Chapter 10: Cocky Taudren, Cautious Cuckles

Yarra doesn’t want to know what’s going on downstairs that weekend. She sneaks down to the kitchen in mid-morning, finds only her father in there - he’s reading a newspaper - grabs some breakfast cereals and takes them back upstairs.

Has the school uploaded that gym class to the database? Is Taudren busy watching it next door? She doesn’t want to know.

Yarra doesn’t have local friends. The family has been in Kennigwort for just over a year. She’s got used to being moved on from one part of Dogaland to another. It hurt so badly the first time - all her friends gone. They went back once, down south to near where their old house was in Saltonesk in the Humbre region, for a visit with an old relative, and she saw a couple of those friends she used to have. But then never went back again, after that. The relative they’d stayed with, Auntie Semeena, had died, she found out a few years later.

She made new friends in her new school, which was in Kolk, in Bightland in the east. They were all new that time, all the girls just starting year four. That lasted two years - in fact, a bit over - then part way through her third year there - year six - the family got uprooted again. All her new friends, just gone!

It was harder in her next school, in a suburb of the capital, Godminster. Yarra found herself turning defensive. She tried to make friends, but by then the kids were older and they’d learned to be crueller. Yarra gor a nickname because of her accent - Biter, they called her, because their last home had been in Bightland, in a fishing town on the east coast called Kolk. And some of the girls who got to know her after that - once she’d deliberately softened her accent to the local Dogger Standard - thought that the others called her Biter because she’d literally bitten another girl.

She had found a friend there, a few weeks in. A girl from another class in the same year, who was standing by her in the dinner line one day. Climdy Pellder hadn’t had friends either. So they’d started sitting together at dinner and meeting in the playground. Just the two of them. Climdy had even lived quite near them. So she’d found she had a friend at home as well! And Climdy had cousins, who always seemed to be around at her house, so suddenly Yarra had other friends too! A bad situation has finally turned good.

Then two years later, they moved again, and this time, the move happened half way through her school year. Two years, more or less, she’d been in Godminster in Dogger region - but gone again, back to Humbre, this time but way out in the west, in a place called Hinterton. nowhere near where they used to live in the south and much too far from Godminster to keep up her friendship with Climdy. She’d started to notice the tick of the years, too. The time between moves. Her dad tried to explain - his work - his type of job - setting up new offices, helping set up their IT systems, teaching new staff how to used this or that.

“I just have to move, Yarra - that’s what the job is.”

She was warier this time. She kept her distance, didn’t try to fit in, waited for girls to come to her. Eventually she fell in with a couple of new friends, but she was watching the tick of the calendar by then. First school year at an end now - year eight. She’d probably get through year nine before they moved.

At least the next move happened in the middle of summer. At least she’d started year ten at Kennigwort, way up in Fisher region, with everyone else. Even though they all knew each other from the year before. But by then she’d got the message - stay aloof. Just let it all wash over you. Learn to like your own company.

But her teacher. She hadn’t seen Mr Ullerade coming. He caught her attention straight away! Caught everyone’s attention! And suddenly she wasn’t going to school to be with friends. Bugger friends, she wanted to learn! And Miss Maplum seemed to find time to work with everyone. To catch them up with things they didn’t understand or hadn’t covered before. Their maths. Their Doglish. Even chemistry now, and physics. It took her till over half waay through that first year to get that, not only did their parallel class not learn chemistry and physics, none of the other classes did! And biology, lovely biology! Insects, organs, cells, organelles, amoebae, bacteria, genetics itself - the endless complexity and beauty of all the invisible things in the world! Made accessible, available, by Donder and Tanta - Mr Ullerade, Miss Maplum. Who needed friends when all the world’s knowledge was right there, waiting for her to find it all out?

Squeals downstairs. Her mum, panting, laughing. “Get - off, you pair of monsters!”

Then in a little while, Taudren, at the bottom of the stairs, “Oh, Yarr-aa! Yarr-aa! Come down for a surprise!”

Her mum: “Seriously, Tauders, just leave her alone.”

Then, another hour later, “Yarra! Dinner!”

