Shutterspeed

by A. J. Betts

  ‘Ah, not a chance Ken, some things shouldn’t be changed. Your processor is mint. I’ve got another film to drop off too, but put this one under my name.’

  ‘Dustin, get the tab out. Write it down, will you?’

  He feels his face burn as his father speaks to him like a child. He can’t bear to make eye contact with either of them so he reaches across to the paperwork beside the till. He can smell her. Without looking up, he senses how close she is, and feels the pull of an invisible force — a rubber band wrapped around the both of them, holding them in place. He can’t remember his heart ever racing like this.

  And he can’t explain it. It’s irrational, he knows. He wants to understand, but he’s got nothing to compare it with. He senses her leave; hears the bell tinkle as the door slides open, then shut. He still can’t take his eyes from the book on the counter. He doesn’t know what to write.

  ‘Leave it to me, I’ll do it,’ his father says, sliding the notebook towards himself. ‘Did you find what you came here for?’

  That’s when Dustin looks up at his father. ‘Did I find what?’

  ‘Your maths homework.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he lies, relieved. ‘Yeah, I did.’

  He lifts his backpack off the floor and rests it in the drawer while he transfers Terri Pavish’s photos furtively into the front panel of the bag. He slides his helmet off the bench.

  ‘I’ll be a couple of hours,’ says Ken, ‘maybe more.’

  Dustin cycles home with the sun setting to his left, orange spilling across the horizon. Kids eat chips beside Cottesloe Surf Club. Surfers look like seals in the water. He feels nothing.

  At home, he stands at the kitchen cupboard filling his mouth with handfuls of dry cereal. The house is quiet and claustrophobic; the air stuffy. He’s so thirsty he drinks three glasses of water, but his mouth still feels dry.

  The photographs. He takes his backpack into his bedroom and locks the door behind him.

  These photos are different to the one from yesterday. Her hair looks shorter, and there’s no Ducati. But her eyes — they’re still the same.

  The first one is a do-it-yourself photograph, the kind of shot where you place the camera on a pedestal and set up the timer. It was taken down by the lighthouse near Freo Harbour. She’s sitting on the pier edge, and behind her a man is fishing. He’s got grey tattoos spiralling all the way up his arms. The lighthouse with the old green door is in the right edge of the photo. She’s half-smiling with her lips closed. Is she holding something back? What is it about her?

  The second one was taken by someone else. She’s by a roadside somewhere with five people in the background. Two of them are bending over gardening, and the other three are talking with hands on hips. Terri Pavish stands, arms folded, with dirt above her left eyebrow and that sneaky smile on her lips. Not even a baggy shirt and old jeans can make her dull.

  He forces thumbtacks into the top corners of each photo, mounting her to the corkboard above his desk. To make room, he bins bits of paper that have been there for ages: last year’s semi-formal invitation; old movie stubs; receipts of CDs; business card from Bikeforce; phone numbers of Nugget, Jasmine, Duffy and Tyrone. They’re all programmed into his mobile phone anyway.

  The three photos take up the corkboard now. She’s fucking unreal. She grabs him in a way that Nugget or Jasmine never have. And there’s more to this — her photo getting stuck, her Ducati, and her appearance in the store — than coincidence. He’s sure of it.

  When he turns off the light, it’s with the knowledge that Terri Pavish’s photos are on the wall beside him, and still will be in the morning. He lies in bed in darkness, musing on the effect an unknown woman is having on him. It’s out of his hands.

  27

  At 2:30am he wakes himself from the nightmare and switches on the light. He squints into the ugly white glare of his room, the sounds still sharp in his ears.

  It was so vivid! He was standing beside the road, helplessly watching the moment of impact play out like a movie in slow motion. Her dark hair, matted with blood, smeared against the inside of the car window — that part always took so long. Her hair was like black seaweed swishing thickly under the surface of the sea. He tried to walk around the car to see her — to recognise the woman’s face — but the car turned along with him so all he could see was this thick dark hair and blood against the window. He knew the car was smashed in. He knew someone was broken, but the dream wouldn’t let him see more. All he could do was listen to the raining glass and metal, and the soft whimper of that someone within.

