Chapter 23

Friday 26 August 2022

Larissa touched the wall just in front of Julian. She’d needed to just about kill herself to do it - she was exhausted in every way you could be, barely able to think. But she’d held him off over the length of their 2km swim, and that was a very meaningful achievement for her.

It’d started when Julian moved up to Townsville at the start of their Queensland trip, and he’d started a pattern of exercising first thing in the morning: swimming three times a week, running three times a week, and a long bike ride on Sunday morning before church. Larissa had joined him just over a week later, and they’d held the pattern all through their time up there. Julian had declared the day she arrived that his primary fitness goal for the trip was to beat her in the pool, and so they’d both knuckled down and trained hard, because that was the one thing she had him beat at. She just couldn’t get him on the bike or when they were running, and it had gotten harder each week to stay in front of him in the water.

So beating him on the last day, just pipping him at the post ... That was very sweet indeed. And he was as exhausted as she was, as he gave her a smile and a gentle high five. That was all either of them could do. Once she’d done that, she looked up and realised that there were about twenty people standing at the edge of the pool cheering for her. She smiled up at them, and punched her first into the air and they burst into cheers and laughter.

Having an audience made sense, really, because they’d been at the pool three times a week first thing in the morning trash talking each other and promising each other all sorts of forfeits for losing the race on their last day in Townsville. And given Larissa’s very public campaign, the other regulars in the morning who thought the whole thing was a big joke had prodded them towards ever wilder sexish tasks for the loser. So it was no surprise they had an audience, a mix of regulars, lifeguards, and a few tourists drawn in by the noise.

Larissa looked at the heads up display in her googles again, and checked the time, and saw that they’d done the swim faster than ever before, and they had time before breakfast. Well, time enough for the first forfeit, anyway.

When they’d recovered, Julian shucked his bathers off, and gave them to Larissa, who held them above her head and let out a whoop that was echoed by their audience. Time for the first forfeit: walk of shame to their towels. Julian sighed and climbed out of the pool in just his thong. He pretended he was going to run, and Larissa called him back and said he had to wait for her, because he’d have made her wait too. Looking at their audience’s expressions made her laugh. She pumped her fist again, and said, “I did it for the ladies, yeah!” A couple of the female lifeguards gave her a big thumbs up.

One of the male lifeguards pouted and pretended to cry. “But it was so close! Like, half a finger tip or something. Surely, Julian, you were close enough to get some clothes off Larissa!”

Julian laughed and said, “Nah, mate, I’m beaten fair and square. Isn’t she awesome?”

“She’d be more awesome if she joined you!”

“Nah, I’d get thrown out, never allowed to come back if I did that,” Larissa said.

The lifeguard laughed. “I’ve never heard of any rule like that. Tell you what, I’ll buy your top off you right now for $50.”

Julian burst into laughter. “Nah, mate, that’s chicken feed. You want her top, give her a kiss.”

“Ok,” Larissa said, laughing, “Give both of us a decent kiss, and you’ll own my top!”

When everyone stopped laughing, he shook his head, and said, “Nah, there’s no way!”

“I will!” one of the female lifeguards said. “Seems like an awesome deal to me.” So she kissed Julian very passionately, and then Larissa. Woo, Larissa nearly was in the mood to give her bottoms up as well as her top but she didn’t, she just laughed and handed her top over, leaving her in just a thong too.

“There, everyone, you’re all happy now! Anyway, thanks for playing our game over the last couple of months, and we’re going to miss you all and think of you from cold Melbourne.” More laughter, but it was time to go. They walked over to their towels and wrapped them around their waists, and Larissa put on her spare bikini top she had just in case Julian beat her, cause who knew where her top would end up. They waved good bye to their audience and walked over the road to their breakfast cafe.

A group of them had been having breakfast at this cafe from the start of their trip - it was right on the waterfront opposite the ocean pool, had good coffee, and was a good spot for ending their runs as well. Most mornings, they had breakfast with Layna and Joe and Nathan and Suzy, unless they were off somewhere filming. Chez joined them a couple of days a week, and a couple of researchers from the uni Larissa was going to sometimes did as well. Today it was just the six of them and Chez for their final planning session.