She forces herself downstairs for that. The other three are already in the kitchen, all three of them sitting at the kitchen table.

It’s like nothing happened last night at all. No Lazabel upended over her armchair. No spanking by Molcum, no pinching by Taudren.

Best behaviour, that’s what it feels like. Like the vicar’s come by for a cup of tea and a fairly cake. And Yarra’s the vicar.

Whatever. She’ll take it. She eats her lunch as they talk about the weather, metaphorically. Even literally, eventually. Then she’s back upstairs, back to sink her nose in her biology book. Attack / defensive co-evolution of the wooly northern rhino and deciduous shrubs with two-inch-long thorns. They’re near-extinct in the wild now. She saw one in a zoo once. Its tiny, sad eye in that massive, horned head.

Five minutes later, there’s her mum giggling, telling them to stop. Then screaming like a banshee - Molcum, Taudren, Lazabel - at it again.

Fuck the telly. She wants none of this. In the evening, she dresses in a track suit and tells them as she’s leaving that she’s going for a run. Which she literally does, just to get out of the house. Out past the bus stops and onto Cudley Marsh - the fragment still left before the suburbs grew out to here and beyond.

She dares the sofa late at night. There’s just her dad down there by then, watching another of his political shows. For once, they’re not talking about in-flagrante laws being scrapped, standards on TV falling through the floor, the SPD, school policy or any of that. It’s economic policy instead. The growth of online sales, the shrinking of the high street.

Molcum doesn’t mention anything about Taudren and his new games with her mum. And Yarra doesn’t ask. She doesn’t want to know.

Sunday starts the same, and she stays up in her room. Then her dad comes to her door. “Yarra, we’re going for a drive - want to come?”

She’s suspicious at first, but they’re heading out north east, to the tip of Fisher region and Dogaland itself. It’s a nice warm day - autumn hasn’t kicked in yet. She wants to go - she just doesn’t want to get caught up in any games.

“Your mum’s made a picnic.” Her dad’s come into her room now.

“Where?” she asks.

“Blickgate,” he says. “That lovely spit of land, you know.”

She does. Lots of people. Nice walks among the ferns, and down to the coast - a popular spot. Not much chance of an ambush.

“Yeah, alright.”

They all pile in the car. Late morning. They’re off. Their dad driving, their mum in the front seat. Her behind their dad’s seat and Tauds behind their mum. The radio on, playing half way decent music. Her window down. It’s nice - she’s happy.

Her mum laughs at something her dad has just said. She didn’t hear it, but she turns to look. And Taudren’s hand is creeping towards her - towards Yarra, not her mum. She snatches his wrist - first in one hand, then in both. She’s as strong as he is still, just about - plus he still reacts like she’s bigger, even if she’s not. She starts to twist his wrist.

She says, deadly serious, but low enough that it won’t carry forward in the noisy-engined car, “Just try it, little bro - if you want a broken nose. Because I’ll do it.”

He’s actually nice, after that. They have a friendly family day. No-one acts weird. When they picnic, they’re all laughing.

There are people about. A lot of day-trippers have headed out to Blickgate. The Corkles walk as a family, they climb down to the rocky spit-head coast. There are spiny urchins in the rock pools. Their dad takes lots of family pictures. Taudren behaves. No-one pinches Lazabel. Or Yarra.

Next morning, she’s thinking about pulling a sicky. But she thinks about Keet, and Farthing Pelling. Not even in her year, not even near her age. Her friends by default, because they all found themselves in the same shitty boat.

And she’s the oldest. She feels like she should be there. Den mother? And anyway, there’s literally nothing wrong with her - she’s in rude good health. So she dresses, as normal.

No, not as normal. Dressing in this stupid orange school kit can’t be thought of as normal. She stares at herself in the long bathroom mirror. Damn - she actually looks cute! It would be a killer look if it hadn’t been imposed on her, if it hadn’t been designed to paint a target on her back. She thinks about ditching these clothes and putting on her older, longer blue school kit. But that would be a red rag to a bull (well, a blue one, anyway), guaranteed to drop her in trouble.

