Chapter 7: Ice Cream Days

Yarra and Taudrens’ schools start half an hour apart, with the girls’ school starting earlier. So she never travels with her younger brother - which she used to be glad of, only now she’s not too sure.

She pours just a few spoonfuls of cereals for breakfast, but even this she doesn’t finish - she’s too nervous to eat. She leaves early enough to catch the bus before the one she’d aimed for on the previous Wednesday, to try to make sure she doesn’t meet the city boys.

When the next K44 bendy bus turns up, it’s much less full than the one she was assaulted on. She gets on at the front - she’d been between the back doors when Pinno and Skidmark and their mates had barged on board. She sits right behind the driver on sideway-facing seats where she can see right back along the full length of the bus. She’s thinking, if she has to scream, the driver will hear her clearly from here.

But nothing happens - the city suit lads don’t get on the bus. She gets off at her school stop no worse for wear.

There isn’t any sport on Mondays for her year. So she won’t have to strip in the changing room, and nobody’s going to see her still-bruised breasts. She’s so early though, that there aren’t hardly any other girls around, and none from her class. So she goes on her own to a sunny spot she likes, near the stream that runs around one edge of the girls school. She waits, sitting down on her own on the grass, then takes out a school book - it’s all she’s got with her - and starts to read.

“Hello?”

Yarra shades har eyes as she looks up at this girl. A straight-haired shape is silhouetted, right against the morning sun.

“I’m Yulla,” says the girl. “I think you’re in ten minus, aren’t you? I’m in ten plus. Do you mind if I sit down?”

Yarra nods her head toward the grass. “I’m early too,” she tells the girl. “I’m never this early. Just today.” She moves the bookmark to where she’s been reading and closes up the book.

Once the girl is sitting down with her knees and skinny legs bent close to her chest, Yulla purses her mouth and waits for Yarra to talk first. Yarra, looking, thinks Yulla has an odd, pinched face, and her eyes seem oddly close together. She’s got a frame of brown hair which hangs dead straight, with no wave or curls at all. Yarra doesn’t know any of the girls from class ten plus. There are two big classes for each year of her school, called plus and minus - not streamed, they’ve told her, just parallel.

“Is Mister Ulldrade nice?” the girl asks eventually.

“Ullerade,” says Yarra, “yes, he’s really good.”

The girl blinks back at her, then nods, face serious. “Yes that’s what I heard.” She doesn’t add more.

“Yes he’s really interesting,” Yarra says. “He knows loads and loads about everything.”

Again, just nods. Then Yulla starts to frown. She says, “Wish I was in your class.”

Yarra has heard stories. Mr Dickle isn’t a nice man at all. “Does he teach you?” she asks. Their single class teachers take just the one class for nearly every subject, and, Yarra has heard, some of them don’t know much at all about half the subjects they teach.

“No. Yes. Sometimes.” Yulla’s eyes flick around the open space between where they’re sitting and the ugly concrete building which holds most of the classrooms. “He gives the books out then makes us read chapters. Sometimes he tells us what’s written is wrong.”

“Oh,” says Yarra. “Like what?”

“He says science is wrong.”

Yarra frowns. “Which part of it?”

Yulla shrugs, then shakes her head. “Just science.”

“Oh.” Yarra frowns. “o you think he’s supposed to?”

“Supposed to what?” Yulla asks.

“Say science is wrong. Mr Ullerade doesn’t. He says science is amazing because it’s looking at what’s really there, not saying something’s this way or that way without really checking.”

“Mr Dickle says that’s wrong,” says Yulla, looking faintly horrified. “He says God made everything the way it’s got to be. So trying to say it’s different is a sin.”

“But that’s bollocks,” says Yarra. “Just saying something’s true doesn’t make it true.”

Yulla is now looking around her, left and right, to see if anyone has overheard. “You can’t say that,” she says.

Yarra frowns, then squints. “Why not?”

“He’ll hear you,” Yulla squeaks.

“Who?” Yarra’s struggling, wrinkling her nose up. “You mean God?”

“Mr Dickle!” Yulla has said this in a panicked, low hiss.

“Oh. What happens if he hears you say that?”

“He’ll say you’re arguing back!” Yulla tells her.

Yarra sits there, blinking. She finally asks, “You mean - you’re not allowed to...”

She can’t quite get her head around it. Mr Ullerade likes them to argue back, ask questions, try things out. Even their assistant teacher, Miss Maplum, says she’s never learned so much in her life. “The way he gets you to question things, to try and build an argument. You’re all so lucky. He’s teaching you to think.”

