Mac Slater Coolhunter 1

by Tristan Bancks

'What?' He frowned, knowing I was being weird and creepy.

  'I looked on the web last night,' I said.

  'Yeah,' he said.

  'There's this massive Imaginator Invention Fest in New York in five weeks.'

  He tried to pretend this didn't interest him.

  'Yeah,' he said.

  'It might be when this coolhunter meeting thing happens there. If we get the bike in the sky again, maybe I can take it there, sell our idea, licence it to someone, y'know. It might be, like, a first step towards us being proper inventors and stuff.'

  He snorted. 'That's a lot of maybes.'

  'Yeah, well, here's a couple more: maybe you can come,' I said. 'Maybe we can save the bucks somehow.'

  I knew this was stretching it a bit. And we both knew that Paul would probably be too scared to get on the plane.

  'Whatever, man. Like I said, if you want to do it, just do it,' he said. But he said it in that way that parents say stuff, so you know that you'd better not do it or they'll kill you.

  'Why are you being such a loser about this?' I said. 'We've always wanted to go to New York. Some random dude comes up and offers us the chance –'

  'Offers you the chance,' he corrected.

  'Offers me the chance and you become this total freak and tell me not to do it.'

  'Well, do it then,' he said. 'No one's stopping you, coolhunter boy.'

  He said 'coolhunter' like it was a dirty word.

  'I will then,' I snapped back.

  'Good.'

  'Good.'

  And that was that.

  7

  The 'A' Group

  Don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look, don't look, I said over and over in my mind.

  Dammit. I looked.

  Paul and I were walking past Cat and her friends. They were in their usual spot, up on top of the big stairs leading to the hall, looking out over all they controlled. And once I started staring, I couldn't stop. Cat looked probably the best I'd ever seen her. She was wearing this black dress with long scraggly black gloves and thick eye makeup. And she was there filming her friends for Coolhunters, with a sweet-looking high-def video cam.

  'This is my baby, Kara,' she said into camera as she hugged Kara Privosek. 'And this is the honey of all honeys, Rain,' she said, pressing her face up to Rain St James. Then Rain kissed Cat on the lips.

  'You're soooooooooo Paris,' said Cat. Then she stopped recording and looked down on me. I'd stopped walking and I was standing, staring up at her. Paul tried dragging me away.

  Cat looked at me as if I was something bad on the inside of a public toilet.

  'Can you perverts stop drooling over us?' she said.

  I became conscious again and swallowed hard.

  'Sorry,' I said, not loud enough to be heard.

  Cat whispered in Rain's ear and they laughed at me. Paul started dragging me again.

  'Say hi to your dad for us,' said Cat, turning back to the group. 'Don't they get one phone call?'

  I stopped.

  'C'mon, man,' said Paul.

  I turned to Cat. Paul had been the only one who'd known about my dad, but Speed had said enough that Cat had put two and two together. It wasn't the first time my dad had been in jail but he'd never been away this long before. He was an activist, Gandhi-style – non-violent protest. This time he walked into the Lucas Heights nuclear facility with a bunch of other protestors just to prove how lax security was. The paper said they went straight in the front gates past security who didn't even stop them. They climbed a tower and put up a banner that said 'Nuclear Will Never Be Safe'. Then he was put away, but Mr Burns and Smithers inside keep pumping out the radiation. Where's the justice in that? They sentenced him for three months and he'd done a month so far. He told me not to come see him.

  Dad was a hero to old-skool Kings greenies but the new breed thought he was a wacko and a freeloader. I dug that he stood up for what he believed in but I really didn't want the whole school talking about him getting sent away. I didn't have the kind of rep that could sustain a blow like that.

  As I stared at Cat's back, I wanted to say, 'You talkin' to me?' and then Paul'd try to drag me off and I'd say it again, 'You talkin' to me?' and she'd ignore me. Then I'd unload on her and tell her how stuck-up she was and that everyone despised their group for being so rude to everyone and that her dad had probably done heaps worse things than mine and stuffed up the world with his billions of stinkin' plastic coffee cup lids but that no one puts people away for that. And I'd tell her I hated the fact that I liked her so much and, anyway, what gave her the right to be so hot?

