The library doors are so heavy it’s no wonder that I only go in there when I’m forced to. There’s a schunk as the doors come apart, as if I’m stepping into an airlock, shortly to be sprayed with disinfectant and handed a Hazmat suit. Our school librarians give off the very strong vibe that they would prefer students to stay out of their facility.
I shoulder in like the brave pioneer I am, keeping my head down, and I swear there’s a pause in the beep-beep of the barcode scanner when I walk past the loans counter. The library smells different, a foreign country that I barely realised existed. There’s a row of girls along the far wall, glued to computers, and a cushion pit full of people reading.
‘What is this mystical language?’ I ask the neat laminated signs taped to the end of each row of shelves. I tap the Dewey Devil number 666 and abandon the non-fiction section, prowling up the alphabet in fiction until I find my prey.
Eight identical brown spines line up next to each other on the shelf, which I guess is because we were supposed to be studying this book in English. Supposed to be, because the teachers have changed their minds: as of this morning it is off our reading list. Of course I asked why, and of course Ms Clarke was super vague. So here I am, in uncharted lands, looking for a verboten book.
‘Hello, my forbidden fruit that tastes all the more sweet,’ I whisper to the paperback as I remove it from the shelf.
Picnic at Hanging Rock looks boring and historical, with a pretty blonde girl on the cover in a ye olde white flowing dress.
‘Hi, Natalia.’ A tiny mousy voice.
Grace Chapman hovers nearby, cradling a stack of books. She always has her head in a book, usually a novel featuring a supernatural love triangle, although in a change of scenery I accidentally saw her with her head in Andrew Taylor’s crotch behind the pool house last Friday night. Which is a bit weird, because it was her birthday party, so whose head should have been in whose lap, I ask you.
As much as I try to act normal, the fact remains that I can’t meet Grace’s eye. And it’s not because she’s caught me talking out loud to a book, or because I spotted her with Andrew, it’s because of what else happened on Friday night.
Let me paint the scene:
It is the aforementioned birthday party, a massively exaggerated affair attended by almost the entire year level, including the boarders who were bussed in and kept on a huge leash made from hundreds of school ties knotted together. No one has stopped talking about it all week: who hooked up with who, who spewed on one of the family cars, who was rejected by which Grammar boy and who smoked pot in the laneway out the back.
Is it abnormal to obsess over a party while someone you know is imprisoned in a house somewhere far from home? I think we all know the answer to that question.
We, by which I mean my lady squad and I, arrived fashionably late. Despite the fairy lights and the gazebo and the waiters with bow ties and the sparkling turquoise pool, the Chapmans’ backyard did not so much resemble a sophisticated soiree as a scene from a zombie film where the zombies can’t decide whether to eat brains or hump each other on the dance floor. As one of the few responsible non-zombies present, it was I who went to inform the adults that the bathrooms were fresh out of toilet paper.
It was I who followed Mr Chapman upstairs to fetch the paper, and it was I who was diverted into the study so Chapman could fetch more whisky, which he’d clearly had quite a bit of already. This was sketchy but ideal because I may or may not have remembered from my Balmoral brain catalogue that Grace’s dad is a detective and this may or may not have encouraged my very attendance at the soiree that evening. Do not underestimate my ability to focus on my goals.
Me: Is it true you’re a detective?
Chapman: Have you girls been talking about me behind my back?
Me: (Vomits a little bit inside my own mouth but carries on.) Haha, yeah of course. You’re all we talk about.
Chapman: I used to be, I’m in security consulting now. I was in the force for twenty years. The drug squad, then the homicide squad.
Me: So, do you still get access to inside information then?
Chapman: (Vagues out slightly while pouring whisky before snapping to.) You mean about the Mitchell case? You two were—
Me: Yes, of course, about Yin. Have you heard anything?
Chapman: I’ve heard they’ve sought advice from the FBI, so they’re taking it very seriously. (Leans sloppily on desk.) They’ll make another announcement soon, I think.
Me: What kind of announcement? Tell me.
Chapman: Be patient, it’ll come. It’s normal to be concerned. You’re very mature for your age, aren’t you Natalia? (LITERALLY X-RAYS MY TOP WITH HIS EYES.)
Me: Can we get the damn toilet paper, sir?
Or something like that. Maybe I didn’t say the last bit. But think about it—Grace has to live with that slimebag every day of her life. And I didn’t learn anything useful. Everyone else might be moving on, or pretending they’re not still counting the days Yin has been missing, but not me. Under the surface I’m not just paddling, but kicking anything in sight.
‘Great party last week, Grace.’ I back away fast, clutching my book.
If I needed further proof that the library is a nightmare if you don’t want to run into people, around the very next corner Art Class Chloe is practically living in the stacks, confirming several of my suspicions about her. She is kneeling on the ground, surrounded by folders and pencils and looking at several million art books.
‘Please save me from an awkward situation,’ I say, with maybe too much desperation. I’m too weird for my own good sometimes. Too weird for even the official weirdos. I sit near her on the floor.
Chloe looks startled and more than a little wary. I decide right here and now, looking at her geeky glasses and her high ponytail, that she’s so uncool she has come out the other side as very cool.
‘What awkward situation?’ She cranes her head, trying to see who’s nearby.
‘Never mind. It’s not important.’
I take a look at the scatter of books she’s pulled off the shelf.
‘Ms Nouri recommended these,’ she says. ‘I’m struggling with our self-portrait. And our main assessment too. All of it really.’
I have no reason at all to talk to her. I clutch for what we have in common. I’d better not mention accidentally blinding Petra in PE and how Chloe swept in like Mother Teresa and nursed her back to health.
