The Gaps Read online

  DAY 2

  I’m always nervous walking into school on a Monday morning, but today it’s especially weird. There’s a sick buzz flowing through the Year Ten corridor, and it’s littered with whispered scraps:

  Small groups huddle—there are tears, hugs, wide rabbit eyes.

  I have to fill five gaping minutes before form room, so I sit in front of my locker and colour in my knee with black texta to hide the hole in my opaque tights. I imagine a clear, wobbling bubble, separating me from everyone else.

  No one comes to talk to me, to ask if I’m scared, did I sleep, how I’m feeling, and I’m relieved. Yin was—Yin is—a Junior Schooler, and some of these girls have known her since they were six years old. Nothing I’m experiencing could possibly compare with what they’re going through.

  I only lift my head when I hear the traditional morning bitchnami crashing down the hallway. You’d think they’d take the day off, but no.

  Natalia et al march four across like teen witches in a movie, and everyone gets out of their way, as usual. People refer to them collectively as The Blondes, for obvious reasons. They didn’t get the memo that it would be politically correct to include some ethnics in their group. Not that I’m applying for the job.

  I draw my legs in, but not quickly enough.

  ‘Out of my way, new girl,’ says Natalia. But her expression is empty; her heart’s not in it.

  I don’t mind what she calls me: it’s the truth. Six months at Balmoral still makes me the new girl. I don’t go skiing with them in winter; we didn’t ride ponies together as kids. A lot of the new girls in my year are boarders and they bonded quicker than survivors on a desert island. The ones that aren’t boarders still have the right parents, live in the right postcodes.

  Sarah, always a step behind Natalia in every way, gives me the finger as they pass.

  ‘Goth,’ Sarah mouths. Her hair, straightened this morning, swings beautifully behind her. There’s a lot of maintenance required to be a Blonde. The other two betas, Ally and Marley, look sheepish. Their foursome is simultaneously beautiful and ridiculous, like an ad that you know is airbrushed to hell but you still can’t look away.

  My bubble breaks open and corridor noise spills back in. Someone’s left a banana in their locker over the weekend and the smell spreads far and wide. I spin my combination lock.

  ‘Fingernails, Chloe!’ a teacher barks. ‘Gone by recess.’

  My nails are chipped metallic blue; a hangover from the weekend. If I wanted to answer back—and I don’t—I wouldn’t be able to, because Mr Scrutton is already nothing but a distant speck.

  Instead of normal morning assembly with the whole school in the Great Hall, they quarantine Year Ten in the Performing Arts Centre. Our teachers hover at the end of rows, their faces tight. Mrs Wang and Ms Nouri have clearly been crying. I think they’re aiming for a ‘safe space’ vibe, but instead it feels like punishment. The whole year level is infected.

  The principal, Mrs Christie, is belted tight in forest green and booming as usual.

  ‘…some of you will want to speak to the school counsellor or the chaplain, and we encourage you to do so.’

  I tuck my blue nails inside my jumper sleeves as our year level coordinator, Mrs Benjamin, sweeps the gathering with her laser eyes. Someone in the row behind me is swallowing sobs.

  ‘Miss Starcke will be available all day. You can sign up at reception. Mr O’Connor will be running a pastoral care session at lunch.’

  Miss Starcke stands before us and nods, but seems seconds away from bolting. Mr O’Connor, on the other hand, looks good and ready to ram a little Jesus down our throats.

  ‘We have been reassured that the police are making extraordinary efforts to ensure your classmate is returned safely.’

  A crackle rises at the mention of the police. Mrs Christie meets it head-on. She grips the edges of the lectern in full power-stance mode.

  ‘You would have seen the media at the gates this morning. I don’t need to tell you that we expect every student here to demonstrate their maturity and refrain from talking to reporters. If you have any important information, you are urged to talk to the police. Reception will take your names, and they will contact you directly. LET. US. PRAY.’

  Hundreds of heads drop. Mrs Christie prays in the same voice she uses to talk about skirt length and bags left out in the corridors. She hasn’t said Yin’s name once. I suppose she wants to keep us under control, more than anything. As if we’ll erupt into hysteria at any moment. Which we might.

