“While it goes back all the way
to the ancient era,” orated
Mrs Watkins, “it was during the 1800s that our modern era of
advertising began– rolling out the use of slogans and eye-catching
visuals to lure in customers.”
Fourth
period on a Friday. Kay was eager to get out of school, go out and be
the water elemental he was
meant to be but first he had
to stomach two more hours of education.
It was the day he
“reawakened” to his powers, too, so he was like a kettle ready to
boil.
That
class wasn’t his first time
having Mrs Watkins as a teacher, but it was media studies this year,
not English like last.
Kay slouched in his seat and paid attention to the lesson as best as
he could, wrangling his
thoughts away from the cool flips he wanted to do later.
“Although
there’s an evolution here, the fundamentals remain the same.” Mrs
Watkins gestured at the series of pictures she set up on the ledge of
the whiteboard, a series of advertisements ranging from the 1860s to
a GameBoy ad from the late
90s featuring bright colours and an edgy font choice. The ad from the
1860s was on photocopied paper but the others were laminated and
were probably reused school resources.
Mrs
Watkins centred herself at the front of the classroom. “But instead
of going with a typical lesson plan, I’ve decided that what we are
going to do here is imagine an advertisement as a group.” She
grinned. “This class is an advertising firm– let’s put it that
way.”
There
wasn’t much of a response from the room but no one had fallen
asleep either so Mrs Watkins considered it a small victory.
“So...”
said Mrs Watkins, “What kind of product should we sell?”
Some
people didn’t bother raising their hand. “Sneakers” shouted a
boy from the back. “New music” said a girl towards the front.
“Watches” said a boy by the window. Some students were courteous
and raised their hands to wait for the teacher’s response while
some hedged their bets by raising their hand but then blurted out
their suggestion anyway.
Huxley
was one of those who waited for the teacher to call on him. Mrs
Watkins rewarded his formality
by picking him out of everyone else. The class quieted down to let
Huxley give his suggestion. “Pop” he said.
Jia
sat at the table with Huxley. She asked, “The music or the drink?”
“The
drink,” said Huxley.
Mrs
Watkins nodded. “Alrighty, then. We are selling
pop.” She used the regional
term like everyone else but stuck ‘soda’ in front to specify.
She clasped her hands
together. “So... who wants to lead this advertising campaign?”
Some
people raised their hand but Mrs Watkins took her eyes over at Kay.
He was staring off to the side, seemingly uninterested in the topic.
Watkins remembered Kay from last year, a quiet and shy boy, but by
the end of the school year was doing pretty good. A very diligent
student, but not very loud or active.
“Kay,”
said Watkins, “How would
you sell a soda pop if you had to advertise it?”
Kay
uttered. He let out an exhale and rearranged himself in his seat. “I
guess posters on busses. Or commercials.”
Watkins
nodded. “Right, yeah.” She gestured a hand out at Kay. “Posters
and commercials. Let’s say we were supposed to focus on television,
though; how would you make
the commercial?”
“I...
I guess I would film it,”
joked Kay. His lack of enthusiasm
made it hard to tell if he was trying to tell a joke but a few
chuckles came his way anyhow.
Watkins
smirked. “Of course. What kind of–” She stopped and
sidestepped. “Actually, Kay, come up here.”
With
a reeled in sigh, Kay got up and moved to the front of the class. Was
he being punished, he wondered as he looked around the classroom and
saw a few students giggling at his predicament.
“What
kind of commercial would you make?” Watkins asked again, her tone
brightening.
“I
guess...” Kay scrubbed his back and gestured his hand out like it
helped the gears in his head turn. “I guess... one that shows the
drink?” He thought of pop commercials and they always had shots of
the beverage being poured into a glass in slow-motion. “Like
pouring it into a glass?”
Watkins
nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. That can’t be it, though.
What else?”
Do I have to cast
this thing, too? Kay thought to
himself.
“It
could be just that,” said Kay, argumentative
but not too rude.
