Chapter Fourteen

 
            On the train home Wayne and Guthrie declared themselves still to be number one fans of Kirsten Steele, despite the humiliations of the photo shoot.
            'That was really good of her to buy us lunch,' Wayne said. 'She didn't have to do that.'
            'Maybe she gets to write if off somehow,' Guthrie conjectured.
            'Either way, we got a free lunch out of it.'
            'I think we did better with the interview this time.'
            'Yeah, we were a bit more confident. You could tell we knew what we were doing.'
            'I just wish that snotty boyfriend hadn't been there. What was his name?'
            'Can't remember,' Wayne said staring out the window.
            'Neither can I. I don't know why he had to be there. He was giving us the eye all the time.'
            'He's a jerk.'
            'I don't like him either. Too up himself. What do you reckon Kirsten sees in him?'
            Wayne shrugged. 'Let's not talk about him.'
            The boys remained silent for the rest of the journey. They didn't even bother to take out the camcorder and look at the footage they'd taped, so wrapped up were they in morbid thoughts of how goodlooking Brad was. Rather they left the camcorder in Wayne's backpack.
            When the train came to their stop they went to Guthrie's house. Wayne knew his house would be crawling with parents, plus his father would want to take the camera off him again as soon as he saw it. Wayne had recently discovered the instruction manual amongst his father's stuff and felt confident that he would be able to make a copy of the small camcorder tape onto VHS himself. He wanted to keep everything away from his father as much as possible. His negligence and interfering could well cause another disaster.
            Guthrie's mother was home, preparing dinner in the kitchen. She was in the midst of stuffing a chook.
            'Anyone home?' Guthrie hollered as he and Wayne walked through the house. 'Anyone home?'
            'I'm in the kitchen,' Mrs Dulwich called.
            Wayne and Guthrie dumped their bags in the loungeroom and made for the kitchen.
            'Hi mum,' Guthrie said. 'What's for dinner?'
            'This chook,' she said, almost sticking her entire fist up it.
            'Hi Mrs D,' Wayne greeted.
            'Hello Wayne. How are you today?'
            'I'm great. Me and Guthrie have just been to a photo shoot. We're going to be on the front of a book.'
            'Yes, Guthrie said something about going to have a photo taken,' Mrs Dulwich recalled.
            'It's very important,' Guthrie said. 'It's something to do with the government.'
            'I'm sure it's important,' Mrs Dulwich said, still concentrating on the job at hand, ramming another fistful of stuffing up the chook.
            'Plus we were shooting an interview today.' Wayne patted the video camera. 'We're going to have a look at it now.'
            'I thought you had already done that?'
            'This is a follow up interview,' Guthrie said. 'Is dad home? I want him to have a look at what we've done.'
            'He's at the tip.'
            'When will he be home?'
            'Who knows? You know how he likes to fossick through everyone else's rubbish. He goes to dump all of our crap, then comes home with someone else’s crap,' Mrs Dulwich shook her head. 'He's a bloody hoarder.'
            'I suppose I can show him the tape later,' Guthrie said.
            'I'll go and set it up,' Wayne said, leaving the kitchen.
            'Come and watch the tape mum. Please,' Guthrie begged, proud of what they'd done.
            'Okay, but only for a few minutes,' she said. 'I can't afford to be sitting around all day.'
            'Don't worry,' Guthrie said. 'You just keep on working. When we're ready we'll call you in to have a look. Okay?'
            'Okay, but it'll only be for five minutes.'
            In the loungeroom Wayne was on his knees in front of the television, plugging in the cords and leads. When he had finished this intricate business he took a few small steps back.
            'There,' he said. 'All ready to go.'
            'Mum,' Guthrie yelled. 'We're ready.'
            Guthrie slumped into his favourite chair while Wayne stood near the video camera, ready to hit the play button. The premiere was about to begin.
            Mrs Dulwich walked into the loungeroom and stood in the doorway. Both her grubby hands were held upwards, trying not to touch anything.
            'Alright, I'm here,' she announced.
            Wayne looked over his shoulder to make sure Mrs Dulwich could see the screen properly, then pressed play. He sat looking on, in a sort of rapture. A shot of an indoor plant came into view - this was more or less a test shot - which then panned over to Kirsten. A distant sounding voice (the boys hadn't really mastered the sound yet) was heard.
            'Is that your voice, Guthrie?' Mrs Dulwich asked.
            'Yeah. I'm the interviewer.'
            'And who's the attractive woman?'
            'That is Kirsten Steele. She's our project,' Guthrie explained.
            'She's really important,' Wayne said. 'She works in politics.'
            Mrs Dulwich stood watching for several minutes, until she felt she had seen enough. The camera work was amateur, and the subject didn't seem to be saying anything earth shattering. Kirsten Steele may have worked in politics, but she seemed pretty ordinary to Mrs Dulwich. In fact the only really interesting thing about the tape was that it was a piece of homemade television. It was the novelty of the TV medium and style that counted here, not the content.
            It was obvious the boys were up to something though. They had been taking their homework seriously for once. Kirsten Steele couldn't have been plucked out of thin air; they must have put in the work to get her to agree to be filmed. That alone was worth applauding.
