The Gaps by Leanne Hall (classic literature list .TXT) 📕

When the man gets within ten metres I draw myself up to my full height and lift my feet, making sure I look carefree and energetic, as if I could run at this pace for hours. I consider spitting on the ground to gross him out.

Out of nowhere, Arnold growls. He never growls.

The man—balding, white, dad-aged—assesses me below the neck, but never meets my eyes. We pass each other. I continue up the hill, he continues down. The moment passes. Even Arnold relaxes.

At the top of the hill, I pause to catch my breath. Arnold lifts a leg to pee and scratches in the dust.

I practise looking and seeing, like I always do. Across the valley, past the vacant lots and teeming highway, to lit-up construction sites topped with cranes. I make a square-ish frame with my hands and hold it in front of my face. I’ve been wondering if I have the skills to do something photographic for my major project.

The truth of this scene is beer bottles mixed in with weeds, a wire fence falling down, fluoro traffic cones, the word CONPLEX painted along the boom of a crane.

The truth is cars scuttling like beetles, neon-painted streaks, a mysterious glowing civilisation across the highway, a hushed park where lovers meet under pooling lights. It’s all in my power to make this ugly or beautiful, gritty and real, or not.

But I can’t stop my mind turning towards the ways you could trap someone in a park. You could use people’s kindness against them and pretend to be hurt, setting up a fake bike accident. You could blend into the environment, dress up as one of the council rangers or rail workers. Or you could carry a tricycle or a children’s backpack, pretending you were a dad. Fathers appear more trustworthy than childless men, even though I know that’s not the case.

At my back, there’s a rumble and a rush of wind as a train screams past. A streak of light in the dusk, people flashing by, all of them strangers.

Mr Mitchell’s face looks like a sunken cake. Yin’s mum keeps her face turned away. The reporter says Mr Mitchell is a ‘prominent Melbourne lawyer’.

I was going to have a shower and change out of my sweaty running gear straight after dinner, but the police are finally having another press conference after being silent for days. Yin’s parents and two detectives sit in front of a crowd of journalists. I sip on my custom blend of Milo and instant coffee.

‘That’s Yin’s mother?’ Mum says. ‘She was the one that was nice to me at that Mother’s Day thing. Did you know she’s a neurosurgeon?’

Mum has the night off work and I’m secretly relieved. Her hands travel over my woollen school tights, darning the holes. Sam is safely in his bedroom playing games on Mum’s phone. We’ve had to ban him from watching any more news reports about the abduction.

‘Remember, Chlo? She was the only one that would talk to me. Oh, that’s even more awful now.’

I remember. Mum said that she’d felt like a fish out of water at the Balmoral Mother’s Day breakfast. Apparently the rich blondes huddled on one side of the room and the rich Asians on the other side, and she hadn’t fit into either group. It sounded scarily similar to my own experiences.

Sometimes I want to launch myself at the international students and beg to be adopted into their group, even if I can only speak English. The boarders from East Asia hang together, but they overlap a lot with the East Asian day girls. There are hardly any South Asian boarders, but there are lots of South Asian students and they seem to form their own friendship groups.

There are so many exceptions to the rules though, and I can’t help wondering if it’s only me that’s hung-up. Melody is biracial too, but she grew up in Hong Kong and can speak Cantonese. Anjali is swim-squad royalty and hangs out exclusively with jocks, and Anusha and Sunita form a four with Bridie and Ming-Zhu and I couldn’t draw a Venn diagram of all of it if I tried.

Maybe I’m making up divisions in my head that don’t really exist. But then Jody carries on about there being too many Asians at the school, and I know I’m not making all of it up.

‘I consider Yin to be my own daughter,’ Mr Mitchell says on the telly. ‘I have been very lucky to find myself with this family, long after I thought my time for it had passed.’

Even though he must be used to speaking in front of people, his voice during the press conference is tissue-paper thin. His white hair and wrinkled skin explains why Yin copped so much at school about how old her dad is. It’s good that Mum doesn’t want to get involved in anything at Balmoral. It’s best not to provide the ammunition.

‘Our house is very quiet without Yin, too quiet,’ Mr Mitchell continues. ‘Usually I have to tell her to turn her music down every night. Yin, if you are listening to this, when you come home you can play your music as loud as you want. Your mum and brothers miss you very much.’

Mum kicks her legs, as if she’s trying to get rid of pins and needles. ‘The worst thing is, I’m sure he’s the first suspect on the police’s list. And look at him. He’s devastated.’

Mr Mitchell looks straight down the lens of the camera. ‘This is a plea from our family to everyone in the community. Please think carefully and consider if you know anything that could be related to my daughter’s disappearance. Cast your minds back to the weekend. You might have seen something that you thought unimportant at the time. Nothing is too small to report.’

A police hotline number sits at the bottom of the screen.

I still have the sourness in my gut that’s been there since I