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

be interested in. Sarah’s main motivation for going on the trip is to lose her virginity to an Italian guy because apparently that’s the fanciest cherry-popping a girl can have. Those two don’t even care about art, not like Chloe, who would actually appreciate seeing everything they’re taking for granted.

Chloe.

She plain disappeared last night, poof! into thin air, sending me a message saying she had a headache and was on a train home, but then didn’t reply to any of my messages after that.

I asked her if she talked to anyone interesting, I asked her if she’d hooked up with Genital Gerard, I asked her if she liked the art, I asked her if she thought my sister was nice.

I send her another message now: Good morning are you completely inspired now?

Because that was the whole point, to inspire her. So that she could meet proper real-life young artists and talk about paint and balsa wood or whatever things they go ga-ga about and make connections and then have her first exhibition and live happily ever after and always remember that I was the first person to believe in her vision the end.

I stare at my phone. She doesn’t reply.

I want to see our photo, I want to get back that energy of doing something together. She listened to my ideas and opinions and I don’t think I was imagining that I was a good team player even though my school reports always say ‘Natalia is not a team player.’ We had that feeling and then it slipped away and I want it back.

It’s 7.30 a.m. and I have how many hours to fill until it’s not too sad to go back to sleep again and then start another day after that, and another, and then go back to school having done almost nothing all school holidays, other than doing a great impersonation of a dead person.

I check the news and there’s nothing about Yin that I don’t already know.

I put on some music, I take out my suitcase, I put on the crown I made for the photo shoot. I’m clearing out my schoolbag, old mandarins, tampons spilled out of their box, no less than seven chapsticks, and I find the piece of paper I pinched off Petra, her creepy list of Doctor Calm’s victims. Reading the list of the girls’ names, their ages, how long they were held for, has not gotten any better.

The words ‘Cold Crimes’ are written at the top of the paper, in my handwriting. I don’t even remember doing that, it’s scary the amount of things I must do on autopilot like those people who wake up and they’ve crashed their car into a tree without even realising.

I search the term on my laptop, and it transpires that Cold Crimes is a supremely ugly website for true crime enthusiasts and I don’t know why, but my heart starts beating fast immediately.

The front page is a hot mess—there are forum rules and information, lists of members and announcements, trending discussions, case folders, urgent cases, current legal trials and missing persons.

According to the sidebar there are currently 990 members online. At least half of them sound like conspiracy theorists and the other half sound like police trying not to sound like police.

I am sick to my stomach but I keep clicking, reading, clicking, reading.

Number one under ‘trending discussions’ is the brand new forum devoted to Doctor Calm.

When I open it there are threads upon threads about the police profile, various suspects, how the name Doctor Calm came about (according to Dtctv86 one of Doctor Calm’s victims cut her finger and he told her that he’s a doctor), summaries of supposed victims and linked cases and, at the bottom of the second page, the question: Why has Yin Mitchell not been returned???

I scroll through conspiracy theories about Yin’s father and the Chinese government, child brides, and a cover-up involving police at the highest level. The majority of people think that Yin must have figured out who Doctor Calm is, recognised his voice or accidentally seen his face, and when I read that, I can picture it. I can see Yin pulling at a mask, seeing the monster and dooming herself.

The forum seems to grow as I’m reading it, spawning more and more comments and information. There’s so much more available here than I’ve ever heard in the news reports.

BoardShorts77 suggests that Yin went willingly with a ‘much older boyfriend’.

Catsrfriendz thinks that Yin has been the victim of a global child-porn ring.

MaxwellSmarts provides a supposed map of the GPS positions for Yin’s phone on the night she was taken but then everyone piles on him for lying and he gets banned.

I find out the reason that the police cleared the guy on the CCTV in the convenience store is because he was interstate on the night Yin was taken.

I find out there was a scandal at Balmoral in the 1980s when one of the teachers married a student three months after she completed Year Twelve.

I find a list of reported sightings of Yin that spans from Tasmania to China.

Piratemajid114 says that aspects of Yin’s kidnapping remind him of a cold case from forty years ago and links to a podcast episode.

I’m torn between thinking the world is one sick place and taking heart from the fact that so many people care about Yin’s case, that they actually care about catching Doctor Calm or finding her alive. Who are these people? How do they have so much time on their hands? Why do they care? Is Petra one of them?

I imagine Chunjuan and Stephen reading this site and feel sick all over again.

Bugs crawl under my skin and my head is weird and empty like I might be getting a cold again and Mum won’t stop trying to make me talk and I have to get out of the house.

I almost make it out unseen but then Mum tries to derail me when I already have