Then suddenly it was all over. I was tired and hungry and I felt even less cool than I had before I became a coolhunter.
'It'll be right,' I said, lying.
'Rockin',' said Paul. 'Three of the lamest minutes of video ever committed to the web.'
I looked at him. Even that word – rockin' – was so 2001. Man, we sucked.
We grabbed our things and an Indian chick with a little bindi between her eyes nabbed our seat and started Bebo-ing. We walked off down the path towards the bus without saying a word.
Paul grabbed a scooter that was leaning against the side of our workshop.
'I don't know if I'm gonna come tomorrow,' I said.
'You'll be there,' he said. 'It's like roadkill. How can you not want to see it? Meet me, ten to eight at the corner.'
And he rode off along the wooden walkway that cut through the ti-tree lake, and into the night.
12
Cosmic Mama
I slopped rice milk into a bowl, wolfed three scoops of oats, grabbed my bag and leapt down the steps of our bus. I was feeling heaps better this morning.
'Gotta bolt, Ma,' I said.
'Slow down. Did you have herbs in your juice?'
'I got to get to school,' I said.
'It's not even eight. What's the rush?' she asked. She was sitting outside in the sun in a yoga pose, eating sprouted bread, this weird, uncooked stuff that took like a thousand chews to get through.
'I'll make you a sandwich,' she said.
'Please not with that bread,' I said.
'What's wrong with it?'
I usually ate all the kooky stuff she served up but since she'd started on the raw food thing – yep, nothing cooked – dining at our place had really gone downhill. We hadn't eaten a scrap of cooked food at home in nearly a year. I sometimes ate normal food when I was out in the world but there was no way I could break that to my mum. Let me tell you, though, there's a reason why humans actually cook bread.
'I'm doing the Coolhunting thing,' I said as I kissed her and grabbed my inline board. It was a two-wheel skateboard that Paul and I had been working on. We were still having a couple of little teething problems. Like stacking every five metres.
'What?' she said. 'Mac, hold on a moment. I thought you'd –'
'Yeah, well, I changed my mind. See, Cat, the girl who ...' I thought for a second about all my reasons for wanting to do this and I knew she'd talk me out of it. 'Doesn't matter,' I said. 'I'm just doing it. It'll be all right.'
'But who are these men? And why do they want you to do this? I've heard the internet can be really dangerous for –'
'Ma, it's fine. Really. It's just a trial. Don't worry about it. I've got to go check and see if we won.'
'Won what?'
But I was off up the path.
'Mac?' she called. 'I've got something for you.'
I turned, expecting her to be offering a kiss, which she knew was banned in public. But she had something in her hand. I walked back to her.
'It's a feather I found. Thought it might help with your flying.'
I took the feather and stuck it in the front pocket of my bag.
'Thanks, Ma. I'll talk to you tonight. And relax. It's cool.'
I skated through reception and out to the road before stacking. I was really starting to get the hang. I jumped back on and skated hard for school, crossing my fingers all the way.
13
And the Winner Is ...
We knew the result as soon as we rolled through the gate.
It was 8:07 in the a.m. and Cat's crew were group-hugging at the top of the big steps. But it wasn't just the ordinary hug. It was like a group hug-jump-squeal thing. Then it broke and they all kind of swizzled their fingers together in the middle and then went back into the hug. Cat was too cool for squealing and swizzling so she just stood there and let them worship her.
'Do you think she won?' Paul asked, deadpan, jumping off his skatey.
'Dunno. They look pretty upset,' I said, picking up my board and folding it in the middle.
We shuffled slowly towards them. Kids everywhere were looking at me. Staring. They stopped and watched as we went past. Someone on the basketball court yelled out 'Loser!' Other kids just had this look of pity in their eyes.
'Man, it's cool being a celebrity,' I said.
'You wanna go see how bad the damage is?' Paul asked in a low voice.
'Not really,' I muttered back.
