What’s a Little Fight between Friends?
I sat in the backroom of the Video Saloon during my lunch break and stared dejectedly at my souvlaki. I took a piece of onion out and threw it in the bin. I don’t even like onion in my souvlaki, but when Toby from the fish and chip shop asked if I wanted onion, I said sure. I wasn’t even listening to him properly. I was thinking about other things. And now my breath would smell of garlic and onion the rest of the day. Gross.
It’d been a week since Topps and I had spoken. I knew it was my fault, but Topps didn’t understand anything. He thought we should have been gung-ho and gone straight to Detective Rooks and told him everything that we knew and had Vince busted.
‘So what are we going to do?’ Topps grinned when I had told him later what Caitlin had said in the toilets. ‘Do we fry Vince today or tomorrow?’
‘I’ll tell you after I think about it a little more.’
‘Oh man!’ laughed Topps. ‘This is gonna be fun!’
Yeah, I thought, a real blast.
I’d made up my mind what I was going to do later that night. I’d told Topps the next day. ‘What do you mean you’re not going to do anything?’ Topps had said in disbelief when I said we were just going to forget about it. ‘Caitlin tells you they’re, like, maxed out dodgy!’
‘We haven’t got any real evidence about what they’re up to.’
‘Oh, come off it Stacey. Only a basement full of DVDs and a girl who thinks the place is straight out of an asylum.’
‘Topps, stop exaggerating. She didn’t say anything like that. Anyway, who cares about pirated DVDs anyway? Every kid in this school copies console games and downloads music all the time. Just last week Xavier gave Skye about a hundred songs on CD. How about that then? I suppose I should dob Xavier and Skye in to Huffy, should I?’
Topps flushed. He hated it when I was sarcastic. I reserved that tone for the moments when I was really angry or frustrated. Like now. I stopped and eyeballed him. ‘Topps, do you want to know the real reason I’m not going to do anything?’
Topps shrugged and refused to look at me. I told him anyway.
‘I need that job over the summer holidays because Dad is broke. Last night I found him crying at the kitchen table. Crying! He had a bank statement in his hand. We’ve got almost nothing left! That’s what he said. I don’t know how it happened but all of Mum’s insurance is gone. Dad can hardly pay our bills and what am I supposed to do? There’s no other decent jobs in this town and I need to make some money. So what if Vince sells pirated DVDs? It’s not as if it’s dope, is it? It’s not as if what Vince is doing is any different to any other guy with a DVD burner. So what? Big deal!’
Topps looked me with hurt in his eyes. ‘Because I think what Vince is doing is wrong, and if you know about it and let it happen and…and you keep working at the store knowing they’re selling pirated gear, it means you’re just almost as bad as he is.’
I hesitated for just a second, but all I could think of was seeing the jagged stream of tears and the red eyes of my father. I’d walked in after school expecting him to be at work on one of his rare days out of the house. Instead I heard him sniffing at the table. He looked, I thought as I threw my school bag on the sofa, pathetic. Beaten. The bill lay on the table crushed, as if Dad thought screwing it up would make it disappear. He was always vague about finances and I never took much notice before anyway. I knew we didn’t have much – we never did when Mum was alive anyway - but I knew things were serious when Dad said we were only just scrapping by. That we had an overdraft that was continually growing. That we owed the bank too much money.
Dad wasn’t just crying about the bill. I knew that. It wasn’t if our house was getting repossessed. It happens every month or so. The crying, that is. It all catches up to him. The work, the depression, Mum. He goes on a downward spiral for a day or two.
The first time it happened I wasn’t sure what to do. We were at Bracken Lake a couple of months after Mum’s funeral. Just watching the ducks and the little kid’s play on the swings and slides. We’d driven to the estate and were going for a walk together around the lake, like we’ve done at least a hundred times since. We’d gone a quarter of the way around when Dad stopped and looked out across the shallow, dank water (there was a warning sign about swimming in it). ‘I used to love walking around here with your mother on a Saturday morning,’ he’d said quietly. ‘It’s so quiet, we even thought about moving to Bracken Lake estate we loved it so much. Sometimes they’d be mist over the lake. On a summer morning it’d be so bright you couldn’t even look at the water without sunglasses. Lora used to love feeding the ducks. She loved those ducks…’ The ducks set him off. He stood on that path and heaved and blubbered. I hugged him and he said, ‘What am I going to do, Stacey? What am I going to do?’ As if I had an answer to that! I wasn’t even 13! How could I even comfort him?