‘Art prize. Are you doing it?’ I say.
‘I don’t know. No. I don’t think so. Why does everyone keep asking that? Are you?’
I snort. I took Art because it’s easier than taking politics or another language. I clock Chloe’s list of artists, written neatly in her exercise book, and the ripped up pieces of scrap paper she’s using as bookmarks, and her bulging sketchbook and the photocopies she’s made. For someone who isn’t entering the prize and says she’s struggling, she sure is doing a lot of work.
There are people like Sarah, who think they have something amazing to offer the world, and who do not in fact have anything to offer, and simply want to be internet famous. And then there are people like Chloe. She has plenty of interesting things to say, and yet she persists in acting like a creature lying at the bottom of a lagoon covered in mud, like a mythical mega-slug. Am I the only one who notices these things?
‘You should enter,’ I tell her. ‘I can tell you love that class and you love Ms Nouri. God knows why, but you like that sad, hairy lady. And you’re actually talented, so you should. I’d go for it myself if I wasn’t completely hopeless and lazy, and I’ll drop out of school if Audrey wins again.’
She looks at me with surprised hazel eyes and doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and then my cheeks start to go pink.
‘Well anyway—’ I say, right at the same moment she says, ‘I’ll think about it?’
And then it’s even more awks for sure and I juggle the paperback I took off the shelves from hand to hand and Chloe jumps in, trying to save this sinking ship.
‘The real history of Hanging Rock is more interesting than that book.’
‘You’ve read it already?’
Chloe nods but only for a split second before she realises she has done a big fat nerd tell. She read this term’s English texts last holidays, in advance, I know it. Maybe she even read them all before the beginning of the year.
‘All that spooky fictional stuff distracts from the actual meaning and history, which is that the rock is an important ceremonial place, and huge numbers of the traditional owners were murdered in the area by settlers or died from introduced disease or got forcibly moved to missions.’
I look doubtfully at the beautiful lily-white girl on the cover. ‘That’s…disturbing,’ I say, and then I run out of things to add. I focus all my mental energy on the carpet beneath me, but the floor refuses to gape open and swallow me. I didn’t do anything to stop that tasteless too-many-Asians conversation in art class and now I have nothing to say about our country’s genocide so I’m pretty much living up to the low standard of who I’m supposed to be.
‘Look up the history,’ says Chloe. ‘It’s true.’
‘I will.’ I rise to my feet and I’m about to go when I turn back and say, ‘Do you know why we’re not studying this anymore?’
Chloe’s cheeks are flushed; she blushes a lot when people speak to her. ‘I guess, because it’s about missing girls?’
That sort of stops me dead for a moment and then I do this jerky head nod and continue on my way, singing to myself la la la because it seems like the teachers actively want us to never think about Yin again and at the loans desk Mrs Berryman looks at me like I’m trying to steal Picnic at Hanging Rock, not borrow it.
‘It’s not on your English list anymore,’ she says.
‘I know.’ I slap my library card down. ‘And yet, here I am.’
I put my world-mufflers back on while she says something else, but she might as well be talking to me through a tin can and string. No, scratch that. She might as well be talking to me from a very distant planet.
The pretence of normal lasts until about two minutes into History when Mr Wright announces that a police officer is gatecrashing and before you know it, there she is in the doorway.
They’ve picked a young policewoman so that we can relate to her and everything, but quite frankly I’m surprised that Mrs Christie has let us be exposed to the people in blue at all. The principal has been blowing off steam about predatory journalists after several students were approached at the Junction last week, and you pretty much get the feeling she would like to turn Balmoral into a moat-circled fortress, inside of which we put equal effort into protecting our virginities and our grades.
This is how the policewoman starts:
‘Hi, I’m Celeste, and I’m part of the team investigating Yin’s disappearance.’
She uses Yin’s name, but she doesn’t say ‘home invasion’ or ‘abduction’ like they do on the news. Disappearance is a watered-down, inaccurate word and I immediately get an itch on the back of my knees.
The policewoman sits on the edge of the teacher’s desk, like Nouri does, and she kicks her feet as she talks and she has her hair in a low bun and they’ve picked her well because with her countryish round freckled face you might trust her so much you’d be able to tell her anything.
‘It must have been a really scary couple of weeks for you, so I’ve come in today to tell you what’s going on and answer any questions you have.’
She runs over the official police line, but it’s the same as what’s on the TV and in the papers and what I hear when I eavesdrop on my parents’ phone calls to their friends by picking up the spare phone in the entertainment room. My head starts up with the blah blah blah and prickly fire creeps up my legs and I have to refocus hard.
‘We have forty people working on this case, and we’re looking at every possible angle and taking every phone call we receive very seriously. We’re working around the clock to find Yin, and we want to get her home as much as you do.’
She makes it sound like they can bring Yin home, like that’s still a possibility, but that can’t be true, can it? Not now. The hot prickles wrap around me and it’s unbearable but I stay still in this forest of alert green-and-orange backs and watch.
What I see is that Petra sits straightest of all in the front row, with her hands resting on a piece of paper covered with writing, staring at the policewoman like she would never break eye contact in a million years, not even if the room caught on fire. This is normal for Petra, because she is literally trying to hoover the knowledge from every corner of the room, all the time, and you can’t even stand near her for fear of your brain getting vacuumed. But there’s an extra level of hoovering today.
We’re all listening when the policewoman says, ‘I know you’ve been told not to talk to the media, so I have to tell you that some outlets will be running reports this week on something new. The police will be confirming at a press conference very soon that we’re looking for a serial offender.’
Petra jolts in her seat like she’s received an electric shock, but the rest of the class are a little more confused, looking at their friends, screwing up their faces.
