Mac Slater Coolhunter 2

by Tristan Bancks

  'You ready?' It was Paul. Damn. So much for disappearing.

  'Any luck?' I said but his face told the story: no money. Big city. Fifteen thousand k's from home. The outlook wasn't hot. I typed: 'Be scary. Mac' and logged out of my blog. Then I checked my Coolhunters page one last time. You wouldn't believe what landed.

  Mac!!!

  We just got in. Literally five minutes ago. Flight delayed twelve hrs due 2 storms in Amsterdam. So sorry we missed you @ airport. Paul's phone isn't working!!!! Our phone carrier has messed up our int'l roaming too. I'm sorry. Will make it up to you.

  We're at:

  The Ludlow Boutique Hotel

  Ludlow St

  Lower East Side

  The hotel is amazing. I'm in room 2503.

  Trust you'll get this soon.

  Speed

  7

  The Ludlow

  I slipped the card into the slot, the light flashed green and I shoved the door open. My jaw hit the floor. Paul pushed past me, into the room.

  'Holy ratballs!' he said, running straight for the stairs.

  My dad's eyes were like two full moons. We'd never seen anything like this in our lives. Floor to ceiling windows with views all over Manhattan and out to the river. A gigantic lounge room. A grand piano in one corner to my right and a kitchen next to it. The furniture was totally wacky. A red pod-shaped seat swinging from the ceiling right next to an antique couch.

  The door leading off to a bathroom was pointy rather than square at the top. It looked like something you'd find in a mosque. I ran to the window and looked out. I could see the Chrysler Building up through the sea of high-rises and the very tip of the Empire State.

  'Come check this!' Paul screamed from upstairs. I leapt up the curving glass staircase to the top floor, which looked down over the lounge room and out to the city beyond. Paul was jumping up and down on one of two giant beds with posts on the corners and mosquito nets draped over the top. There were iPod docks on the bedside tables. There was a door off to an ensuite. The bathroom was bright orange with glass walls overlooking the city. It had an egg-shaped tub in the middle of the room.

  'Geez, this is all right,' I heard my dad say from downstairs.

  'All right?' I yelled to him. 'This is mental! I knew these guys'd pull through.'

  'Hey, look,' Paul said, jumping off the bed, landing awkwardly and smashing over a pile of boxes in one corner of the room. He didn't even complain. He picked up the envelope that fell off the top and pulled out a card.

  'Paul. Enjoy!' it said.

  There was another pile of boxes next to it with a note for me on top. Paul and I started ripping into the packages. There was a new high-def camera to replace the one we'd lost during our Coolhunters trial back in Kings. There was a new phone each and a whole bunch of clothes – T-shirts, jeans, socks, boxes of new sneaks, even a suit. I ripped off my faded, torn and patched green cords and pulled on a pair of dark denim jeans. I peeled off my long-sleeved, no-name T that I'd nabbed out of the lost and found box back at the Arts Estate and I grabbed a T-shirt with a piranha on the front. I checked myself in the mirror.

  I actually looked good. I didn't even look like me. I'd never had a new piece of clothing in my life. Except undies. And even then, I was pretty sure a few of my pairs were hand-me-downs from my cousins.

  'What's all this gear?' Dad asked, arriving at the top of the stairs.

  'I don't know,' I said.

  Paul had already ditched his pile of stuff. He'd opened a pack of games and was choosing FIFA players on the flat-screen TV.

  The phone rang and I somersaulted across the bed.

  'I'm havin' a shower,' Dad said and headed back downstairs.

  I grabbed the phone.

  'Yep!' I said.

  'Settling in OK?' Speed said in his London accent. 'Look, Mac, I really am sorry about –'

  'Forget it!' I said. 'Are you kidding me? I LOVED being lost in New York and I'd stay in that rat-hole we were in last night for six months if it meant a night in this place. Do we really get to stay here or this a joke? 'Cos if it's –'

  Speed laughed.

  'Yes, mate. You get to stay. Be downstairs in fifteen. There's a restaurant called Mash three doors down the street where we're having lunch. You can meet the other coolhunters there and I'll be setting the challenge for the week. Don't be late, yeah?'

