Chapter 4: Tough Times: New Friends

Her dad seems really fazed when she comes down in her tiny orange skirt for the first time. She’s been fitted for it yesterday - Thursday - now it’s Friday, last day of the first week of term. She can see his eyes following her all around the kitchen though. Something about his euyes look haunted. Taudren ‘s don’t, though - he actually reaches out and pinches Yarra’s bum! She half sees it coming - she tries to slap him back - but he ducks, and she’s missed him.

Her mum asks with a huff, “No, really, Yarra, why’s your skirt so short? Because I never bought that.”

“Me neither,” says Molcum, feelimg his collar.

Yarra says, “It’s ... from the school. It’s free.”

Her dad says, “Your school wants you wearing a skirt like that? Not complaining a hundred percent though, love.”

She shoots him a look.

“About the price I mean.”

Lazabel asks, “Is it a cheerleader skirt or something?”

Yarra shakes her head.

“I know,” Taudren says, and giggles. Then tells their mum, “It’s a punishment skirt!”

“Is it?” Lazabel asks Yarra directly. Her face looks shocked. Though she doesn’t quite expect it, her dad’s does too.

Reluctantly, she nods her head.

“What have you done now, Yarra?”

“I’ve done nothing!” she says, angry. “Mr Ullerade and Miss Maplum had to pick six girls to wear yellow and two to wear orange. They didn’t have a choice! So we talked it all out, and everyone picked how we’d organise it, and it came down to everyone wearing yellow for a quarter of the term - that’s all the girls in class in quarter term shifts - but two girls wearing orange all term! That’s just the way it got voted, because nobody in there wanted to wear orange!”

“You teacher,” Molcum asks. “Your Mr Ullerade - he organised it like that?”

“He was trying to be fair!” says Yarra.

“Yes I ... see that.”

Taudren asks, “The ones who wear yellow - did they want to wear yellow?”

“No of course not, stupid. But we voted it was fairer if everyone had to do it sometimes.”

Lazabel says, “But you just said you’ve got to wear that skirt all term.”

“Because orange is worse!”

Her mum is frowning. “Couldn’t you all have worn it one day at a time or something?”

Molcum still looks hot. He keeps blowing out breaths, more than normal.

Yarra sniffs, staring at him. At least he looks upset, she thinks. “Yes. Maybe,” Yarra says, andswering her mother. “It didn’t quite work out at one day per girl. But I ticked that one. For one or two days each, in rotation. But ... two girls all term was what more girls ticked than anything else. I don’t know who voted what. We didn’t have to sign our voting sheets, just tick them.”

“It’s the odds,” says Molcum, with a slightly odd sound, like his voice box is being squeezed from inside. “The betting odds. If it’s just two girls all a term, odds are, most girls will completely get away with it.”

“I know,” says Yarra. “And I thought I might too. Then Miss Maplum did a load of coin tosses... And I kept stil being in ittill the last toss! It ended up this term, just me and Misra Spinks.”

Taudren giggles. “But she’s ugly. And you’re not!”

Yarra glares at him, eyes looking daggers. On the one hand it’s a compliment. On the other, he’s gloating - she’ll get picked on more than Misra!

“What does it mean though?” Taudren asks, breathless. “How are orange skirts worse than yellow or blue?”

Her dad looks like he’s sweating - he looks hot. Yarra doesn’t know why. But she won’t answer Taudren - she doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

But her mum insists. “We do need to know. Me and your dad, Yaz - just tell us, please!”

Yarra’s head dips. “Blue can be spanked, but mostly just by their teachers. Other teachers can ask - but it’s only class teachers who decide what they get. But Mr Ullerade wouldn’t let anyone spank us - not even himself, because he never has!”

“How’s the yellow different?” asks Molcum.

“Yellow can be spanked by other teachers,” Yarra says, and they don’t have to ask the class teacher for permission.”

“And orange?” Lazabel asks, sounding wary.

Yarra says, “For Yellow-skirt girls, they’ve got to have a reason. For Orange skirt girls, they don’t even have to make up an excuse!”

“No way!” says Taudren.

Her dad shakes his head. He keeps blinking his eyes wide.