“Hi, Julian, Larissa, who won?” The cafe owner asked. She always served them herself, made sure they were happy, because having some variation of the group sitting around a table outside the cafe at the same time every morning had done wonders for her business, as people came by to see them or talk to them.

When she brought them their coffee and toasted sandwich, she said, “I want to thank you all for coming every morning. Of course, it’s been good for business, but forget that, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you, and I’m super sad that you’re going home. I guess you’ve done everything you can?”

“Well, we do have to go home,” Layna said, “but we certainly haven’t filmed everything we could. And we’ve very much enjoyed spending winter up here, loved it. So hopefully we’ll see you next year.”

“Oh, that’d be awesome. And it’d be great if you can stay at the same place.”

Suzy had found them a boarding house that had gone out of business during covid. She’d rented it for three months, and they’d moved in as a group. It had ten small bedrooms with queen size beds, a set of shared bathrooms, and a big common lounge/kitchen, and it’d been perfect for them. Except for the beds. Other than that, they’d had a lovely time bonding as a group for seven weeks.

“Well, I’m not sure,” Joe said. “The beds...” he shook his head. “You have no idea how much of a problem they’ve been.” The cafe owner looked at him quizzically. He grinned and said to her, “The previous owner must have been anti-sex or something, because as soon as you move on the bed, they squeak. Several of us have looked at them, but we can’t figure them out. So if we want that place again, we’ll insist they get replaced.”

“It can’t have been that much of a problem!”

“You don’t sleep in the next room to Julian and Larissa or Nathan and Suzy!” Joe told her. “Either side of us, these guys never stop.” He held his hands over his ears. “I tried not to listen, I promise!”

They all laughed for that. Then they did what they did every morning, and looked at the news and their social media accounts. Layna usually FaceTimed Steph in this point, and Suzy FaceTimed Toni in if she was available. Then they’d have a quick look over the night’s events, was there anything Layna or Larissa should look at? But mostly, there hadn’t been for the last few weeks.

Toni was an expert at her craft, learnt from Steph, playing social media like a fiddle on Larissa’s behalf, praising and thanking fans, and sassing the trolls and bigots. From somewhere on the web, Toni had sourced a photo of a male breast, quite hairy, and she’d pixelated out the nipple. Anyone asking for a picture of her tits - something trolls seemed to think was hilarious - got that photo, and their handle added to Larissa’s public shame list, and they’d learnt that there were several bots following her shame list and message bombing those handles to oblivion. Every so often a real issue popped out and she referred that to Suzy. Toni said she was having such fun that she had no idea why she was getting paid, and she had told Larissa that half the girls in her class were in on it, figuring out the funny and sassy replies. Larissa loved it, she’d never had to worry about it at all. Anytime she wanted to say something in public, she’d draft her words and hand them over to Toni, and they’d reliably go viral.

As usual, she had several requests for media interviews and appearances, and she went through the list with Suzy, deciding whether to think about them or fob them off. Today was easy - she told Suzy to say no to all of them.

Then Layna finished her own scan of social media and email with Steph and Nathan, and they started talking about their plans for the day. Today, that was all packing up and tying up the loose ends for filming during the day, and preparing for Layna, Joe, Julian and Larissa to disappear at lunch time. While that was happening, Larissa pulled out her computer to read Louise’s regular Friday morning report about the her campaign in the Gippsland schools.

