Mac Slater Coolhunter 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Author Note

  Coolhunters

  Chapter 1 Born To Fly

  Chapter 2 Coolhunters

  Chapter 3 The Bardo Market

  Chapter 4 In Case You Change Your Mind

  Chapter 5 The Driver's Seat

  Chapter 6 Monday

  Chapter 7 The 'A' Group

  Chapter 8 Just Do It

  Chapter 9 Game On

  Chapter 10 The First Vlog

  Chapter 11 Upload

  Chapter 12 Cosmic Mama

  Chapter 13 And the Winner Is ...

  Chapter 14 Purgatory

  Chapter 15 Race Through Rain

  Chapter 16 Brian Slater

  Chapter 17 Juiced

  Chapter 18 Cat Tells All

  Chapter 19 Real Inventors

  Chapter 20 Wednesday

  Chapter 21 Coolhunting

  Chapter 22 Sk8ing The Sky

  Chapter 23 Dinner Rush

  Chapter 24 Propeller

  Chapter 25 Geeks Or Revolutionaries?

  Chapter 26 Mrs Porter

  Chapter 27 Intruder

  Chapter 28 Two Hours And Forty-Six Minutes To Go

  Chapter 29 Stakeout

  Chapter 30 One Hour And Twenty-Seven Minutes To Go

  Chapter 31 A Very Long Night

  Chapter 32 Flow

  Chapter 33 Test Flight

  Chapter 34 Assembly

  Chapter 35 Run

  Chapter 36 Crash-landed

  Chapter 37 Not A Great Night For Flying

  Chapter 38 Gatecrasher

  Chapter 39 The Party Of The Year

  Chapter 40 Cat's Crib

  Chapter 41 The Great Escape

  Chapter 42 Coolhunting The Sky

  Chapter 43 The Real World

  Chapter 44 A Meeting With Speed Cohen

  www.macslater.com.au

  Mac Slater, Coolhunter 2 extract Chapter 1

  About The Author

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Mac Slater, Coolhunter: The Rules of Cool

  ePub ISBN 9781864714838

  Kindle ISBN 9781864717419

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney, NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House in 2008

  Copyright © Tristan Bancks 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Bancks, Tristan.

  The rules of cool.

  978 1 74166 299 3 (pbk.).

  Bancks, Tristan. Mac Slater, Coolhunter; 1.

  For children.

  A823.4

  Cover and internal illustration and design by Astred Hicks, WideOpen Media

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, South Australia

  Random House Australia uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  MAC SLATER,

  COOLHUNTER 1: THE RULES OF COOL.

  by Tristan Bancks

  Dedicated To

  Huxley, Luca and Amber Melody.

  Dreamers, all.

  Thanks To

  Graham Sutherland and Eddie Gray for their advice.

  Author Note

  The characters and events in this story are fictional. Please don't take their actions as tips on how to fly. If you want to learn to fly, get in touch with the Hang Gliding Federation of Australia and find out where you can learn from the pros. Don't teach yourself. No, really. Don't.

  Oh, and the characters in this book also pull off some other crazy stunts. Don't try them at home. I can't write you out of danger like I can with these guys.

  Coolhunters

  Coolhunters are teens and twenty-somethings with their fingers on the pulse of the freshest, hottest ideas and innovations coming off the street. The people who recognise cool stuff way before anyone else sees it. Big companies rely on coolhunters to tell them what's up and to give feedback on shoes, clothes and technology before they hit shelves. Coolhunters influence what we eat, wear, listen to, drive, ride, watch and buy.

  1

  Born To Fly

  It was our greatest invention ever: a flying bike. Paul and I had been obsessed with building a flying machine for years. The thing I loved and hated about being that guy's best friend was that whenever we dreamed up something like this, I was always the guinea pig.

  'I'm the brains of us, Mac,' he'd always tell me. 'You're the guts.' Which was his way of saying that he knew the thing was going to crash.

  So, there I was on the edge of Kings Cliff. Helmet on, clutching the grips on a low-rider bike with homemade solar engine. Wind was blowing in over the rock face from the ocean, blasting us. Clouds, the enemy of solar power, were gathered all around. The footpath followed the line of the cliff, soaring downhill to the park in front of the beach where the jump was.

  The bike was made totally from stuff we'd found at the tip. Seven bikes, a washing machine, two whipper-snippers and a fold-out bed had given their lives to the development of this baby. Paul designed it and we built it together. A whole year, it took, mainly because of the motor. I just hoped it wasn't going to be another shocker like our Backpack Solo Helicopter with ceiling fan blades. My leg had only just healed.

  Paul hit 'record' on the skanky old video camera we'd taped to the front of the bike.

  'Flick it,' he said.

  I flipped the switch and the solar engine gasped into life. Paul did final checks on the hundred or so strings that led from the bike to the paragliding wing. The wing was shaped like a narrow parachute, but while a parachute was made for dropping from the sky a wing was made for soaring through it. We'd borrowed it from my dad's shed. He was 'away' for a little while. But we'll get to that.

