‘What was all that about?’ I asked him.
‘Not now, Sunny.’ Kevin walked away, leaving me standing alone in the centre aisle of the hall.
I glanced around the room and saw a few people rubbernecking. One man looked at me for a few seconds then back at Kevin. I was used to people staring by now; they always did when they knew about Mum. They wanted to see what the bereaved daughter looked like. But these people were staring for another reason; the looks were not of pity this time. All I knew was that it had something to do with Kevin.
‘Sunny?’ I turned around to find Zara Walker standing behind me. It was odd seeing her there in the hall and not in her school uniform. Not that I hung around with her at school. She was a boarder, but had her own group of friends. I stuck with Mia and Evie, who were daygirls and had been my friends since primary school, but I guessed the fact that Zara and I both came from the same blip on the map and we were in the same grade gave us something in common.
‘Hey! I thought it was you,’ she said.
‘Hi, Zara.’
‘All this is weird, right?’ she said, twisting her sleek brown ponytail around one finger. Zara’s family owned several cane farms in the area and she had an air of confidence about her that came with wealth and privilege.
‘Yeah, it’s weird alright,’ I said, glancing across at Kevin.
‘Dad went out looking for him yesterday, up in the national park.’ Her eyes had an excited glitter. ‘Did you know Dylan?’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
‘I remember him from primary school, before I went boarding,’ she said. ‘And I used to see him around, you know.’
Chat, chat, chat. Why did Zara want to be my friend? At school I wasn’t even on the same planet as her, but I guess here in Kelly’s Crossing, population six-forty-nine, we were soul sisters.
Shelley Hanigan, looking stiff and formal in her police uniform, was tapping on the microphone.
‘I guess we’d better sit down,’ I said.
‘Yeah. We should catch up,’ said Zara. ‘God knows it’s boring enough in this place without having anyone to hang out with. Give me your number.’
We quickly exchanged phone numbers and she left to sit with her parents who looked like two normal, well-adjusted people with nice hair and nice clothes.
I took myself away to a plastic chair in the very back row, slumped down and crossed my arms. I watched Zara move in next to her mother and exchange a whisper. It sounds awful but I resented her and her perfect family. She was so smug and content. What she didn’t realise was that it could all disappear in the drawing of a breath. Just like that.
‘Have a seat, everyone.’ Shelley exhaled into the microphone and her nostril breathing reverberated loudly around the room. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, looking at the microphone as if it were faulty.
The chattering dwindled, and after some chair scraping on the bare floorboards everyone was seated. Kevin sat on a chair at the end of the row opposite to me. He seemed preoccupied, rubbing his chin.
Shelley tapped a laptop and a slide show started. ‘As you all know, Dylan Koslovski has been missing for just over thirty-six hours, last seen in the rainforest not far from the Constant Creek Gorge. What we know is that Dylan went missing while pig shooting with his dad and Kevin, between five and six pm on Thursday evening.’ Her eyes searched the crowd until they rested on Kevin.
A few other people turned to look as well, including Zara and her parents. Kevin had one arm crossed in front of his body and he was rubbing his upper lip with one of his Bratwurst fingers. I turned back to the stage, a list of questions scrolling through my head, the first one being: why hadn’t Kevin mentioned that he’d been pig shooting with Dylan when he went missing?
A huge photograph of Dylan filled the screen. He wore a red chequered shirt and stared right into the camera with eyes that reminded me of Wolfie’s: dark, molasses-brown with a melancholic shine, as if all the sorrow of the world was condensed into those perfect orbs. Dylan had a smooth, tanned complexion, a few freckles under his eyes, a small grin. Lank blond hair hung over one dark eyebrow. It was a baby face for a twelve-year-old, but the eyes told of a worldliness.
Sitting there, an unexpected sense of relief washed over me. No-one was staring at me: the girl with the dead mother. Everyone was absorbing the face of that lost boy; he was the new focus, the new tragedy. The burden of all those searching and pitying glances was gone. Without even knowing it, Dylan had taken the heat off me and I suddenly felt liberated.
I glanced to the front row where Karen Koslovski sat rigidly. The woman next to her rubbed Karen’s back as if that would somehow help ease the worry devouring her insides.
‘Alright then,’ Shelley continued, ‘as you would understand, it’s imperative to find Dylan before he has to spend another night out there.’
Looking at that photograph it hit me that this was really serious. Even if Dylan had run away and was camping out there in the rainforest somewhere, anything could have happened.
‘The SES is going to organise us into teams,’ Shelley went on. ‘And we’ll start the official search straight after this meeting. You’ll be briefed once you get to your search sites.’
I gazed at the back of Karen’s head. I imagined she was running through all the possibilities in her mind. Maybe her son had been bitten by a taipan or had fallen down a cliff. A pang of sympathy hummed through me. I bet she thought there was still a chance of finding her boy; it was only two days, after all. I felt like calling out