  I keep my head up and my eyes open as the prayer drones on.

  Most girls lower their heads and close their eyes, even though I don’t believe for a second that all of them are religious. The fence-sitters drop their heads but keep their eyes open. Only a small number rise above the crowd, and they’re not the popular girls or the chronically rebellious. They’re the nerdy girls and the quiet girls, girls who practise other religions and atheists like me. Yin was one of us.

  I glance down my row and see Petra’s lips moving frantically. Her eyes are squinched shut; she’s praying as if her life, not someone else’s, depends on it. Even though I’m not a believer, there’s something beautiful about how her faith shows in her face, like there’s a small light inside her. If it wasn’t completely inappropriate and intrusive, I’d like to take a photo of her now, capture that look.

  I try not to act surprised when Petra speaks to me in the corridor, as if she somehow sensed me watching her during prayers. The first bell rings around us. Our lockers have been side by side all year, yet we’ve never done much more than nod hello.

  ‘They didn’t even like Yin,’ Petra whispers around her locker door. ‘I don’t know why they have to make such a scene.’

  The scene is most of 10S sitting on the floor in a red-eyed, sniffling heap. Teaghan is hiccup-crying loudly. They look genuinely upset, although I notice one or two girls looking up occasionally to check that everyone is noting their distress.

  I wedge my foot under my locker door to stop it from swinging too far open. My phone jitters on the top shelf. I don’t even need to look at the screen to know that it’s yet another episode in the Morrison High meltdown. Liana and Katie have even got the boys messaging me, telling me to come back.

  ‘They never paid any attention to her,’ Petra says. ‘And now they’re carrying on as if she was their best friend.’

  I don’t know enough about school politics to judge if what she says is true.

  The inside of Petra’s locker is plastered with timetables, flyers for school societies, inspirational quotes, a list headed ‘Yearly Goals’, and a photo of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her textbooks are stacked neatly in a tower, from largest to smallest.

  ‘Are you friends with Yin?’

  ‘I guess. We’re in orchestra together. She’s first clarinet and I’m second, so we sit next to each other.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll get released?’ I ask. ‘Safely, I mean?’

  I mean alive. Petra might be the only person I get to talk about Yin with today, so I may as well ask.

  ‘Karolina Bauer was returned after twenty hours.’ Petra clutches her textbooks to her chest and speaks fast. She’s the same height as me, but she hunches.

  ‘The exchange student, right?’

  Petra nods. ‘It’s now over twenty-four hours since Yin was taken, give or take a few hours because they don’t know the exact time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad has happened.’

  ‘So you think it’s the same guy? They wouldn’t say on the news last night.’

  ‘Almost definitely.’ Petra lowers her voice. ‘The modus operandi is very similar. I’ve been comparing. In both cases, entry was through a ground-floor window, and family members were tied up. And if I’m right, then the weapon he carried was a gun.’

  I try not to raise my eyebrows. Petra is intense. The second bell rings, setting off a chorus of slammed locker doors.

  ‘Karolina survived because she k
ept quiet and did what she was told,’ Petra continues when the bell stops. ‘She memorised important details about her surroundings, even though none of it ever got released to the public. Do you know why the police never reveal all the evidence? They keep it under wraps so they can use it to verify—’

  Petra breaks off as her best friend Audrey joins us.

  ‘You ready?’ Audrey doesn’t look at me. If I was asked to name the most aloof girl in our year level, Audrey would win, hands down. She is so above everything I almost admire her for it.

  ‘Sure.’ Petra gives me a brief, polite smile. She wrestles a music case out of her locker.

  ‘I need help with Chem.’ Audrey all but clicks her fingers as she walks off, Petra at her heels. The boarders stick together, and Petra especially sticks to Audrey. She’s undeniably the suckerfish and Audrey is undeniably the shark.

  DAY 3

  Day three of Yin missing, and the student distribution in the quadrangle is out of whack. Normally groups of Year Tens spread out to every part of the courtyard, but today we huddle close on the steps. Even those who are pretending not to take part sit close enough to eavesdrop.