She’s in trouble anyway. For the umpteenth time since she and Keet and Farthing fought back against those Janitors, she wonders when the shit will hit the fan. She’s been half expecting a call to her parents from the school through the weekend. But her parents - when she’s seen them - have seemed blissfully unaware of any trouble.

She’s down before Taudren, and Molcum seems to be busy in the downstairs room he uses for a study. Yarra quickly stuffs some breakfast cereals down her while her mother, leaning her hips against a worktop, asks her what she’s expecting this week.

“Expecting about what?”

“Well - whatever those clothes mean, I suppose.”

She finds she doesn’t want to answer.

“Yarra? Are you going to be alright?”

“It’s not a fashion thing, mum.”

“Yes - I know that, I got that impression. Those clothes put you in a different category?”

“What did the school say?” Yarra asks.

“Not much. There was a letter. That certain girls will be required to wear new uniforms, but the school will provide them. Girls picked to wear them have to wear them. Something about they’ve got to go to school with the uniforms uncovered. By public transport. When your dad read that part out, I made him read it again. ‘It’s what it says here,’ is all he said.”

“Well I go by bus anyway. So does Taudren,” says Yarra.

“I know, but - stand up.”

Yarra has finished her breakfast, so she stands.

“Turn around.”

She turns. Her mum is shaking her head.

“And - the other girls wearing those orange ones - are theirs as short as that one?”

“Yes,” says Yarra.

“I actually feel as if I should come with you. On the bus. To see you get there alright.”

Yarra says, “It’s not on the bus where I need a chaperone.”

Her mum puffs out her breath. “You girls have it tough. Your generation.”

Yarra gets out of the house just as Taudren thunders down the stairs. With his school starting half an hour later than hers, they pretty much never catch the bus together. He stares at her, at her skirt. “I’m going to find out what that means,” he says - though he keeps his voice low so their parents can’t hear.

“Just make sure you don’t pull it right off when you do,” she tells him, pointing slyly at his crotch.

And she’s gone, with door shut behind her. But as she’s walking away, it opens again, and the little creep is standing there - then crouching, to get a better view.

“I can literally see your bum,” he calls.

The bus comes just as she gets to the stop - it’s the earlier bus which is nearly always emptier. She takes the semi-safe seat just behind the driver and covers her thighs with her satchel anyway. Stuff their keep-your-uniform-uncovered rule.

At the other end, she gets through the school gate without trouble. Nobody is waiting there for her at the entrance - no Tund the Turd, no Eccar, no Miz Shrimp. No janitors either. But now she’s on school grounds, she’s very aware that she’s officially a target. Any male staff member can give her an on-the-spot punishment - bizarrely, without having to even give a reason — an excuse - or even award her an H- punishment, just so long as that gets approved by a teacher. With the yellow skirt girls, those worse awards have to be approved by the girls’ own class teacher. Which means the girls wearing yellow in Yarra’s class will get protection from Mr Ullerade. Orange is the worst of the worst though. While Donder can’t protect the yellows from spankings - at least, not by other teachers - he can’t protect the orange girls from any of it. So she’s in the same boat as Farthing, Keet and all the other orange-skirt girls. As the three of them found out early last Friday, even janitors and other scummy bastards - assistant teachers, ancillary staff - think they have some right to act like gods around the orange-skirt girls.

In the distance, she sees one of the janitors. It’s old Simkiss. And he’s definitely looking. Staring right at her, from the far left corner of the big school block, which leads out to the playing fields and the back route to the playground. He’s far enough away that she could easily out-run him - the man is old and fat. But he doesn’t move towards her.

There are two other ways to the playground, but the girls aren’t allowed through the main school block this early - the quickest way, in between the assembly hall, to her right, and the main block to the left. So she has to go the long way round to her right, skirting the assembly-gym hall and close to the refectory prefab block. This brings her into the playground in a gap between the hall and a part-covered area at the edge of the playground. There are benches below a corrugated roof - everyone calls this the cloisters - and notice boards behind them.

A few girls are already there. Yarra sees it straight away - any blue-skirt girls are sticking with the blue skirts and the yellows with the yellows. A cluster of orange-skirts are sitting by where Yarra has just come in, on the benches underneath the corrugated overhang, right side of the playground.

