As soon as school ends I join the trail of girls walking across the main oval to the tram stop. The parklands adjoining the school are visible through the wire fence. Police in navy and hi-vis yellow walk up and down the U-shaped trough of the creek, sweeping across the park in rough lines. They weren’t there last week, so I wonder what’s happened to bring them out now.
‘Let’s see if any of them are hot.’
A gaggle of Year Nines peel off and plaster themselves to the fence. I slow so much that someone behind me treads on the back of my shoe.
More police, in orange overalls and waterproof waders, push through the water. One of the closest police officers—a normal navy-and-yellow—looks up and sees us staring. For a moment it seems she might come over and talk to us, but then one of her colleagues calls her away.
‘I don’t like it. It’s scary.’ A tiny Year Seven looks close to tears. One of her friends hooks her arm and comforts her.
The teacher manning the gate gets impatient.
‘Come on girls! Pick up the pace!’
There are more cars than usual on the side street, a long queue from the gate almost to the highway. Some parents or drivers are paranoid enough to congregate around the gate, scrolling on their phones.
I cram on the tram with the mass of Balmoral students, my face right up against a Year Twelve’s armpit. Three separate groups of Year Tens dominate the rear of the tram; talking too loud and checking their phones and oversharing. More than a few of them hold the letter we’d been given at final roll call, the one marked strictly for parents or guardians. I guess what it contains is too sensitive for an email.
Eventually, inevitably, someone cracks and rips the envelope open.
I hang onto an overhead handle and eavesdrop.
‘It’s an emergency parent info night.’ The girl scans the letter. ‘This Thursday night. That’s not much notice.’
‘Something must have happened.’
‘What is there to say? Don’t be scared even though there’s a Hannibal Lecter on the loose?’
‘Please don’t take your daughter out of school because we need your money to build a new theatre?’
‘Shit, do you think Grace’s party is going to get cancelled?’
This causes a wave of panic through most of the Year Tens. Grace Chapman’s sixteenth has dominated conversations this week. It’s amazing how people can switch from gossiping about our teachers providing DNA samples to what they’re going to wear on Friday night in one breath.
Teaghan sits behind Brooke, braiding her hair. ‘Can’t they see we want to have one night where we don’t have to think about anything?’
I jump off at the Junction with dozens of other Balmoral girls, feeling as if I’ve collected strands of everyone else’s hair on my blazer and need to shower.
After acquiring my usual can of lemonade and apple scroll from the bakery, I move on to the bus stop. I could do this trip in my sleep, if I had to. It takes me forty-five minutes to get home: a tram and a bus. The first three years of high school I could walk for ten minutes and be at the entrance to Morrison High.
A handful of army-green All Saints boys are at the bus stop, along with two pensioners and a tired mum with a stroller containing a sleeping toddler. The bus is late. I haven’t called Dad yet, and I haven’t spoken to Liana since last week or answered any of Katie’s messages.
I’d thought I could show up at school and do the work, then catch up with my real friends on the weekend. I’d make some friends at Balmoral, not close ones, and not heaps. Maybe a trio, like the one Claire, Milla and Yin formed, a loose bond with girls that are in a few of my classes. That would have been enough.
The thing is, I don’t think I can reverse my decision now.
I’ve seen what it’s like.
Balmoral girls get more homework, extra reading, extension exercises. The world is expected of us. Our teachers are available at lunch, after school and even on holidays, to go over our assignments and tests in detail. They’re paid to push us hard, we have to deliver, and I’m doing things that I wouldn’t be able to achieve at Morrison. I’ve got to pedal hard just to keep up with the pack.
I can’t go back to my old school.
If Liana could see the brand-new science labs we get to use, the shiny state-of-the-art equipment, she’d be amazed, and maybe furious. Sitting the scholarship exam wasn’t even my idea, it was hers.
She wanted to get into McGowan, a selective state school with a good netball team and specialist STEM program. We did practice exams together, then sat in the same massive room at the Showgrounds, along with hundreds of other hopeful teenagers vying for spots at independent schools around the state. But when the results came in, it was me that got the offers: a full scholarship to Balmoral, or a half-scholarship to Sheltower Girls Grammar.
