The Gaps

by Leanne Hall

  ‘Fine.’ I can barely talk around a massive crunchy mouthful of cracker. I check out her library haul on the bench as I chew.

  Every crime novel has the same cover. Dark backgrounds with bold all-caps titles in white, blue or yellow. A surprising amount of them have dead girls or about-to-be-dead girls on the front cover. The blurbs speak of unhappy wives who drink so much they can’t tell if they’ve seen a murder or not, women whose pasts have come back to haunt them, and promising young girls who’ll never get to realise their dreams. The titles tell us how lost, how alone, how trapped all these lovely girls and women are.

  Even though the photos are supposed to show something raw and horrible, they’re actually incredibly polished and posed and digitally altered. I look closely at Blood Sisters, which has the best cover. It fits right in with all the reference images I’ve been collecting for my project.

  ‘Are you planning to elaborate on that?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Not right now, no.’ I hold up Blood Sisters. ‘Can I borrow this for a few days?’

  I sit on my bed with my earbuds in, listening to music and flicking through the photos I took at Brandon’s tonight. Selfies of Katie, Liana and I with our faces squished together. Was being at Morrison High the main thing we had in common? Is that all it takes to end friendships, a change of habit or routine? I thought we were stronger than that.

  A hot whoosh of air rises through the vents in the floor and I realise that Sam has sneakily turned the heating on even though I tell him all the time we can’t afford to turn it on every night.

  When I go to the control panel in the dark hallway to turn it off, something shifts in the very corner of my vision, in the shadows.

  My heart leaps for a brief moment, before I realise it’s Sam, shuffling slowly out of his bedroom. A white smudge in the dark corridor, arms dangling by his sides. His eyes are open but he doesn’t see anything.

  I catch up to him in the middle of the living room, swaying uncertainly.

  ‘Back to bed, Sam.’ I take him by the shoulders and try to steer him gently back towards his room.

  ‘I saw him,’ he mumbles. ‘Hiding…’

  ‘You’re sleepwalking, buddy. Come on.’

  I walk him back to his room and tuck his covers around him after he lies down. I switch his old nightlight on, still plugged in at the socket, and stars made of light oscillate around the room.

  The sleepwalking started just over a week ago, around the time the media started calling Yin’s abductor Doctor Calm. The name has invaded Sam’s brain, we don’t know how, because we’ve made sure he doesn’t watch the news. They’ve probably been talking about it at school.

  We keep finding Sam in random locations around the house, asleep and confused. He’s fine during the day, but at night he roams.

  I return to my room and check the latest news reports—my sick new ritual before going to sleep each night.

  After four weeks most of the information is old. The only new thing is a sketch of a house that police say could be Doctor Calm’s, made from evidence given by Karolina Bauer.

  It’s disconcerting how ordinary the house looks.

  The bedroom has a double bed, two bedside tables, matching lamps with yellow lampshades. Striped drapes, tan carpet. A door to an ensuite bathroom.

  White and tan tiles. Shower over the bath, half-screen door. Sink and vanity, wall radiator. Small frosted window up high, too high and too small to climb through.

  It could be anyone’s house.

  Maybe there was a time when I thought the police had a chance of finding Yin, but if this is the best they’ve got—this, an identikit of someone in a balaclava and a pretty vague profile of an imaginary man—then there is no chance at all.

  DAY 32

  I lurk outside the art rooms like a super-creep. My folio is tagged with pink notes. The last week has been a frenzy of sketching, finding visual references and trying to make my ideas gel. I feel like Arnold when he’s got the scent of something at the park and can’t let it be.

  All my other homework has fallen by the wayside. I can only hope my concept makes sense, and that I can get Bochen excited enough about my project to help.

  I can’t believe I’ve finally settled on an idea I like.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Natalia pops up at my left elbow, chewing gum and staring with those uncanny blue-green eyes of hers. She’s finally joined the herd and switched to winter uniform. I want to throw back a childish ‘none of your business’, but I don’t.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

  ‘You’re always so cryptic, Cardell.’ She peers around the art room door, assessing the small group of girls inside. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. Who are you waiting for?’

