Freshman

Chapter 12 - The "Vodcast"

Robin set it up, getting the most popular people in all years on board. We were left with 50% to divide between us. 

Because of the way internet advertising works, we never got any money out of doing this. 

We set it up so that we would broadcast, live, just after lunch on Wednesdays. We were sitting in an empty classroom, with two laptops and a video camera. One laptp was on camera the other was behind it, connected to the camera by a cable. The tension was rising. I tapped on the desk out of frustration and looked down at my notes. I just hoped they were going to be funny enough. Robin had no notes, the twat, and was planning on just winging it with sarcastic comments and pop culture references.

Emily was crouched over the laptop behind the camera as Katie burst through the door. “Everyone is watching/” She said. “Every computer in the library is on our page.”

I took a breath, and wished she hadn’t said anything. I took a raggedy breath and looked at the clock. We had promised to go on in less than thirty seconds.

Emily counted it down, Waynes World style. “We are on in five, four, three,” the two and one were left unsaid. 

“Hi, my name is Alec.” 

“And my name is Garth…” We could hear the laughter coming from the library.

I ignored my notes. “Relaly?” I said, “we’re less than ten seconds in from our very first show and you’ve already made our first pop culture reference!”

This was fine, this was easy! It was just like a conversation at lunch! I snuck a look at the laptops, ‘lols’ flooded down the screen.

“Hello and welcome to the Freshman Fifteen, the show where we tell you how things really are at school.”

“Crappy?” Robin said. “There… I did it. What do we do with the other fourteen minutes?”

We spoke about everything, laughed at the food, the teachers and the stupidity of what we were doing It may not sound funny now, but something about Wednesdays and the fact that people knew us… I don’t know… But we were a hit.

The entire day, all I was seeing was computers watching the show, ipods, laptops, cell phones. By the time we were home the show had been viewed by over 2000 different people.

I went to bed with this happy smile on my face. That warm feeling continued. 

I still had the warm feeling, even massively early in the morning, when usually all I feel is a little bit sick. This morning, I didn’t walk, or take the bus into school. I floated. 

When I got in I was asked to go to the principles office. I had no idea what it was about, I had broken so many rules that it could be anything.

When Katie, Emily and Robin were also sitting outside the office… I could guess.

“You can go in now.” His secretary said.

Robin gave me a reassuring smile.

I walked in last and closed the door. It was the first time I had seen the principle up close, I mean, he had spoken in assemblies but now he was less than a meter away.

He wasn’t looking at me, however, he was staring out his window, to a grey day. “Sit down.” His voice was gentle, but there was an edge to it. It most certainly was not a request. “Is it safe to assume you know why you are here?” He asked.

There was no way I was going to say anything to that! It’s a classic teacher’s trick. Nobody else responded either.

“You are here because made a broadcast on the Internet concerning this establishment. I don’t know if you realised, but over the night that broadcast was viewed several hundred thousand times.”

I inhaled sharply. I hadn’t bothered to check it this morning. No one said a word.

The principle turned around. He wore glasses, had grey hair and an unkind face. His nose hair desperately needed a trip. He went over to his desk and handed me a netbook. “We would like you to take the video down and delete the account.”

“No!” Robin spoke up. “You can’t do that. We have free speech. You can’t just take that away because you don’t like what we said.”

The principle took a long, hard look, over his glasses at Robin, as if he was trying to set him on fire using only his mind. Robin looked right back.

“If this is your decision.” He said. 

We walked out of the greyly lit office, into the busy, noisy corridor. None of us really understood what had just happened.

The video stayed up and its audience kept growing. After a week had gone by we had half a million views. It was then that we all received letters.

They weren’t addressed to us of course… They were directed to our parents. We were being sued for libel. Basically the school board thought that we had said things about them that were not true. They were the same laws McDonalds had used to silence protesters back in the 90’s. This was obviously far higher than our principle now.