‘What that means is that we’re now certain that we’re looking for someone who has done this before.’
That sets everyone whispering, wriggling, flapping. Celeste soldiers on calmly.
‘In the next few days we’ll be releasing a detailed profile of who we’re looking for, what this person might be like. What the media will say is that this person has to be connected with your school.’
Celeste scans the room, grave but calm. A buzzing noise builds in my head, threatening to drown everything out. I shouldn’t be confused at all because I remember what Ol’ X-Ray-Eyes Chapman said about the FBI and this is probably what he meant. A profile.
‘That connection is not confirmed. This person might be connected with Balmoral, maybe even very remotely connected, or they might have nothing to do at all with your school. We’re considering a large number of cases to determine if they’re linked. Are there any questions?’
Is it more likely that Yin is dead now, or less likely? Wasps are loose in the room.
Milla puts up her hand. ‘Why did you let the guy on the CCTV footage go?’
‘We investigated him thoroughly. He has no criminal record, a solid alibi for the night in question, and no unexplained absences.’
‘What do you mean by “unexplained absences”? Is that something we should be looking for?’ Anusha forgets to raise her hand.
‘It means if someone suddenly changes their routine and is out of the house a lot more, or goes on holidays or weekends away more than usual. That’s all.’
I try to will someone to ask the right questions, but they don’t. My earlobes get oh-so-hot so I tug on them and still the buzzing grows louder.
Bridie lifts her hand. ‘Is it true that we should pee ourselves if someone attacks us? Or say we have our period?’
Our self-defence teacher had been no help on this matter. Mr Wright tries to chameleon himself into the whiteboard.
Celeste is stoic. ‘If you ever feel physically threatened by anyone it’s better to focus on getting away from them, or attracting attention and help.’
This isn’t enough for Bridie. ‘I have another one. Should we try to escape or should we not try to escape?’
Everyone knows that she’s asking because of the ‘In the Unlikely Event of ’ email.
‘No one involved in the investigation thinks that this offender will strike again in the near future,’ is all that Celeste will say.
Predictably, Petra’s hand shoots up, shoots for the sky. She wiggles her fingers and bounces in her seat like we all used to do in Junior School before we realised how dorky that looks.
‘About the profile and the other cases and the possible connection to the school,’ she says in that posh debating-team voice of hers. She’s holding a piece of paper in her hands as if she’s prepared notes for a speech. ‘What about Emma-Maree Jones? Don’t you think that her abduction is important? She was on the waiting list for Balmoral.’
Celeste finally looks freaked. She whispers to Mr Wright and he hands her a whiteboard marker. He has to push her over to the smart-board side so she doesn’t write on the actual wall. She writes ‘PREJUDICIAL’ in large letters on the board.
‘We understand that you’re all really worried about Yin, and you need to air your worries, but some of the information that’s being shared could affect the court case when we catch the perpetrator.’
Petra’s arm goes ballistic again but Celeste ignores it.
‘We’ve already had to shut down the “Find Yin Mitchell” page and a few others that have cropped up. It’s not because we don’t want you to be informed, it’s because we’re trying to protect the investigation, and Yin and her family.’
‘I know what prejudicial means,’ Petra calls out again in a desperate voice. ‘My father is a barrister. But you haven’t answered my question.’
Before I know what’s happening my arm shoots up, pushing through the hot prickling and the buzzing. I look up at it in surprise, as if it’s not attached to my body. Celeste looks relieved to take my question instead of answering Petra’s.
The words tumble out hard and fast like marbles.
‘Firstly, is it true that most kidnap victims are dead within the first twenty-four hours of being taken?’
The room gasps and grows restless. Petra turns in her seat with her mouth hanging open. I realise that what I really, really want is to smash everything in here: the mood, the hope, the furniture.
‘Secondly, why are you saying “the person” and “the perpetrator” when really what you mean is “the man”? It’s a guy we’re looking for, everyone knows that it’s men that do this sort of thing, and they’re likely to keep going until they’re caught. You only have to look at the statistics.’
My voice is loud and powerful. Everyone turns to look at me.
Mr Wright looks plenty red in the face. He actually gets a hankie out of his pocket and wipes his forehead. I’ve probably offended him in his sensitive man parts.
Petra speaks again. ‘There are a few cases where married couples have killed together…’ Her voice trails off when she sees the way I look at her.
I realise that sometime in the last minute I’ve stood up. ‘Just tell us, is she still alive, or not?’
Celeste looks genuinely stricken. ‘I’m so sorry, I know how difficult this is, but we don’t know. We’re trying to remain hopeful.’ She walks around the room, handing out her business card to each of us, along with an understanding look. ‘You can contact me about anything. I realise it’s a lot to ask, but if you could keep what we’ve discussed today within your school friends and family, that would help us a lot.’
Mr Wright claps his hands, probably keen to put a stop to all the emotion. ‘Thank you, officer.’ He escorts her to the door.
The class erupts, and for once Mr Wright doesn’t try to contain it. When the sound dies down slightly he raises his hands.
‘Girls, can I remind you that Miss Starcke and Mr O’Connor are available to speak to if you’re worried about this.’
No one listens to him.
While everyone is deep in conversation I zip over to Petra’s desk and grab her sheet of paper. Audrey is telling her how amazing her questions were and Petra is lapping it up as she always does.
‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ I tell Mr Wright and he can’t stop me.
Celeste the policewoman is still visible at the end of the corridor but I’m only interested in Petra’s piece of paper. I slump against the lockers to read it.
6 years ago—Lisa Wu—10 years old—abduction, 2 hours, returned safely, no connection to Balmoral?