  I can see that she’s not going to let me be. I’m pretty sure Natalia is similar to Katie. If you resist her too much she’ll go out of her way to cause you trouble, but if you give her just enough info to satisfy her, then she’s more likely to let it drop.

  ‘I need a model for my art project. Someone with a certain look.’

  ‘One of them? Which one?’

  ‘Bochen.’

  ‘Why? She’s so strange looking.’

  Bochen has long, straight black hair like Liana. I want the picture to be dark, mostly black and white with small accents of red. Snow White colours. Snow White is supposed to have dark hair and pale skin, and Bochen ticks both of those boxes.

  ‘She’s got an interesting face.’ And you’ve got no imagination, I want to add. Bochen belongs in an elegant woodcut from the nineteenth century.

  ‘Her mouth is so small I don’t even know how she can eat.’

  ‘Why do you have to always say stuff like that?’

  Natalia’s mouth falls slack. ‘Uh, because it’s true?’

  ‘Plenty of things are true, it doesn’t mean you have to say them. You do have a choice.’

  Natalia’s face is blank, like she really doesn’t understand what I’m saying. And she wonders why people call her names behind her back.

  ‘She’ll never do it,’ she says.

  An exasperated huff escapes me.

  ‘I know she won’t,’ Natalia insists. ‘Show me what you need and I’ll suggest someone.’

  Natalia snatches my folio out of my hands before I even realise what she’s doing. She slouches against the wall—she makes even our spinsterish winter uniform look like a deliberate fashion look—and flicks through my jumble of ideas.

  I’ve added some crime novel covers and sketched out how I want the photo to look: a maybe-sleeping girl in a forest, or somewhere else, I haven’t decided yet. She could be asleep, or unconscious, or even dead. There’s an air of something supernatural, or slightly magical, about her. I might use fairy lights to create that atmosphere, or maybe even paint colours over the photo, like I did for my self portrait. I want the viewer to be confused about whether they’re looking at a fairytale or a crime scene.

  I can’t read Natalia’s face at all as she turns the pages. ‘Can I have it back, please?’

  ‘This is kind of twisted, Cardell.’

  I hold my hand out for my folio but Natalia hoists it above her head.

  ‘Come and get it.’ She dances backwards.

  ‘You do realise that I’m a foot taller than you, don’t you?’ I try to grab it but she jumps away. ‘I can take you easily.’

  I grab again and Natalia shrieks like a child having a really amazing fun time and somehow my folio ends up spilling its guts all over the floor. I crouch down and try to stuff the pages in. Natalia tries to join me but I give her such a dirty look she steps back.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Bochen stands in the doorway of the art room. ‘Are you two spying on us?’

  ‘No,’ I say, at exactly the same time Natalia says, ‘Yes. Yes, we are.’

  Bochen laughs. ‘Now I don’t know what I think.’

  ‘Chloe has something to ask you, Bochen.’

  If I could make Natalia spontaneously
combust using the power of my furious mind, I would. But there’s no way of avoiding it now.

  ‘I need help with my project.’ My voice squeaks and I swear Natalia smirks. I swallow and continue. ‘I need to take photos of someone and I think you’d be perfect for it.’

  The smooth, casual things I’d planned to say to Bochen to persuade her to pose for me have fallen out of my brain.

  ‘So, would you do it? It’d be one afternoon of your time. They’re not close-ups. You’d be…lying down…’

  My cheeks are flaming. Bochen looks surprised, pushes her glasses back up her nose.

  ‘Oh, not me, Chloe. You need a pretty girl, maybe Cherry. You should ask her. She likes to show off.’

  I don’t need a show-off. That’s the last thing I need.

  ‘You’re pretty too.’ I don’t know who I’ll ask if she doesn’t do it.