  The deal was that I'd charge downhill to the park, top speed, the wing would fill with air, rise above me, I'd hit the wooden jump, 'specially built for the event, launch into the air and fly. No one had ever done it. Not 'round here anyway.

  Paul clicked my helmet clasp, adjusting his thick, black glasses. His hair was wild, like he'd just climbed out of bed. He wore a tight, white T-shirt with a pic of Brin and Page, the Google
guys, on the front. The sleeves hugged his skinny arms. His teeth looked like a fence that had been hit by a car.

  'Remember, man. This is gonna make you so rock 'n' roll. We fly and we're gonna be made men in this town.' Paul thought all our inventions would make us 'made men' in Kings Bay.

  I looked down the hill to where about fifty people had gathered. I'd been promoting this thing all week. I kinda figured, rather than die quietly, I might as well get it filmed on a bunch of kids' phones. I knew the chance of me dying was the only reason anyone had showed. I think we even used it in our SMS campaign.

  Ten or eleven kids were lying down on the other side of the jump-ramp. I'd given them a personal guarantee I wouldn't use their heads as a landing strip. Even a bike that couldn't fly could clear ten kids. Nine, at least. And our test run had gone pretty good. It was only down Paul's driveway, which was about fifty times shorter and less steep than Kings Cliff Hill, but we'd got air. I'd flown for a few seconds and done a super-sweet landing in the cul-de-sac.

  Then I'd kept going down his neighbour's drive and smashed into the back of their Commodore. But that was just bad luck.

  'Give me your phone,' I said to Paul.

  He gave it. I switched to camera, zoomed in and scanned around to find Cat DeVrees standing near the jump. She was in our year's 'A' group – angry, cold-blooded and a total hottie. She had hair that changed every time you saw her (today, jet black, dead straight, square fringe) and a lipring and she pretty much owned year eight. She probably didn't even know I was in year eight, but she would in about three minutes' time. She was hanging with two guys. They were older and looked like city dudes – dressed too formal to be locals. I could see them all laugh and then Cat looked right at me and stuck her finger up. Adrenaline shot into my gut and I gave the phone back to Paul.

  I looked down at my clothes. Grey shorts and socks. Green polo. School uniform is so not a good look on a Sunday arvo, but they were the only semi-clean clothes I had. Mum's a fire-twirler and not that big on domestic stuff.

  'I don't think I want to do this,' I said to Paul.

  'I'm not a great rider. Riding down here even without flying freaks me.'

  'Don't be a loser. You love it,' he said.

  He knew me too well.

  'I guess,' I said. 'You really think it's all right with these clouds?'

  'Yeah,' Paul said, looking out over the cliff-face, biting his lip. 'Should be.'

  A cloud passed overhead and the engine coughed, then kicked in again.

  'Well, how about you do it then?' I suggested.

  Paul gave me a look. 'Not funny.'

  Paul was deeply afraid of flying. One of his many fears.

  'OK, give me time to get down and into position. I'll give you the sign,' he said.

  Paul bolted off. 'Be scary!' he screamed over the sound of the engine, as he legged it down the steepest slope in Kings.

  A couple of minutes later he gave me the thumbs up. I fed the engine some throttle and took off. Dragging the wing behind was super-slow going, like riding through maple syrup. I started to wonder if the engine was strong enough to get the wing up when, suddenly, it began to lift. I looked back just in time to see the wind slap it to the ground again. By halfway down I must have been doing sixty k's an hour. The footpath smeared past and, down below, I could see kids cheering but all I could hear was the wind hissing in my ears, urging me not to do this. Just as I hit the steepest part of the hill, the wing shot up into the air like a rocket and nearly snatched me up and over the cliff-face.

  I worked hard and somehow grounded the bike again. A thick bank of cloud swept overhead and the solar engine choked and died just as I hit the flat at the bottom of the hill. I was going to need engine-power to keep my speed up, but the cloud-shadow darkened. I was twenty metres from the jump, heading towards the beach but losing speed. I started pedalling.

  With ten metres to go a bunch of kids lying under the jump chickened and rolled out of the way. I thought about bailing, too, but then I caught a glimpse of Cat DeVrees, mouth open, goggling me. The crowd was packed tight, leaving a narrow path to the jump. No space to ditch.

  I heard my front tyre hit the bottom of the ramp and I started wishing that thing up into the air. A blast of wind blew the wing hard to the left and back again to the right. Just as I hit the lip, another few kids rolled out from in front of the jump.

  Two hardcore dudes were still lying there, four metres in front of the ramp. One of them was a guy they called Egg – a massive year ten footy player. Cat's boyfriend. No wonder she was there. I closed my eyes, praying I'd clear him. The bike left the jump and I felt it pull upward. The engine screamed. The bike weighed nothing. I was flying. Actually flying. Way higher than on the test. I opened my eyes and saw beach and ocean in front of me. I felt like I was gonna fly right out over the fence and onto the sand. It was gold.