            'It looks good,' Mrs Dulwich said, a little peremptorily. 'You should at least get some good marks for this. Now, if you'll excuse me I better get back to stuffing that chook.'
            Mrs Dulwich returned to her work, leaving Wayne and Guthrie staring at the television. They hung on every frame. Kirsten talked nonchalantly through the interview. Even though she did her best to appear polite, it was obvious she was going through the motions.
            'She looks even more beautiful on video,' Guthrie said dreamily.
            'Tell me about it,' Wayne agreed, also in a dream.
            'If this doesn't get us an A, then I don’t know what will.'
            'If this doesn't get us an A+, then I give up.'
            The interview came to an end.
            'What happens next?' Guthrie asked.
            'We make a VHS copy of it, then we'll have to think about adding some more stuff to it. You know, padding.'
            'Why is the tape still rolling?' Guthrie pointed to the television screen, pictures of Kirsten's office still appearing on the screen. 'Listen, you can hear the both of us talking still.'
            'Shit. I must have forgotten to turn off the camcorder. What a dickhead I am.'
            Both laughed.
            'Sssh! Can you hear?' Guthrie whispered, trying to suppress his giggles. 'This was when we went out to get lunch.'
            'And this is when I'm about to put the camcorder on Kirsten's desk. I can't believe I left it on. I was wondering why the tape was already at the start. It must have automatically rewound itself.'
            'Hey, this is hidden camera stuff,' Guthrie said, seeing potential. 'We could get some extra footage out of this.'
            'Yeah, but we couldn't use it if it was taken secretly.'
            'Not secretly, accidentally.'
            'Here we go,' Wayne said as the camera was placed on the corner of Kirsten's desk.
            Wayne and Guthrie turned their heads on their side. They could see Kirsten's desk chair tightly framed and heard some conversation. Brad sat on Kirsten's chair. Neither Wayne nor Guthrie could bring themselves to say anything. They were hanging on the edge of their seats in suspense. Half of Brad's head was cut off. The shot seemed to focus more on his crotch area, especially when he scratched himself. He asked Kirsten to sit on his lap. Soon Kirsten was in frame, then came the dialogue.
            Their conversation was both real and unreal to Wayne and Guthrie. They couldn't believe what they were hearing. It didn't make sense. They had been at Kirsten's office only a few hours ago and she had been so nice to them. This couldn't possibly be Kirsten now. It just couldn't. But it was all captured on tape. She was calling them both losers, 'total goofballs'. Worst of all, considering their feelings of inferiority with regards to Brad, she also said they were ugly.
            'Turn it off,' Guthrie muttered.
            Wayne pressed the stop button. They sat speechless, devastated. How could Kirsten do this to them?, they wondered. Was she such a liar? Such a back stabber? Such a two faced so and so? They felt that the whole media studies project had been killed off in one swoop. A dagger had been thrust into its heart. Wayne and Guthrie couldn’t possibly go on with the project now, after seeing this.
            'I don't understand why she'd do that,' Wayne said. 'I thought she liked us.'
            'I want to scrub that tape,' Guthrie said. He had never felt lower. He wanted to erase everything to do with Kirsten Steele. 'Let's just get rid of it. What if someone found it? People would think that we're the biggest losers ever, using someone for our project who slagged us off behind our backs.'
            Wayne didn't know what to say. He felt that the tape should be scrubbed too. It would only be evidence of their all round lack of popularity, and status as universally ridiculed. Even the Minister for Youth Affairs thought they were a waste of space.
            Wayne pushed the eject button on the tape and took it out. He had only bought the fresh tape a few days ago and had proudly put a label on it, even before taping. He dug a finger in and dragged out the tape, pulling hard until there were masses of tight ribboned curls.
            'Say goodbye to all of that work,' Wayne said mournfully.
            'Thanks for nothing, Kirsten Steele,' Guthrie said, moving in his confusion from remorse to anger.
            'I wish I'd never let the tape keep running,' Wayne said. 'Sometimes it's better not to know what people think of you.'
            Guthrie gathered up the tape and casing and took it to the kitchen. In full view of his mother he threw it in the bin.
            'What are you doing that for?' Mrs Dulwich was shocked.         
            'We can't use it anymore,' Guthrie said. 'There's a big mistake on it.'
            'But I thought you were so proud of what you'd done,' Mrs Dulwich said, obviously worried at this sudden turnaround. 'You and Wayne were so excited about the school project.'
            'We've changed our minds,' Guthrie said sourly. 'We're going to have to do something else.'
            Mrs Dulwich looked in the bin at the entangled mess of tape. She thought of retrieving it - Guthrie might change his mind later and regret this rash act - but the tape now seemed unusable. She sensed that something very strange and mysterious had happened in the few minutes since she had left the loungeroom, but couldn't for the life of her figure out what. The boys had seemed so gung ho. Now they had trashed all that they had done.
            Guthrie walked out of the kitchen, obviously not caring less what happened to the tape. That evening Mrs Dulwich tied up the garbage bag and dropped it into the council wheelie bin. She hoped Guthrie hadn't lost his mind.