Every child thinks their father is so strong. Emotionally, I mean. “Nothing could ever hurt my dad” is what every kid says. A father isn’t supposed to cry, to be vulnerable. I learnt that wasn’t true. I knew he wasn’t as strong as I’d once believed.
That’s why I didn’t really care if copying DVDs was wrong or not. There was more important things in life. ‘You’re only saying that ‘cause that’s what your dad says,’ I said to Topps. ‘You don’t really believe it.’
I knew his dad was totally against copying of any sort, even CDs. Topps wasn’t allowed to use pirated computer games and, once, when his dad found a pirated games disk he had snapped it in half. Topps had told me this with more pride than anger.
I’d been at his house once for lunch last year and Topps was eagerly telling his dad how he was going to download the special edition of a sci-fi film, and it hadn’t even hit the cinemas yet!
‘I hope you’re not going to watch it,’ Aleksander, his dad, had said.
‘Sure, why not?’
‘Because it’s illegal, that’s why. You’ve stolen it.’
‘C’mon Dad,’ Topps had laughed. ‘Sci-Fi producers are like multi-billionaires. They’re not going to care. I’ll probably go and see it at the cinema anyway. I just want to catch it early.’
Aleksander had put his soup spoon down. He always gave this look where you knew it was time for a lecture. His eyebrows pointed towards his nose and his lips became thin and he didn’t move for a few moments. Not a muscle. He just stared at Topps. He did his lecturing often enough, according to Topps. He thought doing the right thing was so important he’d even made Topps read books on ethics.
In his deep, serious Polish accent of his Aleksander had said, ‘Pirating is stealing, no matter who you’re copying from. You think filmakers spend millions and millions of dollars making a film just so people can download it for nothing? You enjoy it, you pay for it. Otherwise they’ll be no more Star Wars or Lord of the Rings anymore. It’s become too much. It’s an epidemic. Music shops have disappeared because nobody buys CDs anymore, what next, cinemas? Well, they’ll be no copying in my house, Peter, that’s for sure.’
‘Right. So I’ll take that as a no, we can’t download it,’ Topps had said, embarrassed that I was witnessing his dad’s morale outrage.
But his dad hadn’t finished. ‘Just think,’ he continued, ‘if you’d spent years writing and planning and producing a movie only to have people copy it just so they could see it a couple of days early. Wouldn’t you rather they pay you for two hours of decent entertainment? It’s not a free world, Topps. It doesn’t exist just for your amusement. Morality and ethics start with the very basics Do not steal.’
‘Okay Dad, jeez, take a chill pill,’ Topps said. ‘I get the message.’
I’d said nothing. Dad and I didn’t really have these sort of heavy conversations with words like “ethics” in them. Besides, I had recently copied at least eight CDs from Skye and bought a bunch of dodgy DVDs from the Rosedale market to go with our new DVD player. Dad hadn’t said anything about it when I told him triumphantly that each disc was only five dollars each. In fact, he’d sat up and watched a Will Ferrell comedy that night with me and laughed all the way through. Most of my music and movie collection was copied.
In response to my jibe Topps said, ‘Actually Stacey, I do believe what my dad says. He’s right, that’s why,’
‘Oh, it’s okay for you to go on about it Topps, your dad is a big shot software engineer,’ I said. ‘So your parents are rich. Need some money for a new pair of jeans? Ask Dad. Need a new pair of Globes? Just ask Dad. “Sure Peter, here’s a hundred dollars, have fun out shopping!” Then, when it’s Christmas, here, have a new mountain bike and then it’s off on holidays at your beach house. Well, I can’t do that! I have to work. So go off and tell the cops!’
Pretty dramatic, but it worked. I felt better too, even though I was basically using Topps as a punching bag for my frustrations.
Of course, Topps didn’t do anything about the Video Saloon. He also didn’t speak to me for the rest of the week. Not that we didn’t sit together or totally ignore each other, just that he was hurt, I was angry and we both went into a bit of sulk. Me, because I was just basically angry and Topps because I’d gone and burst his little adventure balloon.
I felt sorry for Skye the most. She’s a good friend too. Someone who’s intensely loyal. She may be a scatter brain and a loudmouth sometimes, but she’s never let me down. Now she had to sit awkwardly between us in class or at lunch. She’d ask us what was wrong, but neither of us would say. It was a bad week.