We kept our heads down and tried to sleuth past without some sarcastic comment from Cat. She saw me but she didn't say anything. Just gave me this look that said, 'You never had a chance.' It was like she thought she'd won the whole thing. We made it to the bottom of the steps and ducked into the library.
'Two minutes for computers,' called Mrs Roberts, the librarian, once we were inside. 'Two more minutes only. We have a 3-unit Economics class coming in early.'
I sat at a computer and took a breath. I still wasn't sure if I wanted to see.
'What're you doin', man?' Paul snapped.
'I just –'
Paul leaned over my shoulder and googled 'Coolhunters' then clicked through.
On the homepage there were pics of the four chosen hunters, then an image of Cat and one of me, taken from our vlogs. I had a weird look on my face like I was straining to push something out.
Paul clicked 'See Who Won!' The page took forever to load. Four seconds of hell. Then BANG. Right there. Cat had 35422 votes. Paul and I had 736. She had slain us by nearly 35 000 votes.
'I didn't think it'd be this bad,' I said.
'I did,' said Paul.
'Thanks.'
The comments left were pretty ferocious, too:
Is this guy some kind of joke? For a second I thought I was on uncoolhunters.com.
– Fashionista, Manchester, UK
mac is whack
– Thunderbutt, Melbourne, Australia
whats tha deal? i swear i saw a tshirt this guy coolhunted in kmart. is that the most original thing comin outta kings bay?
– FraidyCat4, Mexico City
A dog catching a ball? This is cool? I give my vote definitely to the girl
– Antoine, Marrakech, Morocco
It turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far. But not so hot for me.
In the hallways, kids were giving me hell, calling me the Uncool Hunter and telling me to give up. I was waiting for someone to stick a 'Kick Me' sign on my back.
The Emos, the basketball guys, even the heavy metal dudes with long grey jackets, straggly facial hair and knuckles decked with silver rings were muttering and snivelling as I walked past their wall. Ryan Morphett and Chris Brown were the geekiest dudes in our year and they were lovin' it. I was taking the heat off them and their zits were popping with excitement.
Paul and I had met at the same spot every lunch-time for nearly two years but today he wasn't there. He made out later like he'd been looking for me but I knew he was trying to distance himself from the great coolhunting disaster. So there I was, alone, sitting outside the toilets near E Block surrounded by the stench and sound of people emptying their bowels. I had no money to buy food and I would have given my left thumb for one of those uncooked bread sandwiches.
Cat, rather than rub it in, had gone back to pretending I didn't exist, which is the way it had always been between us. I thought about her every third minute and I didn't even rate a blip on her radar. I didn't know which was worse – her venting bile on me or ignoring me altogether.
'Hey,' said a voice. It was Jewels. She had her hair up in all these little blue pig-tail things. She sat next to me on the bench. 'Whatcha doin'?'
'Just hangin' with my friends,' I said. She laughed.
'You want my TVP sandwich?' she asked, a grin on her face.
TVP was about the most revolting substance on earth. Texturised Vegetable Protein. A vegetarian meat substitute that tasted and looked like Chum.
'Has it got tomato sauce?'
She laugh
ed again, took it out of her bag and gave it to me.
'Don't listen to what everyone's saying,' she said.
'Bit hard not to. I didn't even want to do this stupid thing anyway. They just asked me and I wanted to beat Cat and ...'
'It sounds pretty good,' she said. 'Travelling and that.'
'Yeah,' I said and took a bite, trying to tell myself it was something tastier. Like Pal.
'Well,' she said. 'I don't think you're a loser. You can come hang with me and Im if you like.'
'Nah.' She and her friend Imogen were obsessed with this pop band and that's all they talked about all day long. I didn't know if I could hack listening to a debate about what some Dutch girl had written on the band's MySpace page the night before.
'No, really, you should come,' she said. 'I promise we won't –'
'No. I'm fine. Leave me alone,' I said, probably a little too harshly.
Jewels stood up. 'Okay. Sit there by yourself with your TVP, you winner,' she said and walked off.
So I sat there till the bell. Even with the taste of that sandwich and the sweet perfume drifting out of the mens' I was too depressed to move.