The success of the campaign in the Gippsland schools had been remarkable, so much more than anywhere else, and Louise’s report started by talking about how she was explaining how she’d supported the campaign to several other school districts around Australia. Larissa believed that there were four reasons why the campaign had been so effective in Gippsland compared to anywhere else. The first was that she was from there, and that had grabbed everyone’s attention locally. The second was that the headmasters had already been looking for something to rescue the kids, knew that they had a problem, and they’d thrown everything they had behind the project, and they’d begged for help from the community. The third was Louise. She’d basically been appointed full-time school campaign coordinator for the entire region, and she’d given her whole heart and soul to the campaign, visiting every school every fortnight, speaking and organising and sharing her passion, supported by a growing band of school student leaders who were running hard for the campaign. That part was truly awesome. And the last factor was that Bob had told his various alcohol related businesses to get ahead of this, as quick as they could, and he’d thrown money at the problem as well, and the dry bar business, along with his other business’s support, had really cemented the campaign. Particularly the mobile dry bar - he’d set that up as a franchise across the valley, only available to local university students to own and run with generous support to get them going, and his teams were still scrambling to keep up with demand.

Was it working? Well, that was the second part of the report. Yes, it was working. Alcohol sales were down by volume of alcohol or calories. Sales of light drinks were way up. Sales of expensive drinks were up. Sales by value were up, in fact, and Bob was laughing all the way to the bank, as he usually did, and taking every opportunity to rub that into his competitor’s faces. There were other more amusing measures of success. The valley had nearly run out of condoms twice, and pregnancy tests once, and the local GP doctors had written to the schools to advise that all their markers of abuse and alcohol were way down, not just for teens, and could they keep doing whatever they were doing, but do keep reminding them about contraception, please.

In public, of course, all that success, which had been reported in the papers, along with enthusiastic comment from students from the local schools, raving about how much better their parties were, was all believed to be due to Larissa’s Big Party. That’s what the kids and paper’s called it, though neither Larissa nor Louise had ever used those words. Louise had organised it, just as the headmaster had suggested: a combined dance party for years ten to twelve from all high schools in Gippsland at La Trobe Stadium, the only place big enough. It’d been thrown together in a hurry to happen on the first Monday of the third term, the last thing Larissa had done before flying north. They’d bussed all the kids in, and then they’d piled into the ground and the stadium, and there’d been live bands and dancing for four hours, with breaks for the kids to hear from Larissa, Louise, Tamara, Layna, Jo - the police officer Larissa reported her rape to - and Terry, the headmaster from Orbost, who organised for his kids to sleep in a big tent city on a nearby park. Between the talks, Larissa, Tamara and Tony, and her various friends had led the dancing on a big screen, mostly from down in amongst the kids.

The kids had been told that the expected uniform was black yoga shorts or footy shorts, and a singlet or a sports bra for the girls, or they could wear school uniform if they wanted. Only ten percent of the school kids had stayed in uniform, and half those were the nerds who didn’t want to dance, and had their own gaming parties in the stand. Bob had managed to get a dry bar in place, staffed with the prospective franchisees - basically their dry run, and they’d served as many of Maria’s drinks as they could, and just plain water, all at below cost, and they’d eventually run out of everything, they’d been so popular.

The final icing on the cake was that Layna’s team had been there videoing the entire thing, including a special roped off section clearly marked as the YouTube section - the kids had all agreed in writing to the rules beforehand, and one was that dancing in the YouTube section was consent in advance to be on YouTube, and that section was packed with kids wanting to be on YouTube. In their underwear too; no yoga shorts in evidence there. Layna had interviewed a number of them for the video they released, and got white hot statements of passionate support for the dancing and the campaign, along with plenty of commitment to the full Larissa pledge. Dylan and Callum had told Larissa that they’d had to pick through the footage carefully to make sure they didn’t accidentally show kids actually having sex on the dance floor by the campaign rules, because there’d been plenty of that going on in the YouTube section.

Was everyone happy about that? And about the free love that happened at the Orbost camp later? (or at least the extremely happy dance party that had gone on until Terry and Louise finally put their foot down at midnight. Louise had reported that at least twice as many students slept in the park than came up from Orbost, and that contrary to expectations, most of them had been dancing and hugging, not actually screwing, though there’d been plenty of that). Of course there was controversy in the local paper, parents shocked by what had happened, and then other parents shocked at the parents shock, and so on and so forth. But were the students and teachers happy? Very much so.