5 years ago—Emma-Maree Jones—12 years old—attempted abduction, on waiting list for Balmoral
3 years ago—Karolina Bauer—14 years old—abduction, 20 hours, returned safely, exchange student at Balmoral
2 weeks ago—Yin Mitchell—16 years old—abduction, Balmoral student, still not returned
The list is so clinical, so unexpected.
I look at the words ‘returned safely’ next to Lisa Wu and Karolina Bauer’s names. Why is it different with Yin? Two weeks have passed, which is so much more than twenty hours, so why hasn’t she been released?
The bell must have rung because the corridor floods with girls. A pair of shiny shoes come into my line of vision. Petra stands with her hand out, a tight expression on her face.
‘Where did you get this from?’ I ask.
‘It’s mostly from the Cold Crimes website.’ She swallows. Her voice is barely audible above the clamour of locker doors slamming and people stampeding their way to the next class. ‘There are a lot of people interested in the case and they post and share information in online forums. I’ve been doing my own research. It’s been obvious from the start that it’s a serial offender, but it’s very significant that the police are making it official now.’
‘Cold Crimes.’ I file the name away. I hadn’t thought to look at any forums. ‘What are you, a girl detective?’
‘It’s wrong to assume we can’t do anything. Last year there was a group of high school reporters who interviewed their new principal and exposed her as a fraud. It turned out her resume was completely fabricated. So.’ Petra waits but I don’t respond. ‘Can I please have it back now?’
My head is busy, full, exploding. ‘No. I’m keeping it.’
Petra opens her mouth to argue but then closes it, perhaps remembering self-defence class. Instead of leaving though, she lingers.
‘What?’
‘Yin lent me her physics notes.’ Petra swallows hard. ‘You know, before she disappeared. Now I don’t know what to do with them…do you think I should give them to a teacher? Or her parents?’
‘Can’t you hang onto them?’
But I can tell from Petra’s face that she doesn’t want something belonging to a maybe-dead girl in her possession.
‘It seems wrong to throw them out.’ Pause. ‘She was so generous to loan them to me. Especially because we were—I mean, we are—neck-and-neck, grades-wise.’
I can picture Petra harassing the Mitchells or the police with this. ‘Give them to me if it’s bothering you so much.’
‘No, no, I’ll use them. We’ve got a test coming up.’ Petra has blushed from her toes to her scalp. ‘She was better than me. Nicer. And a better clarinet player too. Perfect tone.’
She’s being strange and I don’t like it. The vibrating restarts in my body, from the feet up.
‘Are you done?’ It comes out harsher than I mean it to.
Petra backs away incrementally, then turns properly. Audrey is waiting for her by the water bubbler, a snarky look on her face. I wiggle my fingers at her and smile wide and fake, because it drives Audrey wild with jealousy whenever Petra gets chummy with anyone who isn’t a boarder and who she can’t keep her big green eyes on.
‘Don’t worry—I’m not stealing your wife!’ I yell.
Somehow I’ve come down with a cold on the way home from school. My skin is on fire and my head aches so I put on my favourite soft-as-marshmallow pyjamas and light all of my candles all at once and can’t put down Picnic at Hanging Rock once I’ve started.
It’s the turn of the century and a party of girls and teachers from a ritzy private boarding school go on an excursion to Hanging Rock, which the traditional and rightful owners call Ngannelong because after what Chloe said I’m not going to be totally ignorant, and after lunch when everyone is sated and languid four of the schoolgirls walk off on their own.
Even though the language is outdated and there are descriptions that go on for half a page and the author is totally obsessed with ‘bosoms’, the school and the teachers in the book aren’t that different to Balmoral, not really. And from the moment the group of young girls go off on their own, my skin starts to tingle.
I can see them, in their long white dresses, pale and hopeless and weak, the opposite of angry modern girls. The massive Rock looms, wild and covered with trees, full of dark crevasses and winding tracks that lead nowhere. These floppy, flower-petal girls are no match for it, I can feel it already.
Something bad is going to happen to them.
Dylan Thomas slides under the covers with me, leaving only the tip of his tail poking out. I let the bad feelings I’ve been keeping at bay seep into bed with me too, a familiar pressing, hovering grey cloud.
Serial offender. Connected with the school. Detailed profile. Returned safely.
I breathe in the grey cloud and it’s a relief to give into the fog for once. Dylan Thomas presses into my side and rumbles like a tiny tiger.
The messages start at 9 p.m., while everyone is watching the late news. The police have held the predicted press conference and the profile has been released.
I click the link that Marley has sent us. ‘HUNT FOR DOCTOR CALM’, says the headline.
Doctor Calm is the name the media have invented for Yin’s abductor, a fancy villain name for a monster who can’t be stopped. I try to read the report, take it all in, but my head swims.
Sarah follows up quickly with the video of the press conference. I put my headphones on and the quilt over my head.
Senior Detective Zambesi, the head of the newly-named Operation Panopticon, speaks as cameras flash around him and microphones cluster. He has a craggy, Hollywood-handsome face and the reporters love him.
‘As you’re aware, Karolina Bauer attended the same school as Yin Mitchell for a period of one year as an exchange student. We can now confirm that an earlier case, that of Emma-Maree Jones, also has connections to the school. That young girl had her name on a waiting list to attend the school when she reached Year Seven.’
Petra was right.
One of the reporters asks a question, but it’s hard to hear what she’s saying.
‘I can’t comment on any other cases,’ replies Zambesi.
‘How many abductions or assaults do you think Doctor Calm may be responsible for?’ another reporter asks.
‘That’s your name, not mine.’ Zambesi’s mouth tightens with annoyance. The reporters clamour for attention but he holds up his hand.
