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

letter, decorated with cheesy love hearts. Anyone who knows her knows she’s not the love-heart type.

‘Have you seen them since it happened?’ asks Liv.

‘No,’ I admit, avoiding her eyes.

‘I don’t think the Mitchells have a hundred grand,’ Liv says.

We’re both quiet for a few moments, listening to the hiss of the milk steamer, the clank of saucers.

‘You know, I used to be jealous of you and Yin, the friendship you had.’ Liv swishes the coffee around in her cup.

‘You’ve always had heaps of friends.’

‘Yeah, I’ve always had a group to hang with, but I never had a best friend. One person you always go to, the person who knows everything about you. You two were really lucky to have that.’

‘Well, I really screwed that one up, didn’t I?’ I try not to sound too cut up. I look at the gig posters on the wall and I can still hear the scorn in Claire and Milla’s voices.

‘I don’t think so. People change and grow apart.’ Liv is sincere, for once. ‘It doesn’t take away what you had for so many years. That still counts, that was real.’

I can’t reply, but I give Liv a little smile to let her know I appreciate what she’s said, even though it’s not true. She doesn’t know how hard I pushed Yin away.

‘What do you have planned for the holidays?’ asks Liv, after a quiet moment.

‘I don’t know. Sarah and Ally are going on this school trip to Italy, Marley’s going to Thailand. Mum said something about the beach house.’

‘Do you want to come and stay with me for a few days? You should try and stay busy.’

‘I am going to be busy!’ I reply far too quickly. ‘I’m helping a friend with an art project. Like a feminist statement thing.’

‘That sounds cool.’

Liv shifts in her seat and I wonder if she’s already getting impatient about the next thing in her day even while she’s pretending she has all the time in the world for me. It’s impossible to pin her down for too long. I can’t stay with her, she’s only got a studio apartment and we’ll get on each other’s nerves.

‘Why did you move out of home so young, Liv?’

She baulks. ‘What made you think about that?’

‘I don’t know. It always seemed like a big secret.’

‘There’s no secret. And I was with Aunt Helen, not on my own.’

‘Was it Dad? Was that why you couldn’t live at home?’

‘No! God, Tal. Do not let this police stuff get in your head.’ Liv rakes her choppy hair. ‘I was unhappy. Suffocated. I had to leave so I could grow up properly.’

That makes me snort.

‘You still haven’t grown up properly,’ I say.

When I arrive home the only person around is Faith. Mum thinks I haven’t noticed that she’s asked Faith to come late and leave late when she and Dad work overtime.

I grab a packet of biscuits and some juice, and shut my bedroom door so the noise of the vacuum is a distant hum.

My PE bag fits behind my shoes at the bottom of my wardrobe. No one saw me empty Yin’s locker because it was a charmed action. The reason I know is that almost as soon as I’d shut the locker and zipped my bag, who walked around the corner but Petra, voted by me the most likely person in the entire year level to dob? Instead of busting me, she merely walked on by, and the whole thing was ordained by the universe. Even Liv couldn’t crack me.

The coat hangers are spaced evenly along the rail. My ugg boots, my spare school shoes, my wedges, white trainers are lined up neatly, as neatly as if someone had used a ruler. It’s the first time I’ve looked in my wardrobe properly since the police visited, and things are not the way I left them.

My parents didn’t tell me the police were in my room.

I remember what Marley said about the slippers and pyjamas. I try to stop my brain right there but it slides on, fast. I mostly don’t wear slippers, just really fluffy socks, and my pyjamas are under my pillow, as usual.

I try to make sense of something that makes no sense.

I take my glass and plate downstairs and put them in the dishwasher. Faith is still clunking around in the front rooms so I race to the study and power up Dad’s computer. I’ve tried plenty of times to break his email password and failed, but I can still access his calendar.

I click to the week Yin disappeared. The grid is chock full of appointments but they’re all work things. I bring up his internet history, but there’s hardly anything on there, as if it’s been cleared recently.

My skin tingles with the thrill of snooping, but there’s also a new and sickly undercurrent. Doubting my parents has never bothered me before.

The funny feeling propels me out of the study. I bump into Faith starting on the skirting board, and she points at my schoolbag, hockey stick and blazer sprawling across the hallway.

‘Nutella, you’re killing me,’ she says with her hands on her hips, a favourite joke of ours.

I smile sweetly like nothing is going on and of course I move my stuff because Faith’s trying to do her job, not like Mum who is plain old petty about clutter. I pile everything on the side table.

Faith isn’t done yet though.

‘Your friend is still missing,’ she says.

‘Yes.’ We stand still and look at each other. Faith has only worked for us for three years, so not long enough to remember Yin, but she must have seen and heard a lot around here in the last month.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says and I nod and then skid away in my socks, galloping up the back stairs to my parents’ bedroom. I know Faith never found out what happened to everyone in her family during the war. I wonder how she copes.

Wardrobe and drawer inspection.

The only moderately interesting thing