  We’re not supposed to have our phones out during school hours, but that’s not possible now. Not when there’s rolling news coverage online, comments and theories and prayers and wishes. Some girls haven’t stopped crying yet, and none of us look like we’ve slept.

  My usual lunch spot is the low brick wall above the steps, putting me higher than the rest of the quad, with the dangling branches of a willow screening me. Claire and Milla, Yin’s closest friends, are the epicentre of the gathering. They look incomplete without Yin, a triangle with one of its sides missing. I’d seen them walking around school, heads together, in the library, hauling their musical instruments from one place to the other.

  ‘They were wearing normal clothes, not police uniforms,’ says Claire. ‘We talked in the lounge room and my parents had to be there.’

  Teaghan sits close to them. ‘What did they say? Do they have any leads?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. I mean, if I did have something to tell them, a secret, I wouldn’t do it with Mum and Dad there.’

  ‘Did I miss anything?’ Lisbeth slides onto the wall beside me. I shake my head and move over so we can both see.

  Lisbeth and I have joint custody of the quad wall; sometimes we lay our sandwiches between us and swap halves. I don’t have that much in common with Lisbeth, but she’s always been friendly to me, and that counts for a lot. She doesn’t seem to have many friends and I think it’s because her family are Pentecostal Christians, the full speak-in-tongues type. Even her sandwiches taste religious.

  Claire looks stunned by the attention. Her face is blotchy and her eyes puffy. Teaghan pokes her until she answers the question.

  ‘They asked if Yin had been upset recently, or if she’d had any fights with her parents or teachers or anyone else.’

  ‘See? I told you. They think she’s run away,’ says Sarah.

  The Blondes, normally in their own secluded corner, sit on the bottom step. Sarah lies on Ally’s lap; Ally is wedged up against Marley. With the tree masking me, I can watch Natalia unseen. She sits slightly apart, touching no one, drawing biro patterns on her bare legs. She seems oblivious to everything around her, but something tells me that she’s listening intently. She’s still wearing her summer dress, even though we were meant to have switched to winter uniform at the beginning of the term. It’s entirely possible that cold blood runs through her veins. Natalia is like one of those ships that power through the polar ice caps. Good at everything, with zero effort. An A-student, makes sporting teams, gets leads in school plays, rules the roost.

  ‘And has she run away?’ Teaghan mimics a current affairs reporter. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’

  ‘They asked me if she ever talked to strangers online.’ Milla’s eyes aren’t as puffy as Claire’s but I notice her nails are bitten down so far they’re bleeding. She chews on them now. ‘One theory is that she has a secret boyfriend.’

  That makes Sarah snort into her juice. She has the unusual good grace to turn it into a cough. I want to speak up, to say that doesn’t make any sense—because who trapped Yin’s mum in the bathroom?—but I don’t.

  ‘Has she been acting worried or scared recently? That was another question.’ Milla’s voice drops and the whole year level leans in. I almost topple off the wall. ‘Was she scared of anything?’

  Everyone is quiet for a few seconds, running through, I imagine, the old monsters and bogeymen of their childhoods, and the new teenage ones as well. Serial killers, rapists, paedophiles, pornographers, public masturbators, flashers, angry guys we ghosted, creepy uncles, online stalkers.

  ‘The woman asked a lot of questions about her phone,’ Claire adds. ‘I thought maybe it’s missing?’

  ‘Yin had that silly cover she bought on Etsy, remember?’ Milla ventures a private smile to her friend, but something else is occurring to Claire.

  ‘Mil, did you message her that night?’ she says. ‘I did. I was asking about orchestra practise.’

  Milla nods with wide eyes.

  ‘Imagine if he read your messages.’ Teaghan can barely hide how titillated this new idea makes her. ‘The kidnapper, I mean. He could be reading your private, personal messages, right now on Yin’s phone. Or looking at photos of you.’

