Not venomous. I have just accepted the fact that I should have written a script that required fewer actors.
ISAAC
That’s venomous. They’re my friends.
I can see Isaac clearly now.
MILES (O.S.)
Right. I have it. Stay still.
ISAAC
Staying still.
Miles steps into frame, tucking in his shirt. He crouches down to place the script at their feet.
MILES
I honestly cannot fathom how one person can be friends with the three of us.
ISAAC
If I wanted to be friends with myself, I’d invest in mirrors.
MILES
But we are incompatibly different.
ISAAC
How do I explain this? You’re a nerd, you play Pokémon, right?
MILES
Yes, I – Wait, I am not a nerd.
ISAAC
Really?
Miles opens his mouth to rebut, but no words come out.
ISAAC
(continuing)
Well, you know there’s animals?
MILES
Pocket Monsters.
ISAAC
See? Nerd. Anyway, you have your party of monsters and they fight other parties. There’s strategy to it. You don’t win because you have six of the same type. You need to have a varied group so that whatever someone throws at you, you’re covered.
MILES
And what? We are your Pokémon?
ISAAC
Yes. The swimmer, the rebel and the nerd.
MILES
And what does that make you?
ISAAC
The guy with the best team.
Miles smiles. He takes it as a compliment.
I do not take it as a compliment now. I was not a friend, I served a function. I was a sidekick, a bit player in Isaac’s life. And now that he is gone, what does that make me?
INT. COMPUTER LAB – AFTERNOON
I find I doubt our friendship less when I pause the footage.
Isaac smiles.
There is something so much better about an image that cannot tell me anything I do not want to hear.
‘I know it is still more than a year off,’ I tell Isaac, ‘but I have started to think about what I want to do at university. I was considering International Studies. I think I could be really good at it.’
Isaac smiles.
INT. AQUATIC CENTRE CHANGE ROOM – MORNING SUPERIMPOSE: SOME TIME PASSES
I slide the envelope marked LAST ONE underneath the bag marked THOMSON.
INT. AQUATIC CENTRE CHANGE ROOM – LATER SUPERIMPOSE: SOME MORE TIME PASSES
I slide the envelope marked SERIOUSLY THIS IS IT, I AM DEAD underneath the bag marked THOMSON.
INT. CORRIDOR – MORNING
A Year Seven kid stands with our Modern History class. He is swimming in his shirt. He asks Omar something, and Omar points over to me.
INT. MS THOMSON’S OFFICE – MORNING
I linger in the doorway. ‘Miss?’
Without looking over, she asks me to take one of the two seats facing her desk. I wonder if her tone is frosty or if I am just imagining it. There is a bevy of reasons why a head of department might summon me to her office. It does not mean I have been caught. I am careful. I always add authenticity.
I sit.
‘How was the minion?’ She means the Year Seven helper who fetched me.
‘He was good.’
‘He is one of the good ones.’ Her eyes twitch. ‘I thought you were one of the good ones.’
All right. Maybe I did not add enough authenticity. I swallow hard and keep my voice steady. ‘Pardon?’
She removes her glasses and looks me square in the eyes. ‘Is my son selling essays that you write?’
I keep still. ‘No.’
That makes her smile. ‘You’re an intelligent young man, Miles. I had hoped you wouldn’t make me jump through these hoops.’
‘What hoops, miss?’
‘I know you and Ryan –’
‘I am sorry, but I do not really have much to do with Ryan.’
‘You do understand that I’m his mother, and when he goes to your house, he tells me?’
‘He comes to my house?’ Ryan has never visited, ever.
She inhales sharply. ‘Right. I am going to continue my work. You sit tight, have a think, weigh up your options. When you recognise that you have been caught, we can have a chat about what you’ve done.’ Her eyes widen. ‘No!’
‘No?’
Ms Thomson picks up her phone and dials a number. She looks through the glass panel separating her from the other English staff. Mr Morgan answers his phone.
‘Hank, could you send in the minion? I need him to fetch my son.’
INT. CORRIDOR – MORNING
Ryan is sour about me using him as a cover. To be accurate, I only used his bag as a cover. His involvement was loosely inferred, at most, but he feels I owe him.
‘Tell me what you do at lunch,’ he says.
I do not understand why he wants to know. He has never shown more than a passing interest in me.
INT. COMPUTER LAB – AFTERNOON
When Ryan arrives, I am still in two minds about actually showing him the raw footage. The time I spend in here, it is just ours – Isaac’s and mine. Letting Ryan in changes that.
But the time I spend in here, how good is it? How good is what Isaac and I have now? I talk to a frozen frame, because when I un-pause the footage, he disappoints me, upsets me, angers me. His faults are on show, but even then, I still miss him.
Ryan must miss Isaac too. Knowing that, I cannot keep the footage from him.
I watch him watch Isaac, the way his breathing changes when he sees him. At one point, he inhales sharply. ‘Shit, I’m getting goosebumps.’ He points to his arm. ‘It’s like he’s here.’
‘Yeah,’ I mutter.
I miss feeling like that when I watched Isaac.