I jam the rest of the scroll into my mouth and crumple the paper bag. Natalia and her gang are hanging out the front of the juice bar, right next to the bus stop. They must have been on the tram before mine. Apparently there’s a secret shortcut through the grounds that gets you to the tram stop early, but no one’s ever shown me. The boys they’re with, some spoilt guys from Norton Grammar, are making a big show of flexing their muscles and pushing each other around, even while they’re sucking on hot-pink takeaway cups.
Sarah has taken off her blazer and rolled her winter skirt up so it barely covers her butt. She’s sitting on one boy’s lap, but the rest of the girls are more interested in their phones than the Grammar boys.
Natalia stands apart from the rest, eyes on her phone, with Ally looking over her shoulder. They don’t care that they’re blocking the footpath, forcing shoppers to flow around them.
I pretend to read my Biology textbook while I eavesdrop.
‘I can’t believe she’d go out in those pants,’ Ally says. ‘Again. I’ve got chills.’
The two girls watch the screen quietly, and at one point Ally squeals.
When whatever they’re watching finishes, Natalia looks up and catches my eye. I can tell that she’s pissed off with Ally by the way she’s angled away from her. Her eyes are hollow.
‘What are you looking at?’ Natalia calls out, but I know it’s just a reflex. There’s no fire in her words. She seems blank, empty as a lost sock, especially compared to how she was last week. She was so jumped up in self-defence class that she was lucky she didn’t take Petra’s eye out.
Behind her I can see the Grammar boys checking her out, and I don’t blame them. Perfect tanned skin, skinny legs and boobs the exact right size, those supermodel eyes, blue-green, set far apart and a bit alien.
I hold her gaze and shrug. I can read your mind, a bit, I think. Something’s wrong with you. I can tell you’re wearing a mask.
Natalia eyeballs me for a few more seconds before turning back to her friends.
I check the bus timetable. I don’t think the 3.50 p.m. is coming, so I decide to walk to the next bus stop. I’m hauling my second-hand Maths, International Studies and Biology textbooks home and my bag straps cut heavily into my right shoulder. Once I’m far enough up the street, I slip my backpack on properly, both straps, a proper dork.
I realised two days into my new school that no one uses the green Balmoral backpacks; they all use the green duffel bag instead. There is no way I can use anything other than this perfectly good new backpack that Mum bought, though. When I got the scholarship it felt like a free ride, but it turned out that there were plenty of extras apart from the fees. Summer uniform, winter uniform, sports uniform. Straw hat, school swimsuit, textbooks, excursions.
The air is thick with exhaust fumes at the next intersection. Cars fly by; one driver wolf whistles. I have no idea why school uniforms do this to men, they’re literally an advertisement that I’m underage.
A new billboard looms above the crossroads. A pale girl in a silky cream slip lying on the ground, her sleeping face surrounded with a bright red blot of hair. Her legs cross at the ankles, her wrists turn soft side up. Her skin is dirty and scratched.
She might be selling perfume or shoes, but that can’t be right.
The girl looks damaged, and sexy. Something crawls deep in my gut.
Around the fallen girl everything is dark and foreboding: the thin silhouettes of trees, a shadowy, indistinct figure hiding behind one of them. The half-seen figure is bulky and powerful; the girl so beautiful and bare. The photographer has managed the lighting perfectly, illuminating the crumpled figure of the girl and then letting patches of darkness take over.
I think of the police and rescue service workers walking methodically through the parklands next to school, and imagine them finding a discarded body in the creek. Should an assaulted girl look this sexy and glamorous? I flash back to mum saying that the community cares more about some women than others. What is wrong with people?
I squint at the text in the bottom corner.
Who Killed Emily Blake?
Much later that night, during the late news, I figure out what it was that Natalia and Ally were watching at the bus stop.
The police have released CCTV footage of Yin from a convenience store close to her house. They don’t say what day it was taken, only that it was in the week before the attack. The footage is grainy, but you can still tell that the short girl with black hair is her.
Yin walks into the store and disappears from view. A guy in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap follows her, then stops to look at the sunglasses stand. Yin, wearing the pyjama pants Ally was griping about, comes into shot again, holding a bottle of milk. While she rummages in her pocket for money, the guy in the flannel turns to look at her. She has her back to him, so wouldn’t have noticed. A few moments after Yin leaves the store, the guy in the flannel exits too.
The police are stressing that the man isn’t a suspect, merely a ‘person of interest’ they want to talk to.
Even though Mum is at work and it’s not a good idea to spook myself while she’s out, I watch the footage again and again, until it plays behind my eyelids as I’m trying to go to sleep.