“Multiple shots of cola
being poured into a glass.”
Watkins
rolled her eyes. “,
let’s have more story,
though. It’s
a commercial– thirty seconds– so it won’t be a lot, but what
kind of images would you use? Imagine what kind of cause and effect
you’d have to sell this pop.”
Cause
and effect? The only cause and effect Kay had with soda pop was him
drinking it and feeling less thirsty, but wisecracking and joking
would tempt Watkins with giving Kay a failing grade, so the young man
gave an earnest answer. “Maybe it’s hot out and people are
thirsty so they crack open a few bottles of pop.”
Watkins
nodded. “That’s better.” She looked out the window. “Not
seasonally appropriate but I think it could make waves at the start
of summer.” Watkins
addressed the class. “So it’s a summer’s day in this
commercial. What are people
wearing?”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Kay
wobbled his head, coming up with some ideas with half-confidence.
“Shirts, shorts... sunglasses.”
Watkins’
motioned a head flick at Kay’s eyewear. “Yeah. Sunglasses.
Appropriate
wear.” A good laugh rumbled across the room and Kay brushed off a
pang of embarrassment. Watkins asked further, “What’s
the music like? What would you want to hear?”
Kay
curved his lip. “Well... What
would want to hear is a lot different from what’s marketable.”
Watkins
raised a brow. “What does that mean? Do you listen to experimental
stuff?”
Jia,
sitting back at the worktable with Huxley and Lana, piped up for Kay.
“He likes older music. Classic rock and that stuff.”
“Really?”
Watkins said with her face brightening.
“Yeah,”
said a kid close to the front. “Can’t you tell? With the way he
dresses like a rock star?”
For
moment Kay felt a bit of pride, almost
pushing his chest out to show off his vintage look.
Watkins
gave Kay’s fashion a comb. “Sure,” said
the teacher sounding not a
bit convinced.
And
then the moment of pride had passed.
“So
would you pick something to your liking?” asked Watkins. “It’s
not like they
use old music in commercials, even things aimed at broader
audiences.” She folded out
her hand. “So name a song you think would work for a pop commercial
about people quenching thirst with Sprite or something.”
“‘Black
Dog’ from Led Zeppelin,” said Kay. Nobody rose at this
suggestion, so Kay clarified: “It... it’s kind of a party song!
It’s got a wild guitar sound.”
“Okay,
okay,” said Watkins, trying to ease some confidence in Kay’s song
choice. “‘Black Dog’ by Led Zeppelin.”
Kay
grinned sheepishly. “Does it matter that Led Zeppelin doesn’t let
people use their music?” He thought to unravel a little trivia on
the band’s stark licensing regiment but as his mind formed an
argument, a synapse sparked in his annals of 1960s hard rock and out
of the darkness didsong
arise. “ ‘No
Sugar Tonight’ by the Guess Who.”
Watkins
perked a brow. “Oh?”
“Yeah...”
Kay glanced around the room, eyes bright. “For diet pop. ‘No
Sugar Tonight’. It’s the perfect song!”
Watkins
was almost certain that she
seen a commercial for diet pop that used that very song, but far be
it from her to put the fizzle on a student’s enthusiasm when she
got into teaching for the exact opposite. And besides, Kay might have
put together a retro look but that didn’t mean he was familiar with
commercials that could have been a thing since the 1970s. He wasn’t
ripping anything off.
“Not
bad,” said Watkins. “Yeah, we’ll start with that idea. Thank
you, Kay. Take a seat, if you please.”
Kay
returned to his seat with a bit of glow. Huxley, Jia and Lana passed
around sly glances like they were impressed.
Huxley
could have given Kay a pat on the back, but Kay didn’t seem like
the kind of guy to like that sort of thing so Huxley refrained. He
said, “This is probably the
closest lesson to
my ideal career in awhile.”
“Filming?”
asked Jia.
