Generation Next (14 page)

Austin hung up the phone and I grabbed my laptop from the floor next to my bed and opened it up. What did he want me to look at? GenNext? Twitter? What? As I opened my Facebook page, the dread was already washing over me, but somehow I just couldn't imagine that Hunter would actually . . . Oh. He had. The video of out-of-control Jack Penman behaving like a complete and utter dick and jumping behind the wheel of a Ferrari was all over my Facebook, with ten thousand views and counting. Twitter was the same, with retweets of the video stacking up before my eyes, and however I tried to spin it in my head, it just didn't look good. It wasn't cool or even funny—well not to me, anyway—it was just reckless and embarrassing. The worst part about it was that the end of the video, with me climbing out of the car and throwing up, had been edited out, so as far as anyone watching was concerned, I might have started the car and driven it away once the camera had stopped rolling. Nice, huh?

By 10:30, I was down at HQ chugging a Starbucks double-shot macchiato and desperately trying to explain
to Austin, Sai and Ava that my drinks must have been spiked and that Hunter was behind it because I told his slimy uncle to get lost, and because he'd been out to get me from day one. Sai and Ava listened to me, but they looked skeptical, and I was conscious of the fact that everything coming out of my mouth probably sounded like the paranoid babblings of a madman trying to detach himself from a bad situation. Austin, meanwhile, sat staring at his computer screen with his back to me. He'd warned me not to have anything to do with Hunter and I'd told him I wasn't going to—I'd lied to him. For a moment I tried to imagine how he must have felt watching the video. He was my best mate and I'd hurt him and our friendship. Well played, Jack, well played.

“The question is, why did you even feel you had to hang out with Hunter and his crew?” Sai asked. “Are we not good enough for you now you're famous?”

“Steady on, mate, of course you're good enough, and I'm not bloody famous.”

“Look, there's absolutely no point in having a go at Jack; that's not going to do anyone any good, is it?” Ava interrupted. “The main thing is damage limitation. We need to assess what harm, if any, this is going to do to GenNext, right?”

Austin spun around on his chair.

“Well I can assess that for you right now, Ava,” he said flatly. “I'm looking at an email from the company
who were about to pay us a big sum of money to review and feature their new range of sportswear and trainers over the next few months. It says: ‘We don't feel it would be a viable option for us to associate with a website that endorses the sort of behavior we witnessed on the video.' Great! The hair wax people also want to pull their latest mention offline. Is that a good enough assessment for you so far?”

Before anyone could answer, Ella was at the bottom of the stairs, out of breath.

“God, Jack, are you OK?” she said.

“Is he OK? That's a laugh,” Sai said.

“Ella, it was bloody Hunter,” I blurted out. “He obviously spiked my drink and this was the result.”

“I'm not sure about this spiking drinks malarkey, Jack, it all sounds a bit too spy-novel to me,” Ava said.

“Jack, I know Hunter can be a bit of a tool, but come on,” Ella said.

“I'm telling you!” I yelled. “His uncle was trying to muscle in on GenNext and I basically told him where to go, and the next thing I know—”

“Well it sounds feasible to me,” Sai said. “Somebody went out of their way to film this for a reason.”

“Look, there were loads of people at that party, anyone could have done it,” Ella snapped. “There's no way Hunter would do something like that for some sort of
stupid revenge thing, for God's sake. Maybe you just need to take responsibility and own it, Jack.”

“Or maybe you should go and ask him if he did it,” I shouted back, losing it completely. “Maybe you need to wake up.”

Ella looked stunned and everyone else just stood there staring at me. I knew it was time to go.

“I'm really sorry, Austin,” I said, calmer now. “If you guys want me out, then I'll go. Just let me know what you decide.”

And with that I was out of there.