  He drinks water in the kitchen. With the light on above him, he can see his tall figure reflected in the window. He doesn’t need this. It’s just a dream, he reminds himself, why can’t he push it away like everything else? He swallows the memory down.

  Looking at his reflection, he wonders if he should get his hair cut. The ends are curling at his shoulders. It’s probably been pissing off his dad for ages.

  He puts the glass into the sink and decides to let his hair grow longer.

  THE SUBJECT

  26

  Jasmine’s not in art and Mrs Blackler pauses when she marks the roll. ‘Dustin, do you know where Jasmine is?’

  ‘No,’ he answers, suddenly self-conscious. Students turn to look at him, hoping to catch him out. Why did Mrs Blackler ask him? Why is it his responsibility to know where Jasmine could be? He’s not her babysitter, or her boyfriend. ‘How should I know?’ he says, too abruptly.

  There’s a snigger from someone at the front of the room, as some smart-arse thinks she knows everything. He feels himself getting pissed off. Why should other students give a shit about his life when he wouldn’t give a shit about theirs? The eyes burn into him.

  ‘I thought the two of you were friends, Dustin,’ Mrs Blackler answers calmly, ‘that’s all. It’s not like her to be late.’

  Mrs Blackler continues calling out names on the roll while the room rises and falls with whispers. This isn’t anything new. In high school ‘love’ is the disease of the masses. He overhears it in the canteen queues — who likes who, and who snogged who at whose party. Junior girls, especially, gather and giggle with the novelty of it. Letters are written: I think you’re nice. Do you want to go out with me? Tick yes or no. Relationships are tainted with this crap, even though he and Jasmine aren’t like that and never have been.

  The three of them — Dustin, Jasmine and Nugget — had originally found themselves together in the same detention room each Wednesday afternoon in Term Four of Year Eight. Jasmine’s crime was not as violent as the boys’ spectacular punch-up in French class; her detention resulted from telling Ms Tartufo exactly what she could do with the sautéed garden snails she was forcing everyone to eat. But Jasmine’s ethical protest had cut to the heart of the patriotic Tartufo, resulting in six weeks of detentions with her new buddies in rebellion.

  They made the most of each Wednesday afternoon, with Nugget and Dustin feeding their obsession for motorbikes with whatever magazines they could get their hands on.

  Jasmine would either take the piss out of them, or listen in to their debates with a mild curiosity. Conversation about other topics — TV shows, parents, music, films, holidays — was easy, and this spilled over into lunchtimes too, with the three of them hanging out under the big peppermint tree.

  Nugget would make them both laugh, retelling his dad’s dirty jokes. ‘What do elephants use for tampons? … Sheep.’ They’d go mental; Nugget’s laughter was infectious.

  Over the next few years their magazine titles had expanded to include Cleo, FHM, Surf’s Up, and even MAD for a brief period. It didn’t matter. Life was uncomplicated, just the three of them. But this year, Nugget’s rising testosterone levels have made it impossible for him to sit still, instead spending his lunchtimes kicking a ball around and tackling whoever he’s allowed to. He makes the occasional visit, but it’s not the same.

  So now it’s just Dustin and Jasmine by default, and that’s ok
ay. At least they’re separated from the rest of the school population, who are still preoccupied with popularity and feeble attempts at flirting. Life is simple with Jasmine, that’s all.

  He stares at the graffiti on the desk — Josephine for Craig, Sam fucked Steph, Laura is gay — and tells himself to calm down.

  He wonders where she is.

  25

  He’d known of Jasmine before their first detention together in Year Eight. She was the short tanned girl with brown hair — who looked like every other girl with brown hair — in his science class in Term One.

  He remembers the day Mr Shelton put a white bucket onto the front desk and encouraged the kids to come and stick their hands in it. There were frogs inside, cold from being refrigerated the night before. Their green heads, bellies and limbs were squished up against each other in contorted positions. The bucket stank of formaldehyde.