Close to midnight I give up on sleep and search for articles about the abduction on my phone. I find one that includes a list of other recent missing or murder cases in Melbourne. I read through the list and wonder if any of the things Mum talked about has made a difference in the way that they were investigated or reported.
An economics student from China who hasn’t been seen in three months. A trans woman who was beaten to death on the way to her work as a chef. A fourteen-year-old who ran away from home with her boyfriend but has since gone missing. A Gunditjmara mother of three who was found dead next to train tracks and I don’t remember there being a manhunt or media frenzy about it.
All these girls or women from different circumstances, all missing or dead. There’s a burning in my chest about the unfairness of it all. It could happen to any of us.
Yesterday Ms Nouri showed us a documentary where eight famous artists spoke about their careers. They all had very different approaches to their work, but the one thing they all said was that you needed to be passionate, to make art about what you believe in, what you feel most strongly about, what you’re obsessed with.
I wonder if I can turn this burning feeling into anything good, anything meaningful. It seems impossible, I’m not even a proper artist. Still, I flip open my sketchbook, find a blank page and start writing.
I think they’re joking when they remind us about compulsory house cross-country at morning assembly, but they’re not. I’m forced to put on a musty sports bra and crumpled PE top from the bottom of my locker.
The serious runners paint house colours on their cheeks and jostle to get close to the start line. I tug on the awful purple house jersey over my PE shirt and dawdle at the rear. A biting wind whips across the grounds.
The gun goes off; the girls at the front leap forward. Their feet pound the mushy oval, throwing up chunks of mud that hit the runners behind them.
The course circles the oval, then climbs between the tennis courts. At the end of the first hill the runners have stretched out to a thin thread. I think about walking, but by the time I cross the main driveway it feels good to stretch my legs, even though it’s not as much fun without Arnold by my side.
At the bottom of the hill we cut through a large pine plantation, an abandoned part of Balmoral that looks at least fifty years older than the rest. I pass a disused portable classroom and head into the thickest section of trees.
The fallen pine needles are soft to run on, swallowing up every footfall. I’ve left the last group of runners out of sight and the next girl is way ahead. The only sign that I’m not in the middle of a Grimm’s fairytale are the yellow course flags tied around the trees.
My head flashes with images. Young girls running through the forest, red-cloaked with wicker baskets. Gold rings. Spinning wheels. Tower prisons. Maidens asleep under trees. Girls with black hair and snow-white skin, lying on the pine needles with a school blazer for a blanket. Eyes shut, but not sleeping. Taken. Not a fairytale at all.
I trip on a half-buried tree root and lose my rhythm. I pick up my pace, striving to get out of the shadowy copse.
I bolt full speed into the long, torturous climb back to the oval, where everyone has to do a final lap before collapsing across the finish line. I’m not too tired so I push my legs a little bit harder, passing the trickle of struggling runners one by one.
By the top of the hill I’m regretting everything.
Ms Hammond, one of the PE teachers, stands at the side of the oval, directing the runners onto the track. When I draw close she frowns and consults her clipboard. If I had any puff left I’d laugh at the confused look on her face. With only a few hundred metres to go I decide to stick it to the PE teachers and the man and hungry wolves in forests, and I put in a final burst of speed. I pass one staggering girl, then another.
At the top of the straight, the purple house captains jump up and down as I take two more runners. My legs are rapidly turning to jelly, but I manage to keep my dignity to the finish line. I swerve to avoid Sarah, who is doubled over ahead of me.
Mrs Wang hands me a piece of cardboard with the number 4 on it and claps my gross sweaty back. Your choice, lady. I’m going to die.
‘What’s this?’ I gasp. Then I’m leapt on by two screaming girls in purple wigs.
I wash and change as quicky as I can after the race and rush towards the main building, trying to balance my PE bag and Art folio. There’s barely time to eat my sandwich before fifth period. I want to write down the ideas I had while running, before they float away.
Fairytales. Tangled hair. Blue lips. Beauty.
‘Chloe Cardell!’
Ms Hammond chases after me, sans clipboard but sporting her trademark whistle around her neck. Once she reaches me she gets straight to the point.
‘I want to talk to you about joining the cross-country squad. We train three times a week, starting at 7.30 a.m.’
I shake my head straight away, but Ms Hammond either doesn’t notice, or chooses to ignore it.
