The Gaps

by Leanne Hall

  ‘Everything but? Nah, I’m not into that butt stuff.’

  It takes me a moment to catch her drift, and then I can see she’s barely holding herself together.

  ‘Filthy harlot!’

  I throw fries at her and she grows hysterical. Finally, someone with their head as much in the gutter as me.

  ‘TELL ME, LITTLE CHLO-CHLO.’

  Eventually she relents.

  ‘Okay, okay. I did it a few times, and I shouldn’t have. This guy Brandon at my old school really liked me, and I knew I wanted to. I wasn’t in love with him or anything. I thought it would be a good opportunity to…get it out of the way? That sounds awful, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, I get it.’

  ‘Afterwards I didn’t know why I’d been in such a rush to do it. And I also figured out way too late that he’s got a thing for Asian girls. I felt…like I should have realised.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? We’re teenagers. Apparently we’re supposed to be impulsive one hundred per cent of the time.’

  We smile at each other and it’s this completely calm moment. My smile wavers when I realise this might be the first time I’ve felt genuinely happy since Yin was taken.

  I’m a monster.

  There were so many times today when I was going to tell Chloe about my history with Yin, how close we used to be. And I knew if I did Chloe wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, she would take it in, like she does with everything, like a sponge that soaks up everything you’ve spilled. But I still didn’t say anything.

  ‘Chloe,’ I whisper, leaning forwards, shaking off the guilts. ‘There’s this old lady right behind you, and she’s been listening to every word we’ve said.’

  Her mouth makes a perfect shocked circle, and she’s trying to see over her shoulder, and then Jeremy knocks really loudly on the window with his car keys and scares the living daylights out of both of us.

  When I get home I go straight to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of juice. I finish it and pour another. I have a very specific orange juice thirst that will never be quenched.

  I think of all the boys and the couple of girls that I’ve had not-sex with and it calms me to run through the list, picturing faces and names and parties and places. I don’t think about cold concrete against my skin and uncontrollable shivers.

  I start looking in the cupboards for a packet of those fun-size chocolate bars that Mum hides for when she’s menopausal, and my plan is to eat them one after the other in the bath while the world goes away, at least for a little while.

  ‘Keep it down,’ a voice says. ‘Your dad’s upstairs with one of his migraines.’

  Mum is on the couch, in the dark, doing nothing that I can see, which is something that she’s been doing more and more of lately. I kick off my heavy boots and sit with her. I offer her the bag of chocolate bars. She takes one but doesn’t open it.

  Last time Dad had migraines he had to take three weeks off work. When he’s not all the way on, he’s usually all the way off.

  ‘Did you have fun with your friend?’

  ‘She’s not my friend.’

  I feel terrible a split-second after saying that out loud. Embarrassing crying aside, I had more fun with Chloe today than I have had with anyone for a while.

  ‘Well, did you have fun with your not-friend?’

  ‘Yes I did. And you’re right, she is my friend.’ I polish off a bar in two bites and start on another. I should have asked Chloe if she needed help over the school holidays, if there’s anything else I could do. I should have made that much more clear when she and Jeremy dropped me off.

  ‘You look pretty with your hair like that,’ Mum says.

  I touch my head, feeling the pointy crown atop my skull, which is where it’s been the whole time we drove home and ate Maccas. I’d forgotten I was wearing it. Yin and I never told our parents, never told any grown-ups, about Wingdonia. I might have mentioned it to Liv, but that’s it.

  ‘How come Dad’s not well?’

  Mum sighs. ‘This has been hard on him. The police coming here really upset him. Not that he’ll say so out loud. We found out that the McIlwraiths had their house searched too.’

  My chewing halts. Sarah didn’t say a word.

  ‘God, this whole thing. It’s not healthy for you girls, is it?’ Mum rubs her temples as if she’s also brewing a headache. ‘Every man you know is a potential suspect. How are you going to grow up to like them?’