  ‘Sorry, Chloe!’ Bochen gives me a big smile but I can tell she’s trying to escape. ‘You’re so talented! You’re going to beat my ass at this prize!’

  ‘It’s not for—’ I dribble out, but she’s gone. The heat from my cheeks spreads up my face and heads for my tear ducts.

  ‘Bochen is failing maths and her parents are threatening to bring her back home if her grades don’t improve.’

  I turn my head away from Natalia and blink fast. ‘Why are you telling me this? No, actually, why are you still here?’

  ‘She doesn’t have time to help you, she’s cramming. It’s nothing personal.’

  ‘I’m not taking it personally!’ I say, too loudly. I stomp down the corridor. I feel foolish for not knowing the first thing about Bochen’s life, despite our friendly conversations, when apparently Natalia knows everything about her. She even tried to warn me, which only makes me feel worse.

  ‘Your folio is really good.’ Natalia follows me. ‘You’ve done a lot of work.’

  ‘Doing a lot of work doesn’t matter if your ideas are shit.’

  ‘Who said your ideas are shit?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you find your minions? Or are you coming to the tuckshop with me?’

  She ignores my questions. ‘Turn to that page with the crime books.’

  I hold my defiled folio tighter. ‘I know the one you mean.’

  Dead Girl Walking. When She Left. The Wife You Knew.

  ‘They remind me of that TV show, Devil Creek? Do you know it? My minions love it.’

  I’m quiet but listening. I slow down.

  ‘Devil Creek is totally dead girl porn. A bit like some of those covers. We should watch it together some time.’

  I let that weird invitation slide. But the name, Devil Creek, sounds familiar.

  ‘What about me?’ says Natalia. ‘I’ll be your model if you ask nicely.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  Too posey, I think, too obvious. I think of the dark and delicate and subtle things I want to express and Natalia is not any of them. I jangle my tuckshop money in my skirt pocket as we walk. ‘Why do you want to help me?’

  We stop and I stare at her innocent angel face, which hides the personality of a demon. I try to figure out if she’s making fun of me.

  ‘It’s not about helping.’ Said as if it’s a dirty word. ‘You’re going to do this thing, it’s going to win the art prize, and I’ll be part of it. I’ll bask in your glory, or whatever.’

  ‘I’m not doing this for the prize.’

  ‘What? This is going to be good, I can tell already. You should go for gold.’

  We’re on a collision course with Sarah and Marley, linking arms near the stairwell down to the tuckshop. Ally is practising some seriously filthy dance moves on the banister. She looks like obscure European royalty but she doesn’t always act that way.

  Natalia fixes her supernatural eyes on me.

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve got the right look.’ I bite my lip. Who am I kidding? My vision for the photo keeps dissolving every time I try to grab onto it.

  I try to look at Natalia objectively, and mentally adjust what I’ve been picturing.

  ‘You look otherworldly enough…but too dangerous for what I’ve got in mind. It’s supposed to look like a fairytale gone wrong. You’re more of a mean pixie type, or the old sort of fairy. The kind who tangles mortals in wishes and promises, and tricks them into eating fairy food so they can’t return to the human world.’

  This alone should be nerdy and insulting enough for permanent excommunication, but instead something flashes inside Natalia, an extra spark of interest. Up until now I could have sworn she was playing with me.

  ‘All of those girls come from in-between places.’ She points at my folio. ‘Dead and alive. Heaven and hell. Or some other place and the real world.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ I say with shock in my voice. That’s better than I could have described it. Maybe that’s what I’m aiming for.

  ‘Give me your phone, Cardell.’

  She calls herself on my phone, while still keeping a close eye on her friends.

  ‘You know what makes me sick?’ she says. ‘Everyone skating along the surface and not talking about what’s really happening.’

  She’s lost me. ‘I need to think about it more. I’ll let you know.’

  She hands me my phone. ‘Well, when you decide yes, I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Right,’ I nod. ‘Okay.’

  She joins her friends and they pour like oil through the corridor in the way that they do.