‘Every year we go away for a training camp to Swansea, it’s a lot of fun. It’s not all training. We go whale watching and cook big dinners together. It would be a good way to make some friends—some more friends—’
It’s clear she thinks I’m a social pariah in desperate need of help.
‘I don’t think so.’ I’m pretty sure Sarah is on the team, and she’s not the kind of friend I’m looking to make. Also, I don’t see any way to add ‘runner’ to ‘mediocre artist’ and ‘person who gets As in Maths’. There’s nothing that Balmoral won’t turn into a cut-throat competition.
‘I’m pretty busy with schoolwork actually.’
‘But you ran so well today, Chloe. You looked great out there, your form was perfect. With the right training you could improve astronomically.’
I force myself to be brighter and bubblier than usual, to soften any possible offence. ‘Oh, thanks for asking, Ms Hammond, but I don’t think I have the time for it.’
I clutch my folio tight to my chest, like armour, and hurry away.
Mum does a pretty good job of parking Ron and Pearl’s car, even though she’s only driven it once before. The Barina hatchback is a dung beetle in a school car park full of four-wheel drives and shiny gold sedans.
We get out and put our jackets on.
‘You sure?’ I’m probably asking myself this question as much as I’m asking Mum. ‘You never wanted to come to another school thing ever again.’
‘This is different.’
Mum was short with me the whole way here, which means she’s nervous. I spent the drive catching her up on the week’s events at school. Mostly that there were a suspicious number of substitute teachers in rotation, but that only male teachers were missing class. Petra also told me at morning recess that she’d seen a group of four detectives after orchestra practice. And there were the police searching the creek next door, of course.
We join the stream of parents flowing through the main doors and into the Great Hall. There are a few students loitering in the foyer, mostly Year Sevens and Eights with violin and cello cases in hand.
It’s petty, but I note that Mum is younger and prettier than the other mothers. She’s got on her good jeans, heeled winter boots that boost her several inches, dangly gold earrings and a silky shirt. I’m the slobby giant next to her, as usual.
‘You look nice,’ I whisper.
‘I’ll try not to embarrass you, baby.’ She lets her eyeballs roll and flops her tongue out. I’m not sure we should be joking, but I smile.
There are a lot of parents already in the hall as we file in, rows and rows of navy jackets and cashmere jumpers, bald spots and helmet-bobs. No students, even though the letter didn’t say anything about students not being welcome.
After a brief moment of panic I notice a handful of girls sitting right at the back, in the dark corner where the spare chairs are stored.
I point in that direction and Mum continues into the centre of the hall. I feel guilty for putting her through this.
‘Hi,’ I nod to the small group of girls. I climb over a few rows of fold-up chairs and perch up high, to see better. I spot Mum’s dead-straight black hair in the audience.
There are at least four people sitting in a row on the stage, but I’m too far away to figure out who they are. The velvet curtains are drawn behind them, there’s a lectern and plain lights. I can at least recognise Mrs Christie by the puff of grey hair worn extra high. She steps up to the mike.
‘Thank you for coming this evening. This has been a difficult couple of weeks for everyone in the school community…’
My attention drifts as Mrs Christie introduces the people on stage. The metal bars of the chair are already digging into my bum. I realise the majority of the girls are international students from my year, most of them boarders. Some have their homework with them, others play with their phones.
Bochen from Art class waves and comes to sit with me.
‘I thought there would be police here.’ She holds up her phone, with the recorder running. ‘I promised my father there would be police. I told him we have security guards on all the school doors.’
Bochen is chattier than some of her friends, maybe because she’s spent time in the States and is more confident with her English, maybe because that’s just the way she is. If I could pick who will win the art prize, it would be her. Give Bochen a pencil and a piece of paper and she can turn out photorealistic portraits.
‘It’s even in the Chinese media, so everyone is scared for us,’ adds Cherry, then zips it, returning to her notebook. The page fills with tiny characters written in mechanical pencil.
Despite Cherry’s words, none of the international students look that worried. Maybe, like me, they feel one step removed from what’s happening.
Bochen picks up a strand of my hair, and I try not to jump from her familiarity. ‘Where are you from, Chloe? You’re mixed, yes?’
‘Mum’s from Singapore. She’s here tonight.’ I point her out in the crowd, and Bochen rubbernecks majorly. I don’t mind her curiosity.