Yulla says, “Mr Dickle says girls are supposed to do what they’re told to do.”

“Oh.” Yarra drops her chin towards her chest. “Oh.” She looks up. “Yes I get it. He’s one of those then, Mr Dickle.”

“One of what?” Yulla asks, quickly checking around herself again.

“One of those who tells you - girls are supposed to do what they’re told?”

“But we are,” says Yulla.

“Yeah,” says Yarra, slowly. “And who told you that?”

“Mr Dickle.”

“Just him?”

“My dad.”

“Just them?”

“It’s what everyone says!”

Yarra sighs. The playground is starting to fill up with girls. “Mr Dickle, your dad. Is there anything they have in common, would you say?”

“What d’you mean?” Yulla asks.

“Um ... anything that makes them the same?”

Yulla looks confused.

“Is there anything you think they might have in common?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. What’s the same about them, but different about us? From them, I mean.”

The girl is frowning - squinting what look to Yarra like coal-black eyes. “That they’re grown-ups?” she asks.

“Close, but not that.”

“They’re both men?”

“There you go. Hole in ... two, I suppose. If men make up the rules - which they do - then they can tell all us girls that we’re supposed to always do what we’re told.”

“But we are,” says Yulla.

“No we’re not. Not when you see the bigger picture, we’re not.”

The school bell rings. The two girls get up. Yulla heads off to class 10+ and Mr Dickle, who won’t let them talk back or ask questions. Or think. Yarra heads off to class 10- and Mr Ullerade, who, it turns out, has decided to teach them some chemistry and physics today, even though it’s not in their official curriculum. He starts telling them that matter is made up from atoms, then tells them that atoms are mostly empty space. He tells them how atoms have been fused together then tells them, different atoms have different properties. Then he shows them what he means in a bucket full of water. “Water puts out fire, right?” he asks.

They all nod, every one.

He takes out tiny little lump of metal. He says, “This is pure magnesium. Watch.”

With them all pressed up close, he drops the little lump on top of the water, and they stand there, mouths open, amazed, as the lump skids left and right and twirls across the water’s surface, a pinpoint of dazzling light, till it skitters and crackles itself out of existence.

She gets home in one piece too, head full of all the elements the universe is made from, thinking of the millions of combinations that just pure bits of this and pure bits of that might combine to make entirely new molecules of things, that might not even have existed before.

“You look loads better, Yarra,” her mum says when they stand in the kitchen.

And Yarra starts to tell her what magnesium does when it’s dropped into water.

They all eat in the kitchen, then Taudren runs off upstairs, while Yarra does some homework at the kitchen table.

On the telly that night, there are more smutty idents. Her dad has put it on Popular again. As usual, he’s the one who’s hogging the remote. There’s an ident where a different girl with great big tits keeps doing jumping jacks, and the first time it’s on it’s seven o’clock. It’s the same thing as last night after Popular Arts, but with a wet tee shirt, clinging pants, more slow motion. The girl’s breasts slap up and down backed by cheery, infant-pleasing music.

The soap comes on at not long after seven. It’s been running forever, has Ice Cream Days. It’s this show about a seaside town with a brightly coloured ice cream shop, which is right in the middle of these sea-facing shops. It’s called Ice Cream Days because the man in the shop is called Mr Days.

There’s a new family that Yarra has never seen before, with a girl about her age, or maybe slightly younger. In the soap, they’re the Maloodys and the girl is called Shishelle. They make it sound like this family’s been there all along, except that they haven’t. The mum asks the girl if she’s done all her homework, and she says she has.

They cut to her coming into school the next day. The school’s been featured before, they had a thing about a teacher having an affair with his teacher’s assistant, it was all about whether his wife would find out.

It’s a girl’s school on one side and a boy’s school over a fence, and this teacher was in the boy’s school side, only now he’s in the girl’s school side and he’s this new girl Shishelle’s new class teacher. The teacher’s assistant got written out, it was all a big scandal. And they’re saying that’s why the teacher’s in the girl’s school now, because the boy’s school headmaster won’t have him anymore. The teacher looks dejected at the start. He’s got salt and pepper hair, mid forties by the look of him.

The new teacher’s assistant in Shishelle’s class is a man who looks no more than twenty one or twenty two. Yarra shudders when she sees his face - he reminds her of Norgel, the brown haired short lad who snorted and laughed when her face distorted as he Billy Halled her poor sore breasts.