I watch him now and it just hurts. He collected us: the swimmer, the rebel and the nerd. He was the hero, we were his sidekicks. Ryan and Harley, they have swimming and rebelling, they can become their own heroes. But me? What is the nerd to do but study us, revising our history, over and over?
I explain it to Ryan like a television show. The young filmmakers programme took my brain and realigned it. I fall out of myself and live my experiences as scenes. When I consider my life, I picture the season-long character arc. I do not tell him that, though. I only say it feels like the main actor of the show we are on has left to pursue a movie career.
It is odd, after so much time in here with Isaac, I have forgotten how it feels to have someone talk back.
There is a weight to each of Ryan’s replies.
I consider asking him what I have spent countless hours asking myself and asking Isaac. There is no opportunity to until he shakes my hand and a silence settles in the lab.
‘Question,’ I say, more to build up the courage to ask it than anything else. ‘Were Isaac and I actually friends?’
The lines on his forehead deepen. ‘What are you on about?’
I rephrase the question. ‘Did Isaac like me?’
‘Yes.’ His answer is emphatic.
‘Then why was he so mean?’
‘Oh. In the footage?’ I nod and Ryan brushes it off. ‘You were stressed, and it was funny to mess with you.’
‘It was not funny for me.’
‘It was really funny for us.’ He grins until he realises he has misjudged the audience, and winds it back. ‘Sorry.’
‘I know it is not really him,’ I explain. ‘Footage is made of samples of the light bouncing off him, assembled together to give the illusion of movement, with recorded audio running underneath. But it feels so real.’ My eyes water. I blink hard. My voice cracks when I continue. ‘I know the video is the moment without its context. I know filming took nine months, and I know I only have twenty-one hours of footage, and I know I cannot judge nine months from twen
ty-one hours, but what I feel overpowers what I know. It is not an illusion. He lives, he breathes, he speaks, and when I watch him, he tells me he hates me.’
‘Man . . .’
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. I can feel him pitying me. I must look so stupid.
‘You’re overthinking it,’ Ryan says, leaning in. ‘He helped with your film. You said it yourself. It took twenty-one hours of filming, and he was there for most of it. Would he really have given up that much time if he hated you?’
‘He wanted the blooper reel.’
‘You wouldn’t have asked him to help if you thought he hated you.’
That is not entirely true. I always felt my link to Isaac was the most tenuous. He, Harley and Ryan had gatherings. When Isaac proposed we sell essays, and came to me with a plan that would see him assume all the risk for a nominal fee, I agreed despite my reservations, because it was something that would bind us. Yes, the film was largely a quest for personal glory, but it was also an opportunity to strengthen our bond.
I asked him to help with the film because I doubted us.
I clear my throat. ‘You are right,’ I tell him.
INT. MILES’S LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
The paperback is open facedown in my lap. I have my phone out. The conversation with Ryan is empty. My fingers hover over the keypad.
I can see Mum in my peripheries. She bends Dion’s head back and gasps when the tear worsens. ‘I think it’s time to retire our good friend Dion,’ she says with a heavy heart.
‘Maybe you could use a photograph of your husband as a bookmark?’ Dad suggests from the kitchen.
‘No.’ Mum tilts her head to one side. ‘Do they still sell firefighter calendars? It would be sturdier material.’
‘And larger,’ Dad says.
‘Much.’
I type, Hi.
INT. COMPUTER LAB – MORNING
‘Ryan was just in here. I showed him a clip of you two. His face lit up.’
Isaac smiles.
‘We have been texting, him and I. That is not to say that we are shooting rapid-fire messages back and forth, but we are texting.’
Isaac smiles.
‘I have not decided whether it is good or bad. It is new. That is all it is at the moment.’ My phone vibrates in my lap. ‘Oh! This is him.’
I check the text.
Seeing his name again makes my skin crawl. Harley’s sole contribution to society is bestowing nicknames upon people. I guess that is why we never clicked. Cooper Adams is already Coops, and he has no idea what to do with Miles.
I hope he is.
INT. CORRIDOR – AFTERNOON
He is not kidding.
Harley wastes no time making his presence felt. He starts a photographic tribute on Isaac’s locker. All it takes is for Ryan to add one and the locker becomes a monument to Isaac, plastered in photos. Guys spend their free periods printing off and adding their photos with him.
I met Isaac on the first day of Year Seven, and since then, we never took a photo together. Did we think we had more time? Did we never have a moment we thought warranted preserving? Did Isaac just not want one with me?
My eyes linger on Harley’s photo in the centre covered by the corners of the others that have been added since. He and Isaac are standing on a Sydney street. I know for a fact Isaac hated being dragged into the city on weekends, a bus and a train and too much effort, but looking at the photo, no one would realise. Isaac is beaming, they both are. They look so happy.
‘He looks so happy, doesn’t he?’ Omar asks, edging past me to tape his photo to the growing tribute.
‘Photos are just lies,’ I say flatly. ‘We pose, someone tells us to smile.’
Omar does not respond. I think I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to doubt what he had with Isaac as much as I doubt what I had.