‘Chinese?’ she says, after finding her.
‘Yeah, I guess.’ It’s a bit more complicated than that, but it will do. Mum has tried more than once to explain Singaporean race politics to me but I never pay enough attention to fully get it. ‘Dad’s Anglo-Australian. I was born here. Like Yin.’
‘You got a good nose,’ Bochen says. ‘Lucky.’
We’re quiet, because on stage Mrs Christie is running through advice from the police. It’s all very obvious and in no way resembles the advice in the chain email that I haven’t bothered to forward to anyone. Mrs Christie keeps repeating that there’s no reason for the ‘Balmoral community’ to take any greater care than the general public.
I crane my neck and wonder how Mum is going.
The Head of the School Board gets up and starts fielding questions from the parents.
‘Sarah’s father,’ Bochen whispers.
No, he doesn’t know how many calls the police hotline have taken about the case.
No, there hasn’t been a ransom request.
Yes, he has seen the CCTV footage, it would be hard not to have seen it the last few days, but he has nothing more to say.
The rumbling in the audience grows.
Sarah’s dad looks and talks like a bulldog politician, so it’s no wonder Mrs Christie has left question time to him. Not that Mrs Christie is a pushover, but these parents are plain intimidating. They’ve decided that they should stand up to ask their questions, which each of them do in turn.
He has no opinion on whether this is a serial offender. That is a matter for the police.
This causes one dad to yell out, ‘Do you think we’re all fools?’ Bochen raises her eyebrows at me and presses ‘stop’ on her recording.
Yes, it’s true that there are similarities between Karolina and Yin’s abductions, but he’s no expert.
No, there is no truth to the story that school computers have been seized. Cherry clicks her tongue when he says this, so maybe the boarders have seen something the day girls haven’t.
A woman in a patterned shift dress stands up. ‘I would like to know what the school is doing to ensure my child’s emotional and mental health?’ She stabs the air with her finger every couple of words. ‘I’ve got a little girl at home who is scared, and not sleeping. She can’t get offline and she won’t eat. What are you doing for her?’
Mrs Christie steps up to answer this question, trotting out the types of support services offered by the school. The questioning continues, as if this were a political debate for the federal election.
Sarah’s dad can’t comment on whether teachers are being interviewed. That is a matter for the police.
The police will be looking at every angle, including all employees of the school.
Yes, that will include gardeners and grounds staff. Yes, he expects that he himself will be looked at, as one would hope, if the police are doing a thorough job.
Yes, it’s possible that some parents will be contacted by the police taskforce, and yes, we expect you to show them your full cooperation.
It gets so boring and repetitive that we start talking among ourselves.
‘How is your major project going, Chloe?’ Bochen doesn’t need to mention that she’s talking about Art.
‘Stressing me out,’ I admit. I still think my ideas from cross-country yesterday are interesting, but I haven’t had much of a chance yet to think any further. ‘How about you? Have you started?’
She scoots closer, takes out her phone and scrolls. ‘I’m drawing my friend Mercury. In ink, nothing complicated, but very big.’ She stretches her arms out to indicate the scale of her piece. ‘Here.’
I look at her screen. Bochen has drawn a light graphite map of Mercury’s face, but I can already tell she’s playing with perspective and distortion in interesting ways.
‘It looks great,’ I say. ‘What are your themes going to be?’
‘No idea!’ Bochen says. ‘Sometimes a drawing is just a drawing, you know?’
I wait until we’re halfway home before I empty out my spinning brain.
‘Mum?’
Mum turns her head only a fraction. She’s a careful driver. The passing streetlights glance over the planes of her face.
‘Will Dad’s record come up? I mean, will the detectives know about that?’
She flicks the indicator on, shifts lanes to merge onto the freeway. It’s a few seconds before she speaks. The freeway lights give her the pearly complexion of a sixteenth century Flemish painting. I try to mentally record the way she looks, the way the light hits her. Imagine being able to recreate that in paint or on film. She looks as young as me from where I’m sitting. I want to erase every part of Dad and be one hundred per cent like her. I don’t want his nose.
‘It had crossed my mind,’ she admits. ‘But they can’t investigate every man associated with the school. How many girls are there? Two thousand? How many dads, stepdads, boyfriends could that add up to? I don’t think they have the resources.’