Yarra is starting to tear up. “It used to be just Mr Ullerade, and you know he never spanked us even once!” She chokes back a sob - it’s getting to her now. “But orange is way worse! Any man at school can just spank up - even cane us! And he still doesn’t need to say why! Any time, just because we’re wearing these stupid orange skirts!”

“Oh my God,” says her mother. “And can’t nice Mr Ullerade...”

“No!” shouts Yarra, really losing it now. “And every one can give us H- punishments too!”

Taudren’s breath sucks in. Molcum freezes, trying not to show that he know what this means.

“What’s an H- punishment, Yarra?” Lazabel asks sounding very concerned.

Taudren is grinning from ear to ear. “Tell her!” he says.

Molcum is feeling guilt grow in him, and it’s showing in his face. Because he knows he made the family watched Completely Gratuitous. He’d picked it, too. And he’d guessed what might be in it.

Taudren says, breathless, “It’s like what they did to that girl on that programme, the one to all music! That Punisment Show.”

Lazabel is turning suddenly white. She says faintly, “The one at the end? With them poking her...”

“No, mum,” says Taudren like she doesn’t know anything. “Like the ones just before. Like that girl on that chair, with her pussy right to camera. Taudren adds excitedly, “I saw this thing on a social! She was only fourteen!”

“Oh my God,” says Lazabel, “oh my God Molcum, go straight to that school and tell them they can’t! My poor Yarra, my poor Yarra!”

Molcum asks, close to a whisper, “Is it school policy now then, Yarra?”

“Yes,” she says leadenly. “The governors changed everything.”

Molcum is looking very spooked. He swallows and makes a nervous-sounding sigh. “There was that vote in the council. Opting out. I ... heard.”

Yarra is suddenly suspicious of her dad’s tacked-on, ‘I heard.’ He had something to do with it, she thinks. Mr Ullerade had explained it. Some parents who were voters had been asked to take this survey. When the council voted to de-regulate the school. Then there’s been another votes. To oust their female Governor. And Yarra knew it, there and then, looking straight at his face. He’d voted to get that woman out. All the men with a girl in their school could vote. When they’d kicked out the woman, they’d got two more LC nasties in, because another one who’d been Governor for ages, he resigned. She could see it in his eyes - he’d doen soemething - she wasn’t sure what - that ended with Yarra wearing this hateful orange skirt!

Taudren is staring, asking, “You’ll get H- bombs?”

“Yes,” she says, glaring back, certain that she will.

“And they’ll have to upload them?”

She can’t look at him gloating. She stares at the wall and hardens her mouth. She hasn’t let her mum know what she knows, but she knows her dad lets Taudren watch BaseGirlies. So she knows her dad must watch it as well.

Molcum’s still gawping up with his jaw hanging slack. She grabs up her bag.

Her mum tries to get her to wear a long coat, to cover over her skirt outside. She can’t though - she had that explained to her enough times when they fitted this stupid skirt at school. All she can wear is a jacket top, which comes down to her waist. Taudren laughs when she’s explained it. Her dad is doing that wide-blink thing again. Lazabel’s staring at his face as well, as he pants a few more suck-puffs of air like a goldfish.

Yarra pulls on her only waist-length jacket - a denim one with pockets - then stomps out of the house, with her orange skirt flouncing and showing them her bum cheeks.

Taudren’s school starts half an hour later, though it’s called the same name - nearly. Kennigwort Upper Boys School, not Kennigwort Upper Girls. And the boy’s school has very different rules. So far as Yarra has been able to get out of him, they don’t spank, ot cane, or humiliate the boys. They teach them proper things, like maths and English and physics and biology.

She’s glad he can’t walk with her. He wasn’t ready to leave the house. She thinks, he’s probably racing to his room to have a wank now. Then her heart falls through the floor, because suddenly she knows - he’s going to watch it all! All her canings, all her spankings. Her H- bombs - the lot! The nasty little creep will be wanking like a steam train when he watches his own sister getting mugged on that thing!

She doesn’t think her dad gets it - how dangerous it might be, her getting on the bus dressed like this. She’s still never told them, or anyone, about what happened with Pinno, Skidmark, Norgel and the others.