The blues - the majority - and most yellows - six in every class - are in mostly same-age groups. But the same is not true for the orange girls. There’s one girl from the year above her, Yarra thinks she’s called Erma Woller. Add Misty Lutyens, the pretty but accident-prone girl from year ten below Yarra’s. Minty Ploom is there from year nine and Farthing from year eight. The moment Yarra joins them, their group is made up of one girl from each of the five school years - Yarra being year eleven now.

Minty Ploom was right in front of Yarra in the Gym class, next to Keet, last Friday. She’d even got caned in the changing room, as a warning to everyone else to keep their mouths shut. It was looking at Ploom, who’d been directly in front, that had made Yarra realise how disgusting those shorts they’d all been forced into were: not only were Minty Ploom’s too tight, but anywhere she’d sweated, they’d turned transparent. The image flashes through Yarra’s mind.

“Hi, Yarra,” says Farthing.

“Hi Farthing. Is this it so far?”

The youngest girl nods.

Yarra’s peering around the edges of the playground. It’s being patrolled by a couple of assistant teachers - Hoik and Cuckles from the year eight classes, strolling together.

“So, no-one’s been targeted yet?” Yarra asks.

“Oh god, don’t bring that on!” says Erma Woller huffily.

The assistant teachers are strolling along the top, far edge of the tarmac playground. They turn when they get to the overhanging cloister shelter - it stretches all along the playground’s right-hand side.

“Those assistants are coming this way,” Yarra says.

“Do you think we should move?” It’s Farthing who’s asking.

“What for though?” Erma Woller says.

“Cause they’ll target us,” says Yarra.

“No they won’t.”

“Yes they will,” says Farthing.

The older girl turns her face to Farthing with a sneer. “And how would you know? You’ve only been here two weeks now.”

Two more orange-skirted girls come into the playground using Yarra’s route. They take one look at the approaching assistant teachers, turn around and disappear back the way they’ve come.

“She knows more than you do,” Yarra hisses.

The assistants are closer. They draw up parallel and turn to face the orange group, standing lit up in the morning sun. Cuckles glares at them one by one. Then he turns to Hoik. “Look, one from every year,” he says.

“Morning, sir,” says Woller.

“You’re very cheerful,” Cuckles comments. Then his eyes flick to Yarra. And straight after, to Farthing. “You don’t want to be caught hanging out with them two.” He makes it clear who he means by pointing.

Woller, who Yarra fears will talk back, is staring, first at Farthing, then at her.

Cuckles looks like he’s waiting for something more to happen. He just stands there, eyes flicking from face to face. Until Hoik, beside him, starts to turn away, and Cuckles, with a last leer at Yarra, follows.

“What did he mean by that?” Woller hisses.

“No idea,” says Yarra, who does know, exactly.

Then Minty Ploom is asking Farthing, mouth wide open, “What did you do?”

Farthing blinks at Yarra and shrugs.

Yarra says, “They’re just trying to sound important. Right, Farthing?”

“Yeah,” she says. But she’s following Cuckles still with her eyes.

“Isn’t he the assistant in your class?” Ploom asks her.

“Yeah,” says Farthing. “Fimber lets him do whatever he wants.”

“Fimber’s your teacher?” Yarra asks.

“Yeah,” says Farthing. “He just stays at the front. Doesn’t do it himself. He tells Cuckles who to pick, then everyone else has to stare at his ugly smug face. If we ever look back, we get picked on next.”

Yarra says, “Cuckles takes one girl to the back, then?”

Farthing nods. “And Fimber watches. I mean, he carries on talking in this stupid, boring voice. But all you can hear is whoever’s at the back.”

Yarra shakes her head. So different from her class.

“Has he picked on you?” asks Ploom.

“Yeah,” says Farthing.

Yarra wants to ask more, but not in front of a random like Woller.

“We’ve got Mr Beelar,” Ploom says. “He’s horrible!”

“You mean Snorter,” Misty Lutyens says.

“Didn’t you have him last year?” Ploom asks.

“Yeah,” says Misty. “Not all year. Just after he started, after midwinter break.”

