Chapter 1: Sale

Asha was feeling very good about her adventure by dinner time Monday, when she arrived in the Sale botanic gardens with Larissa. She’d slept over in the bed with Larissa and loved that. Then they’d gotten up very early to get ready for Larissa’s early shift, and Asha had spent the day in the passenger seat, watching Larissa at work.

And it was a good day for it, too – Larissa had some of the usual, patching up dogs, dealing with furballs, and making their little kid owners happy, comforting an old woman whose aged but faithful canine companion probably wasn’t going to live long enough to see out her cancer treatment. But she’d also had some excitement: she got called to a serious accident that involved three cars, and one of the cars had been towing a trailer of sheep, and a farm dog. Three ambulances and police everywhere, and Larissa had to shoot two of the sheep, after making very sure all the police knew she was going to, while two more were OK – just bruised, shaken, and panicky. It was the farm dog that she did her best with – exerting real effort while the farmer was taken off to hospital, more worried about his dog than himself. Maybe it was fruitless, with so many broken ribs, and other damage, but she did everything she could think off, and took that one straight to vet hospital with a special plea to do their best. Then she was called to a koala that had been in a road accident but wasn’t injured enough to put down; She splinted its front legs and organised to meet another rescue van that was already heading out to the Healesville Sanctuary where they’d nurse the koala back to health.

Larissa was pleased for Asha – some days were more boring than this, and others more difficult; this was enough excitement and variety for her to understand what Larissa did. Asha wasn’t supposed to touch anything, do anything, but she did get to cuddle the confused koala and help hold the dog at the accident; Larissa bent the rules there because she really needed another pair of hands, and she really couldn’t ask a cop to help out, given the rest of the chaos around the accident – an industrial spill going on from one of the other vehicles.

In the car afterwards, as they drove down to Sale, Asha slowly chilled out, amazed and thrilled at the day. And also shaking her head, looking at Larissa several times and saying: “That’s a much bigger experience than you can ever explain. You really are awesome. That’s one of the most exciting days of my life!”

They were meeting the Youtube team in the botanic gardens at Sale where they were hosting an open dinner for anyone involved in the shooting over the next few days. The team weren’t sure how many guests they’d have – maybe twenty, they’d guessed. Well, scratch that. Larissa’s first estimate was over a hundred people easy.

Well, at least the catering wasn’t their problem. Chez had thought about it like a city person, figured there’d be twenty people and decided to just get takeaway delivered. But when Larissa heard about that plan she pointed out that a country town like this ... once enough people decided it was interesting, many more would be in. Chez and frowned and wondered what to do, since they’d already committed, so Larissa suggested Julian call Jane, and offer her that they’d pay her twenty dollars a head, however many people turned up, and she should decide how to spread it around her friends – many of them uni students without holiday work – and they could figure out how to deal with the fact that they had no idea how many people would turn up. “Deal,” Jane had said immediately, and now the Youtube team didn’t have to worry about it. But turning up, she could see she made one mistake – should’ve had a discount for kids, because there were kids everywhere.

Looking around, she could see Steph’s friends, people from Xander’s factory, Jane and her team, and just heaps of other people. Ah yes – there was the gas plant boss, talking to Julian. She made her way into the crowd, and then discovered that way more people than she expected knew who she was – her video had been doing the rounds, obviously. After a few people stopped her to talk to her, Asha smiled at her and headed off to find Layna. By the time she made it to where Julian had been, he’d moved on, but the food was served, so she joined some of Steph’s friends in the queue. When they asked what Julian had done with her once she got home on Wednesday last week, she grinned and said, “Exactly what I told you all to imagine, over the kitchen bench. It was awesome. But over very quick!” They laughed hysterically at that, though it was clear they didn’t really believe her. Larissa grinned at them and told them two other variants for them to not believe in either, grinning all the way. They just laughed at her and said, “We’ll ask Julian.” Larissa laughed, and said, “He’ll tell you the same as me, except that he’ll say that he lasted all night!” Now they really were laughing.

When she got to the front of the queue, Jane spotted her and ran over to hug her, “Oh, it’s so great to see you! Thanks for this.” A few more words, and then Jane had to run back to her work. As Jane left, she heard one of the mums say, “That’s Jane. You know what I heard? She went down on her guy at a party last week, right out in front of everyone, made a big show of it.” Wow, why, a couple of the mums asked. “Apparently she cut a deal with her guy – if he stopped drinking completely, she’d blow him like that. I heard that she said she was proud of it. And a friend told her mum, and her mum said she was proud of it too.” Wow! from the mums. “More power to her,” one said, and then another said, “Well, she’s certainly made a name for herself. She’ll probably regret it.”

“Hang on,” the first one said, “how does she know you?” to Larissa. Larissa grinned at her and said, “Well, the guy you’re talking about, that’s my brother!” In the embarrassed silence that followed, Larissa said, “Actually, I suggested that she do that. I’ve done that with my guy – you only have to do it once, in my experience. They have to want to stop, but their mates can be a problem. Well, not after you do that. Tell me, your guys, how much do they drink?” There were some thoughtful faces on the mums after she asked that question.

The food was OK, but the company was great, and she eventually caught up with Julian, who wasn’t having quite as much fun he should – just way too much going on. Larissa took one look at him and said quietly to him. “If you can manage to chill, Asha will be in bed with us tonight. I know you want to get everything right but look around – people will understand if you don’t get to them.” Yeah, he looked at her, and grinned, and she could see he was more relaxed after that.

Plenty of people wanted to talk about her video – but increasingly, it was the video about Layna and the minister’s proposal. Opinions were fifty-fifty, but certainly passionate. People looked at it from two different perspectives, misogyny, and whether to engage with the system or break it. There was plenty of sympathy for the ‘tear down the house’ position of the techies, she was surprised to hear. And she spotted the techies, a bunch of local girls hanging off them. She grinned. Oh, and she saw Mark’s oldest daughter Suzy, chatting to Asha, and some of the local school kids. Interesting.