Students and parents and teachers melt out of her way and I am about to be incinerated, Dad too, for my unruly behaviour, my spectacle-making, my refusal to know when to stop, for being too much.

But Mum’s expression isn’t warpath, it’s soft. It’s soft like ice-cream and sorrowful and full of pain. There’s compassion on her face, and regret and fear and there’s only one thing that could give her that face. I saw it when Grandad died and here it is again.

My face gets it first, my lips snarl, and then the knowledge rolls down my body in a sickening oily wave. Somewhere, in some other part of my brain, I register a Dad-shaped smudge coming through the front doors, but I don’t pay it much note because—

It’s Yin.

Not good news.

They’ve found her, but not really her.

An emptiness, a shell.

They’ve found a body.

I know I know I know what tsunami is about to crash over us, not just me but the whole year level the whole school rippling outwards, crashing into every worried person in this city.

I push off the wall and run.

Mummy.

I get so close I could reach out to her and the realisation hits my legs and my knees melt to nothing. Her mouth an O, her arms out, but I’m too far away still and I feel the hard floor and the bite of carpet for only a millisecond before darkness comes.

CHLOE

DAY 62

The story unfolds on our TV screen in gritty blue pixels, as if it’s another shaky scene from Devil Creek. A windswept reporter in a parka stands in the foreground, while behind her there are police cars and people in dark clothes and hi-vis vests.

‘The body of sixteen-year-old Yin Mitchell was found around 4 p.m. yesterday by a park ranger in the Broken Ranges State Park in Melbourne’s far west, cementing what has been suspected for a long time: that this is a homicide investigation.’

I can’t help drawing in a sharp breath, even though this has all been mentioned in the morning news. It looks so unremarkable, this scrappy paddock, the run-down picnic facilities.

‘Should I turn it off?’ Mum squeezes my hand, hard, and we lock eyes. She let me stay home today, even though classes were still on. Attendance was optional, not just for Year Ten but the whole school. I wonder how many girls showed up.

‘If I don’t find out the details now, I’ll look online later anyway. I want to know what happened, otherwise I’ll just be making things up in my head.’

‘I can’t believe it’s come to this.’ Mum looks as shaky as I feel. ‘I don’t know how I would go on living if anything happened to you or Sam.’