Interesting, from Larissa’s point of view. If the kids had behaved like that when she was at school, the school would’ve been shut down. But make it a campaign against underage drinking, and given that the kids had really taken that on board ferociously, it’d suddenly become OK. And the kids seemed to understand that bargain. Seven weeks later the reverberations were still making it into Louise’s report.

The next section of the report dealt with the campaign outside the schools. There were a few bottle shops in the area that Bob didn’t own, and when they’d been slow to get on board with the program - not selling non-alcohol drinks, for instance, the kids had picketed them enthusiastically, nearly to the point of shutting them down, and they’d had to get on board. Then Ebony and her school co-captain had announced in the local papers a couple of weeks earlier that the students were going to go after hotels that didn’t sell Larissa drinks, as Maria’s drinks list was now known, or at least a convincing non-alcoholic option, and Louise’s news was that they were scrambling to get that sorted before Ebony’s deadline was up. Bob’s hotels had done their scrambling weeks before, so they were advertising their compliance already.

The last section in Louise’s report was new, and really got Larissa’s attention. It dealt with the overall impact of the campaign in the region. Larissa’s friends had told her on their WhatsApp chat that had replaced their Sunday afternoon picnics that the campaign was everywhere when they had parties, and talked to their families, and the school kids were pushing it hard into the rest of the community. But was that reality on the ground? Well, in the last week, Louise had spoken to the chief of police in Traralgon, and also the head of the healthcare service, and both had given her really solid statistics showing a downturn in admissions for violence and physical, mental and sexual abuse, and a downturn in arrests and reports for physical and mental abuse. Not sexual abuse, though - those reports had shot right up after Jo had spoken to the thousands of kids, but the police were confident that they’d trend down in the next reporting period.

Wow. Fucking wow. Larissa finished reading the report with tears in her eyes. That was her definition of success, right there. It had been all worth it. All that effort, putting herself on the line. It felt good, really deep in her heart, and she lowered her head and thanked Jesus for helping her through it.

“Larissa, are you OK?” she heard Layna ask, and she realised that Julian had his arm around her.

She looked up, and smiled, and kissed Julian, and said, “Just really incredible news, that’s all. I’m very OK.” Of course, she had to tell them, and they broke out into cheers for her. Yeah, that felt really really good.

“I’m so pleased!” Layna said. “I know that you’ll get lots of official recognition, but even if you don’t, whatever, all of us at the table know just how big a price you paid to make that happen. We’re in awe of you.”

“Yeah, babe, well done you!” Julian said. “I knew when you chose me just how awesome you are, except I had no idea that you’re this awesome!”

The owner of the cafe had come over to see what was going on, and asked, “Larissa, can I ask, what was the price? Was it as big as you expected?”

“Umm. Yes and no. I expected that the companies would go after me, try and smear my morals, dig dirt on me. And there was stuff to find, photos out there. But no one did, and we thought the alcohol companies would.” Larissa shrugged. “So that was good, but there were plenty of memes running around social media critical of me.”

A typical meme was a photo of Larissa in her uniform with the caption “This woman wants to kill your weekend,” or similar. The first few had bothered her, but Toni and her friends had immediately started ‘improving’ them by taking the original and putting another next to it mocking the first one. “This woman wants you to have a great weekend, and to remember it!”, or something similar, and the improved memes were immensely more popular than the originals. Of course, there would always be trolls, Russians, incels and whatever, but they didn’t get anywhere outside their nasty corner of the web, and Toni and Michael were getting good at trolling the trolls on their home turf.

“But I’ve ended up enjoying that as a contest of ideas, and we’re winning. And I thought the companies would fight back, lobbiests and media campaigns, but no. I mean, I clashed in public with that chair of the board, but he’s fallen out of the picture.”