This time, Yarra gets lucky. There’s a group of older women standing near the front. She squeezes in behind them - though they give her a few disgusted looks. She can see a few men looking, but the other women must put them off because none of them tries to sneak close enough to actually touch her. She knew it ‘s what her teacher says - the school putting them in skirts this short is a way of sexualising them to others. Skirts this short might be a red rag to a bull.

When she gets off the bus, she’s incredibly relieved to see she’s not being followed. Then she’s in amongst other girls heading for the gates, and she knows she’s safe from strangers.

It’s her first day wearing the orange skirt. It marks her out, as she knows it’s designed to. As she heads to her class - there’s still no Assembly - she sees another girl from a younger class, who’s wearing orange too, and they share a haunted look. It makes Yarra feel like, somehow, they’re sisters.

She walks up to the girl, who asks straight away, “Have you got to wear that long?”

“All term,” says Yarra.

“Oh. God!” says the girl. “What did you do?”

“I picked the wrong number. Our class voted. Two girls all term, picked by lots, tha’s what they voted.”

“Really?”

“Our teacher’s one of the nice ones,” says Yarra. “But he really looked upset when that’s what they voted. And then I picked an unlucky number.”

The girl says, “Our teacher isn’t nice. He just told me I’ve got to wear this, yesterday. Me and three others. He made us four stay back at the first morning break and just told us, ‘Right, you four are in orange now - till I say you can stop!’ And we asked him, ‘Why us? It’s not fair!’ And he snorted - he snorts, like a snotty kid or something - he’s new, a new teacher, but he’s really young - he’s called Mister Beelar - he just said, ‘I can pick whoever I want. I don’t have to give a reason. So I thought it would be funny to pick you four.”

“Why?” Yarra asks.

“Don’t know,” the girl says. “We’re all quite pretty? We’ve got the biggest tits? Because that’s what it looked like. So I don’t know how long I’ve even got to wear it. For as long as he wants?”

“What’s your name?” Yarra asks.

The girl says, “Keet. Keet Lendersby, I’m year nine.”

Which means she’s fifteen, Yarra thinks. She says, “I’m Yarra Corkle. Year eleven.”

At first break, Yarra walks out with Misra Spinks, the other girl in her class who’s been forced to wear orange. Misra Spinks keeps making odd looks at Yarra. They don’t normally talk and it’s making Misra nervous.

Yarra can see it, as soon as she gets out - girls in orange skirts are with other girls in orange skirts. At first she thinks it’s safety in numbers, like birds in a flock. But later she starts to think - other girls are avoiding us. Even the yellows.

Misra Spinks is looking more miserable than ever. Yarra’s finding it hard to get her to say anything. But pretty soon it doesn’t matter anyway, because two more girls in orange wander up. They’re from Yarra’s parallel class, and she even knows their names - Jizelle Mordam and Rofa Vermees. They’re both fairly plain girls, like Misra is - Maybe Dickle wants to keepo all the best ones for himself.

Rofa Vermees offers straight away, “Mr Dickle says he doesn’t see the point of orange skirts. It’s just me and Jizelle, and Gwanna Primpt and Rossa Wilmutt.”

That’s four, thinks Yarra - two more than our class. And Rosaa Wilmutt is another one of Taudren’s frequent wanking targets, because Dickle does her all the time.

“When he told us we’ve got to wear them,” Jizelle Mordam says, “he said it’s because he never feels like spanking us anyway.”

Unlike Rossa Wilmutt, Yarra thinks. So that pops that one.

Pretty soon though, Misra Spinks, Rofa Vermees and Jizelle Mordam are a talking group of three, and Misra is yapping happily, like they’ve been her friends ages. Yarra isn’t sure if she’s ever never seen the girl look this happy. As they wander away, and Yarra stays rooted to her spot, cut out of their sharing, she feels sorry for herself but, when she thinks about it, happy for the girl. Miserable Misra, the class 11 minus loner, now has something in common with two girls from the plus class. That orange skirt is, right now at least, weirdly working in her favour. Misra’s down-mouth expression, which she hardly ever changes, has lifted - at least, for now.