A couple of times I’d reached for the phone at home or tried to crack a joke at school, but nothing happened. I knew I’d have to apologise eventually. Which I hate doing. I was hoping the argument would just fade away and we’d be back being friends again.
Anyway, I thought I was right with what I had said. If you’ve got money, you can afford to decide what’s right and wrong. You can be picky.
I angrily threw away two pieces of onion from the souvlaki as I thought about our conversation. Who was Topps to make me feel guilty? I have a father who works parttime and who still can’t cope with losing his wife and I’m supposed to just throw away my job? And so what about a bit of pirating? As if every kid in school isn’t in to it, from Rebecca Kite and her 2500 songs on her iPod, all downloaded from the Internet – she had once boasted the last time she’d actually paid for music was a Wiggles cassette ten years ago - to that Sri Lankan guy from year eleven who gave out lists of PS 3 and X-Box 360 console games he’d sell you for eight dollars a game or two for ten. All copies. So, what was a few DVDs in the basement of a down-and-out video store?
I didn’t care. I really didn’t. When Vince came in that afternoon and gave me my pay packet and I ripped it open and saw the crisp ten and twenty dollar notes, it was settled, as far as I was concerned those illegal DVDs never existed.
This strategy lasted exactly a week.
Topps and I had slowly begun to mellow out at school. We were still angry at each other, but I did lend him my copy of our literature class novel, Sonya Hartnett’s Sleeping Dogs, when he had left his at home, and he did give me his spare packet of Burger Rings for morning break. Still, it was an awful week. I felt a guilty knot in my stomach every time I saw Topps. This was the longest running feud I had ever had with a friend.
On Saturday afternoon I joined Crass in the Video Saloon for an afternoon and evening shift. I rarely had to work the mornings. The afternoon was busy though. Summer was only a few weeks away but the weather had turned cold and dreary. This always improved business. And we had a new deal – five weeklies for five bucks. It got us pretty busy.
Crass and I got to talking about being broke. He understood where I was coming from. His dad had nicked off to work in the mines in Western Australia and his mum worked in a crummy bakery. They never had any money.
‘You’re skint too?’ he asked.
‘Pretty much. I want to save money to buy a car in a few years time. No way could my dad buy me one.’
‘Know how you feel. Vince pays us chicken feed. That’s why I try to earn a little on the side.’
I suddenly became uneasy. Very uneasy. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
Crass scratched his peroxide hair. ‘I run a little business. It makes a bit of money. I could always do with some extra help, too.’
I had a bad feeling where this was leading. ‘What sort of help?’
‘Packing and posting DVDs, maybe some console games or CDs, for my own customers. You could help me get the labels ready, pack some boxes, all easy stuff. You can even do it from home.’
A sinking feeling, like you get in a real fast roller coaster, hit me hard. So Crass was in with Vince too? ‘Nah, it sounds a bit fiddly and stuff. I don’t reckon I’d be good at it,’ I said.
‘Hey, it’s no big deal,’ said Crass. ‘I just sell a few DVDs. If you want to help, that’d be cool, but it’s up to you.’
‘I…I’ll think about it, yeah, I dunno,’ I stammered.
Oh man, I couldn’t believe it! I find the DVD stash and then a couple of weeks later he asks me to help sell them? This was crazy! What were the chances? Why would he ask me to help him out, anyway? What was the point? A customer came in and asked Crass to recommend some good comedies for her daughter’s slumber party. Crass walked with her to the comedy section giving me some valuable time to think.
What did the Caitlin’s warning mean? “I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friend, but watch yourself. Just keep your head down.” It sounded sinister to the max.
Crass rented out an average comedy (it was the Princess Diaries 2 which is way unfunny compared to the book) and turned back to me. ‘Thought about my little business proposition then?’
‘It sounds okay, but, you know, I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘Hey, it’s no big deal. It’s not as if I’m getting you to sell stolen goods or anything, just help me out with a couple of DVDs. Besides, I thought you said you needed the money? Just trying to help you out, you know.’
Crass rubbed his hands up and down his T-shirt. A customer returned a bunch of videos. Crass took them and held the first cover up and studied the blurb. It was from the classics section, Honour Among Thieves. Very appropriate.
Crass put the video down. ‘Listen, do you want to make some extra money or not?’ he asked.
I thought about Dad and the bills. Then I thought about Caitlin’s warning. Not for the first time in the past few weeks I said: ‘Let me think about it.’