  DAY 34

  Mum beckons for me to join her in the lounge room. The six o’clock news is just starting, and the anchorwoman is saying something about Yin.

  My heart stops. ‘Did they find her?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  I sit close to Mum on the couch, my heart beating again.

  Yin’s parents appear on screen, looking a little stunned. They’ve both aged in the last five weeks. You can tell from the camera flashes and the clusters of microphones that the press conference is jammed full.

  This time it isn’t Mr Mitchell that speaks. Yin’s mum reads from a sheet of paper held in shaking hands. The faintest trace of an accent runs through her words.

  ‘Yin was born on this day sixteen years ago. She was my first child and I was so happy to meet her. She was a perfect baby with a full head of black hair.’

  Mrs Mitchell starts hiccup-crying. Her husband’s arm sneaks around her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, man.’ Mum grabs my hand and starts kneading it.

  Mrs Mitchell swallows, continues.

  ‘Dad, Mum, Nelson and Albert wish you a happy birthday, Yin. Wherever you are. Tonight we pray that you will return to us soon. To the man who has my daughter, please be kind to her on this special day. I think you are a good man who can do the right thing. To the public—thank you for your kind words and thoughts. We announce that we are offering a reward of one hundred thousand Australian dollars for information leading to the return of our daughter. Please, we are begging you, if you know anything that might help the investigation, please contact the police. You can be anonymous. Help us find Yin.’

  A reporter shouts a question, but a woman in a suit steps in and takes over the microphone. The footage cuts out and the newsreader takes over.

  ‘Police have released an updated photo of Yin Mitchell, which may be closer to her current appearance.’

  The photo they show is more recent, maybe even this year’s school photo.

  ‘Again, if any member of the public believes they have any information related to Yin’s disappearance, they are urged to contact the hotline number below.’

  A tear slides down Mum’s cheek. She wipes it away, pretends it wasn’t there in the first place. ‘Albert and Nelson? Those kids will be getting hell at school with those names.’

  I give her a rueful smile as my phone vibrates in my pocket.

  It’s an unknown number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Are you watching it?’

  I can’t tell who it is. The person on
the other end gets impatient. ‘It’s Natalia. From school. Are you watching the news?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’ I get up and go to my bedroom. ‘Did you know it was her birthday?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’ Silence and uneven breathing.

  I flop down on my bed. ‘A hundred thousand is a lot of money.’

  More breathing, then, ‘The reward shouldn’t be for her return, it should be for information that puts that sicko away for life.’

  ‘She could still be alive.’

  All of a sudden I’m afraid the reward will work. It’s been more than a month. What if it’s not about Yin’s safe return, but about finding her body? Maybe it’s better not knowing. I look at my neglected picture wall and everything on it seems so old, from a million years ago. Irrelevant.

  There’s dead silence for so long I wonder if I’ve messed up.

  After way too long, Natalia speaks. ‘So, do you want me to do the photo shoot with you, or not? I don’t do nudes though.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief.’

  She snorts in a humourless way. ‘Okay, so when do you want to do it?’

  My brain spins, trying to figure out how soon I can be ready, or even if I want to be ready. I’m still not a hundred per cent sure this isn’t an elaborate plan to make fun of me.

  ‘How about the first week of holidays?’

  That will give me time to plan the lighting and find a location and see what equipment I can borrow from school, and then time to edit the photo and paint on it and anything else I decide to do afterwards. If I’m lucky.

  ‘Nup, can’t do. We’re at the beach house that week. What about the second week?’

  It seems as if everyone at Balmoral is going somewhere for the September holidays. The end of the holidays will be way too late.

  ‘That doesn’t give me enough time to finish it. How about the first weekend after we go on break? Sunday?’

  ‘You mean next Sunday?’

  She’s right. How did the term get away from me so badly? ‘There’s a lot to organise…’

  ‘God, Cardell, settle down. You’re a massive geek, I’m sure you can pull this off.’