  But I didn't. I just stood there.

  Then the bell rang and Cat and her friends hugged each other. They did this every time they said hello or goodbye. The principal, Mrs Steele, had actually banned group-hugging in the corridors because Cat's group was causing traffic chaos from the science labs all the way down to woodwork.

  Then they left. The whole playground emptied out. Even Paul left. And I just stood there. I felt pretty ordinary.

  8

  Just Do It

  I flung open the dingy double wooden doors to our workshop – kind of a makeshift humpy built by people who clearly hadn't built anything before. The size of a garage, it's where my mum used to paint back in the eighties.

  Afternoon sun flooded in, throwing light on thousands of bits of abandoned inventions. A ladder with a missing bottom rung led to a loft where our old creations were kept. What was left of them. Above our workbench there was a shot of me paragliding with Dad when I was ten. Seconds after the photo was taken I'd done a head-plant and ripped half the skin off my face. Dad had promised to keep teaching me but he'd been busy changing the world. I'd been trying to get back in the air ever since.

  I slammed the package from Speed down on the bench.

  'Crack it open,' said Paul.

  I looked at him.

  'No question,' he said. 'Open it.'

  It had been the worst day of school ever. Wherever we turned, Cat was filming her friends, flaunting the coolhunting thing in my face and whispering to people, looking my way and laughing. By the end of the day I reckon our whole year knew about my dad. Everyone was asking what he'd been put away for.

  I'd been pretty annoyed all day that I was handing the coolhunting gig and New York to Cat on a platter. But now Paul hated her more than ever and, on the way home, he decided that I had to do this thing, with or without him.

  I ripped a corner off the packaging then we both went at it, tearing the wrapping off like three-year-olds at Christmas and chucking it on the floor. I pulled a pristine high-def video camera, just like Cat's, out of the bigger box. It was slick, black and very cool. I'd always wanted to make a movie and this camera looked insane. Inside the smaller box was a phone/organiser thing with video editing software to go with it. We were both pretty crazy for this kind of stuff. Especially me 'cos I'd never had any of it. I just loved the fact that these things didn't exist until someone looked at a blank piece of paper or a computer screen and dreamed them up.

  'Oh, man, she's so going down,' Paul said.

  'To Chinatown,' I said. 'To Chineys, mate.'

  'Give me a look at that,' Paul said, excited, grabbing the phone from me. As he did he fumbled, dropped it, tried to break the fall with his foot and kicked it into the metal supports of our workbench. Then it fell to the dirt floor.

  'Did that just happen?' I asked him, bending down to pick it up.

  The screen had a huge crack in it, a chunk of plastic had fallen out and the digital display was caked in dirt. I pressed the power button. Nothing.

  'Maybe it's not charged,' Paul said.

  'Maybe you're a moron,' I said. 'You think that's ever gonna work again?'

  Paul looked at it and he knew the answer.

  'I dunno. They should make them stronger. It was an accident.'

  I thought about what he said for a second and tried not to be angry. I'd never had a mobile and to see one given to me and
then smashed within ten seconds was pretty hardcore.

  'I guess,' I said, tapping the dirt out of the screen. 'They should make 'em tougher. Like as if no one's ever going to drop it.'

  'What's that say?' Paul said.

  I grabbed the envelope off the workbench. Inside were instructions scrawled on Coolhunters letterhead.

  The Rules

  1. Mac, you and Cat will vlog Kings Bay Monday to Friday this week. Tell us something cool you've found, stuff our subscribers won't find anywhere else. Sure, talk to camera, but show us things as well. People want pictures. Uncover stuff that will blow people away. And if you film or interview anyone, get them to sign a release so you've got the footage rights. (Standard release enclosed.)

  2. You will shoot it, cut it on your phone and upload it to the Coolhunters site by 8 p.m. each night. Subscribers will vote and results will be posted on the site at 8 a.m. the following day.

  3. Win three of the five days and you will become our fifth and final featured coolhunter. You will be paid by us to hunt cool in Kings Bay, to give us feedback on new stuff before it hits the shelves and to go on international cool-hunts. The first is New York in a month's time.

