiveness, but their influence still lingered – instead of a pompous, demanding child, Cassy was growing into a young woman who knew what she wanted out of life and she made sure that you knew it. And her new friends loved her for it – Becky loved that she spoke her mind, Nicky was enamored with her intensity, Bobby resonated with their mutual experience of being raised by their grandparents, and young Jess idolized Cassy for being everything she was not.