Free Life is a Parallel Universe by Alexa Aella Page A

back?
     
    The suburb of
Adamstown Heights is dominated by a great monolith; a building of
great proportions and immense magnetic power. This building appears
to possess some type of supernatural ability to pull huge hordes of
people inside its mouth. People, dizzy with the need to buy stuff
to decorate the houses they do not own and eager to shovel more
food into bloated bodies, packed inside petrochemical clothing:
like sausage skins. I see you look away now, but don’t, we will
turn our eyes elsewhere. But we must come back to the shopping
centre soon. We must.
     
    Next to this
mercantile marvel, snakes a long and busy road. A road which snarls
and barks with grinding gears, squealing tyres and roaring exhausts
day and night. But mostly day.
    In a little
decaying timber house, set not too far back from this cacophony of
sound, lives our last suburban heroine. Beatrice Snellgrove. Come
on now! Turn your eyes back, give her a chance. Do not be too hasty
to dismiss anyone. Most people deserve a chance.
     
    Beatrice
Snellgrove prepares her own simple breakfast and washes her cup and
plate in the metal sink. Nobody else is at home here, because Keith
Snellgrove, Beatrice’s father has left for work. Her mother and
younger sister left two years ago. Beatrice is not sure why they
left or why she was left behind. Always left behind she thinks.
This is a kind of mantra. She slips her dusty canvas bag (found
amongst her father’s fishing stuff) off the plastic peg, which is
stuck to the faux-wood panelling of the kitchen; the kitchen, which
is really a tacked-on little cupboard, to a house which is
essentially one long room. Beatrice throws into her bag a margarine
sandwich, made the night before and glances over her shoulder, back
into the boiling heat rising and pulsating upwards toward the metal
roof. She swallows hard and gets on her way. Look! You can see her:
a carmine haired creature, scuttling across in front of the barely
retrained and panting traffic. Hurry girl! Don’t be late for the
bell.
     

    That first week
of school passes rather well. The teacher was kind. A person who
sought to share knowledge and ideas with her students. Within
reason, of course. You can’t allow the little ones to think too
much. Not in the suburbs. But, then, the real teacher arrives. I
see your eyes light up and show interest. What excitement do you
anticipate?

    Mrs Plodd was
young with a tumble of dark curls, which momentarily beckon the
eye. Eyes do not linger long on these tresses, as they are soon
called toward the astonishing hemline of an orange mini-skirt and
teetering black heels. Mrs Plodd smiles and her students look
stunned.
     
    Lisa is pleased
by the fashionable personage before her. Those brown, leather
sandaled teachers disgust her. Sue, seeing the smile on Lisa’s
face, is also impressed by this pretty pedagogue. Beatrice,
however, sees cruel reflections from eyes hiding under green
eyeshadow. She suddenly realises: ‘I am trapped here and I will not
be free for many years’. She moans aloud and Mrs Plodd pounces.
     
    And, so, begins
Beatrice’s career; standing outside classrooms in disgrace, and
later, graduating on to picking up wet and stinking rubbish at
lunch time. But, it is not really Beatrice, who interests the
callous Mrs Plodd. She reserves her special treatment for a meek
and petrified half Aboriginal girl named Terry and the class
genius, Richard, whose mother outrageously taught him to read and
do maths before he even started school. Don’t worry, Mrs Plodd will
knock his mother’s learning out of him. She will shape him up and
put him in line with the other children. Mrs Plodd sniffs loudly;
there is nothing she hates more than those who get above
themselves.

    But look! It is
9.30 on a Wednesday morning and Mrs Plodd is busy telling Richard
what a stupid boy he is and how much he annoys her. Richard is
looking stoic, pushing his black-rimmed glasses up along the bridge
of his nose and waiting for