Sam stands five metres away, holding a plastic bag with his precious games inside. He’s wearing his orange hoodie, not a purple jumper, and cargo shorts, not jeans.

‘There you are!’ I swoop, and in the time it takes me to reach my brother, I melt into fury. ‘Where were you? I told you not to move from there. You know to stay put! It’s the first rule.’

‘I was looking for you! I was trying to find you!’

Sam keeps repeating these meaningless words over and over as I grab his wrist and drag him towards the doors. I’m hot all over; something flutters around my body, something has been let loose. I keep moving to disguise it.

‘Chloe!’ Sam pulls away until I stop. He pulls his hand free and rubs his wrist. ‘You’re hurting me.’ His lower lip is suspiciously trembly. Then—whispering—‘I couldn’t find you.’

I look back at him, and he looks so confused and indignant, and little, really. A little kid. And I haven’t been thinking clearly, because the guy doesn’t snatch boys from shopping centres, he goes for girls in their homes.

I remember the quad last week—which already seems eons ago—and Milla repeating the police’s questions: Was she scared of anything?

Yes. I can almost hear the thoughts of every single girl in my year level. We’re all scared, of almost everything.

NATALIA

DAY 18

The library doors are so heavy it’s no wonder that I only go in there when I’m forced to. There’s a schunk as the doors come apart, as if I’m stepping into an airlock, shortly to be sprayed with disinfectant and handed a Hazmat suit. Our school librarians give off the very strong vibe that they would prefer students to stay out of their facility.

I shoulder in like the brave pioneer I am, keeping my head down, and I swear there’s a pause in the beep-beep of the barcode scanner when I walk past the loans counter. The library smells different, a foreign country that I barely realised existed. There’s a row of girls along the far wall, glued to computers, and a cushion pit full of people reading.

‘What is this mystical language?’ I ask the neat laminated signs taped to the end of each row of shelves. I tap the Dewey Devil number 666 and abandon the non-fiction section, prowling up the alphabet in fiction until I find my prey.

Eight identical brown spines line up next to each other on the shelf, which I guess is because we were supposed to be studying this book in English. Supposed to be, because the teachers have changed their minds: as of this morning it is off our reading list. Of course I asked why, and of course Ms Clarke was super vague. So here I am, in uncharted lands, looking for a verboten book.

‘Hello, my forbidden fruit that tastes all the more sweet,’ I whisper to the paperback as I remove it from the shelf.