Every single photo on that locker says the same thing: ‘We were best friends.’ Each one presents its own reality, and in it, Isaac and Harley, Ryan, Omar, whoever, were inseparable.
I do not have that. I have the footage. That says something else entirely.
INT. MODERN HISTORY CLASSROOM – AFTERNOON
Ryan leans over the space where Isaac used to sit and whispers, ‘Harley wants to catch up, the three of us, after school today.’
‘The three of us?’
‘Okay, me and him, but you should come.’
I open my mouth to reject the offer, but my realigned brain considers the arc. Ours is unfinished. There is so much that has gone unsaid.
Isaac was never perfect, but there was more to him before Harley arrived. Back then, I took the bad because there was so much good in him. He would not show it often, but he would show it. He was my best friend. And Harley took his shell and made a monster.
He needs to be told as much.
It will be our ending. The three of us have walked mostly diverging paths since Isaac died. Harley, Ryan and I, the sidekicks, will come together one last time. We will resolve everything. Then the camera will slowly pull away and the series will fade to black.
It will be our series finale.
‘All right,’ I tell him.
‘Meaning you’ll come?’
I nod. ‘After Squad?’
‘I don’t have Squad tonight.’ Ryan looks down at his work. I see something in his eyes, but I do not know what.
INT. CAFE – AFTERNOON
When Harley sinks into the vacant chair, my smile evaporates.
It is the first time I have seen him in months. In person, anyway. I have seen more than enough footage of him. The worst parts rise to the top of my mind and play like a greatest hits collection of his garbage humanity.
When he invites me to speak, it is hard to stop.
Every thought that has occurred to me while reviewing the footage spills out. He was a terrible influence, selfish. He goaded Isaac to be his absolute worst. He did not care if Isaac overdid it, so long as he still had a place to crash on the weekends.
I tell him, and he does not go down quietly. We trade barbs.
Ryan intervenes eventually, when we have scarred each other enough. ‘Christ,’ he says. He insists we break bread, but the cafe is out of bread, so we settle for breaking one croissant.
The waiter eyes us strangely.
Ryan nods. ‘With three plates.’
We sit around the table and Ryan awkwardly breaks apart a tiny croissant with his fingers. It is a powerful final image.
I wait for the fade to black. It does not come.
‘Are we kicking on?’ Harley asks.
I hesitate. ‘Actually, I have lots to do.’
‘We would love to kick on,’ Ryan answers for me.
It seems our ending is elsewhere.
INT. MESS HALL – NIGHT
Barton House hosts social dinners with the boarders of our sister school. Harley sneaks us in as expertly as he can manage (we are spotted almost immediately). He introduces us to his friend Jacqueline, who seems lovely, but I doubt her as a judge of character. The night is neither a failure nor a success, it is a pass. And as it passes, I cannot help but feel like our ability to end is slipping further and further away . . .
When the younger students begin to clear the plates, Mr Collins does the rounds to encourage those who do not live here to return to where they do.
Harley hugs Jacqueline. ‘Good night, lady,’ he says, looking at me.
An artful dig. Definitely Year-Seven level, which is more than I tend to expect from him.
I must not hide my disdain well, because Ryan mutters, ‘Don’t. He’s making an effort.’
That is how low our standards are for Harley. He invited us to a dinner he had no authority to invite us to. That is making an effort.
Harley farewells Ryan with a handshake. Ryan reciprocates with, ‘I’m busting. Where’s the loo?’ Harley gives him directions.
That leaves Harley and me in the middle of the mess hall.
‘I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?’
I opt for honesty. ‘No.’
‘Huh?’
‘This is our series finale, Harley.’
‘Our what?’
I sigh. I had hoped he would understand the metaphor, to save me explaining it. I lucked out with Ryan. His mum is Head of English. Metaphors are in his genes. Harley though . . . I doubt he has ever got anything right on an English paper besides his name.
‘There comes a time when a television show runs its course, and exhausts all of its plotlines, and there is no justifiable reason for the characters to still hang around each other. This is our time, Harley.’
He shrugs. ‘Whatever.’
INT. MILES’S BEDROOM – NIGHT
I sit on the edge of my bed and loosen my tie. My eyelids feel like they have weights tied to them. I do not think I have ever been out so late on a school night, although, I doubt it really counts considering I was at a Barton House function.
‘How was it?’ Mum stands in the doorway, careful not to cross over the threshold.
‘Good.’
‘It’s nice to see you boys getting along,’ she adds.
‘Mm.’ It is easier than lying.
Mum yawns. ‘Well, I should let you get some sleep.’
I yawn back at her. ‘Goodnight.’
She musters a limp wave and shuffles down the hall.
I lean forwards to untie my laces. Four imitation gold statuettes stare at me. Instead of reminding me that I am the best filmmaker, director, editor and scriptwriter, they remind me of Isaac sitting in front of the camera, pitching zombie vampires, and me shooting him down. They remind me of Isaac pitching a drunken scene with Harley’s endorsement. They remind me of the years I spent as a wet blanket, walking Isaac back from the edge while Harley tried to push him. They remind me Harley won.
I drop the four statuettes into the bin.
The Sidekicks Page 17