Shishelle is in a smaller class of girls than any class Yarra has ever been in. There’s maybe ten to fifteen there, while all of Yarra’s classes have been well over thirty - sometimes closer to forty. Taudren says his classes have had twenty to twenty five boys in them always, and she’s only really realised in Mr Ullerade’s class that this means society values girls’ education much less than boys’.

The camera only really looks at four or five of the girls in this class. They seem to know already who Shishelle is.

It cuts away to another scene, a different bit of story, in the ice cream shop. Then another place and a different bit of story. Then we’re back in the school, and Shishelle is in their playground with these other four girls. They’re talking in a group about doing a strike, but it’s one of the other girls who talks about it first. It’s a stupid reason, about being allowed to vote for who their teacher is. Yarra shakes her head at the storyline. That’d never happen, not anywhere, she thinks. The girls agree to go on strike between them, only Shishelle looks like she doesn’t think it’s a good idea at all.

We’re in the ice cream shop again. Then the other different story’s now set in the Church Hall, further down the sea front, where the mums are talking about a jumble sale they’re going to put on. It’s only on for just a few moments.

Then we’re back to the school. The teacher takes Shishelle’s homework from her, looks it over like he’s read it in two seconds, then tells her she’s pretty much his favourite student - she always does such sterling work!

Ice Cream Shop. Church Hall. Then the prettiest young wife, who’s been talking with the others about putting on this jumble sale, is riding a bike to go and fetch some things from her home for the jumble. She’s been in the show for a good year by now, though the stories she’s been in have been simple and silly. Yarra’s dad has called her, “A pretty face to look at now and then.” It’s the woman’s on-screen husband who’s had more to do, in stories here and there with the men of the town.

Yarra frowns at the screen. The pretty mum is wearing flared white shorts, which are tight at the back. The camera is following nor far behind her, so you see her hips working. Then as she starts to go uphill - the seaside town is backed by steep hills - she sits up off her saddle so her hard-working bum is right there in front of camera. They follow her uphill, cutting to her face then back to her bum.

Yarra has never seen a sequence like that on the soap before - Ice Cream Days has always been bland and, the odd affair aside, not at all shocking.

Then it’s back to the school. It’s the end of a lesson, with the same teacher taking it. Four of the five girls get up - just not Shishelle. Their leader from the playground just comes out and says it - they all want to vote to have their old teacher back. Their new teacher looks shocked. Shishelle’s still sitting, but one of the other girls hisses to her that she’s got to get up too. Shishelle shakes her head, but the other girl hisses louder, till Shishelle reluctantly stands up as well.

The teacher dismisses the rest of the class, then he tells the first four girls they’re in for a caning. Yarra’s never heard that on this programme before. They never mentioned caning when the story was set in the boy’s side of the school. The teacher sends the first four away, to the punishment room - apparently this school has a punishment room - with the grinning teacher’s assistant behind them.

Then the teacher’s talking to Shishelle on her own, telling her how completely disappointed he is, how it personally hurts him that she’s one of the strikers, that she’s always been his favourite model student. They really make him out like he’s a bit of a prat, he’s so over the top about how much he thinks her standing with the others has personally hurt him. And it leaves them like that as it cuts to an ad break.

Yarra says, “Really well worked-out storyline this, Dad.”

It’s him and her and Lazabel, her mum, they’re the ones who are watching Ice Cream Days.

“They trailed this,” says Molcum. “You remember that, Laza? On Media Matters, with Simin Lankland. Those bods from the network. Terrific young actress, that’s what they said. That’s her, that’s that schoolgirl.”

Yarra says, “Stupid plot though. The first time we’ve seen her she’s already in trouble.”

Once the adverts are over, we’re back to the soap. The scene on screen is in the ice cream shop. Then we’re back up the hill as the pretty young wife comes out of her house with a bag full of clothes. She gets back on her ding-belled, girl-handled bicycle and freewheels down the hill. As she drops, she lifts her legs off the pedals, opens them up to ninety degrees and starts screaming, “Wheee!” The camera’s not far away from her - only just in front. You can tell she’s going fast because the wind opens up the legs of her shorts.

At the bottom of the hill, she starts pedalling again, really happy, with her bum high up off the seat. They cut to the front and she’s really leaning forwards, and you see right down her cleavage. Yarra can’t believe a stupid soap is doing stuff like this.

Back to the school. They’re following the four schoolgirls now as well, down a corridor and from behind their bums! But they’re schoolgirls! They honestly don’t look any older than sixteen. The same age as she is, Yarra thinks.