‘Our main objective today is to tell you what we know about this man. He is between the ages of thirty and fifty, with medium skin tone. He is of average height, or tall with a slight stoop, and of average build. He is highly educated and well spoken. He may be in a prominent or respected position in the community, and it’s possible he has a job in which he travels frequently. Friends or family will know him to be a gentle and reserved person, and would be shocked to learn he is capable of violence.’
‘Make no mistake, we are looking for an extremely dangerous criminal. His methods are thorough and he may have some knowledge of police procedure. We are looking for an unusually intelligent individual who will not stop until he is caught.’
He calls an end to the press conference, even though the reporters are still wetting their jocks and yelling out questions.
I sit on my bed and let it sink in. I wasn’t expecting them to describe someone so completely bland. Beige beige unusually intelligent beige. A forgettable man with an unforgettable name.
I shut the computer. I try hard not to be sick.
It’s pointless even thinking about any of this police stuff. What can we do with the profile anyway? They don’t want us to discuss the case online. The teachers won’t tell us anything, and our parents don’t seem to know. Would they even listen to us if we went to them with information? I picture telling a teacher or police officer about Mr Chapman staring at my tits and emitting sleazy vibes and even I can acknowledge how tenuous it sounds.
The Hanging Rock cover girl stares at me from my bedside table, ethereal, blonde and disappeared. Miranda. She acted strange right before she went missing.
I saw Yin in the hallway on the Friday before she was taken. Normally we ignore each other—so studiously, so completely I’m surprised no one notices—but this time we stood and looked at each other, eye to eye, for a few seconds. It was odd. Had she been trying to tell me something? Did she have a premonition that something was about to go wrong?
If Yin had been trying to send me a message that day, I didn’t receive it. Sarah came up behind me and leapt on my shoulders, and we both turned away slowly, Yin and I, like ships trying not to collide.
Ally stands on Marley’s bed and reads from a phone.
‘Number one: reach ten thousand followers. Number two: make out with someone famous. Number three: take Luca Henning-Smith to the formal. Number four: win Regatta.’
As per usual we are getting ready at Marley’s house because her parents are the slackest and her room hangs right off the back of the warehouse, almost like she has her own apartment.
We’re not being quiet enough, because Ally gets pissy, or as pissy as Ally gets, which is not very. ‘Shh, you guys! Listen.’
‘You’re not going to do any of those things,’ I say from my position at the mirror. Ally has a floppy headband on that definitely has to come off before we leave the house. Her legs are still covered in bruises from self-defence class. Ally has tissue-paper skin, she’s as delicate as the princess lying on the pea.
Even though I’m here in the room with my friends, my mind keeps wandering back to Wednesday in the library and wondering what Chloe thinks of me. Few people can make me that off-kilter.
Why did I even go up to her in the first place? She likes it at the bottom of her lagoon and I came along and disturbed her moss, her leaf litter, her driftwood, her algae.
‘Tal, are you even listening?’ Ally puts her hands on her hips. ‘It’s not my list, it’s Sarah’s.’
On cue, Sarah yells, ‘Someone proper famous! I want you to know that. Not D-list famous. And I’ve got to get this done this year, or by the end of summer, at the latest.’
Both have started early on the vodka, way too early in my humble opinion.
Ally loses steam and slumps to her knees, burying her face in the covers. ‘We shouldn’t have to make bucket lists at our age. It’s depressing.’
She pauses then adds, because Marley has been on antidepressants all year, ‘Sorry Marls, I didn’t mean that.’
‘No probs.’ Nothing much touches Marley. She keeps scrolling on her iPad. In between scrolls she grabs a Tim Tam from an open pack. Ally and Sarah ignore the biscuits, because they’re in a yearlong competition to see who can eat the least.
‘If you want to try pot, I think I know someone who can get some,’ Marley offers.
I feign surprise. ‘Your parents make you pay?’
‘Ha ha.’ Marley throws a Tim Tam at my head, and misses.
Marley’s parents are rock-and-roll royalty without actually being musicians. They own practically this whole factory block—the warehouse, the rehearsal rooms and the recording studios—and for all we know maybe they do deal pot on the side.
I smooth on more BB cream to cover the red marks on my chin. Too much of my brain is taken up with wondering why the media is calling him Doctor Calm. It’s a messed-up name—it makes me think of surgery masks and bright lights and big syringes.
‘Why’ve you got so much eyeliner on? You look like that goth from Art.’ Sarah tries to hand me the vodka bottle but I wave it away.
Marley’s makeup is spread all over the vanity. Her mum buys the expensive stuff, the kind that comes with toiletry bags full of free gifts. Usually Sarah is in charge of eyes, because she’s got the steadiest hand, but she’s already too smashed. Her lipstick is wonky, but I don’t plan on pointing that out to her.
Sarah pushes Ally’s feet away from her. ‘When are you going to change those?’
‘They’re my good-luck socks,’ Ally protests. ‘I can’t take them off, they could be the only thing keeping me alive.’
‘Well, just so you know, you’re killing me with the smell.’
My makeup inspiration for the evening is: Teen Crystal Warrior Queen. I’ve used about five different types of highlighter to achieve the Opal clan’s updated look. ‘I don’t expect you to understand,’ I say mildly. It’s embarassing to go around looking the same as your friends anyway. I leave the zip on my stolen satin jacket at half-mast to maximise my boobs. Nice.
‘Have you seen this Report Card thing? People rate their teachers. Balmoral’s on it, there are twenty-three teachers listed.’ Marley reads from the screen. ‘Mrs Wang, Ms Baker, Ms Nouri…Ms Nouri needs to get some waxing strips immediately—ha! Interesting fashion sense because she dresses like a medieval peasant. That’s accurate. Mr Purdy, Mr Scrutton.’