The playground gradually fills with girls. Hoik and Cuckles keep doing their rounds, but no-one gets attacked - there’s no sudden screeching, no flurry of action. Eventually, the bell sounds. Cuckles goes to stand by the entrance to the school block. He says, “Assembly!” frequently as girls file in, and points towards the gym hall.

There’s no organisation as to how they should stand once they get in there. The rough rule is, the youngest girls should make rows at the front, and everyone else should file in year by year behind. But this is the first assembly this school year, and the youngest girls don’t seem to know this.

Girls stare at all the new markings on the floor. A couple even squat to try to make out the cameras, mounted under dark-tinted circles of glass, each in the middle of the larger painted circles.

It’s the Headmaster, who never teaches and they hardly ever see, who’s up there on stage. He announces in his piping, dull-vicar voice, “As you can see, we finally have our assembly hall back. This hall will be used for gym again, too. Which some of you found out last week may now be conducted by uniform colour. Orange-skirted girls, your gym class will take place here from now on during regular Sports Friday Afternoons.”

This is something Yarra and the orange girls already know. And it’s not so much straight gym class now as Pervert Gym with see-through pants.

The Head witters on about other things, which don’t seem to have any relevance to Yarra. It’s only at the end that he talks about their colours again.

His dull trilling voice says, “You will notice that some of you are now in new style uniforms. I have to say that this is an instruction from the Governors and, actually, not myself. As you know, six girls from each class must wear yellow. Two more must wear orange, with an option - perhaps unfortunately - for more. I perhaps shouldn’t say, I didn’t entirely agree with these changes. The - ah - other rules. There are forces beyond me. Don’t think it was me, hmm?”

Yarra doesn’t think anything was him. She’s not sure why he’s Headmaster - what he does is a bit of a mystery to everyone. She’s heard Donder call him that pen-pusher Leezing - to Miss Maplum, not to them. She got that she wasn’t supposed to have heard, but she did, one day when she slipped back in a break to pick up a book she wanted to read - last year, before this new nonsense with the skirts.

When the mystery Headmaster has finished saying nothing, he sends them to class. Miss Maplum is marking an attendance sheet as Yarra steps through the door. She ticks Yarra in. Then, shortly, she holds up the sheet, catching Donder’s eye. “All present!” she says.

Donder Ullerade looks relieved. Yarra gets why - he doesn’t have to pick any more girls for the coloured skirts. And that’s when it hits her. If she’d bunked off today as she’d felt like doing, he’d have had to have picked another of her classmates. She sees his eyes flick to Misra Spinks, the second girl in orange - then to her, as if he’s grateful. And teaches a lesson with his usual passion.

At first break, Yarra meets Keet and Farthing half way along the roof-shaded cloister benches. These girls may be two and three years her juniors, but they share a common bond now - their fight against the janitors. All three know they’re in danger. And all three know they’ve survived it once already. Maybe twice, if you include their escape from the gym hall late last Friday.

Farthing has another young girl in tow. “This is Mercy,” she says. “Mercy Karp, she’s in my class.”

Minty Ploom, who’s come with Keet (who are also in a class together, one year up from Farthing) asks Mercy Karp, “Are you the only other orange in class eight plus?”

Both Keet and Farthing laugh.

“There’s six of us!” says Farthing. “All the rest are over there.” She points to a group of girls out in the middle of the playground, who look as young as Mercy and Farthing.

Two more assistant teachers are patrolling the edge. Cuckles from year eight is back, this time with Mr Fairlaw from year nine. Miz Shrimp is pacing too, slow and stocky, with Mr Wendwer, the lanky male year 12 assistant, in a line right through the middle of the playground. While blue-skirted girls mostly pay them no heed, and yellow-skirts seem to clump tighter together, orange-skirts scatter ahead of their trajectory. The four young girls in Farthing’s class dissolve into a moving line which squeezes away between other groups.

It’s an odd effect: a colour wave. Flashes of orange break ahead of the assistants, like blood cells squeezing through peripheral tissues. But one girl doesn’t see them coming. Keet hisses quietly, “Move, Ellara!”