  I fly out for the Great Barrier Reef Monday morning but text me on 0011 44 7833 162 635 if you want to play ball. Otherwise I'll pick up the camera at the end of the week.

  'Almost too good to be true,' I said.

  Paul busted his mobile out of his pocket. 'Want to tell 'em you're in?'

  I grabbed the phone and punched Speed's digits.

  'Wish I could do this on my own phone,' I said.

  'Phone, schmone. We're goin' to New York, man,' said Paul.

  'New freakin' York,' I said with a huge grin.

  9

  Game On

  Paul and I powered down Herriman Street towards the beach. Me pedalling, Paul in the aluminium sidecar with the perspex windshield we'd made. The sidecar had pedals inside so we could ride twice as fast as an ordinary bike, but without looking like total losers on a tandem. In fact, it looked pretty cool. One of the many vehicles we'd invented.

  The only problem with it was that there was a steering wheel in the sidecar linked to my handlebars so when I wanted to go right and Paul wanted to go left, only the strongest man won, ie: me. But being stronger than Paul was nothing to boast about. His arms got tired grating cheese.

  We took a right on Hutchence and booted it towards Main Beach where cool people were supposed to hang out. Paul and I rarely went there but I guess we had to get with the program if we were gonna hunt cool for a living.

  In the park in front of the beach we could see a bunch of metalcore music fans with their Parkway Drive T-shirts and facial bruises from stage-diving. There were two guys wearing L.A. Raiders tops with caps on sideways and bandannas round their necks. There were lifesavers zincing up for an afternoon on the beach. There were rich families strolling the path in their Polo gear, licking choc-chip and super-fudge chunk. There were loved-up ferals on the grass sucking face and two yummy mummies pushing thousand-dollar prams full of sleeping, vomiting, pooping kids. But you couldn't call it cool.

  'This is rash,' said Paul.

  'It's raccoon dung with bums,' I said.

  'It's itchy legs and prawns.'

  We did this from time to time – came up with words that felt like what we were trying to say without actually making any sense. But we knew what we meant.

  In the middle of it all we saw Cat cruising solo on old-skool skates with pulled-up rainbow-stripe socks, yellow hotpants, big sunnies, a wild, coloured hair-extension thing and a lollipop in her mouth. We stood and watched as she filmed some guy's haircut, a girl's pants-line, a dude's shoes, the way a Japanese kid was carrying his phone, two dudes wearing black nail polish and then some guy's butt. As we rode closer I realised it wasn't his bum but what was on it that she was interested in. A tattoo with some kind of wings.

  'What is that? Like, a flying bum?' asked Paul. 'Is that Andy Griffiths?'

  We pulled up next to Cat just as she finished shooting butt. He was a hip-hop dude with big silver headphones, tracksuit, Adidas no laces. Not Griffiths.

  'Thanks, babe,' she said. 'Check it out on the web tonight.' Then she got the guy to sign a release and gave him what looked like a little Coolhunters business card. She must have made it herself. She didn't waste any time.

  I wanted to look busy so I pulled out the camera and started filming two seven-year-old boys dressed as pirates trying to rip each other's ears off over near the slippery-dip.

  Cat went to skate off, saw us and did a double-take, braking with her toe-stopper.

  'What do you think you're doing?' she asked.

  I stopped recording.

  'Oh, Cat, hi,' Paul said, trying to act casual. 'Didn't you know? Yeah, Mac's doin' the trial. I thought Speed would've texted you. That's pretty rude of him actually, 'cos –'

  'What?'

  'Yeah, he gave us a camera,' Paul said. 'Nice, too. If you use the night mode in the day you can see through people's clothes so watch out,' he lied, grabbing the camera and pointing it at Cat. She covered her bits, not knowing whether to believe him.

  'Yeah, we've shot some incredible stuff,' he went on. 'You should log on tonight and check it out. Might learn a thing or two about cool. Nice socks by the way.'

  Cat suddenly looked self-conscious of her knee-highs and I couldn't help but smile. They did look pretty ridiculous. Even if they were wrapped round the best legs in Kings Bay.

  'Did you get a phone, too?' she asked.

  I glared at Paul.

  'Yeah. Course we did,' I said.

  'You guys bailed. You can't run away like babies and then change your mind and come back.'