  Fresh horror on Milla and Claire’s faces. If I had a history of participation at Balmoral this is probably where I’d step in and tell Teaghan to stop being such a vulture. I look across at Lisbeth, and can see she’s thinking a similar thing. Natalia stabs her biro into the ground.

  Teaghan must sense the tide threatening to turn against her, because she adds, ‘I mean, I’m just so distressed. Mum says we’re going to have PTSD from this.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ someone says. ‘The man that’s keeping Yin has his hands full at the moment. So, in a way, we’re safer than ever.’

  ‘I heard that they were using GPS to track where she went,’ chimes in someone else.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ Natalia sits up sharply, instantly alert, alert all along. Her eyes flash. I’m reminded of a predator moving into position. I lean as far forwards as I can without falling off the wall, Lisbeth too. Something awful builds in the quadrangle.

  It’s easy to want something to happen, anything, even a fight. Something to break the tension, a wave to crash over us, letting us know that, yes, disaster has really struck.

  The girl who made the comment—Tara or Kara or something like that—clearly regrets speaking. One word from Natalia, one look even, can cut some of these girls to ribbons.

  ‘Online,’ Tara/Kara mutters eventually. ‘Someone set up a private group. People are saying what they know, what they’ve heard. The teachers have been told not to talk to us, so how else are we supposed to figure out what’s going on?’

  ‘Did you write that email?’ someone calls out.

  The girl closest to Lisbeth and I says in a low voice to her friend, ‘I’m going to walk home a different way every day. In case I’m being watched.’

  ‘Say whatever you want in your group.’ Natalia stands. ‘Send around those pointless chain emails, I don’t care. She’s not coming back.’

  More than a few mouths are open. A gust of wind tears through the trees, jangling leaves, jangling nerves. I haven’t heard anything about a chain email, but it doesn’t surprise me that I’d be left out of the loop.

  ‘How would you know, Natalia?’ Teaghan demands. ‘Have you got some special line to the police?’

  Natalia may be short and slight, but she commands everyone’s attention easily. ‘The GPS thing doesn’t make any sense. If police knew where she was, they would have rescued her days ago, they wouldn’t wait. If they knew anything, they’d be talking. Do you know how long it’s been? She’s not coming home.’

  ‘We know how long it’s been!’ Claire manages to get these last words out befo
re dissolving into tears.

  Milla cradles Claire’s head on her shoulder, her face crumpled. ‘Why are you such a bitch, Natalia? Why can’t you be nice?’

  Sarah gasps at that, gasps so hard I almost laugh at the melodrama of it. People talking back to Natalia: it was like a solar eclipse. It hardly ever happened.

  Natalia’s voice is calm but her hands are clenched. ‘You’re all thinking exactly the same thing. Don’t pretend you’re not.’ She stands up and her friends stand with her. ‘Eighty-eight hours and counting. That’s too long. Time to face facts. I’m the only person with the guts to say it.’

  No one speaks.

  I can see Natalia’s chest rising and falling, even from here.

  The wind does a lap of the quadrangle, scattering plastic wrappers and paper bags. Sarah clamps her hands over her shiny hair.

  The anger melts off Natalia’s face and something else, another expression, is visible for a split second before she covers it up. Then her face hardens and she mutters to herself and turns away.

  ‘Huh,’ says Lisbeth.

  Even though Lisbeth has cochlear implants in both ears, she still lip-reads at times. I don’t ask her what she’s seen. If she wanted to tell me, she would.

  The bell rings.

  Everyone disperses slower than usual. I jump off the wall and brush off my skirt. There’s a strange sensation in my mouth, like it's full of words I might actually let out at school.

  Lisbeth says, ‘It doesn’t seem real, does it? It’s like a nightmare. I’ve been praying a lot.’

  I can’t think of a reply to that, so I ask a question. ‘Do you think she’ll get released?’

  ‘I read about something that happened in America. Three girls were held in a basement for eleven whole years before they escaped, all of them alive. It gave me some hope.’

  I’m not sure that being imprisoned for eleven years is preferable to being dead and at rest, and I don’t even believe in heaven. Lisbeth and I drift towards the breezeway door, waiting for a flood of Year Eights to pass through.