‘Read about Purdy.’ I had him last year and it’s fair to say we had a major personality clash.
‘Mr Purdy blocks every website on the internet when we’re in the labs, plus he’s moody—oh, that’s an old comment, he’s been at the school forever. Hang on. Mr Purdy is creepy, he sits with his legs wide open to show off his family jewels.’
‘More.’ Sarah is agog. She feeds off the comments section.
Marley continues. ‘At first I really liked having him as my teacher but then he started creeping me out…people like him because he’s slack and tells us what’s on the test but sometimes he says inappropriate things. Um, then there’s: This one time when he was handing back my exam he deliberately brushed my hand and I’d bet anything that he’s Doctor Calm.’
Sarah is enraged by this.
‘What? Noooo! It’s Tyrone, the hot serial killer photographer. Gimme that.’
She grabs the iPad. ‘I’m making an entry for him. Tyrone Martell is the school photographer and he’s a sex manic and perv and if anyone should be the main suspect of being Doctor Calm, it’s him. If you search his house you’ll find photos of the students with the most developed breasts. There. You should all put comments too.’
‘Maniac,’ contributes Ally, ‘Not manic.’
‘He doesn’t fit the police profile.’ I’m gripping the mascara wand so hard it might snap. ‘No one we know does.’
‘Is Mrs Mancini on there?’ Ally asks. ‘She promised that we could watch a movie on the last day of term, then she wouldn’t let us and I complained, and she goes, “Don’t put lies in my mouth, Allison.”’
Marley swings her fancy Bao Bao bag. ‘Tal, shouldn’t we get going soon? Mark and Ben and the others said they’d meet us there.’
For a second I can’t take how immature it all is, and then I imagine the girls from Picnic at Hanging Rock superimposed over my friends, imagine that they’re excited about a wholesome picnic in the bush rather than getting groped by Grammar boys at Shelter.
The illusion doesn’t even hold for a second. Sarah is splotchy from booze, Marley’s under the impression that she’s wearing pants when in fact she’s not, and Ally looks like an adorable little girl. I hug her. She smells of Marc Jacobs Daisy and fierce liquor and arranges her thin arms around my neck like a toy monkey.
I whisper in her ear. ‘I saw you sniff Marley’s pillow. Pervert.’
Ally squeals and pushes me away. ‘Taaalll! I did not!’
She’s traffic-light red, burning up with guilt, even though I made the whole thing up. I’m full of a bursting mean, poking feeling. I want someone to ask me about Yin so I can tell them to shut their faces. I’ve been waiting for someone to finally inevitably actually be brave enough to say something to me about her out loud.
‘We’ll go to the park for a bit,’ I announce, ‘then Shelter.’
They don’t dispute the schedule, they never do.
‘I’m cold,’ complains Ally. ‘And bored.’
Her whining is irritating, even though I agree with her assessment. There’s fog hanging low on the grass, and clouds billow from our mouths.
Sarah is flat-out on the merry-go-round, kicking at the ground to spin herself around and checking her phone at the same time. ‘What are we still doing here?’
‘No one gets there that early.’ I sit at the top of the slide and can’t imagine why I was ever scared of sliding down it.
‘I hope tonight’s better than Grace’s,’ says Ally.
‘That won’t be hard,’ Sarah says, even though all the pics she posted of Grace’s party online made it look like she was having the time of her life.
The park perches at the top of Bleecker’s Hill, and the whole city is visible as a glowing strip along the horizon. I still haven’t had a drink, but no one has noticed. I’m tilted sideways as it is, a couple of degrees off, followed around by shadows and reflections.
Mum and Dad didn’t want me ‘prowling the streets’ tonight so I lied and said that Marley’s parents were dropping us off and picking us up too. We’re too many to attack, but someone could easily be watching us, waiting for a sheep to drift from the pack. All our parents made us switch on location services and Find My Phone before we were allowed out, like a thin slice of electronics can protect anyone from anything.
Marley totters back from the nearby bushes, trying to straighten her tights. Her bracelets shine in the dark.
‘I remembered something I have to tell you,’ she says. ‘Mum gave me a Zen book. It says that an individual life is a wave in the ocean. The wave rises up and exists, and then it disappears back into the ocean. The wave is gone, but the ocean continues.’
‘That’s amazing.’ Ally looks at me. She’s sitting on a wobbly seat shaped like a chicken. ‘Don’t you think?’
I turn my eyes to the darkest corners of the park and say nothing because that is the dippiest thing I’ve ever heard. Who wants to be a fucking wave when you could be the ocean?
I examine the line of trees at the edges of the oval, the bit where the ground dips steeply, and the barely lit football club building near the car park. There are houses not too far away, but the eucalypts and ti-trees form a thick barricade around the reserve. Every few minutes there’s the faint growl of a car driving along the crescent.
A memory crawls out of the shadows, as thin and insubstantial as a ghost. When I open my mouth, steam clouds spill out, and words too.
‘When I was eleven we went camping in a national park,’ I say, ‘and got lost out in the trees. I went for a walk and stomped around until I couldn’t recognise anything. When I realised, I tried to go back the way I’d come, but the campsite wasn’t there. I walked around and around in circles until all the trees and tracks looked exactly the same.’
Yin had been there as well, of course, but I don’t say that. After two hours of walking we’d both started to cry, tears and snot and dust mixing on our faces. It got dark early, and it wasn’t until the first stars were visible that we’d heard Mr Mitchell cooee in the distance.