“,”
said Huxley. “That’s what I’m gonna go to college for!”
“Got
it all figured out, huh?” said Lana. She dripped her head with a
smirk. “I have no idea what I want to do after high school.”
Jia
let out a defeated chuckle. “Me neither.”
The
more Kay thought about the future, the more anxious he got. What was
he supposed to do for a living after school was done? He hadn’t the
foggiest idea. He had no clue before his powers awakened and even
after he wasn’t sure.
Truly,
it all came down to his powers: what he was supposed to do with them
after he was done school. He had no guarantee they would last, in the
long run. But in the end, he really wasn’t sure what he was doing
after high school, much like his peers.
“Same
here,” he said, trying to sound normal with that kernel of truth.
“Well...”
Huxley presented an irreverent shrug and grinned wide. “You have
all of high school to figure out. We’ve only just begun the second
half of it.”
Kay
found that . He was in his second half of high school.
It felt weird to acknowledge that. With him getting his water
elemental powers, the timeline of secondary education didn’t have a
real shape in the back of his mind.
Jia
perked up. “Oh yeah. I remember you telling us about old video game
advertisements in magazines.”
Huxley
smiled, nodding. “Growing up, a lot of the video game ads for Sega
and Nintendo were–” He fanned
out his wrists, imitating a pose that the cool dudes would posture in
these ads– “
and .” His
voice growled as he said it. He shared a giggle with Jia and Lana and
continued. “I remember– when I was younger–
reading an article on the internet about video game ads of the
nineties and how they were trying to out-cool each other. It got me
thinking about how to sell a product and what I would do in that
situation– if I had to
advertise Sonic the Hedgehog or... whatever.”
“So
what do you want to do?” asked Lana. “Make cool ads?”
“I
don’t know,” said Huxley.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of convincing people,
but never thought about doing it as a career. Then I read that
article and wondered what it would be like to be an ad executive.”
Kay
was impressed. Here was someone his age who had it all figured out.
Kay didn’t even know someone could have
such direction so young. Kay,
on the other hand, looked at the front of the room at the photographs
for ads. Was what
Kay signed up for when he chose to take media studies? Was
it okay for Kay to have taken a class that had nothing to do with
this career? Or
his life?
He
went over his class selection and wondered if World History was going
to be useful later in his life. He also
regretted not taking drama. He
considered it a few weeks into unleashing his elemental alter ego and
thought acting classes would have helped him create the character of
the water form.
Too
bad his superpowers weren’t foresight. He could have used some of
that.
Friday
was for splashing around, though. Kay went home, tossed his bag in
his room, then headed
out to the graveyard to shift
into his water form and slip into the city. Ghost
Thing was ready for a full
day of watering out, provided that no thugs attacked him like the
week before.
As
he made his way to downtown, his mind wandered, though. Was his
powers his career now? His
future? He might not want to
be a superhero but surely there was some job that
would have been suited for someone that could turn into water and
slither through cracks. Ghost
Thing couldn’t imagine a way for that to work with him not being
found out, though, and he wanted to keep his secret identity a secret
for as long as he could.
Ghost
Thing
stopped, slowing his run on the top of a RadioShack.
He thought to himself, expecting
to be discovered...
“Will
I get found out?” he whispered to himself.
Indefinitely,
he would likely be found out. Maybe the governments would create
technologies that detected powers, like what Ghost Thing had. Being
“detected” was a worry that stuck with the boy: so much so that
he dodged seeing a doctor since he got his powers. What if the doctor
checked his blood rate or looked into his eyes and discovered
something like– congrats, Mrs Karachalios, your son’s a mutant!
Ghost
Thing shook his head; quite literally, in fact, like the intrusive
thoughts were moths fluttering in his face. It was . It
was a time for rollicking and he had a week of down time to make up
for. It had been a little while since he checked to see how high up
the skyscrapers he could climb. Ghost had to correct that, so he
continued on to downtown to make the most of his afternoon.
