Who Killed Emily Blake?
Much later that night, during the late news, I figure out what it was that Natalia and Ally were watching at the bus stop.
The police have released CCTV footage of Yin from a convenience store close to her house. They don’t say what day it was taken, only that it was in the week before the attack. The footage is grainy, but you can still tell that the short girl with black hair is her.
Yin walks into the store and disappears from view. A guy in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap follows her, then stops to look at the sunglasses stand. Yin, wearing the pyjama pants Ally was griping about, comes into shot again, holding a bottle of milk. While she rummages in her pocket for money, the guy in the flannel turns to look at her. She has her back to him, so wouldn’t have noticed. A few moments after Yin leaves the store, the guy in the flannel exits too.
The police are stressing that the man isn’t a suspect, merely a ‘person of interest’ they want to talk to.
Even though Mum is at work and it’s not a good idea to spook myself while she’s out, I watch the footage again and again, until it plays behind my eyelids as I’m trying to go to sleep.
Close to midnight I give up on sleep and search for articles about the abduction on my phone. I find one that includes a list of other recent missing or murder cases in Melbourne. I read through the list and wonder if any of the things Mum talked about has made a difference in the way that they were investigated or reported.
An economics student from China who hasn’t been seen in three months. A trans woman who was beaten to death on the way to her work as a chef. A fourteen-year-old who ran away from home with her boyfriend but has since gone missing. A Gunditjmara mother of three who was found dead next to train tracks and I don’t remember there being a manhunt or media frenzy about it.
All these girls or women from different circumstances, all missing or dead. There’s a burning in my chest about the unfairness of it all. It could happen to any of us.
Yesterday Ms Nouri showed us a documentary where eight famous artists spoke about their careers. They all had very different approaches to their work, but the one thing they all said was that you needed to be passionate, to make art about what you believe in, what you feel most strongly about, what you’re obsessed with.
I wonder if I can turn this burning feeling into anything good, anything meaningful. It seems impossible, I’m not even a proper artist. Still, I flip open my sketchbook, find a blank page and start writing.
DAY 11
I think they’re joking when they remind us about compulsory house cross-country at morning assembly, but they’re not. I’m forced to put on a musty sports bra and crumpled PE top from the bottom of my locker.
The serious runners paint house colours on their cheeks and jostle to get close to the start line. I tug on the awful purple house jersey over my PE shirt and dawdle at the rear. A biting wind whips across the grounds.
The gun goes off; the girls at the front leap forward. Their feet pound the mushy oval, throwing up chunks of mud that hit the runners behind them.
The course circles the oval, then climbs between the tennis courts. At the end of the first hill the runners have stretched out to a thin thread. I think about walking, but by the time I cross the main driveway it feels good to stretch my legs, even though it’s not as much fun without Arnold by my side.
At the bottom of the hill we cut through a large pine plantation, an abandoned part of Balmoral that looks at least fifty years older than the rest. I pass a disused portable classroom and head into the thickest section of trees.
The fallen pine needles are soft to run on, swallowing up every footfall. I’ve left the last group of runners out of sight and the next girl is way ahead. The only sign that I’m not in the middle of a Grimm’s fairytale are the yellow course flags tied around the trees.
My head flashes with images. Young girls running through the forest, red-cloaked with wicker baskets. Gold rings. Spinning wheels. Tower prisons. Maidens asleep under trees. Girls with black hair and snow-white skin, lying on the pine needles with a school blazer for a blanket. Eyes shut, but not sleeping. Taken. Not a fairytale at all.
I trip on a half-buried tree root and lose my rhythm. I pick up my pace, striving to get out of the shadowy copse.
I bolt full speed into the long, torturous climb back to the oval, where everyone has to do a final lap before collapsing across the finish line. I’m not too tired so I push my legs a little bit harder, passing the trickle of struggling runners one by one.
By the top of the hill I’m regretting everything.
Ms Hammond, one of the PE teachers, stands at the side of the oval, directing the runners onto the track. When I draw close she frowns and consults her clipboard. If I had any puff left I’d laugh at the confused look on her face. With only a few hundred metres to go I decide to stick it to the PE teachers and the man and hungry wolves in forests, and I put in a final burst of speed. I pass one staggering girl, then another.
At the top of the straight, the purple house captains jump up and down as I take two more runners. My legs are rapidly turning to jelly, but I manage to keep my dignity to the finish line. I swerve to avoid Sarah, who is doubled over ahead of