I erase Yin from my story, snipping her out neatly. It’s not difficult to do; I’ve been doing it ever since we started high school, when I realised that she wasn’t going to keep up. Even in the first weeks of Year Seven I could tell which girls I should make friends with, which older girls I should emulate.
Yin couldn’t be part of the project, and so I cast her off. She went quietly, that was always her problem. You have to fight in life to get what you deserve. She should have fought harder.
Shelter is only just beginning to fill up when we arrive. If we’d got here at nine, like Sarah wanted to, we’d have been dweebs sitting around on the couches, waiting for things to get started. It’s not rocket science, but I’m the only one who seems to understand these things.
I hang in the shadows near the pool table while Sarah and Ally talk to Bill and Ben the Private-School Chinos Men. Sarah and Ally both acted more sober than they actually are for the bouncers, and now they’re pretending to be drunker than they actually are for the boys. Thanks to my impeccable planning skills, the boys were excited to see them arrive, rather than the other way around. Sarah is leaning up against Bill/Ben’s shoulder, faux-laughing. He flicks his floppy blonde angel curls, looking like he keeps Rohypnol in his pocket.
I already need to pee, but I don’t want to go through ‘the carwash’—the narrow corridor to the bathrooms where boys congregate on either side and try to grab parts of your body.
Shelter is almost over, let’s be honest. There are some kids who look barely thirteen and we’re definitely the oldest ones here. If you turned on the lights and turned off the smoke machine and the music, all you’d have is a bunch of loser teenagers sitting around drinking coke.
Liv has offered to get me a fake ID so I can go to real clubs. But when I think about hauling everyone around town with me, pantless and tipsy and way-too-excited, it exhausts me. Maybe all my friendships are dissolving right before my eyes, maybe the group is too hard to keep together, maybe I can’t be bothered anymore.
The dance floor is aquatic, with purple-tinged arms waving in the air like seaweed. I keep my eyes on Marley in the middle, happily drowning, and I smile a little. The girl can dance, I’ll give her that much.
In Picnic at Hanging Rock you never find out exactly what happens to the girls, but there are hints. That’s probably why it was on the English list in the first place, so the teachers could wring the joy out of it with endless theories.
I don’t need to theorise; I know what happened to those girls.
They followed vixeny Miranda through a crack in the rock, through an almost-invisible tear in the fabric of the universe.
I imagine the cracks that might exist in our daily lives, in ordinary places. Secret doors at school, jagged edges of air that don’t match up at the train station. Fractures leading to another world. Where do they go, those girls that accidentally fall through a gap in the universe? What’s on the other side?
I blink. The lasers sweep across the dance floor and I can’t see Marley. It takes me a few seconds to locate her again. My heart keeps beating.
There’s a boy standing at the edges of the dance floor, watching me. He’s tall, with a shaved head.
His friends orbit around him in a way that suggests he’s the male version of me. You can tell they’re not private school boys, because they don’t look like their mothers have dressed them.
I pull the V of my bomber jacket down until it sits in a better place.
Their tall leader pushes off the wall and saunters towards me. I do the same and meet him in the middle.
In unspoken agreement, we make our way to the multistorey car park next door.
The car park is open at the sides, the concrete floors and pillars recycling the cold, whipping it down ramps and slaloming it through rows of parked cars. I’m forced to zip up my jacket.
His name is Marcel and he goes to a performing arts high school I’ve never heard of. When I tell him about Balmoral, he shrugs. He stops next to the fire escape door and I get a chance to look at him properly. He’s beautiful, I’ll admit it, with perfect skin and huge eyes.
Now that we’re here, who’s going to make the first move? Things are a small step away from getting awkward.
‘So, um, what year are you in?’ Marcel says eventually.
‘Ten,’ I answer. ‘How about you?’
He dips his head, smiles. When he raises his eyes again, he looks defiant. ‘Year Nine.’
I can’t keep the shock out of my voice. ‘How old are you?’ He towers over me.
‘Fifteen.’
‘I’m sixteen.’ I shake my head. If this gets out, I’ll never live it down.
Marcel smiles. ‘Well…I like older women?’
I smile back.
He reaches out and traces a finger around the outside curve of my breast, making me draw breath. ‘You’re really hot,’ he says.
He stoops and kisses my collarbone, then lower, pushing my tits up with both hands. He moves back up to my neck, the space below my ear lobes, then finally, my mouth. His lips and tongue are hot and wet, he kisses like he has plenty of experience. When he pushes me through the doorway and into the stairwell, I relax and let him. My back rests against the cold concrete wall.
Marcel presses his whole body against mine, and finally all the thoughts and visions from these last few weeks melt away. The ghosts creep back into the dark corners.
Marcel has a stubbly scalp and ridges of muscle on his arms. Skin on skin and soft mouths and I don’t see flashing blue lights and think about how I gave up on Yin long before she disappeared and maybe now I’m going to pay for it. We steam up the whole stairwell. We’re both out of breath when Marcel finally pulls away.
‘You know,’ he says, a newly sheepish and innocent expression filling his face. ‘I’ve never had a blowjob.’
I stare back. The lone light bulb in the corner casts distorting shadows over his gorgeous face. He’s batting his eyelashes with the best of them, namely me. I know his game. I tilt my chin and the corners of his mouth twitch.
‘Liar!’ I say. ‘You big fat liar.’
He smiles with full brilliance, dazzling teeth in the darkness. ‘It was worth a try, wasn’t it?’
‘Here’s a deal,’ I say, once I’ve made up my mind. ‘I’ll use my hands.’
I close the front door so gently it makes almost no sound. The lights are on in the back half of the house. I shuck off my coat, kick off my shoes and pad to the kitchen, where I spit my chewy in the bin and fill a glass of water.
