“Okay … are you guys ready?” Brad asked the three boys and two girls of his Goldstone Night Film team.
Charlie was one of them. They gathered on the side of Goldstone Avenue at their designated meeting point. All six of them were Arch Film Institute students, Rowan and Jessica were a couple. the other two, Mike and Lewis were best friends, which left her partner-less.
“I’m gonna show you how this works today and Friday, after that … you’re on your own,” Brad wore a hoodie that night, he lost his charming professor look but not the persona. He was giving clear instructions and explained the steps as he did in the classroom.
“Once you have all the footage you need, we’ll hit the studio for the editing and the technical process … but the body content would still be the most important … and it all depends on what you’re trying to capture and how you capture it.”
Everyone listened intently. Since it was their first try, they were going to do it as a group. Afterwards, it will be a two person project. “Charlie … we’ll find a partner for you … I’m still recruiting … but otherwise, you’re stuck with me,” he put his hands on his chest with a charming smile.
She smiled back, felt a bit nervous but she didn’t mind partnering up with the Professor, if anything, she would learn from the expert. Then her phone rang, it was Tommy. He had been sending her messages to tell her how sorry he was about what he said, she didn’t reply to any of them.
When her phone kept ringing, she picked up.
“Please don’t give me the silent treatment, you know I can’t stand it … I’m sorry about what I said, I didn’t mean it the way you thought … Can we please kiss and make up? Like … now?”
Just the sound of his voice put a smile on her face, “I’m working on my project right now … you know, The Night Film … the one I told you about?” She spoke quietly and walked away from the group.
“Oh … sorry, I forgot … but can we, though? Kiss and make up? You know I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” at least not anymore. “I’m sorry too … I might’ve jumped to a conclusion too fast … can we talk about this later?” She tried to cover her mouth because everyone was silent.
“Can you come back to my flat after your project?”
She thought for a moment, “I guess I can.”
“Can we kiss and make up before we talk about it?”
She giggled, “Tommy …”
“I miss you baby, I want you calling my name on the bed while I kiss you down there …”
Charlie kept giggling, “Tommy …” Then she could hear Brad clear his throat. “I gotta go … I’ll be at the flat later.”
Tommy laughed softly, “Okay … have fun, see you later, I love you.”
“I love you too … bye,” she hung up, turned around, all eyes were on her.
“Are you ready?” Brad asked.
She nodded, trying to hide her awkwardness for making them wait. They all walked to a rented SUV that Brad had rented for the night to fit them all.
“Boyfriend?” Brad asked when she walked past him to enter the car.
She nodded shyly. He smiled, he thought it was really sweet. He opened the car door for her.
There were more under the neon lights than glitz and glamour in Goldstone, so much more. The other kids were locals, they weren’t strangers to the scene. For Charlie, it all seemed like a trip to a foreign land compared to what she’d seen in Bluebridge.
Prostitution, male, female, underage, drugs, users, dealers, street artists, street punks, broken home teenagers, homeless people. She was taken for a ride to see the real face of Goldstone, the face that’s hidden under the mask of the limelight. The dual reality that coexisted, though this was the side that was rarely explored.
She had been learning how to operate her handycam by herself, now she could capture life in motion with one small device. She tried the zoom, the infra red, and other exciting features she never knew she could do with a recording tool.
Brad gave them a tour guide as he drove the car around the city, took them to the most unexplored part of Goldstone as they passed the most iconic ones too. There were a lot of abandoned buildings on the edges of the city. Investments issues that halted their development, unresolved monetary dispute which eventually led to the abandonment of the unfinished constructions.
These skeletons of a building were completely vacant, there was something eerily beautiful about them that intrigued Charlie’s attention. Homeless people used them as a shelter to sleep in at night whenever they failed to find a bed at shelter homes. Drug addicts often found lifeless among the ruins after a long night of drug parties which happened mostly in their heads. The concrete jungle was silent witnesses of human despair in the night.
It’s a sad contrast to see those dark silent ruins from an angle where they could see the neon lights lit up half the sky in the background. After she had taken the footage she wanted, they moved to another area.
