The Gaps by Leanne Hall (young adult books to read .TXT) 📗

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 But I still don’t think it’s my job to take care of other people’s outdated attitudes.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?

DAY 28

Katie offers me a cigarette, and I take it even though I don’t really smoke anymore. Maybe it will warm me up, because the bonfire isn’t exactly blazing. We huddle around the struggling flames in Brandon’s backyard, instead of retreating sensibly into the shelter of the house.

‘I never see you anymore.’ Katie and I pass a can of beer back and forth between us. It’s quite the juggle with the smokes and the can.

I flip my hood up, stamp my feet. ‘You wouldn’t believe the homework they give us. I can barely keep up.’

‘I got homework too, you know. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it though.’

I give Katie a quick one-armed hug. She’s a bag of bones wrapped in an oversized cardigan.

In theory I should be able to go to Balmoral and still see my Morrison friends on the weekends, but in practice it hasn’t worked out that way, I’m not sure why. I haven’t hung out with the whole group since Easter. It’s not really homework getting in the way, that much I know.

On the other side of the fire, Katie’s boyfriend Tim threads marshmallows onto sticks. Brandon’s mum is framed perfectly in the kitchen window, dish brush in hand. Brandon pokes the fire with a broken cricket bat and looks confused about the lack of heat, even though we always have the same problem at the start of every spring.

It’s a scene frozen in time from last year, the actors transported and arranged in almost identical positions. Nothing has changed with my friends, but maybe something has changed with me.

I’ve been trying all night, but nothing can hide the fact that I’m bored, and cold.

Brandon shoots me a slow, snaky look over his half-gallon man-cauldron. I think it’s meant to be seductive, but I can’t be sure. I turn to Katie.

‘Things still good with Tim?’

‘Yeah, guess so.’ Katie stubs out her cigarette on the sole of her boots, flicks it into the non-fire. ‘It’s been eighteen months, so we’re an old