‘You sound surprised,’ she says.
‘No, not surprised.’ I am surprised.
‘Okay, nervous then. Like you don’t know what to say to me.’
If I thought tragedy was going to bring a new, softer Natalia, I was wrong. ‘How about pleased? Pleased you called me.’
I hear her snort.
‘No, it’s weird. I’m the one being weird,’ she says. ‘I woke up this morning and realised I’d sent you an essay yesterday.’
It takes me a moment to realise that she means her text message. ‘It’s not weird at all. First the—the—’ my throat practically closes up, it’s impossible to say ‘gravesite’ and I don’t even know if that’s the right phrase for a place where a body isn’t placed respectfully and intentionally. ‘The park sounded intense. And now you’ve got to get through the memorial tomorrow. It’s a lot.’
There’s a public vigil for Yin tonight, on the steps of Parliament. It might have even already started. I overheard a few Balmoral girls say they were going, even though there’s no official school presence, it’s more for the city itself. I never thought about how a whole city might need to grieve. The memorial tomorrow is going to be enough for me; I can’t imagine mourning among thousands of people.
‘Thanks. I called Ally too much in the first few days when I couldn’t do anything but lock myself in my room and cry. That poor girl had to listen to me ugly-crying for hours.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ is all I can think to say.
It’s not enough, but I have no idea how to behave. Talking openly about our emotions is not something I thought I’d find myself doing with Natalia, but I make myself do it.
‘And I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate your petition enough. And your protest, too.’
‘You heard about that?’
‘I did…Bochen sent me a photo.’
Natalia standing in the school lobby, all dressed in black and holding a sign, with a fierce look on her face. I guess any gossip about her protest got lost quickly among the awful news.
‘What are you doing, Cardell?’
‘Right now?’
I look at my work spread across the floor. Mum has taken Sam out for dinner so I can have some peace and quiet. I’ve commandeered every spare surface in our kitchen and living areas. I wasn’t in the mood to trek across town to the studio at Dad’s house. Streets, train stations, bus stops, parkland—ever since Yin’s body was found they all seem like they could be hiding bad men, all over again.
‘Don’t get worried, but I did something to our picture.’
I hope this doesn’t seem callous to her, that I’m making art while she’s been visiting the place where Yin was found. ‘I had a revelation. Or I think I did. I’ve pulled it apart.’
In bed last night I was thinking about something Lisbeth said—that it was horrific to find out what had happened to Yin, but it was a relief that the wondering was over. It made me think more about the limbo that we’ve been in, everyone at Balmoral, but especially our year level.
I remembered something Natalia said when she first saw my folio, about how the girls on crime novel covers always look like they are in-between places. That’s exactly where we’ve all been for the last few months. In-between hope and despair.
I try to explain my new angle, but Natalia gets impatient. ‘You’re making no sense. Send a pic.’
I do that, and then she’s quiet for way too long.
‘Are you mad that I cut it up?’
‘No,’ Natalia replies immediately. ‘It’s good. I don’t have any words at the moment, Chloe, but it’s good.’
‘It’s about the in-between places,’ I tell her, ‘and the girls in them. I remembered what you’d said. The real world, and other places too.’
The white canvas with the floating girl used to mean a place we couldn’t imagine. Doctor Calm’s house as it appeared in the police sketches, or another dimension we couldn’t fathom. And now we know the white expanse means the end; peace, we hope, or rest.
‘Cut out of life,’ says Natalia flatly, and then she’s quiet. I stay on the line and we breathe in unison for a while, letting stillness hold us together.
‘Please come tomorrow, I need your face in the crowd,’ she says after a while, and then she hangs up.
DAY 69
I’ve already been awake a few hours or maybe I never even went to sleep at all when Liv knocks on the wall adjoining my room and the spare bedroom that she’s been methodically transforming into a messy hovel.
She knocks and knocks and you bet she won’t stop knocking until I knock back: I’m alive, I’m okay, I’m here. We knock good night and we knock good morning and you can say a lot with a knock apparently. I’m already dreading when she goes back to her own apartment and things supposedly return to normal.
My eyes close again but then my bedroom door clicks and Liv is there with her woolly blanket clutched around her like a couture cape.
‘You still want to do it?’ she says. ‘Let’s do it early before Mum can stop us.’
We creep downstairs, avoiding the two creaky steps and it would be like midnight feasts or Christmas morning except that today is Yin’s memorial service and the whole of Balmoral will be there and I have to speak.
There’s no point to our stealth because when we get downstairs Mum is already in the kitchen drinking carrot juice in her pilates gear and Dad is pan-frying mattress-sized slabs of French toast which is basically their entire relationship summed up in one neat scene.
Mum is silent while Liv swirls an old sheet around me and fastens it with a butterfly clip but I can see her starting to twitch when Liv runs an extension cord from the kitchen and plugs her clippers in. I sit at the table and push aside the thick orange envelopes they’ve been sending my schoolwork in, which I have been studiously ignoring.
Liv buzzes the
