Spurt (16 page)

Jack shrugged. ‘Things aren’t the same as when I was on
Bigwigs
the first time. Things are different now.’

Reese looked away. ‘Dude, I don’t know what to say. I’m
sorry
things have changed, okay? I feel crappy about it. But it wasn’t
planned
, you know? It just happened. Like, nine years of knowing each other and suddenly it’s like, “Dude! You’re awesomeness in girl form!”.’ He paused. ‘Hey, why am
I
saying sorry?’

‘You think this is all because of you and Darylyn?’

Reese shrugged. ‘Isn’t it?’

Jack sighed as Reese put his earbuds back in. Reese was right: he didn’t need to apologise. It wasn’t Reese’s fault that Jack was slowly but surely humiliating himself in front of the
Bigwigs
cameras. It wasn’t Darylyn’s fault either, or Vivi’s, even though she’d brought Sampson into the group. (He decided it was at least partly Sampson’s fault – just because.)

But one thing was certain: his return to
Bigwigs
was
not
working out the way he’d hoped.

‘Maybe you were right,’ said Jack. ‘Maybe I’m not ready for this. Maybe I
don’t
belong back on
Bigwigs
.’

Jack looked ahead and saw Vivi swat Sampson with her rolled-up release form. Apparently he had just said something super hilarious.

Reese pulled out his right earbud. ‘What did you say?’

Jack stared ahead at Vivi and Sampson. ‘I said, maybe I don’t belong.’

The news that a TV crew had been filming near the main gates swept through Upland Secondary. At assembly that morning, Principal Byrne explained that, yes, the
Bigwigs
producers had sought permission to film at the school, but that no firm plans were in place.

‘So you can hold off on those dreams of hitting the big time, just for now,’ she added.

Jack spent the rest of the day feeling watched. His first day as a Year 7 had been exactly the same. He’d come to high school fresh from
Bigwigs
, and spent the whole of that first morning trying to get away from the star-struck stares and envious scowls.

And then there they’d been, hanging around just inside the school gate. Vivi: strawberry-blonde, leaning against the fence, bright blue eyes shaded by a huge floppy sun-hat. Darylyn: small, dark-haired, standing motionless like a startled bird. Reese: plugged into his music player, afro hair shaped into a fauxhawk. All three of them had looked back at him with a complete lack of recognition or curiosity.

As if they hadn’t known who he was.

Jack hadn’t been able to stop the grin from spreading across his face.

‘Hi,’ he’d said. ‘I’m Jack.’

After that, Jack had forgotten all about
Bigwigs
. So had everyone else, eventually – with the exception of a certain trio of Year 7 girls. And a certain Oliver Sampson.

Things were great – for a while. Now everything was weird and different. Things were
complicated
.

The big time
, thought Jack.

Faking it was turning out to be harder than he’d thought.

The Boulevard Motel was one of about a dozen motels and mini-resorts that lined the main highway into town. Most of them had emptied out after the end of the spring holidays. The classier ones were all built and owned by the Bruno Distagio property development empire.

This was not one of the classier ones.

Jack spotted the minivan right away. He leant his bike against the wall of the reception building, crossed the car park to room 14, and knocked on the door.

Delilah was busy on the phone when she answered. She mouthed a ‘Hi!’ and waved Jack in. It looked like she hadn’t got around to completely unpacking her suitcase yet. A laptop was open on the bench next to the bar fridge.
The Bold and the Beautiful
was on the TV. Jack figured Brett and Todd had their own rooms. He wondered if they were watching
The Bold and the Beautiful
too, and decided it was unlikely.

He was glad Delilah was alone. He didn’t want anyone else hearing what he was about to confess.

Delilah wrapped up her call with a string of ‘Okays’, then tossed the phone aside and turned to Jack. ‘Hi Jack. What’s all this about wanting to come clean?’

Jack took a deep breath and plunged in before he had a chance to rethink his decision. ‘I’m just in kind of a weird place at the moment, and I guess I’ve been saying a few things lately that … aren’t exactly true?’

‘Okay …’ said Delilah.

‘Like, today, what I said about the shooting and the fishing and the boxing and everything? Well … none of it’s real. I … made it up.’

Delilah looked not entirely amazed. Jack wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping to achieve by telling her. Maybe he just felt guilty. Maybe he was hoping she’d offer to scrap what they’d filmed and start again. He thought there was a good chance she’d give him a serve about being unprofessional. He remembered seeing an executive on
Bigwigs
throwing a tantrum at an intern, the first week of filming, for not being able to get celebrity chef Courtnee Devries to the location for Blue Team’s restaurant challenge because of a grounded aeroplane. The executive had gone red in the face and screamed, ‘Fix it! Just fix it! Do you think
my
boss would just accept it if I wobbled my lip and said, “But I have no influence over air safety regulations”? No! So
fix it
!’

