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.

‘I never see you anymore.’ Katie and I pass a can of beer back and forth between us. It’s quite the juggle with the smokes and the can.

I flip my hood up, stamp my feet. ‘You wouldn’t believe the homework they give us. I can barely keep up.’

‘I got homework too, you know. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do it though.’

I give Katie a quick one-armed hug. She’s a bag of bones wrapped in an oversized cardigan.

In theory I should be able to go to Balmoral and still see my Morrison friends on the weekends, but in practice it hasn’t worked out that way, I’m not sure why. I haven’t hung out with the whole group since Easter. It’s not really homework getting in the way, that much I know.