  The line went dead.

  I slammed the phone down, lay back on the bed and slapped myself across the face. I was awake. And it hurt a bit.

  8

  Mash

  'You guys are going to be massive stars,' said Speed, addressing the group. Paul kicked my foot under the table. He had this dream of being famous for something. Kind of weird for a total hermit, but I think he wanted people to admire him from a distance.

  Me, Paul, Dad, Speed, Tony and the other four coolhunters were seated around a big dining table at Mash, a 'comfort food' restaurant selling stuff like mashed potatoes and grilled cheese on toast and charging the big bucks for it. Speed called it 'retro' but it just looked like dinner at Paul's place to me. The walls were bare brick and Jimi Hendrix was playing on a stereo out back.

  'We have the most gobsmackingly incredible plans in place for total world domination. Web, mobile, print, TV, games, virtual worlds and media that haven't even been invented yet. And you guys are going to be the face of it.'

  My dad snorted under his breath. He'd always taught me to be suss on people who made big promises. I elbowed him to shut him up. He was the only parent who had showed for lunch, so Paul and I already looked freaky enough without him snorting at our boss.

  'Now, before I go on, I want everyone to give due props to our newest hunters on the site, Mac and Paul,' said Speed.

  Luca, the South American dude who was into adventure sports, gave a couple of lame claps but when no one else joined in he let it go. I looked at Paul and my dad. The three of us were not like anybody else at the table. Maybe it was our eight-dollar haircuts (I think Paul actually cut his own) or Dad's dirty jeans, checked lumberjack shirt and out-of-control brows. Maybe it was something in our wide-eyed looks that said 'backwater hicks'. Whatever it was, I knew we didn't belong.

  'That was great, guys,' said Speed, straight-faced. 'A really warm welcome.'

  Michiko, the Japanese photographer chick from Paris, was playing with her fringe, not even listening. Her skateboard was on the table, lying between her knife and fork. Next to Michiko was Van (short for Vanessa), who described herself on the site as a tech expert and New York City rich kid. She had one headphone in and was staring right through us. I smiled but got nothing. Then there was Rash, the music- and movie-buff guy from Shanghai, China. His profile said he was scared of going outside. He sat there, hoodie on, slumped down, eyes lit by a hand-held games machine he was playing. Luca was the only one who'd lowered himself to speak to us so far.

  Speed and Tony, the site's founders, were at the head of the table. Speed had big sunglasses shading his eyes and a black v-neck T-shirt with 'Prada' on it. Tony was older, wearing a suit. I'd never heard him speak much but he had power. It felt like he was the money guy.

  'Anyway,' Speed said. 'Here are the rules of the game. We need you guys to find the coolest stuff in the city. Vlog it, blog it, photograph it, draw it, paint it, etch-a-sketch it. Whatever. So long as you're uncovering stuff that nobody knows is here and that everyone wants a piece of. We want the Next Big Thing. You need to upload a fresh find to the site every day, keep on delivering, keep the punters coming back for more. Any day you don't deliver something, you're gone. You'll be paid a hundred and fifty US a day for the five days you're here and, as always, we'll cover hotel and expenses.'

  Paul and I gave each other five under the table. It'd take us, like, two million years to earn seven hundred and fifty bucks each in our old McJobs at Taste Sensation, a skanky burger joint on the main street of Kings.

  'Coolhunting is not a job you keep forever,' Speed went on. 'You stay as long as the sit
e subscribers like you, as long as they're logging on to your part of the site and looking to you for fresh stuff. Think of it as sudden death every day. I'd like all of you to be there on our next international hunt in Shanghai, Rash's hometown, in three months' time, but at least one of you won't be. We are getting in excess of a million hits a day and all of those people want your job. One of you is going home this week.'

  Van straightened in her chair. Michiko looked like she was about to spit at Speed.

  'I don't mind if you enjoy yourselves but we are deadly serious about the business of cool,' Speed went on. 'There are copycat sites cropping up all over the web and we need to know about trends happening on the street before Innovators even think of them. Got it?'