  ‘I like them just fine,’ I say, without even knowing if it’s true. Maybe it is. Marcel keeps messaging me, even though I’ve hardly been encouraging. I might have spoken too eagerly, because Mum’s eyebrows are now saying: don’t like them too much.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right though, love?’ Mum reaches out and strokes my arm. ‘Do you want to speak to anyone about all this?’

  I brush her aside. I don’t want her to start on one of her ‘you’ll feel better if you talk about it and you know you can tell me anything, anything at all’ spiels.

  ‘Should I go upstairs and see if Dad needs anything?’

  ‘I think he wants to be on his own,’ says Mum, and I’m relieved.

  DAY 43

  Something bizarre happens as I’m standing on the Mitchells’ doorstep. I shrink, like Alice after drinking from the bottle, and then I’m twelve years old and my hair is long and snarled and my boobs have just come in. I’m allowed to spend all afternoon and evening at Yin’s house and all I want to do is watch dance tutorials on YouTube. All Yin wants to do is read, hold her guinea pigs and tell me about orchestra camp, boring boring. There’s smoke in the air from the bushfires and we are already splitting apart without really knowing it yet, the way tectonic plates move away from each other minutely, breaking up continents.

  The door opens a crack, Chunjuan looks through and the spell is broken.

  I’m still drained from the photo shoot yesterday and the tote bag full of Yin’s things is a burden and my head spins from the time travel.

  If I was scared that Chunjuan wouldn’t want to see me, I needn’t have been. Welcome marks her face.

  ‘No one there?’ Her eyes dart over the garden.

  I remember that they’ve been at the centre of a media circus for six weeks now and you’d think they’d lock their front gate, but they don’t. They’ve always been hit and miss with it, that’s the bit no one ever mentions in any of the TV reports about their supposed fortress, and also that the video intercom has never been wired in.

  Chunjuan ushers me in and she doesn’t hug me, she grips my arm in that way she’s always had and leans her head into mine. The smell in here, the rose-scented cleaning spray and something pungent simmering on the stove, makes my head spin through layers of time again and I have to breathe to bring myself fully into the here and now.

  ‘Ice tea, juice, Ovalteen, Pepsi?’ Chunjuan says when we are installed in the kitchen.

  ‘Ovalteen?’ I didn’t know you could still get it. Chunjuan moves to make it. I let my bag slump to the floor. There are bits of dried grass on it, from where I hid it on the banks of the oval during classes.

  I looked through the stuff from Yin’s locker properly at home, finally, and what do you know, there was nothing to worry about, nothing too sinister or heartbreaking and no reason to avoid it. I held her things and I couldn’t tell if she was still the Yin I knew.

  The kitchen is the same but different and Chunjuan’s face is the same but different. She pops the microwave door to heat the milk.

  The walls are a different colour since I was here last, peach instead of tan. Every appliance is stainless steel and new, but the scrolls on the wall are old and the photos in the frames are too. There’s a picture of Chunjuan and Stephen on a cruise ship, studio portraits of Albert and Nelson, and Yin’s old school photo, the one they used in the first news reports. Maybe the police are holding on to this year’s photo now. I look away quickly.

  ‘You should have come earlier.’ Chunjuan places a mug in front of me an
d a plate of biscuits too.

  ‘I know.’ I burn my mouth on the hot drink and sneak a close look at her. Her jeans and cardigan flap loosely, her face is a hundred years awake. She doesn’t look like she hates me for being alive and well and sitting in her house instead of Yin.

  ‘How are your parents?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Your mum sent me flowers. Chrysanthemum. Very nice.’

  ‘I have to give—’ I start, but Chunjuan gets in first.

  ‘It’s good you are here, Natalia. The school wants to hold a memorial service for Yin before the end of the year.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They say it will help everyone cope with their exams.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’ It slips out of my mouth before I can stop it and Chunjuan gives me a disappointed look. ‘Sorry, but—it’s too soon. It’s not right.’