  Dustin dropped his hand in, took hold of one and lifted its floppy body out of the mess of frogs. He carried the limp thing back to his bench where he nailed its feet with thumbtacks to the polystyrene square, as instructed. Its body was elongated, its pearly translucent belly gleaming. The eyes were closed, as though in pleasure of having such a lovely full-body stretch.

  Jasmine fainted. She fainted even before Dustin had pressed the scalpel into the frog’s soft throat. She fainted from the sight of it lying there, with its webbed little hands and sticky fingers, and belly still bloated with swamp life. Her fall to the science lab floor was silent and swift. Other students were so engrossed in their straight-line incisions from mouth to anus that no-one but Dustin saw or heard her fall. She lay beside the base of the bench, right at his feet.

  On other benches, bellies of frogs were split and peeled back; slippery innards were liberated from the tight restriction of skin. Guts bulged and squirmed on polystyrene boards. Hearts were prodded into short-lived pulses, and lungs were inflated with straws. Hundreds of slimy eggs were scooped into teaspoons.

  Dustin wished he could just carry on but she was a distraction at his feet. She lay there as though sleeping, with brown hair across her face and her grey school skirt up around her pants. Her pants were white cotton with red vertical stripes, like the pattern of a Christmas candy cane.

  He knelt down, and using the back of his school shorts wiped the frog guts from his stinking hands. She had three strands of hair in her mouth. From this close he could smell her fruity breath, and he could see the outline of her white singlet underneath her school top. The upturned hem of her grey skirt had pink zig-zagged stitching. It lay across the top of her undies. Her legs were tanned, all the way to the top.

  Gently, he lifted the edge of the skirt from her belly and moved it carefully down her legs, back to her knees. He held his breath. To his relief, she didn’t stir at all. Her mind was still somewhere else, unaware of a crouching thirteen-year-old boy observing her with something resembling affection.

  ‘Jasmine,’ he said to her closely. ‘Wake up.’

  He was aware of background shouts and squeals as students carried on, engrossed in their messy dissections. But how long would that last?

  ‘C’mon, wake up quick.’

  She looked so peaceful he almost felt bad about it. ‘Quick, the bus is coming!’

  ‘Mum?’ she stirred.

  Dustin stood up fast, back to the heady reality of frogs’ guts. Soon Jasmine was standing next to him, her face flushed. While Dustin pretended to be occupied with his specimen, Jasmine walked over to an open window, pulling hair strands from her mouth.

  The following week their class dissected rats and Jasmine was excused with a note from home. She sat outside the room colouring in the periodic table, and Dustin was only mildly distracted by the memory of red-and-white stripes.

  24

  ‘I’ve borrowed the cameras from Mr McLeish,’ Mrs Blackler explains, putting one on each desk, ‘for our new topic of photographic portraiture. They’re old, but they’re expensive, so be careful. I’m trusting you.’

  Mrs Blackler’s bangles clank as she sets a camera on each desk. As she moves past Dustin, the smell of sandalwood drifts with her.

  The camera is black and chrome, with more knobs and dials than it really needs. It looks like too much effort so Dustin’s attention wanes once more, swinging out again to the distant harbour.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Mrs Blackler asks, her closeness surprising him. Other students play with their new toys, squaring up each other’s feet, lips, eyes, their creative genius suddenly unleashed.

  ‘Nothing … sorry,’ he says, as though his disinterest might be interpreted as an insult. Mrs Blackler’s nice, he reminds himself. It’s not her fault she has to teach him.

  ‘Really, Dustin, what are you looking at? What’s more interesting out there than in here?’

  ‘Nothing, I don’t know,’ he stumbles. ‘The real world?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know … out there,’ Dustin indicates, with an indiscriminate glance toward the harbour.

  ‘Why are you always looking out, then? What’s so good?’

  ‘Shit, miss, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘What do you see that’s so appealing?’

  ‘Stuff … things … you know, things that do stuff like … bikes … boats … people maybe.’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘People. Ordinary people, I guess. I can’t see them from here.’