After school, Paul wasn't in the usual spot. I saw him hurrying off with Nick Jones and Bradley Farrar, the guys he hung out with sometimes to talk sci-fi 'cos I seriously couldn't provide that service. I chucked my board down and dug in. I had to tell him that the whole coolhunting gig was over. I'd had enough humiliation for one lifetime. It was either give up the trial or change schools. Maybe both. But I couldn't take another four days of this.
Thunder groaned overhead. Dark clouds were gathering out towards the beach. They looked kind of green, like we were in for hail even.
As I skated I realised that maybe I'd gone into this whole thing for the wrong reasons. I wanted to try to beat Cat, to take revenge on her maybe, for ignoring me for so long. And I wanted to go to New York and to give this coolhunting thing a shot. But why did I think it was possible to beat her when Cat was already cool? Then, yesterday, Paul and I just went out and filmed what we thought other people might think was cool because we didn't believe the stuff we like is cool enough.
'Hey, man, why didn't you wait?' I said to Paul, skating up behind him. 'We've got work.'
Paul and the guys went from laughing and talking about Space Ninjas or some rubbish to these looks of 'What do you think you're doing?'
Paul said, 'Well, if you're gonna skate ahead, I'll just meet you there, hey?'
I thought he was joking at first. Then I realised he wasn't. The other guys shared a look that told me to disappear. So I did.
14
Purgatory
We knew there was something very wrong going down, even from around the corner. The other guys had peeled off home on the edge of town so I'd dropped back and Paul and I were walking together. He still wasn't talking to me. Until this:
'What is that smell?'
The air was hot from the day and a stink hit us like a hard slap. The guys' toilets smelt like cinnamon doughnuts next to this.
'I don't know. Is it, like ... maybe someone died.'
'Is it the chicken factory?' Paul asked.
We took a left into the alley behind Taste Sensation, the two-bit burger joint where we held down McJobs as kitchen hands/front-counter dudes for five-fiddy-an-hour one arvo a week. It was a try-hard franchise store with one outlet, right here on the main street of Kings. The worst food in town, but someone had to feed the backpackers.
Thunder moaned all around. As we climbed the concrete stairs to the kitchen we realised exactly what the stench was. A thick sludge flowed out from underneath the flyscreen door. And then the door was flung open. 'Get in here and help. NOW!' yelled Mr Dykstra, our boss. Dykstra had a thick moustache, a fear of spending money and an attitude.
Paul and I stepped inside, Paul dancing to one side, trying not to get his shoes gooed. The whole kitchen floor was covered in fat and three-week-old, chewed-up food – skanky lettuce leaves, chunks of decaying beef-burger, warm tuna and bits of egg.
The grease trap had exploded again. The trap is a filter. All restaurants have them. Everything that goes down the sink passes through it to stop bad stuff getting into the drains. And, at Taste Sensation, this meant some very bad stuff. It was meant to be emptied by professionals once every few weeks but Mr Dykstra was so cheap he emptied it himself. But sometimes he forgot.
Imagine the worst thing you've ever smelt in your life. And then times it by four thousand and you have the smell of an exploding grease trap. The filth was erupting from a cupboard in the wall, flowing in all directions and heading towards the dining area. Dykstra raced out to explain to a couple of remaining customers.
'Please accept our apologies. Taste Sensation will be back to normal soon. Would you like a pass for a free kebab?' said Mr Dykstra, but they were gone.
'What're you doing?' he spat at me and Paul. 'Get on it!'
Paul and I jumped, scared of being sacked from our high-paying jobs. We ripped off our shoes and I waded into the pool of wrongness, heading for the big tin drum that we'd used for cleanup the last time this went down. Paul was still dancing from foot to foot at the edge of the flow.
'What're you doing?' I asked.
'I can't do this. I'm worried about my allergies, y'know,' he said.
'Get over here now or I'll make you eat it,' I said.
'I better not get a rash,' he said as he took his first step, hand clamped to his nose like a mask. Then another step. The fat lapped up to his ankles. He groaned loudly.