Mum has never held anything back about Dad’s past, or hers either, at least as far as I know. I know she was a wild-child in the nineties, first a grunge groupie in her teens, then a raver at university. I know about her fighting with her family and the fallout over Dad.
I know Dad was more enthusiastic about drugs than her, and that his enthusiasm led to two charges of possession. Mum has always said that as soon as she got pregnant Dad cleaned his act up, but I don’t remember what it was like when I was a toddler. I’m not sure if it was that simple. But being into drugs when you were young has nothing to do with abducting teenage girls.
‘Are you glad you went tonight?’ I ask.
‘Those parents were intense.’
I laugh. ‘I know! I was terrified!’
‘I guess they pay through their nose for the fees so they think they have the right. They expect so much.’ She puts her indicator on. ‘Are you sure you’re good for tomorrow night?’
Mum had to change shifts so she could come tonight; she wouldn’t normally work Friday nights.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I can ask Pearl again.’
‘Not two nights in a row,’ I say. ‘Me and Sam will have bonding time, it’ll be good.’
‘You should be out with your friends,’ she murmurs, taking the exit ramp. We’re almost home. ‘Who was that nice-looking girl you were talking to up the back? Is she a Balmoral buddy?’
I snort at her casual tone. I know she’s concerned that I haven’t adjusted to Balmoral as well as I might have. In all the thinking about whether to take up the scholarship offer, I didn’t think about whether I would fit in, or what it meant to trick your way into somewhere you don’t belong.
‘I can’t comment at this point in the investigation,’ I say.
Sam pokes his BBQ pork with disposable chopsticks.
‘I don’t think it should be this colour.’ The sauce has stained the mound of rice pink around the edges. ‘Chlo. Chlo. Look.’
‘You chose it, so eat it and don’t waste my money.’
I was supposed to cook dinner for Sam and me tonight, but the better scenario is lazy times at Meridian Shopping Centre. And this way we’re not alone at home, bouncing off the walls and twitching at every innocent noise. The shopping centre is always packed on Friday nights and I’ve brought Mum’s camera with me. I’ve been trying to develop the habit of seeing the boring, everyday things around me with fresh eyes, but it’s not easy.
In our corner of the food court the canned music is loud; the flat screen on the wall opposite us is huge. Normally it’s showing music videos or football, but at the moment the evening news is playing soundlessly. Someone accidentally showed a nipple at an awards ceremony. And that’s called news.
Most of my year level will be getting ready for Grace’s party right now. Bochen told me they were providing minibuses for the boarders. Even I’d been invited. Granted, it was only because I’d been standing at the lockers next to Petra, and Grace is nice enough that she couldn’t help but hand me an invite too. Apparently her parents insisted on paper invitations, to stop gatecrashers finding out about the party online and arriving in the hundreds. Good luck with that, Chapmans.
I watch Sam herd the peas from his fried rice to one side of his plate, mumbling to himself. My own lemon chicken is a suspect shade of yellow, but tastes as MSG-good as ever. Maybe we can watch a movie when we get home. I let Sam watch MA-rated movies and stay up past 9 p.m. when Mum’s not around. I told him about our self-defence class and now he wants to do a Bruce Lee marathon.
I should feel like a loser for preferring to hang out with my ten-year-old brother than go to a party, but I don’t.
I switch Mum’s camera on and fill the viewfinder with my radioactive yellow dinner, Sam’s plate lurking in the background as red, white and green blotches. Snap. I try again, turning the wheel to macro and getting up real close. Mum’s camera does not cope well with low light. There’s no way I’ll be able to hold it steady enough.
When I look up at the flat screen again the grainy CCTV footage of Yin is playing, both bits. This morning the news sites started showing the same convenience store incident, but from a different camera. From the new angle you can see the flannel shirt guy a little bit better.
I can’t look away from it, as if somehow this time the video might be different.
The newsreader comes back on, but it’s impossible to know what she’s saying. Maybe she’s saying this is definitely the guy we’re looking for. Maybe someone will call the police tonight and say they recognise him. Maybe that will lead them to a house in a far-out suburb, and we’ll wake up tomorrow and find out that it’s over; they’ve found the creep and rescued Yin. Maybe then I can stop checking doors and windows and running through my dwindling list of reasons to stay at Balmoral.
‘I talked to Dad today,’ says Sam, out of nowhere.
‘Good for you.’ I push my plate away. A layer of congealed skin has formed over the lemon sauce. ‘Are you done?’
