Trust by Kate Veitch

conciliatory tone, ‘but there’s plenty who like it.’
    ‘Susanna, we’re all posting images online, all the time,’ said Noor. ‘If you’re not online, you’re nowhere.’
    ‘Plus what’s coming up, what’s on. Reviews, opinions,’ said Angelo.
    ‘In between Flickr and Twitter and the blogosphere, a journal – like, an actual book – it’s kind of … history.’
    There was a room-wide murmur of agreement. More students were pulling out their laptops, others holding up their mobile phones; not mere mobiles, Susanna presumed, but iPhones and BlackBerries. She couldn’t tell the difference; she hadn’t even got the hang of using predictive text.
    ‘I’ve looked at Facebook,’ she ventured. ‘I’ve seen photo albums on Facebook.’ She didn’t want to say she wasn’t a member. Were they even called ‘members’?
    ‘People who are kind of serious about photography don’t use Facebook,’ Tom told her, bringing his laptop to her table at the front of the room. ‘The resolution is too limited, there’s no way for people to see the detail of your work.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Emily joined them with her own laptop open to the deviantArt website, clicking through it rapidly. Thickets of images flashed on the screen, a vast array that was apparently just the ‘ favourite deviations submitted in the last eight hours ’. Susanna ran her eye down the sidebar menu: traditional art, digital art, designs and interfaces, artisan crafts, manga/anime, community projects …
    ‘I put heaps of web addresses in my journal,’ Bianca was saying, and other students called out that they had too. Susanna looked up and Bianca fixed her with an interrogator’s gaze. ‘Didn’t you look at them?’
    Susanna hadn’t. But she spent her lunch hour glued to the computer in the shared art department staff’s office, looking through the sites they’d emailed to her, fascinated and impressed. It was simultaneously very exciting and the most humbling experience of her teaching career. I have been a snob , she realised. A sanctimonious, hopelessly outdated snob . She saw again Bianca’s accusing, jacaranda-clad gesture: pre-digital; post-digital .
    I bet I’m not the only art teacher who’s floundering with this , she thought, and ping! Her brain lit up. This isn’t a seventies issue. It’s topical, and pertinent, and sexy . This can be my piece for publication!
    She felt a nervous inward shiver. Was she being ridiculous? So soon after the disappointing conversation with Belinda, could she actually have stumbled on another idea? One that might really work? And even if this topic was good, how could she, so spectacularly ignorant, write about it? My ignorance is part of the story, she realised . I write that in: confess it. Oh, and consider this: her students had already done half the research for her! She was reaching for a pen – how deliciously apt that she would instinctively reach for such a pre-digital tool to get her ideas down, on the despised page – when her mobile, on the desk beside her, leapt and buzzed twice, like a huge dying blowfly. Susanna jumped. New message , the screen said.
    She picked the phone up and pressed the button. OK with you if Leonard joins us for dinner tonight before book group? X M
    Susanna texted back a single word: Lovely. She liked her mother’s friend Leonard. She’d had a notion that over this evening’s dinner, she might talk to Jean about her idea of a trip to Europe together next year, but that could wait.
    I’ll bet Mum knows how to use predictive text , she thought. Probably even those face thingies: emoticons. She gave a small chuckle as it occurred to her that she was actually going to enjoy writing this piece. What an extraordinary prospect!
    Jean flipped her phone shut, pleased to have got Susanna’s quick response, then sat back in her chair, arms folded and lips thoughtfully pursed, regarding the picture she’d just hung on the wall. She had replaced one of her late