  'Can and have,' said Paul.

  Cat stared at us. I always felt kind of like a different species when she did that, like she could have us sent to the pound or have the ranger fine us for being in an area where only humans were allowed.

  'Well, I guess it's kind of easier to beat you two geeks than, say, anyone else in town who might have trialled,' she said, gazing all around, looking for her next conquest. A guy came up behind her and kissed her on the neck. It was Egg, the footy guy who'd been lying under the jump on Sunday afternoon. I didn't know what his real name was. There was a rumour that he tackled a kid at his last school so hard that the kid was in hospital for two months. But some people said it was just a rumour that Egg had spread to make kids scared of him. Whatever. It worked.

  'You nearly left tyre marks on me yesterday. I ought to pound you,' he said, smiling.

  'These rejects are trialling for Coolhunters,' Cat said to Egg.

  'What?' he said, laughing.

  'Yeah.' She laughed, too. 'Look, you guys should probably know that I don't like to be beaten. Fact, I hate it. I definitely plan to be in New York and I will do what it takes. This is my dream job and if you get in my way I'll have someone go postal on you, 'kay?'

  Paul and I both looked up at Egg. We were guessing that he was the postman. He smiled, flashing a missing tooth, and then dragged the roller-derby queen off along the path towards the old shipwreck on Samsara Beach.

  'Well,' said Paul.

  'She's so cute,' I said.

  'Will you shut up? She's the devil's spawn, the enemy. You better realise that if we're gonna win this thing.'

  Paul and I scanned the beachfront, totally underwhelmed by it all. Where Cat saw winged bums and elbow piercings, we saw nothing. I guess you had to have an eye for this stuff. Or at least care about it. All we could see was a whole pile of lame. But if we didn't shoot something we were going down.

  10

  The First Vlog

  'It's a world capital of cool. Home to celebrities, surfers and skinny models from L.A. Kings Bay is comin' atcha with me, Mac Slater, hunting all the hottest stuff and servin' it up daily –'

  I stopped and hung my head. We were down on Main Beach – Paul shooting, me presenting, the lighthouse in the distance behind me.
>
  'What?' said Paul. 'That one was good.'

  'I can't say this stuff,' I said.

  'What? You need to know what your motivation is?' Paul said, eyes drooping. 'Your motivation is I'm gonna kill you if you don't get it right. It's nearly dark and we've done, like, two thousand takes of this. I gotta go to my sister's thingo at school later so shut up and talk.'

  'You got a real way of nurturing a performance,' I said. 'Ever thought about a career as a director?'

  'And, go!' said Paul.

  I took a deep breath. 'It's a world capital of cool. Home to celebrities, surfers and skinny models from ...'

  11

  Upload

  7:57 p.m. 'I just want to watch it one last time,' I said.

  'You can but it'll mean we don't get it in by eight. Which might actually be a good thing,' Paul said.

  We were surrounded by a bunch of backpackers with dirty hair and tie-dyed T-shirts in the Arts Estate web cafée. Paul had cut our first piece on iMovie. He was trying to make up for totalling the organiser/phone thing. A German guy next to us said, 'I see it is looking pretty good, ja?'

  'Mac, I'm going to need that computer at eight,' said Mr Kim, walking past with a coffee order.

  'Yeah, all right,' I said. 'Do it.'

  Paul hit 'upload'.

  I covered my face with my hands and peeked through a crack. There was me onscreen, standing on the beach with the lighthouse in the back-ground. 'It's a world capital of cool. Home to ...'

  As if the lighthouse was cool. And then we had footage of all these kooks on the beachfront with strips of eyebrow hair missing and chicks wearing knee-high biker boots in the middle of summer. Some American guy had 'Mom' tattooed across his arm and we shot that and stuck it in. I mean it was kind of funny-cool and I think he meant it as a joke, but who knew? There was a Japanese girl wearing a Nike hoodie, Gucci sunnies and a crown on her head. An old dude with curly grey hair, a straw hat and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. A border collie leaping a metre into the air to catch a festy pink tennis ball and a homeless guy sleeping on a canvas bag with a lemonade bottle leaning against a post next to him. None of it was cool to us but it's what we saw. It was just the reality.