Over the next few days, my escapades at Hunter's dad's party were all over the place. The amount of heated social media discussion meant that, for the first time, GenNext caught the eye of the mainstream media—and not in a good way. There were several articles, online and in the press, commenting on and questioning the behavior of teenagers in the public eye and making me out to be some sort of devil teen. It got to the stage where I didn't even want to turn on my computer or look at my phone ever again. I pretty much felt like everyone was pissed off at me: my friends, Ella and especially Mum and Dad, who'd hardly said a word to me and seemed completely preoccupied. Everyone, in fact, except Sophia, who didn't seem to have even noticed all the madness online and
just kept WhatsApping me to find out when our next date might be.

I didn't know what to do for the best, but I knew I couldn't just sit there and rot in my bedroom, so I pulled myself together and filmed a short apology that I could upload on GenNext. It was nothing too dramatic, just a few words telling everyone how ridiculous my behavior had been that night and that it wasn't something I was proud of or endorsed in any way. I also made sure everyone knew that even though I had no business sitting behind the wheel of a car in that state, I absolutely did not drive it or even attempt to. What was it Ella had said—take responsibility and own it? Well that's what I was doing.

Two days later, I met Austin, Sai and Ava in a little café near my house for a full English, and I was pleased and somewhat surprised to hear that, after putting their heads together and talking about it, they were unanimous in their conclusion that Hunter was indeed responsible.

“I think it was a set-up from the start,” Sai said, waving his fork in the air. “If he couldn't get in with GenNext in a legit way, he was obviously prepared to play dirty.”

“I think that's why he invited you in the first place,” Austin said. “All that mysterious key crap and welcoming you into the fold. It was part of his master plan, and when it didn't work, he resorted to Plan B.”

“The thing is, it's backfired on him massively,” Sai said. “I mean, yeah, we've had some negative press, but most of the younger GenNext subscribers seem to love you even more, Jack.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, deluded,” Austin laughed.

“Have you not seen the comments under the apology you uploaded?” Ava said, putting down her mug of tea and showing me her phone.

“I've tried not to look,” I said.

“There're hundreds of them, and 99.9 percent are in support of you.”

“The kids all think you're cool and funny, Jack, and our media profile has sky-rocketed. You couldn't make it up,” Sai said. “Yesterday our subscribers went up massively. I reckon by tomorrow we'll have reached the one million mark.”

“You're kidding me.”

“That's not to say you weren't still a massive tool,” Austin said, punching my arm.

“I know, I know,” I said. “I'm just glad you guys are still talking to me; that was the worst thing about all this. I'm not sure about Ella, though, after the way I shouted at her.”

“There's something going on with her, but I don't know what it is,” Ava said. “She's been acting a bit weird the last couple of days. I'm seeing her tonight, though, so with any luck I'll get to the bottom of it.”

I smiled, hopefully, and then the four of us dug into our plates of egg, bacon and sausage, with half of me feeling like a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and the other half realizing that there was no way Ella and I would ever be together. Not while Hunter was on the scene.

Sai's uncle AJ turned out to be a good person to know. As well as his partnership in the talent agency, he was a shareholder in The Abacus—a swish private members' club in Shoreditch—and when Sai announced that AJ wanted to throw us a little party to celebrate GenNext signing to the management team at Metronome, I was over the moon. After all the crap I'd been through with the video, I really felt like blowing off some steam and just hanging out with my mates and having fun. In fact we were all well up for it, and for the first time since I'd been friends with the GenNext team, literally everyone was taking a date. It's funny, maybe there was something about having a bit of success that suddenly made us more attractive, I don't know, but all of a sudden girlfriends seemed to be coming out of the woodwork.

That being the case, I fired Sophia a casual text to see if she fancied coming along, without making a big
thing of it. Of course, Ella was going to be there and I had mixed feelings about seeing her. I mean, half of me was nervous about facing her after I'd yelled at her a few days before, and the other half was still angry that she seemed incapable of grasping the idea that Hunter might be involved in my very public shaming. I also knew there was a distinct possibility that I was going to have to face Hunter himself at the party, but screw worrying about that. If he was there, he was there. I certainly wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he'd almost wrecked everything for me and everyone else on the team. We'd pulled it back from the abyss and had come back bigger than ever, and that was all he needed to know.