'This is cool. Should have brought the camera,' I said.
'Probably cooler than what we shot yesterday,' Paul replied through his cupped hand.
The stench made me gag and I only just managed to hold onto my lunch. I slid the empty drum along the floor into the middle of the goop and grabbed two buckets from under the sink, chucking one to Paul.
Mr Dykstra was on the phone out in the alley, walking in circles.
We started bucketing.
'This is the worst day of my life,' I said.
Paul didn't say anything.
'Why'd you ditch me at school?' I asked him.
'I didn't,' he said. 'I couldn't find you.'
'That's strange,' I said. 'You've never had trouble finding me before.'
I filled my bucket. It had something floating in it that looked suspiciously like a dead rat.
Paul was quiet and drizzled a tiny quarter-bucketful into the drum.
'So, why?' I said.
Paul dropped his mask for a second. 'This Coolhunting thing sucks. I think we should pull out,' he said.
'Right,' I said, pouring in another bucket. 'Yesterday you didn't want me to do it because you couldn't do it with me. And today –'
'Well, as if we're ever going to beat her,' he said.
I knew it was true and it was how I felt, too, but his negativity was getting on my nerves.
'Why not?' I asked.
Paul looked around. 'Do you have eyes?' he said. 'And a nose? You think Cat's somewhere across town in another skanky diner knee-deep in regurgitated blurk? No. We are not cool, Mac, and we never will be, so why humiliate ourselves?'
'Don't talk. Work!' yelled Dykstra through the back flyscreen door. 'You want me to lose more customers?' Then he went back to his phone conversation.
'See what I mean?' Paul whispered.
We worked silently for an hour, scooping, mopping, wiping till every drop of gunk was gone. I spent the time stewing on what Paul had said. Knowing he was right but not wanting him to be. Then we re-opened the place and did an hour working the counter and deep fryer. I was scared of how long that oil had been in there. A storm warning came through on the radio, the first big one for the season.
Dykstra appeared through the back door right on five and said, 'Good boys. Very good. Let me pay you now for today.'
He went to the cash register and he gave us eleven bucks each. I had to peel my crusty fingers apart to get the money into my
pocket.
'See you next week,' he said.
'Not if I can help it,' I said under my breath as we headed for the door. Paul and I stepped out onto the main street.
It was raining. We stood there getting wet, letting the goop wash off us, looking like pigs. Two girls from year seven passed by, staring at us and laughing. Paul wiped some fat off his leg and flicked it at them and they scurried away.
'Man, I love being a coolhunter,' I said.
A couple of flashes of lightning made everything white for a second or two. Then another flash exploded over the lighthouse in the distance.
I washed some more fat out of my brows and hair in the rain.
'Lightning,' I said to Paul.
Another flash.
'So what,' he said, not knowing what I was getting at.
A boom of thunder and more lightning. I stepped back, trying to get a better look at the lighthouse between the buildings across the street.
'You know what I'm thinking?' I asked.
'What're you thinking?' he said.
I raised my brows and he knew what I meant.
'Oh, no way.'
'What would you rather? Win this thing and get paid to hunt cool or spend the rest of your life working here?' I asked him, starting to walk away.
'Your dad won't even be there,' he said.
'Don't care,' I said. 'Let's go, before the storm ends.'
'I said I was quitting.'
But I was gone.
15
Race Through Rain
Lightning erupted all around us and wind screamed in our faces. The sun set pretty late at this time of year but the cloud cover was making everything look grim. Cars flicked past in both directions, lights on, as we caned along the edge of the road on our bikes. We'd been back to the workshop, grabbed two old BMX bikes we'd found at the tip and the camera, which was now in my backpack. I was praying the pack was waterproof, as we charged up the winding Lighthouse Road.
A car honked loudly, telling us to get out of the way. I guess they could barely see us now, with the rain falling in thick, grey sheets. Standard presummer weather in Kings. Hotter than hell in the day and then the skies crack around five with a killer storm. Clear again by seven.
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