It’s not until I turn towards my bedroom that I see Mum sitting very still at the dining table. I almost drop my glass.
‘Mum! What are you doing up?’
As long as I message her at a decent hour and promise to taxi home, she doesn’t wait up. There’s a bottle of wine and a glass on the table, and a stack of books. Mum is barefaced, her hair frizzy. Sometimes she looks so washed-out and saggy I have to promise myself I’ll never let things get that bad.
‘I couldn’t sleep, hon.’ She rubs her eyes. ‘I haven’t been sleeping in general.’
‘What are you looking at?’
She shows me.
An old photo album, open on somebody’s birthday party. Yin is right up in the camera, face painted, grinning with one tooth missing. A slap in the face.
‘I had no idea you kept these.’
It never occurred to me that Yin would be on Mum’s mind too. She sinks underneath me when I put my hand on her shoulder. I can see the weekend paper peeking out from underneath the photo albums, Yin’s photo on the front yet again.
I don’t want to step too close with my night-out grottiness, the debauchery behind my minty breath, the details of what I’d done with Marcel lurking in my eyes. It’s not often I wish I could be Mum and Dad’s little girl again, but perhaps tonight is one of those times.
The wine bottle is empty though, so I’m probably safe.
‘What did you used to say?’ I point at a photo of Yin and I with our heads together, my hair shockingly white-blonde, hers as black as it comes.
‘Double the cute, that’s what I used to say,’ says Mum. ‘You had the Polish hair. Mine was the same colour at that age.’
The remaining photos show us in a whirl of colour and activity as the party games heat up—musical chairs, giant’s treasure, pass-the-parcel. In the background is Mum, blurry, and Yin’s mum, right off to the side. Pages of half-forgotten dreams.
‘Were you friends with Chunjuan back then?’
I can’t remember our mums together, but they must have spent time in the same places, while Yin and I played. They must have talked on the phone and dropped us off at each other’s houses.
‘I suppose so…I found her hard to figure out though. Her work was so demanding and she was so serious. We would only talk about you kids, nothing else. I got along with Stephen—Mr Mitchell—better. Once he was on the scene.’
I’d forgotten how much time I used to spend at the Mitchells’ house. Chunjuan fed me and made up a blow-up bed for me on Yin’s floor and left out a clean towel and face washer for me when I stayed over and washed my knees when I scraped them and patiently watched the silly plays Yin and I performed using our dolls.
‘I can’t stop thinking about her trapped in that bathroom,’ Mum says. ‘What she’s going through.’
I’ve hardly thought about Chunjuan at all these last two weeks. Sometimes, I’m scum.
‘Is Dad home?’
Mum nods and turns to look me up and down and I am definitely not her little girl anymore.
‘What are you wearing?’ She tsks, so she can’t be that tired. ‘Oh Tal, it’s like feminism never happened.’
‘Technically speaking, I have the right to wear whatever I want,’ I say in an oratory style, because this is well-worn territory with us, ‘even though some of my choices could be seen as perpetuating objectification.’
‘You do listen.’ She sounds surprised.
‘I listen to everything you say, Mummy dearest. But I still don’t think it’s my job to take care of other people’s outdated attitudes. Or their lack of control.’
‘I know.’ Her arms and legs are dangling, the chair barely holding her. ‘I don’t disagree. But it’s different when it’s your daughter. As soon as you turned fourteen and men started looking at you—’
That makes me laugh, one sharp, loud, ‘Ha!’
‘What?’
‘Oh, Ma. Try eleven. There were pervs looking at me in Junior School.’
I lean in to kiss her shocked cheek, she grabs my wrist. ‘Sweetheart, how are you doing? Really.’
I don’t like that ‘really’.
‘Fine.’ I try to wrestle my arm free.
‘It’s good to talk. Don’t you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’ I decide to be straightforward for once. ‘I really don’t.’
I pretend not to see the flash of hurt across her face.
‘I’m always here,’ she says and then she unlocks the handcuffs and my wrist is free and I ignore the invisible pull of her, which could destroy my composure so easily, and I slip away.
Even though I’m exhausted, sleep won’t come. Little strips of street light show through my blinds.
Helicopters drone overhead, tracing circles over our suburb. There have been helicopters over our area more often recently. Every time I hear them I imagine a masked intruder running through backyards, climbing fences and darting down alleyways.
I watch the plain white ceiling of my bedroom, trying to imagine the inside of my head being as bland and empty as plaster. It doesn’t really work.
When we were not-so-little, just before high school, Yin and I believed that we were linked psychically. Or perhaps I believed, and Yin went along with the idea to be supportive.
For years we’d communicated in fragments of our made-up language, and the summer before Year Seven we decided we could also talk with our eyes. We’d sit at the dining table and stare at each other, having long ‘conversations’, breaking into laughter only when someone asked why we were acting so strange.
And what did I do with that connection? Took a big pair of scissors and severed it, right across the middle, because it didn’t suit me anymore, because I knew Yin wouldn’t be cool or popular in high school, or stand out in the way that I wanted to.
But even after we stopped hanging out, I’d sometimes catch her eye across the assembly hall or netball court, and wonder if we were still talking without talking. Sometimes she would look sad, I could see it in her eyes.
I empty my head to match the ceiling, and wait to hear Yin’s voice, calling out as if she was on a really bad phone line.
No voice comes.
It’s been three weeks since you were taken, I say to her, silently. I haven’t known what to think, how to act, what to do. I can’t figure out if there’s any hope and how much I’ve lost.
Sorry, I say, sorry sorry. Can you forgive me?
Radio silence. Yin isn’t sending out signals to me anymore. But why should she?