“We’ll take the red light district for our project … I think we always knew that’s our pick for the project,” Mike and Lewis called it out after the stroll.
“We haven’t decided between the shelter homes or The Mad Hatter Alley … I think we’ll take another tour on Friday before we decide,” Rowan said with Jessica tangled around his waist.
Brad nodded, he was leaning against the car with his legs crossed at the ankle, arms folded in front of him, “And Charlie?”
“I was thinking if we could explore the Goldstone parties … I mean … everyone else has chosen street life, can I explore the other side as a contrast to the other guys content? That way we can have a wholesome image of a Goldstone night … we’ll make films separately as groups and weave them together in the end as a team,” she suggested.
“Whoaa … that’s a great idea … why didn’t I think of that?” Lewis commented, everyone else agreed.
Brad’s head was down, he pursed his lips, he was hesitant. “Goldstone parties are off limits … you can’t go in there without an ID.”
“I have an ID,” Charlie answered quickly.
Everyone’s eyes widened, she didn’t seem like the type to have a fake ID.
“You can’t go in with a camera, let alone a handycam … those parties are as secret as an underground cult,” Brad shook his head.
Charlie had no idea, she pretended it didn’t surprise her. ‘Tommy’s Parties’ echoed in the back of her mind. That explained why he never invited her there, what were they hiding in there? The other students looked away as if they knew something Charlie didn’t. “Can we hide the camera?” she tried.
“No,” Brad’s voice firm. “The Goldstone parties are off limits, I don’t want my students going in there … not for school projects, not for personal curiosities,” he added.
Everyone was silent, they could feel Brad’s tension on the issue.
“What about The Silver Tongue?” Charlie asked.
Brad’s sharp gaze pointed at her, this girl was relentless, he took a deep breath. “The Silver Tongue?”
Charlie lifted a shoulder, “Yeah … it’s the next best thing after the parties, I guess, they allowed cameras inside, I’ve seen people bring their pocket Kodak camera in there.”
“That’s not an easy place to enter, you have to queue for hours just to get inside … the third floor is closed to the public, right?”
She nodded, “But I know inside access … I can get us in.”
The other students were looking at her like she just promoted herself to be the leader of the pack. The smart and pretty girl with no friends on campus turned out to be well-connected around the Goldstone nightlife.
Brad rubbed his nose and pressed his fingers on his eyelid, this girl was determined. “Okay … good, if you think you can get good materials there, I’ll allow it … with one condition …”
Everyone looked at him and waited for what came next.
“You can’t go in there alone … either with a partner or … with me …” he exhaled deeply. Silver Tongue was obviously not his favorite place to visit. What Charlie didn’t know, he too had inside access to the place. A privilege he hadn’t used in a long while.
Charlie smiled, she could picture in her mind how her footage was going to look like already. “Great … thank you.”
Brad gave her a half nod and walked over to the other side of the car to get something.
The other kids were quiet, they looked awkward. “You don’t know, do you?” Mike posed a question to her.
She paused, she wasn’t sure if he was asking the question to her. “Know what?”
Mike stood up, walked over to her, “It was big news a few years ago … something happened in one of those parties with Brad’s girlfriend back then … he never went again after that.”
Which explained his reluctance. “What happened?” She was concerned.
“No one knew exactly what happened … they only said there was an incident, Brad was there, it involved his girlfriend, his aunt Maxine took care of the problem and that was it … but he was rarely seen after that, he used to be a party boy back in those days … I guess it changed him,” Mike explained.
Before he could say anything more, Brad was back with assignments. “I think we can call it a day … here’s the written instruction for the project … thank you for joining this team, I’ll see you in my next class,” he dismissed them. “oh … Charlie … let me give you a ride home,” he said again.
She was the only one who had to go home alone, she accepted. “But I’m not going home … is it okay if you drop me off to …”
“Sure … I’ll take you anywhere you need to go,” he didn’t let her finish. He heard the phone conversation earlier, he knew she was going back to her boyfriend’s.