I laugh. ‘I know! I was terrified!’
‘I guess they pay through their nose for the fees so they think they have the right. They expect so much.’ She puts her indicator on. ‘Are you sure you’re good for tomorrow night?’
Mum had to change shifts so she could come tonight; she wouldn’t normally work Friday nights.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I can ask Pearl again.’
‘Not two nights in a row,’ I say. ‘Me and Sam will have bonding time, it’ll be good.’
‘You should be out with your friends,’ she murmurs, taking the exit ramp. We’re almost home. ‘Who was that nice-looking girl you were talking to up the back? Is she a Balmoral buddy?’
I snort at her casual tone. I know she’s concerned that I haven’t adjusted to Balmoral as well as I might have. In all the thinking about whether to take up the scholarship offer, I didn’t think about whether I would fit in, or what it meant to trick your way into somewhere you don’t belong.
‘I can’t comment at this point in the investigation,’ I say.
DAY 13
Sam pokes his BBQ pork with disposable chopsticks.
‘I don’t think it should be this colour.’ The sauce has stained the mound of rice pink around the edges. ‘Chlo. Chlo. Look.’
‘You chose it, so eat it and don’t waste my money.’
I was supposed to cook dinner for Sam and me tonight, but the better scenario is lazy times at Meridian Shopping Centre. And this way we’re not alone at home, bouncing off the walls and twitching at every innocent noise. The shopping centre is always packed on Friday nights and I’ve brought Mum’s camera with me. I’ve been trying to develop the habit of seeing the boring, everyday things around me with fresh eyes, but it’s not easy.
In our corner of the food court the canned music is loud; the flat screen on the wall opposite us is huge. Normally it’s showing music videos or football, but at the moment the evening news is playing soundlessly. Someone accidentally showed a nipple at an awards ceremony. And that’s called news.
Most of my year level will be getting ready for Grace’s party right now. Bochen told me they were providing minibuses for the boarders. Even I’d been invited. Granted, it was only because I’d been standing at the lockers next to Petra, and Grace is nice enough that she couldn’t help but hand me an invite too. Apparently her parents insisted on paper invitations, to stop gatecrashers finding out about the party online and arriving in the hundreds. Good luck with that, Chapmans.
I watch Sam herd the peas from his fried rice to one side of his plate, mumbling to himself. My own lemon chicken is a suspect shade of yellow, but tastes as MSG-good as ever. Maybe we can watch a movie when we get home. I let Sam watch MA-rated movies and stay up past 9 p.m. when Mum’s not around. I told him about our self-defence class and now he wants to do a Bruce Lee marathon.
I should feel like a loser for preferring to hang out with my ten-year-old brother than go to a party, but I don’t.
I switch Mum’s camera on and fill the viewfinder with my radioactive yellow dinner, Sam’s plate lurking in the background as red, white and green blotches. Snap. I try again, turning the wheel to macro and getting up real close. Mum’s camera does not cope well with low light. There’s no way I’ll be able to hold it steady enough.
When I look up at the flat screen again the grainy CCTV footage of Yin is playing, both bits. This morning the news sites started showing the same convenience store incident, but from a different camera. From the new angle you can see the flannel shirt guy a little bit better.
I can’t look away from it, as if somehow this time the video might be different.
The newsreader comes back on, but it’s impossible to know what she’s saying. Maybe she’s saying this is definitely the guy we’re looking for. Maybe someone will call the police tonight and say they recognise him. Maybe that will lead them to a house in a far-out suburb, and we’ll wake up tomorrow and find out that it’s over; they’ve found the creep and rescued Yin. Maybe then I can stop checking doors and windows and running through my dwindling list of reasons to stay at Balmoral.
‘I talked to Dad today,’ says Sam, out of nowhere.
‘Good for you.’ I push my plate away. A layer of congealed skin has formed over the lemon sauce. ‘Are you done?’
Sam skids in his slippery shoes all the way to the bargain games shop. I give him twenty minutes and twenty dollars of my own money. That kid has no idea how much I do for him.
The shopping centre is swarming: teenagers cruising each other, security cameras, security guards. Peace descends for the first time this week. I’m a bee in a swarm, a particle, part of a larger pattern. I have no separate thoughts or significant problems. I wander the corridors with Mum’s camera held in front of me, looking around for colours and patterns.
The tubs of jelly cups and coconut water at the Asian grocer become abstract and psychedelic if you get close enough, the reflections in the window of the brow bar fragment the customers inside, the aisles of the discount chemist warehouse are stark and artificial. I take photos of hair-netted women speed-folding dumplings in a restaurant window and old men gathered in the Greek coffee shop with their walking sticks hooked onto the table.
I swing past to check on Sam, and see him sitting on the shop floor with rows of games fanned in front of him. I snap a photo of him through the window and he doesn’t even look up. If I turn it black and white, if I tweak it to make it look pixellated and gritty, it would look exactly like a surveillance photo.
At