  The police haven’t given up, at least I don’t think they have, so why should we? I don’t know what to believe anymore.

  ‘I understand why they want to do it. Maybe it’s good to close it off. To finish the year properly.’

  ‘No. It’s way too soon!’

  Memorials are for remembering dead people, which is a way of saying that you plan to forget them really soon. The school acts like they want us to talk about our feelings, but really what they want is for us to pretend we’re only having nice pastel weepy emotions and concentrate on getting the kind of marks that will get us into law or medicine.

  ‘We’re not giving up. I will never give up.’ Chunjuan places a hand on her chest. ‘I still feel in my heart that she must be alive. I would know if she was gone. But it makes sense to do something to help you girls cope.’

  Chunjuan reaches across the bench and catches my hand. She’s got proper surgeon’s hands, small and pale with long thin fingers, sinew underneath. I wonder if she’s still working or if Yin’s disappearance has cracked normal life apart completely. I can’t imagine her operating on people’s brains in the state she’s in.

  I really, really want to believe that Yin is still alive and I’m afraid I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I want a church service.

  ‘Will you say something nice at the memorial? You know her best.’

  It’s Chunjuan asking, with her cold hands and lined face, haunting her too-big clothes and I nod yes, even though I’m not the one who knows Yin best anymore.

  The house is too quiet. ‘Where are Al and Nelly?’

  ‘Science camp. Yin was supposed to be skiing with Milla’s family this week.’ Chunjuan says it in a matter-of-fact way, and it shouldn’t shock me, but the thought of Yin going away with someone else’s family for the holidays makes my head spin with jealousy.

  We talk, or I talk, because Chunjuan wants to hear inconsequential stories about Mum and Dad and Liv and some of the other girls at school, the ones that went to Junior School with Yin and I, and the whole time the television is on, muted, in the background with a cooking show.

  When I leave I promise to visit again and soon, I promise that I won’t be a stranger and that’s when Chunjuan latches onto me like I’m a lifebuoy and she cries like she did during the first press conferences, crying like a child who’s fallen over and grazed their knees.

  I hate being hugged but I let her lean into me, and I remember Chloe’s calm presence yesterday, and how much it helped, so I press my hands into Chunjuan’s skinny spine and I try to be solid around her until she cries herself out.

  After she draws herself together, she gives me a plastic bag full of tights and hair ties, saying she bought them for Yin and never got to give them to her.

  ‘Please be very careful, Natalia. Take care and watch and protect your family,’ she says.

  I can’t tell her about the bag of Yin’s things, so I leave it sagging on the kitchen floor and hope it won’t shock her too much when she finds it later that night.

  DAY 44

  ‘It’s bigger than I thought it would be.’

  Mum pulls in slowly at the kerb and we get out of Ron and Pearl’s car. The sky is pink and birds are wheeling overhead.

  Dad and Jarrod’s house sits on a big block of grassy land, shedding layers of paint and roof tiles like an animal sloughing off its old skin. They bought the house from an elderly Maltese couple and there are fruit trees everywhere and a passionfruit vine over the carport.

  ‘More of a dump, don’t you mean?’ I pull Mum’s suitcase behind me, the one she bought to go back to Singapore for her dad’s funeral. I hand Mum a roll of paper that’s almost as tall as her and try not to worry about making her drive me here.

  The suitcase bucks wildly on the uneven front path.

  When Dad answers the door I note that he has brushed his hair and ironed his shirt.

  ‘Come through, come through.’

  He has the good sense not to give Mum the guided tour, but I notice her head swivelling, taking in every possible detail. I hope she’s not imagining the alternate future where she and Dad stay together and they can afford a falling-apart house to have all their arguments in.

  We pass the spare room that Dad has set aside for when Sam and I stay over, which we never do, and which is where I assumed I would be working on my project.

  Dad leads us through the kitchen and out the back door, past the Hills hoist, to the decrepit chipboard shed near the compost heap. He opens the door and gestures like a fancy butler for me to step inside. I raise my eyebrows, because I’m pretty sure this is Jarrod’s reiki room, and you couldn’t pay me to spend time in it.