“Victory is yours!” Suzy exclaimed. Well, that was quite true, she’d criticised him implicitly in her early media work, used him as the butt of her jokes a couple of times, without naming him, and that had goaded him into doing a media interview getting into Larissa, so after that she’d just named him and asked in an interview when he was going to stop beating everyone’s wife, or at least, when he was going to take the damage his business was doing to woman seriously. If he wanted to ever be taken seriously again by women, that was. Then she’d mused on national TV whether a social media campaign to stage a protest by dancing on the streets outside the gates of his delivery centres would be damaging enough to his bottom line to get him to start caring, or to at least look like it. After that he’d sent her an email throwing in the towel, which had somehow leaked, and Larissa was very confident it wasn’t Suzy who leaked it, since they hadn’t even read it before it leaked. His email had asked her what she wanted from him, and her answer had been simple: Show Australian women that you understand and care, or go and get fucked. Or rather, in fact, you won’t get fucked ever again. That answer had leaked, and Larissa knew exactly who leaked that one: Suzy did, on her instruction. Bob had called her, laughing his head off, and said, “He won’t last three months, let alone six months!” Obviously Bob had crossed swords with him before.

“I guess it is. Anyway, other than that,” she said to the cafe owner, “it was just really challenging to tell my story, put it out in front of everyone, and know that everyone in the world knows just what happened to me, and how low I went. And it was also tiring to deal with all the attention and the endless media requests, even with my bestest friends here deeply on my side.”

“Oh,” the cafe owner said, “I’ve watched everything, read everything, and we couldn’t love you more. I have family members who’ve suffered, and you’re doing more than anyone else I know. You too, Layna, you’re amazing for your own work.”

“Thanks,” Larissa said. “Anyway, it hasn’t all been bad.”

She’d done two lots of consulting and made piles of money from the big corporates for telling them what should have been damn obvious in the first place. If they wanted to pay her stupid amounts of money to do that, she was fine with it. And both those big companies were turning their ships as fast as they could. But since they were wholesalers, with typically three months of stock in the delivery channels, nothing they were doing was visible yet. But it sure was going to be, it was going to arrive over the next few months and really change things. And Deanna’s team was busy pointing the rest of the country at Gippsland, and doing their best to encourage districts to emulate what Louise and Bob’s businesses were doing, and they were starting to get traction, and Deanna was hoping that they were approaching a tipping point across the eastern seaboard cities.

And since that time Annie had got into her, no one she knew personally had been less than complimentary. Annie had disappeared too, no one she knew had seen her, even while Larissa was away from the uni. She knew some family and some of her friend’s parents weren’t happy about what she was doing, but they hadn’t said anything. What had happened, which had been a bit of a drag, was in her church.

Larissa’s campaign was obviously very high profile, and she’d referenced her faith as a motivation for it in several interviews. That had lead to an opinion piece in the national papers that what Larissa’s campaign represented was Christians finally claiming sex back, instead of just repudiating it. Larissa didn’t know anything about that, but her own church was full every week, excited to be spreading the word on building relationships properly, and Tim and Vicki had been quoted in that opinion piece. That had led to a spate of media articles of various kinds for and against sex, or alcohol, or violence, from a religious point of view, and the rather ridiculous outcome of christians picketing against her campaign outside her church on a Sunday morning. Tim had gone out and asked why didn’t they come in and celebrate Jesus, and when they’d refused, he’d asked everyone to go out and stand with the protesters in the carpark, and done the service outside. Tinky had organised a bunch of the older kids and at the end of the service, they handed out food and drink to the protesters. That was it for protesting at the church, at least, but not the end of the arguments.

The others had got onto talking to about Hannah, who had gone up to Canberra to work for Layna inside parliament building shadowing the Teals and publishing a weekly diary of how environmental issues were being handled. At first, she hadn’t been welcome in the private meetings, but once she’d made her presence felt she started getting the private background briefings, and Hannah’s wheelchair and bright personality were now pretty well known around Parliament building. They were talking about her latest antics, because she’d contrived to get thrown out of her wheelchair out the front of parliament while filming a protest about the government still kowtowing to the coal billionaires, and by doing so on camera, she’d stopped the police from shutting it down, and by doing that, she’d ensured that a billionaire coal baron didn’t make his meeting with the minister. All for everyone to see on YouTube. The police absolutely weren’t going to arrest a young pretty handicapped girl lying in front of a broken wheelchair while being filmed for YouTube.