Sam skids in his slippery shoes all the way to the bargain games shop. I give him twenty minutes and twenty dollars of my own money. That kid has no idea how much I do for him.
The shopping centre is swarming: teenagers cruising each other, security cameras, security guards. Peace descends for the first time this week. I’m a bee in a swarm, a particle, part of a larger pattern. I have no separate thoughts or significant problems. I wander the corridors with Mum’s camera held in front of me, looking around for colours and patterns.
The tubs of jelly cups and coconut water at the Asian grocer become abstract and psychedelic if you get close enough, the reflections in the window of the brow bar fragment the customers inside, the aisles of the discount chemist warehouse are stark and artificial. I take photos of hair-netted women speed-folding dumplings in a restaurant window and old men gathered in the Greek coffee shop with their walking sticks hooked onto the table.
I swing past to check on Sam, and see him sitting on the shop floor with rows of games fanned in front of him. I snap a photo of him through the window and he doesn’t even look up. If I turn it black and white, if I tweak it to make it look pixellated and gritty, it would look exactly like a surveillance photo.
At the camera store I look at digital SLRs I’ll never be able to afford, not even if I take off a hypothetical $500 won hypothetically in the non-hypothetical art prize and then add all the pocket money I can save this year. Mum’s old camera is a dinosaur compared to these muscly black models. I wish I’d thought to sign out one of the school’s fancy cameras for the weekend, so I could have practised with it. Brooke and Audrey take all their photos on film and use the darkroom to develop and print them, but we didn’t have a darkroom at Morrison, and I don’t have time to learn how to do it well enough for my project.
When I’ve looked at every camera in the shop, I retrace my steps to the games store to collect Sam.
The corner where he was sitting is empty now. I scan the store, looking in front of each shelf and bargain bin. Everywhere I look there are rows of browsing backs. Sam’s not at the info counter, or hiding behind a cardboard cut-out display.
I go to the front counter.
‘Have you seen a little kid? He’s ten, about this tall?’ My voice sounds normal even though my insides don’t. The sales assistant stops pricing games with a sticker gun.
‘Oh, hey,’ he says, as if he knows me. ‘Who are you looking for?’
‘My brother. He’s wearing a purple jumper and jeans, maybe?’
‘Sorry, no. Nick, you haven’t seen a kid on the loose have you?’
His work colleague shakes his head.
The assistant puts down his gun. ‘Do you want some help looking for him?’
‘No, no thanks.’
I exit the store and look both ways up the aisle, a frantic feeling already coming on. I look at waist level among the crowds of shoppers. No Sam.
I turn to ice. My fingers, toes, all the way to the ends of my hair, and especially my heart.
I walk to the end of one aisle, look up and down the next row of shops, then go back to the other end and robotically repeat the action.
Sam is gone.
The next obvious place to check is the large entrance to the shopping centre. To the right is the food court where we ate dinner, to the left the gates to the subway.
I consider the sliding doors to the underground platforms. I picture a man holding Sam’s hand and leading him down the escalators, onto a train, and away. Forever. In my chest is a cold fist.
‘Chlo? Chlo?’
I turn so quickly I get vertigo.
Sam stands five metres away, holding a plastic bag with his precious games inside. He’s wearing his orange hoodie, not a purple jumper, and cargo shorts, not jeans.
‘There you are!’ I swoop, and in the time it takes me to reach my brother, I melt into fury. ‘Where were you? I told you not to move from there. You know to stay put! It’s the first rule.’
‘I was looking for you! I was trying to find you!’
Sam keeps repeating these meaningless words over and over as I grab his wrist and drag him towards the doors. I’m hot all over; something flutters around my body, something has been let loose. I keep moving to disguise it.
‘Chloe!’ Sam pulls away until I stop. He pulls his hand free and rubs his wrist. ‘You’re hurting me.’ His lower lip is suspiciously trembly. Then—whispering—‘I couldn’t find you.’
I look back at him, and he looks so confused and indignant, and little, really. A little kid. And I haven’t been thinking clearly, because the guy doesn’t snatch boys from shopping centres, he goes for girls in their homes.
I remember the quad last week—which already seems eons ago—and Milla repeating the police’s questions: Was she scared of anything?
Yes. I can almost hear the thoughts of every single girl in my year level. We’re all scared, of almost everything.
