My bed is awash with scrunched-up tissues and old Balmoral yearbooks that I’ve been flicking through on repeat repeat repeat. I have my phone and my laptop somewhere here on the Good Ship Natalia, but I’m sick of the outside world and want to float only on my bed, which is cut off from the mainland and surrounded by an ocean of my very own snot and tears.
If only I was still friends with Yin. If only I had realised what I had when I had it. If only I could remember our last conversation. If only I had called her out of the blue that night and shifted the course of history. If only we still had slumber parties and I’d been there to protect her.
‘You’re into drugs,’ I dig my chin into Liv’s collarbone. ‘Can you get something to make me stop crying?’
‘It’s better to let it out.’ My sister sounds like a bona fide adult. ‘Plus you’re one of those annoying people who looks good when they cry. You should have seen me after Mel and I broke up.’
Liv acts out how grotesquely she wept and it prompts a smile from me, a smile that makes me immediately guilty for feeling anything except the worst ever, when Yin is where? In a metal drawer in a morgue that looks like the one on Devil Creek?
The tears leave me now, adios until the next round comes and grabs me by the throat and shakes me down. Periods of calm followed by one thought—I can’t believe she’s gone—and then the earth shakes and the rocks fall and the rivers burst their banks and I come close to throwing up my own stomach, followed by all my major organs.
I’ve been having nightmares about what Yin’s last hours or minutes might have been like, how scared she was, how much she saw, did she know this was the end, what was the last thing she said, was she in pain and on and on and on.
‘Look at these…’ Liv has wonder in her voice. ‘I can’t believe you kept them all.’
Neither can I. I’m sure I should hate Balmoral but instead I have religiously kept every single yearbook from prep through to last year’s. The Junior School ones are thin and simple, but the yearbooks from Year Seven onwards are glossy, full-colour books.
‘Hey look, it’s us.’ Liv shows me the page. We’re at Sports Day, in matching polo shirts, with ribbons pinned to our fronts. Me, a baby Grade One, Liv a big girl in Grade Six. We’re wearing these puffy old-fashioned bloomers that are just glorified underpants and my little infant legs look like sausages.
I screw up my face. ‘Embarrassing.’
I find my Year Seven yearbook and Liv and I leaf through it together. Our House Concert that year was set on a cruise ship, and there’s a photo of me in a sailor costume dancing with a mop. The Year Twelve formal minus Liv, who refused to wear a dress and wasn’t allowed to come unless she wore one. Bad poetry from nice girls. Class lists. Debating reports. A tedious essay from Mrs Christie extolling the virtues of the Lord.
‘I was looking for answers, I think.’
‘About you and Yin?’
‘Yeah.’
I show her the photo of Yin in Junior Orchestra, how she’s smiling so hard her eyes have disappeared, clutching that clarinet like someone might want to rip it out of her hands. She started learning it because she wanted to graduate as quickly as possible to the saxophone, but instead she fell in love and I bet she wanted to marry that clarinet.
Claire and Milla are in the photo too, Milla with her French horn, Claire on timpani drums. Every year, every time there’s a photo of Yin, either Claire or Milla are in it. I guess Claire and Milla are feeling what I’m feeling now, but maybe even worse, if that’s possible.
‘You never know, you and Yin might have come back together again, in Year Twelve, or even later in uni,’ Liv says. ‘That happens sometimes.’
‘Not now it doesn’t,’ I reply and burrow my head on Liv’s shoulder as another wave takes me.
DAY 67
‘Chloe, can I talk to you?’
I’m lost in my own thoughts when Petra speaks to me at our lockers. It’s a shock because I know she’s been actively trying to avoid me all week. Lisbeth told me she saw Petra stashing her books in Audrey’s locker, which is right at the far end of the corridor.
‘Sure.’
A mottled flush decorates Petra’s throat and ears. I wait, because I don’t want to make this too easy for her.
‘I want to apologise for going to Mrs Christie with my concerns about your photo. I thought at the time that I was doing the right thing. I didn’t think she’d disqualify you…’
‘Didn’t you? What did you think she’d do?’
‘I mean, I didn’t think it through that well—but I felt very strongly that—’
‘If you didn’t think she’d do anything, then why would you say something in the first place?’
Petra’s lip trembles and I force myself to lower my voice and tone slightly. She’s already had Natalia yell at her and it didn’t do too much good. And if what Audrey told me last week is true, Yin’s disappearance set off a grief ripple about her aunt, so maybe I should be showing a bit more compassion.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I tell her, ‘I don’t want to hold a grudge, but this isn’t even a proper apology yet. I currently don’t care why you complained. Do you know how hard I worked on that photo?’
Petra has no idea how much it took from me to put myself out there like that, to take a risk, to submit an entry to the prize. I wouldn’t expect her to understand. She’s been bred for lifelong, all-round excellence.
‘Okay…’ Petra takes a big shaky breath and