But Delilah didn’t yell or scream. She just nodded slowly, thinking for a moment. ‘I’m glad you told me. I was starting to worry about this whole shoot.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is reality TV, Jack. The last thing we want you to be is
yourself
.’

Jack was surprised at how much that sentence seemed to make sense.

‘Actually, I’m glad you’re bringing these ideas to the table,’ said Delilah. ‘It gives us something to work with. So let me get this straight: you’re telling me that all those things you mentioned today – the shooting, the fishing, the boxing – they’re not real?’

Jack nodded.

‘Okay. My question is: do you want them to be?’

Jack blinked, swallowed – and squeezed the trigger.

A muffled crack split the air. The rifle butt dug hard into his shoulder, even through the padded protection he was wearing.

Jack squinted through his protective goggles, then turned to look behind him. ‘Did I hit anything?’

The range officer for the Upland Rifle Club stood huddled with Delilah and the crew at the back of Jack’s firing lane. There were a dozen other lanes in the concrete enclosure, which sat in the middle of a fifty-acre patch of scrub just outside town. The range officer raised his binoculars, paused for a moment, then turned to Delilah, shaking his head.

‘Doesn’t matter!’ Delilah shouted back. She leant over to talk to Brett, who prised one of his earmuffs away from his head to hear what she was saying.

Jack went to remove his own earmuffs, but the range officer held up a cautioning finger and pointed to the open grassy area next to the enclosure. Jack looked over and saw two shooters lying on their stomachs on the grass, their rifles aimed at the targets. One was a kid around Jack’s age. He figured the other shooter was the kid’s dad.

When Jack looked closer, he realised the kid was Kenny Hodgman; the second-last boy to grow pubes in Year 8. He had no idea the Hodgemeister was a shooter. Maybe that was how he’d finally kickstarted puberty into action – by taking up the rifle, just like Jack was doing.

Jack wondered if Sampson had ever fired a gun. Knowing him, he probably had a bazooka at home.

‘A few more rounds for the camera, Jack!’ shouted Delilah. She mimed shooting an invisible rifle at random points in the air. Jack couldn’t tell, because of the earmuffs, but he was fairly sure she was making shooty noises out the side of her mouth.

Jack turned back to the bench rest where the .22 rifle had been set up for him. He nestled the butt of the rifle firmly into his shoulder, where the padding on his rented shooting vest was thickest, the way the range officer had shown him.

He fired three more shots, then turned to Delilah again. ‘I still don’t think I hit anything!’

A series of shots rang out from the grassy area next to the enclosure. Delilah made a ‘time out’ sign, then touched the range officer’s shoulder and asked him something. He nodded and sent two of his staff off to opposite ends of the enclosure.

‘Just calling a ceasefire,’ Delilah announced as she took off her earmuffs. Jack noticed that Brett had gone around the back of the enclosure and was climbing into a jeep with one of the range staff. ‘Don’t want my only cameraman coming back looking like Swiss cheese!’ she joked.

The range officer and Todd laughed.

‘Yeah,’ said Jack. ‘Like, imagine if someone accidentally shot the cameraman and he died!’

Silence.

The range officer emptied Jack’s rifle of ammo and helped him out of the shooting vest. ‘That was a good first go, son. A lot of boys your age can’t handle the recoil.’

Jack wondered how old the range officer thought he was.

The jeep had pulled up next to the sandbag backstops piled behind the targets at the far end of the range. Jack saw Brett jump out of the jeep, camera on his shoulder.

‘How did that feel?’ Delilah asked, as the range officer took Jack’s goggles and earmuffs and laid them onto the folded vest.

‘Okay,’ said Jack. ‘I wish I’d actually hit a target. I guess I showed those sandbags a thing or two, though.’

Delilah shrugged. ‘You looked like a natural. It’s going to be great vision.’

When Brett returned, driven back to the enclosure in the jeep, Jack asked to see what he’d filmed. The cameraman glanced at Delilah, who nodded.

Jack leant over and peered into the viewfinder as Brett scrolled back through his footage. The screen froze on a shot of one of the targets, with two ragged holes inside the ‘8’ ring, and one inside the ‘9’ ring, close to the bullseye.

He glanced over at the grassy area next to the enclosure, where Kenny Hodgman was getting ready to fire again now that the range was clear.

‘All good?’ asked Delilah.

Jack nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘All good.’