I lean in to kiss her shocked cheek, she grabs my wrist. ‘Sweetheart, how are you doing? Really.’

I don’t like that ‘really’.

‘Fine.’ I try to wrestle my arm free.

‘It’s good to talk. Don’t you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’ I decide to be straightforward for once. ‘I really don’t.’

I pretend not to see the flash of hurt across her face.

‘I’m always here,’ she says and then she unlocks the handcuffs and my wrist is free and I ignore the invisible pull of her, which could destroy my composure so easily, and I slip away.

Even though I’m exhausted, sleep won’t come. Little strips of street light show through my blinds.

Helicopters drone overhead, tracing circles over our suburb. There have been helicopters over our area more often recently. Every time I hear them I imagine a masked intruder running through backyards, climbing fences and darting down alleyways.

I watch the plain white ceiling of my bedroom, trying to imagine the inside of my head being as bland and empty as plaster. It doesn’t really work.

When we were not-so-little, just before high school, Yin and I believed that we were linked psychically. Or perhaps I believed, and Yin went along with the idea to be supportive.

For years we’d communicated in fragments of our made-up language, and the summer before Year Seven we decided we could also talk with our eyes. We’d sit at the dining table and stare at each other, having long ‘conversations’, breaking into laughter only when someone asked why we were acting so strange.

And what did I do with that connection? Took a big pair of scissors and severed it, right across the middle, because it didn’t suit me anymore, because I knew Yin wouldn’t be cool or popular in high school, or stand out in the way that I wanted to.

But even after we stopped hanging out, I’d sometimes catch her eye across the assembly hall or netball court, and wonder if we were still talking without talking. Sometimes she would look sad, I could see it in her eyes.

I empty my head to match the ceiling, and wait to hear Yin’s voice, calling out as if she was on a really bad phone line.

No voice comes.

It’s been three weeks since you were taken, I say to her, silently. I haven’t known what to think, how to act, what to do. I can’t figure out if there’s any hope and how much I’ve lost.

Sorry, I say, sorry sorry. Can you forgive me?

Radio silence. Yin isn’t sending out signals to me anymore. But why should she?

CHLOE

DAY 28

Katie offers me a cigarette, and I take it even though I don’t really smoke anymore. Maybe it will warm me up, because the bonfire isn’t exactly blazing. We huddle around the struggling flames in Brandon’s backyard, instead of retreating sensibly into the shelter of the house.