While she was listening to that, Larissa got a message on the chat she shared with Louise and her mum, a very private one for Louise to share her heart when it was overflowing. Usually with self-doubt, but sometimes with really important personal successes.

✉ Louise: Big news. Very happy news. Two bits of news!
✉ Louise: Sharing it with my besties before anyone else. Even Libby

Wow. Louise had looked Libby up, as Larissa had suggested, and found that she was now a farmer’s wife in far western Victoria, and very happy to hear from Louise indeed, and they’d created a very beautiful online friendship that might one day turn into a real world one. But, Louise told Larissa, it was so good as it was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to risk meeting in the real world.

✉ Larissa: Sounds exciting!
✉ Raychelle: Love it, hanging out to hear
✉ Louise: First, Larissa gave me a task to do

Did she? What? She didn’t remember.

✉ Louise: She told me that I had to accidentally let the kids see me in something inappropriate

She did too, she’d forgotten all about it.

✉ Louise: So yesterday afternoon, I was coaching the senior swimming team. We train at the public pool, two lanes for us
✉ Raychelle: This is going to be great!
✉ Louise: The next lane is for a group of oldies. One of the old women had a turn, right in the pool
✉ Louise: I was the nearest, so I dropped my shorts and t-shirt and dived in, and held her up
✉ Louise: I didn’t have to do CPR or anything, but I stayed with her and helped her out, and then we got her into the ambulance. Took about ten minutes all up, and the kids came and helped her and me. One fetched her medication so that we could give it to her in the pool, and another got her a glass of water
✉ Louise: A very good experience all around, and the kids were thrilled. All good, right?
✉ Larissa: Absolutely
✉ Louise: Only, the underwear I had on was about the most inappropriate you could possibly imagine
✉ Louise: [a photo of Louise in a lacy g-string and a very sexy bra]
✉ Louise: That photo was later. I was still buzzing. Larissa, that was an incredible experience. I had to tell the kids, don’t bother trying not to look, just help me. Fucking amazing
✉ Louise: After I got dressed, and after she went off in the ambulance, I told the kids: yes, I’m sexed up cause I’m going on a date afterwards, and I have to trust them not to spread stories and photos around
✉ Louise: I bet at least the story will spread! I just about killed Terry later
✉ Larissa: That is an awesome story. 10/10 for the rescue, and 100/10 for style at meeting my challenge
✉ Raychelle: My heart is beating wildly, what an experience for you!
✉ Louise: But it gets better!
✉ Larissa: How?
✉ Louise: It’s official. Going to be announced this morning. Terry told me last night, a total surprise
✉ Louise: Terry is moving to be headmaster of Trafalgar High School. They really need what he’s been doing at Orbost there
✉ Louise: The people at Orbost are going to be devastated, they love him, and he loves it there, both the school and the wild land
✉ Louise: He’s moving in with me and the girls. I would’ve moved to Orbost in a heartbeat, but the girls are doing very well in school. Very well. So he’s coming to us out of love for my girls and me
✉ Louise: My heart is blown by that, and the girls love him. As much as they love Julian, which is nearly without limit
✉ Louise: So it’s all perfect! I finally have found genuine love, and it’s all come together
✉ Raychelle: I am in tears, such good news!
✉ Larissa: Me too. I’ve just told Julian and we’re thrilled for you

Larissa had seen Terry and Louise coming, as soon as she met him with Louise when they were planning the big party. She hadn’t said anything but at one stage when his back was turned she’d pointed at him and given Louise the thumbs up. Terry and Louise had consummated their physical relationship at 3am the night after the party out in the open in the middle of the Orbost tent city when they were finally convinced that no one else was awake anymore, and Larissa had immediately known that he was the right man for Louise when she heard that. They’d been getting closer and more intense, and she’d wondered how that would resolve itself.