Love-shy (5 page)

ME: Fine. Do you have a girlfriend?

ZACH: No, but just say the word and the position's
yours
.

ME: I don't want to be your girlfriend. Do you have trouble talking to girls?

ZACH: Talking, kissing,
loving
. All systems go. No problems here.

ME: You're standing a little close.

ZACH: Smell my pheromones, baby.

ME: I can. It's not very pleasant. Have you considered deodorant?

ZACH: You love it.

ME: I don't. Really.

ZACH: Are you recording this? Are you going to take it home and listen to my voice while you play with a washcloth in the bath?

ME: I don't have a bath. I shower.

ZACH: Bubble bath, yeah? With candles and stuff. And you just listen to my voice softly caressing your ears and mind, while you're softly caressing—

(INTERVIEW TERMINATED)

Verdict: Not love-shy.

As I made my way to swim training at lunchtime, I got trapped in a throng of giggling, Impulse-drenched, hair-sprayed girls. They were discussing outfits and boys and how to sneak alcohol into the school social, and boys and boys and boys. Having spent the last two days talking to the boys of this school, I wanted to tell them they were wasting their time. But taking a good look at each of them, I realised that these vacuous excuses for young women were perfectly matched to those Cro-Magnon, meathead boys. I wondered if one of these girls was
PEZZ
imist's crush. I doubted it. Surely he'd have better taste.

‘Do you know if Nick Rammage is going to the social?' said one of the girls. ‘He's so hot. I'm going to ask if he'll go with me.' I could smell her cigarette-and-chewing-gum breath from a metre away.

Another girl flicked her hair. ‘Don't be stupid,' she said in a stunning example of pot–kettle hypocrisy. ‘He's got a girlfriend. From his old school.'

I clawed my way out of the pack, gulping down fresh air. The pong of Teenage Girl irritated me all through swimming, and lingered even after I'd showered and changed.

Hugh Forward and I were both class captains as well as Year Ten captains, and there were four other Year Ten class-captains at our meeting. Three of them were girls, so that left Nedislav Radnik.

He was a definite possibility. He'd only been voted in as a class captain because of his Nordic good looks (did I mention that almost all teenage girls are totally shallow?), and never contributed to our meetings. I watched Nedislav carefully as we talked about the catering and decorations budget for the social, and then discussed the possibility of building a new weatherproof bike-shed. He didn't say anything, just doodled aimlessly on the cover of his school diary.

I tried to corner him at the end of the meeting, but Hugh was hanging around as though he wanted something.

‘Are you going to Debating straight after school, Penny?' he asked, tidying up his notes at a glacial pace.

I made up some excuse about having an oboe lesson. I could easily tackle six or seven more boys in the hour between school and the Debating semifinal.

‘Oh, okay,' said Hugh. ‘I guess I'll see you there, then.'

Of course he'd see me there. We were on the same team, after all.

I sprinted down the corridor, and found Nedislav outside his locker. He looked startled. I stood squarely in front of him so he couldn't run away. Perhaps I needed to be more subtle this time so as not to scare him off.

NEDISLAV RADNIK

Eye contact: Sporadic.
Overt signs of shyness: Darting eyes,
uncommunicativeness.

ME: Hey, I just wanted to ask you something about the meeting.

NEDISLAV: Um.

ME: Can you remember if Hugh said we had $1735 left in our budget? Or was it $1375?

NEDISLAV: Um. I don't remember.

ME: You don't remember? It was five minutes ago. I don't think you really understand the responsibility you have, as a democratically elected representative of the student body.

NEDISLAV: D-don't
you
remember?

ME: Not that I think the majority electoral system we have in this school is particularly democratic. I've been telling Mr Copeland that we need to move to an instant runoff preferential system to elect the class captains, and either the Sainte-Laguë method or Hare-Clark proportional system for the prefects and school captains. But as usual, everyone is resistant to electoral change. It's probably because Mr Copeland is British.

(SUBJECT APPEARS AGITATED . . . AN EXCELLENT SIGN! TIME TO CHANGE TACTICS.)

ME: Are you planning on going to the social?

NEDISLAV: (DISTRACTED) What? No.

ME: Why not? It'll be fun.

NEDISLAV: I don't really go out very much.

ME: Why? Do you find it difficult to socialise?

NEDISLAV: (LOOKS BEYOND THE INTERVIEWER AND SHOWS SIGNS OF RELIEF)

KATE PITTMAN: Hey, baby.

NEDISLAV: Heyyy.

(KATE PITTMAN, IGNORING INTERVIEWER, PROCEEDS TO WRAP HER LEGS AROUND SUBJECT'S WAIST, WHILE LICKING HIS EAR. SUBJECT SHOWS NO SIGN OF CONCERN.)

ME: Right then.

KATE PITTMAN: (MOANS)

Verdict: Not love-shy.

In Media Studies, Sarah Parsons handed me a pale pink envelope. It was an invitation to her sixteenth birthday party. I guessed she had invited the whole swim team. I thanked her and let her know I'd definitely be there.

I couldn't say I loved attending parties. To be honest, I wished there were still structured games and activities, like when we were little. At least then there were prizes to be won. Now it was all just sitting around, making inane small talk, gossiping and (depending on the level of parental supervision) drinking.

I understood that people enjoyed drinking, and that it made me seem like a wowser when I didn't. But drinking made people
stupid
. And it was also dangerous. Never mind the fact that one teenager died every week from drinking in Australia. Never mind the increased chances of having employment problems, other substance-abuse problems, and engaging in violent or criminal behaviour. It was my
brain
I was worried about. My brain was my favourite part of me, and I was hardly going to interrupt its vital adolescent maturation phase with a neurotoxin such as alcohol.