  Then a gust blew out of nowhere and tore the wing sideways. I'd seen kite surfers get caned when this happened to them. And water's softer than earth. It was ripping me out of the air. The crowd cleared. A few kids fell in the rush.

  The wing hit ground and BAM! I hit right after.

  My head, shoulder and ribcage slammed into gravel, dirt and grass. The bike clipped somebody's ankle. Kids ran screaming from the wreckage. A blast of white light tore through my head. It was like one of those air-show disasters they have at the end of the news. Only I'd just seen it from the cockpit.

  Everything went quiet.

  2

  Coolhunters

  Kkkkkkkkkkkkkk. The mangled bike wheel scraped over concrete as we dragged ourselves along the edge of the road out of town. My head was bandaged, my ankle twisted, my whole body blood-scraped. Paul had the torn parachute under his arm. The video camera had been totally shredded. Only the handle remained. The bike was a write-off but Paul just couldn't let go.

  I'd been trying to cheer him up. He hadn't said a word since the crash, not that he was choked up about my injuries. He was just devastated to see a year of his life totalled in front of a crowd.

  Most kids had disappeared as soon as the disaster went down. A couple that stayed dragged me in to the surf club and a fat man with lumps on his face gave me first aid and suggested that my brains were made of poo.

  It started to rain. It felt good on my grazes. I stopped and raised my face to the sky. Then I started laughing, for no reason, which is the worst kind, 'cos you can't stop laughing if you don't know what you're laughing about. Paul stopped a few metres on.

  'What?' he said.

  'I dunno. Just ... funny,' I said, looking at the sky.

  Paul looked at me. 'You're a kook,' he said.

  'What? We gave it a shot,' I said. 'We crashed and burned. Onward and upward, duders.'

  'No. You crashed and burned,' he said.

  'Yeah,' I said, 'But, before that, I was actually flying. I must've been up there for, like, two minutes.'

  'Seconds,' said Paul.

  'Whatever. It felt like a long time,' I said. 'Anyway, what happened to the solar engine? You're the brains of us, remember? I'm just the loser who's prepared to die for the cause.'

  'I didn't know a couple of clouds would kill it,' he said.

  'Yeah, well, next time, let's not use the solar panels off your calculator to power a bike,' I said, starting to laugh again.

  'They weren't off m–'

  We turned to the sound of tyres on gravel close behind us. A black Jeep Commander – big and square, Hummer-style, with dark tinted windows –pulled up next to us. The front passenger window slid down. Inside was one of the dudes who had been with Cat DeVrees. He was maybe thirty-something, black spiky hair, chiselled jaw.

  'Need a ride?' he said in an English accent.

  'No, we're OK,' I said.

  'That was pretty cool out there,' he said.

  'Thanks,' I replied. 'Glad we entertained you.'

  'No, seriously. We'd like to talk to you. Jump in. Get out of the rain. Look, Cat's in here.'


  A rear window wheeled down to reveal Cat DeVrees inside, playing with her lip-ring, blowing and popping little pink gum bubbles. She faked a smile. I looked to Paul to see if we should get in. He frowned as if to say, 'No way.'

  'What's your name?' I said to the guy.

  'Speed,' he said. 'This is Tony.'

  Tony was behind the wheel – a big, kind of European-looking dude with slicked-back hair, about forty. He flicked the wipers on.

  'Hi,' I said. 'Look, we don't know you and all that, so ...'

  'But, Mac, we know you. You live in a bus with your mum over in the Arts Estate, yeah?'

  'How do you know that?' I asked.

  'Let's talk somewhere else,' he said. 'Name your place.'

  'Sobu,' said Cat from inside. Sobu was a Japanese restaurant where rich people in Kings Bay hung out, ie: not me and Paul.

  Paul whispered in my ear: 'How about the Bardo?'

  I nodded and said, 'My mum's got a stall down in the Bardo Market. Let's meet there.'

  'Do you know where that is?' Speed asked Cat.

  She nodded reluctantly and snapped another bubble.

  'See you there in fifteen,' said Speed. 'You'll want to hear what we have to say.'

  The windows closed and the Commander spun around, spat gravel and turned back into town.

  Paul's eyes had come alive.

  'You reckon they want the rights to the bike?' he asked.

  I looked at the carcass of the bike lying on the ground.

  'Somehow I don't think so,' I said.

  3

  The Bardo Market

  We entered the undercover market from the back alley. We were soaked. Paul clutched the remains of our 'flying' bike, which he'd now decided was about to make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. We wove our way through the maze of tiny, mystical stalls filled with incense, Buddhas and jewellery. Beads and baskets hung from the low ceiling. Bored stall-owners drank herbal tea and read thick books with titles like Sudden Awakening.

  Mum was sitting at her stall – long dark hair, green eyes, making firesticks. Hardly anyone bought them but she kept making them anyway. I told her people'd go nuts for them on the web but she was the full anti-techno chick. We didn't even have a computer at home.