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘The sea.’ It looks safe from this distance. ‘The harbour. And the sky.’

  ‘And that’s important?’

  ‘Of course the sky’s important!’

  ‘So take a photo.’

  ‘A photo of what? Blue?’ he laughs. ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘So you remember it. That’s why we take photos, Dustin, so things don’t get forgotten.’

  ‘The photos I process in Dad’s lab are crap,’ he says, from a lifetime of experience. ‘People take them because they’re vain. Or bored.’

  ‘They’re important to your customers, Dustin. Think about the family photos you have at home in albums and on your walls. As soon as you see them you’re transported back to that time, and those people stay real.’

  ‘We don’t have any photos,’ he says, straight on, and she believes him. There are no photos of him as a child and none of his parents, not even a wedding photo.

  ‘What about of your mum, when she was alive?’

  He shakes his head. The walls are clean of memory, as though his mother had never existed. He looks out to sea again, to steal himself some distance.

  ‘Dustin, have you used a camera before?’

  He shrugs.

  Mrs Blackler leans against the wall beside him and speaks gently. ‘Mate, whether you want to or not, you’ll have to use one for this assignment or you’ll fail. You’ve got to look through a viewfinder and press a button. I promise it won’t hurt.’ She nudges the camera towards him and pushes on. ‘You’ll be surprised how different things can look. I was ten when I borrowed my mum’s Polaroid. I remember how small things suddenly became bigger, or … more important. I used a whole film and Mum went ballistic when she saw all the photos of my dog’s face. When you start seeing the world through a viewfinder you realise everything is made up of parts. Surprising parts. The little things matter, Dustin. Don’t forget the little things.’

  ‘Is it digital?’

  Mrs Blackler laughs. ‘The other class need the digitals, so we’re stuck with these. But don’t worry, I’ve given you the best one. It’s a foolproof automatic. Those dials are optional, and here, look at this.’

  She digs in her apron pockets to retrieve a lens, which she attaches easily to the front. ‘A Minolta Super Telephoto, 250mm, only 250 grams. It’s made of mirror lenses so the light reflects rather than refracts. Amazing, hey?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Trust me, you’ll like it. The barrel’s smaller and the focal length is longer than anyone else’s
. It’s for the extremists amongst us … and those who can’t be bothered to move their feet much.’ Her long skirt swishes as she moves away to tell Travis off for photographing the T-bar at the top of Shania’s jeans.

  The camera’s a mystery to him. Spending his teens in a photo lab has done little to inspire Dustin to take photos for pleasure. Besides, neither he nor his father owns a camera, so he’s managed to make it to sixteen years of age without ever using one. He watches the way the other students use theirs — playfully, like toys — then brings the viewfinder up to his right eye to look through.

  When the jetty eventually sharpens he’s amazed by how close it looks, like he was right there. He sees individual wooden beams, side by side, held together with heavy bolts that reflect the sun. Beneath the jetty, silver water ripples. With this zoom, the water’s no longer a lazy backdrop of blue — it’s liquid again, rocking and sputtering.

  His right elbow rests on the desk, keeping his hand and camera still. He pans the scene, testing out the zoom’s ability to bring the outside world closer, all without being noticed. There are tourists waiting for the next ferry, and two people further along fishing from the jetty, but the zoom isn’t powerful enough to make them out clearly.

  ‘On Friday we’ll be going into Fremantle so you can pick up some outdoor portrait experience, not just studio shots,’ Mrs Blackler tells the class. ‘We’re lucky, you know. Freo’s such a colourful backdrop you’ll have plenty to work with. Think especially about the elements of colour and movement. You’ll have fun.’

  ‘Friday? Oh, what a shame, miss. I have choir on Friday.’

  ‘Well go now, Dustin.’

  ‘To Freo? Now?’

  ‘I’d hate for you to miss choir. Take this permission slip. You’re supposed to have maths next, right?’

  ‘But Mrs Blackler, Dustin isn’t in choir!’

  ‘That’s all right, Shania. I believe him. Would you like to go with him to get some shots too?’