  Everybody nodded.

  'Good. This is your chance to prove yourselves. Go hard or go home,' Speed said, staring directly at me and Paul. 'Dig in.'

  As the others started eating, I looked around the table. I was pretty sure that I must've read and dreamed more about this city than any of these dudes, even Van, who lived here.

  'He's a bit of a goose,' Dad said in a low voice. I elbowed him again.

  'They all think we're losers,' Paul whispered out of the side of his mouth.

  'I don't care,' I said.

  I actually did care, but there was no point talking about it. I'd already decided I was going to blow them out of the water with the stuff we found, no matter what it took to find it. By the end of the week we were gonna own New York. I was sure of it.

  9

  The Hunt

  A kid pulled a killer airwalk, grabbing the nose of his board and kicking his feet out, chucking the board back beneath him before landing and caning down the half-pipe. And this thing was huge, the biggest pipe I'd ever laid eyes on.

  'That's, like, three stories high!' Paul said, almost not believing what he was seeing.

  Paul, Dad and I were gawking at the skaters through a rusty wire fence. The pipe was in an empty block with a burnt-out car in the middle. It was hemmed in by tall buildings on three sides, graffiti everywhere. These guys were up the back, probably sixty or seventy metres away from us, skating the monster pipe.

  Another kid dropped in and went tearing down the face to shoot up the other side, pulling a big old hand plant, fingers on the lip, board in the air, before pushing off and firing back down again.

  'Let's shoot it,' I said, lifting the wire and sliding under the fence.

  It was 10:15 a.m. Friday, our first proper day coolhunting, and I figured if we were going to find the real New York and prove we weren't bumpkin freaks from the wrong side of the planet we were going to have to push the boundaries a little. We were in the Lower East Side, a few blocks from the hotel. The area felt kind of dodgy but then it had clubs and expensive restaurants and stores sprinkled around, too. We'd been hunting for this doughnut shop I had a picture of in my NY book, but doughnuts would have to wait.

  'Don't be ridiculous,' my dad said.

  'These dudes will smoke us,' Paul said.

  'They look young,' I said. 'We'll be fine.'

  'Have you never seen an American movie?' Paul asked. 'We're not in Kings Bay. Just shoot it from back here.'

  'We'll hardly even get a picture. And we'll have to zoom in so much it'll be all shaky.'

  'This is so typical of you, Mac. You'd rather get a steady picture than keep your life,' Paul said.

  'I'm going in,' I said and headed off across the block, pulling the HD cam out of my backpack. It was a beautiful machine. I'd spent all night sussing the menu.

  Dad groaned and said, 'Wait a minute,' awkwardly scrambling under the wire. Paul stood there for a second but there was no way he was staying out there by himself so he slipped under, too. We headed across the block towards the skaters.

  There were three or four guys riding the pipe and another six or seven hanging out, pulling moves on rails and other junk lying around. They all looked our age or younger. Kids as young as eight or nine even. They had guts to ride that ramp. There was no way I'd have done it when I was nine. Or maybe even now.

  One of them had a plaster cast on his arm. It was painted red and covered in tags. Another kid was skating with his ankle bandaged. A guy and a girl were playing b-ball using a milk crate as a hoop.

  'I think we should stop here,' Paul said when we were halfway across the block.

  'I agree,' Dad said, which was his way of saying, 'I'm freaking out but I want you to make your own decision.' That was my folks' one rule on parenting: let him make his own decisions. It had gotten me into some pretty sketchy situations but at least I got to find out what happens when you do dumb stuff, rather than having someone always telling me I shouldn't.

  I talked them into coming a little closer and we scooched down behind the burnt-out car where we couldn't be seen. There was a blackened BMW badge lying in the dirt. I set up the camera, dragging a three-legged chair over to use as a tripod. I pushed the chair out past the rear bumper so I could stay hidden and still shoot the action.

  'Shouldn't we ask them first?' Paul said, on his knees behind the car. 'Get them to sign a release?'

  'Then they'll play to camera,' I said. 'I want to shoot the real deal. We'll ask them later. They'll love it.'