So I just didn't see the point of parties. I quite liked it when there was dancing, but that usually didn't happen until after midnight, by which time I was totally ready to go home. But I knew going to parties was part of The High School Experience, and that apparently I'd Look Back on My High School Years as the Best of My Life. Which I totally doubted. I suspected I'd look back on my years as an award-winning, history-making, internationally-acclaimed journalist as the Best Years of My Life. High school wouldn't rate a mention.

However, apart from the whole High School Experience thing, parties were a great way to soften people up, get to know my fellow students, make them comfortable with me and sniff out potential stories. I was half considering starting an anonymous gossip column in the
East Glendale Gazette
. Or maybe a blog. Everyone was saying that blogging was the future of journalism, and while I was obviously going to end up as one of the media elite, I supposed it wouldn't hurt to dabble in the less reputable forms of reportage. As long as I didn't get sucked into that black narcissistic hole of endlessly reporting daily minutiae. As if anyone cared what you had for breakfast. Get a real job. Not that I would get sucked in, of course. I'd be one of those hard-hitting, behind-the-scenes bloggers who expose corruption and scandal in the mainstream media and government. Like Julian Assange, but without the getting-arrested-for-sex-crimes part. It might actually be a good back-door entry into real journalism. But an East Glendale gossip column probably wasn't the back door I was searching for. And anyway, I had more important things on my mind.

I was only two days into my interviews, and I was already seeing potential for a whole series of articles about teenage boys, of which the love-shy article would be only one. Why did Nedislav Radnik struggle to communicate verbally, but had no trouble with explicit public displays of intimacy? What exactly made Zach Hausen such an over-confident sleaze? Maybe one day all my articles would be collected in a book.

I eyed off my next subject. Bradley Wu. He'd won some short-film competition last year, and we'd done a piece on him for the paper. He was skinny and didn't have any friends because he spent all his time in front of a computer, painstakingly editing his videos frame by frame until they were perfect. I hadn't done the interview myself (it wasn't much of a challenge, after all: STUDENT WINS FILM GLORY blah blah yawn), but I vaguely remembered the article. It had contained an inappropriate apostrophe and two spelling mistakes because people just don't care about attention to detail. But I couldn't remember if Bradley had come across as being particularly shy or anxious.

I squinted at him. Actually, I
had
interviewed Bradley for something. I remembered he had a slight lisp and said
adverTISEments
instead of
adVERtisements
. I just couldn't remember what the article was about.

I slid into the chair next to his. He was editing another short film – something involving cars and a guy wearing only one gumboot. He was wearing headphones and peering intently at the screen. I tapped him on the shoulder and he started. I touched the record button on my Dictaphone app and smiled in a friendly and encouraging way.

BRADLEY WU

Eye contact: Yes.
Overt signs of shyness: Some reticence in answering questions.

ME: Bradley, I was wondering if I could have a word.

BRADLEY: I'm actually in the middle of something.

ME: It'll only take a minute. I just have a few questions.

BRADLEY: Yeah, thanks all the same, Penny, but I remember what happened last time you just had a few questions.

ME: Yes. What was that again?

BRADLEY: Your little article on gay students at East Glendale?

ME: Oh, of course. I remember. It was a lead feature, not a little article. It was on the front page.

BRADLEY: I know it was on the front page. Do you know how I know? Because my girlfriend, my sister and my mother all read it.

ME: That's great! It's awesome to see that people are reading my work. Very gratifying. Tell them thanks from me, and that I'm glad they liked it.

BRADLEY: They didn't like it.

ME: What? Why? Was it the layout? Because I don't have final sign-off on that. Tragically. I seriously can't believe how frustrating it is working with these morons. They think just because it's only a school paper, we don't need to have any journalistic integrity. Or proofreaders. Don't they remember that Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter'? Newspapers are the most fundamental expression of democracy! The voice of truth!

BRADLEY: Except it wasn't.

ME: Wasn't what?

BRADLEY: The truth.

ME: What? Of course it was the truth. The layout doesn't change that.

BRADLEY: I don't care about the layout. You said I was gay!

ME: So?

BRADLEY: I'm not!

ME: Are you sure?

BRADLEY: Yes! I have a girlfriend!

ME: So? Freddie Mercury had plenty of girlfriends. And Anthony Callea.

BRADLEY: I'm. Not. Gay.

ME: Why do you have such a problem with gay people?

BRADLEY: I don't. But I'm not one of them. And I had to explain that to my girlfriend. And my mother. So if you don't mind, I'm going to politely decline this opportunity for another fifteen minutes of Penny Drummond fame.

Verdict: Not love-shy.

I spoke to another six boys after school, bringing my total number of interview subjects to eighteen, before sprinting to the local town hall for the Debating semifinal. Our topic was
Should the Arts be Government Funded?
and we were Negative. We won, of course, mostly because the other team didn't seem to know what ‘the Arts' actually meant, and kept talking about libraries and swimming pools.

Hugh Forward asked me if I wanted to get an ice-cream afterwards and talk strategy for the final. I pointed out that the final was two weeks away and was a secret debate, and as we wouldn't know the topic until an hour beforehand, there wasn't much strategising that could be done at this stage. Anyway, I wanted to get home and check for new blog posts.

As the train rattled its way homewards, I reviewed my findings. There were seventy-seven boys in the yearbook, and I knew that four had left at the end of last year, bringing it down to seventy-three. I had fifty-five left to interview. I was making good time, but felt a little concerned that I had not yet met a single boy who even warranted a yellow highlighter, let alone a green one. Still. There were plenty more to go.