  Nestled inside the shed is the perfect art studio.

  The walls are freshly painted white. The floorboards are bare and already paint-spattered, with a threadbare Persian rug at one end. The windows have been washed and cleared of vines, letting in the natural light. There’s an easel and a card table. A beanbag and a milk crate with a water jug on it.

  Dad flicks the switch near the door and the overhead light comes on.

  ‘We got the power fixed,’ he says. His expression is expectant, but my face has stiffened like a plaster cast and I turn away.

  It could almost be a proper studio for a proper artist.

  It’s too good for me. I don’t deserve it.

  Dad starts bustling around the room. ‘You can stick things to the wall…I’ve got to find the old trestle table somewhere in the garage…I found the easel in hard rubbish, which was a stroke of luck.’

  Mum leans the roll of paper against the wall. Her arm snakes around my shoulders. ‘It’s perfect, Jez,’ she says. ‘This is very thoughtful.’

  She looks at me, and I’m embarrassed to feel my eyes well.

  ‘Let’s have a cuppa while Chloe unpacks some of her supplies.’

  ‘Don’t we have to get back?’ I push my glasses up and wipe my eyes. Mum’s shift starts at eight and she has to have dinner before she leaves.

  ‘We’ve still got time,’ she says and they exit.

  I’m left alone in the terrifying white space with my own shaky potential.

  I slowly unpack my suitcase—watercolour paints, brushes, masking tape, glue—and run through what I have left to do: pick the image, edit it, get it printed, perfect my hand tinting, and then tackle the final piece. And make sure the entire process is documented in my folio. Every decision and theme and symbol has to be justified and explained. Ms Nouri is big on that.

  I’ve looked through all the photos I took on Saturday, my laptop whirring furiously as it tried to cope with the file sizes, and a lot of the pics are darker and gloomier than I’d planned. I didn’t get the lighting quite right and Natalia has disappeared into the background. I wish I could find time to do the photography elective next term; I would love to get better at this.

  What amazes me is how calm Natalia looks in most of the frames, when in reality she was shaking all over, about to break apart.

  At first I thought it was just the cold, but then I realised it was more than that. It looked like shock, like sadness, like everything bad
hitting her all at once. Something was wrong with her, something more than the stress that we’re all feeling. I don’t know her well enough to guess what it could have been, though.

  All I could do was crouch next to her and let her know I was there. Maybe I should have asked her what it was about. In the end, we packed up and went to lunch, as if nothing had happened.

  I zip up the empty suitcase and check my phone. We need to get moving. I turn off the light and carefully shut the door.

  DAY 48

  The librarian hands me the stack of books and my knees buckle under their unexpected weight. Somehow I manage to also grab onto the pencils he offers. Pens are forbidden in the State Library Heritage Collections Reading Room, as if they’re used to people forgetting they’re handling rare items and doodling in the margins.

  I pick a table next to the wall, right at the back. I’m the youngest person in here by far. To my right a polished woman in hijab pores over a folder full of handwritten letters, in front of me a man with silver hair examines a map with a magnifying glass.

  There’s a clock high up on the wall, above the check-in desk. My print won’t be ready to pick up for another two hours.

  The photo lab assistant was patient while I decided on paper, explaining the pros and cons of each, and the price per centimetre. I didn’t realise I’d have to pay a rush fee, but I agreed, because I have to spend next week tinting and finalising my piece. I was already too embarrassed by how little I knew about the process.

  I could fill the time proofreading the International Studies essay that I rushed through yesterday, but instead I’ve got three hard-to-find Bill Henson monographs in front of me, the sort of thing you would definitely never find at the Morrison Heights public library, and that you can’t even find at Balmoral.

  When I crack the first book open, the one that covers Henson’s earlier work, I’m f looded with excitement. The paper is thick and glossy, the images shadowy, deep, inviting.