  I started filming. One tiny kid was getting ready to roll. I zoomed right in to his face. It was a bit pixelly but you could see him staring into the pipe, trying to psych himself. A couple of the others were going, 'Whoo. Whoo. Whoo,' trying to fire him up. Then, all of a sudden, he let go. I crash-zoomed out. His board dropped away from him and he free-fell three storeys, landing on his back on the curve of the ramp and rolling into the centre of the half-pipe.

  He lay there, still, for a few seconds, and a couple of the others ran in to see him, crowding around. Slowly he pulled himself up and, as he did, three other dudes dropped off the lip. One of them stacked but two pulled off some crazy moves: airwalks, nollie bigspins and kickflips.

  'This is so good,' I said to Paul.

  He could see the action on the flipscreen.

  'Sincerely,' he said.

  I pushed the chair out from the car a little further to get a bit more of the half-pipe in shot. The chair scraped loudly across the concrete and I heard a, 'Hey, what're you doin'?'

  I ducked back in behind the car so I was fully hidden.

  'Hey yo,' said the voice again.

  'What do we do?' I asked Paul.

  'Don't ask me!' he said.

  So I stood up slowly, ready to explain.

  'Hey,' I said.

  They didn't look that happy to see me.

  'You guys want to be on the web?' I asked.

  'What?' said the guy closest to us. He had a black cap on backwards, bandanna underneath, black armbands, T-shirt with Japanese script, two belts, a moon tan, zits on his chin.

  'Coolhunters. This site. I'm shooting some ...'

  Four or five of them started walking towards us. One of them picked up a bit of wood, another grabbed what looked like a metal pole.

  My mouth ran dry. 'They're coming,' I said to Dad and Paul, who were still behind the car.

  Seconds later our feet were pounding across the empty block, jumping scrubby bushes, landing on bits of mashed-up tar. I could hear the guys screaming behind us, giving chase. Then I fell and grazed my hands pretty bad, scratching the camera. The voices were closing in behind. I dragged myself up, bolting towards the wire, then skidding beneath it. I held the fence up for Paul as he slid under and I looked back to see where Dad was, but he still had maybe twenty metres to go. The kids were almost on top of him and he was no athlete.

  'C'mon, Dad! Go!' I screamed.

  I could either go back in for him or just stand there and shout for him to run faster.

  10

  Escape

  'Don't, man,' Paul said as I slipped under the wire. But what was I going to do? Leave my old man for dead? I stood just as the front kid came within striking distance of my dad, who still had maybe ten metres to run.
r />   'Hey! Stop! Stop!' I screamed, running towards them, looking around for something to defend myself with, even though I wouldn't really know how. All that peace and love stuff growing up hadn't prepared me for a sitch like this. Kings Bay wasn't exactly the 'hood.

  So I stuck my hands in the air, trying to show that we weren't there to start something. Dad made it to me, out of breath. He turned and we were face to face with them. They were wearing a mix of baseball, basketball and skate gear. One kid wore a black T-shirt with 'I Skate NY' on it but instead of the word 'skate' it had a picture of a board. He wore a beanie over messy blond hair. He was younger than me and kind of skinny-looking, but he had an ugly piece of wood in his hand with a few nails sticking out of it.

  'Gimme the camera,' he said.

  I felt the cam sitting there in my sweaty palm. I didn't move.

  'I said gimme the camera.'

  'Give him the camera,' Paul said and, when I resisted, my dad grabbed it out of my hand and walked over, giving it to the dude. I don't want to tell you what they said next but they kind of asked us to leave.

  Dad and I backed towards the fence. He reefed the rusty wire up and I crawled through to the other side. When Dad was under, the three of us crossed the road and started backing up the street. They watched us go, trying to look tough, which I guess they were. Beanie dude showed the other guys the camera, turning it over in his hands and laughing. One of them shouted something at us as they headed back across the block towards the ramp.

  Dad, Paul and I kept walking. Dad was out of breath and my heart was thumping somewhere up inside my head. Paul was muttering stuff to himself, trying to process what had happened. We didn't say anything for ages until we came to a park and collapsed on a bench.