Cassandra was a living, breathing stereotype. Her spindly frame was swallowed in her baggy hand-me-downs and her thick glasses never sat straight on her crooked nose. But those things didn’t matter to her, even at a young age she knew what mattered and what didn’t.

Appearances? Not important.

Taunts? Mattered even less.

Imagination? Now that was everything.

Cassie had consumed her eleven years with things that mattered. Her single mother, who was a mirror image of her daughter, had began reading her the greatest fantasy works of all time in the cradle. Now that she was capable of doing so independently, she was consuming the library the way a wildfire inhales a hundred year forest. Wonderful worlds, great adventures, heroic exploits and dazzling magic were all at her disposal. While her reality wasn’t a fairytale she knew how to escape to a place that was.

It was good that she knew these things, that she had an imagination and could escape to a different world, because the goblins and trolls that surrounded her on a daily basis at her grade school didn’t make the real world easy for her.

“Four eyes” wasn’t so bad.

“Loser” didn’t hurt too much.

“Crazy Cassie” cut a little deeper though and the monsters knew it.

There is a quaint comfort in routine and Cassie had developed one. Get up, shower and dress then throw herself into a book. Board the bus, ignore the jeers then escape into a different literary realm. And this repeated throughout the day, imagination was an effective coping mechanism except during recess. “No books on the playground”, the teacher would say and Cassandra was left defenseless.

The taunting would start then , helpless to escape, the tears would come. As hard as she tried to escape and imagine herself into a different place she just seemed trapped in an endless battle where she was hopelessly outnumbered.

Until she crossed into a new world. When sharing her troubles with her mom, Cassie learned a new way to use her imagination. She put down the books and picked up the pen, she was going to create her own story. “Write your way out of it” her mom said. “But the key is really believing”

In her imagination she came up with a wild tale in which she was no longer Crazy Cassie, but the powerful witch Cassandra. In this world she was no longer powerless as her tears fell, in her imagination she was able to transform her emotional storm into a powerful electrical current which she could wield as a weapon and vanquished her foes.

The monsters didn’t stop coming. Cassie never quit imagining.

The routine repeated itself into adulthood, until one day she received an email. As she read she began to weep, her imagination was becoming reality. She was about to embark on her first real adventure and escape her world, an agent was ready to give her a lucrative book deal. Cassandra was coming to life.