I caught the train down to London that Friday night, mainly so I could catch up with some of the GenNext emails I'd missed when I couldn't face looking at my computer. The rest of the gang traveled down by minibus, driven by AJ. By the time I got to The Abacus, everything was in full swing: the music was banging, the drinks were flowing, and it looked like it was going to be an epic party.

“As it's my own private soirée tonight, I might have accidentally left a bottle of something fizzy on your table,” AJ said as he greeted me at the neon-blue door of the club's entrance. “Just keep it on a low one and don't get too lairy, OK?” He winked at me as I headed inside to look for the rest of the GenNext gang.

“You're a star, AJ,” I said, laughing.

As promised, AJ had organized a prime table for us, in a much better spot than the trio of
Hollyoaks
actors who were stuck over on a duff table near the dance floor next to a massive speaker, and as I got closer to our booth, I was relieved to be greeted by a sea of happy faces, all dressed in their finest attire and seemingly in the mood to celebrate. Ava appeared especially pleased with herself, which was hardly surprising given the cool and rather gorgeous Japanese girl sitting next to her. Ava looked a bit more sophisticated than I was used to. She was wearing her pastel hair up in an artfully messy bun and she had on a short blue skater dress with pumps. Her date looked effortlessly elegant in a loose off-the-shoulder black top over skinny jeans and spiky heels. The two of them were smiling at each other and giggling.

“This is Suki. She works in promotions at the label Cooper has just signed to,” Ava yelled over Calvin Harris. “Suki, this is Jack Penman—our glorious leader.”

“Good to meet you, Suki,” I shouted back. “Wow, has Cooper signed his deal already? That's amazing!”

“We had to get in quick; there was a lot of competition from other labels,” Suki said, leaning over the table so I could hear her. “He's got such a massive following online—it's all pretty crazy. We're dropping his first track next week because there's such a demand.”

I noticed Suki had a tattoo of a swallow on the back of her shoulder, then I remembered Ava's mermaid tattoo
and smiled to myself—I had a feeling those two were going to get on just fine.

Austin's date was a Year 13 girl from school, Jess. Yes, she was one of the populars, but then I guess Austin counted as one himself these days, thanks to GenNext. He'd been going on about Jess for ages but had never plucked up the courage to ask her out, especially as she was in the year above and therefore officially out of his league. Then, three days before the party at The Abacus, I received a series of excited WhatsApp messages from him: one telling me how he'd spotted her buying T-shirts in Hollister, the next telling me he was seconds away from walking over and asking her out, and then a final one that just contained about a million happy emojis.

Sai, meanwhile, was on a sort of blind date with a very pretty Scottish girl called Chloe, who he'd met on Tinder and who was studying at the Royal College of Music. Typically, he was being very methodical about the whole thing, telling me in an email earlier that day that it was more of an experiment than a date at this stage, like something out of
The Big Bang Theory
. Still, whatever it was, he looked like he was enjoying himself.

Austin and Sai had scrubbed up pretty well, both looking good in jeans and smart ironed shirts, for once, and with new haircuts. In fact, looking around the table, it was obvious that the success of GenNext had given everyone that extra little bit of sparkle. This certainly wasn't the same group of misfits I'd stumbled upon in the
sixth-form common room only a few months before—everyone seemed to have blossomed and gathered a bit of confidence. Yeah, maybe that was why we all had dates that night. Except Ella, that was. She was Hunter-less and on her own, which was a little weird as we were supposed to be celebrating the success of a company that she was the face of, but as she didn't appear too unhappy, I certainly wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. I mean, we hardly ever saw them together anyway; why should tonight be any different? Maybe Hunter was just keeping a low profile because he knew we were all wise to him and his epic failure of a plan to screw us over. Yeah, that was about right; when it came down to it, the guy was nothing more than a sly coward. Poor Ella. Could someone as smart as her really be so blind to the real Hunter?

After a quick-fire round of “hellos” and “what's happenings,” I sat down and poured myself some champagne—a reasonably small glass to start with, given how badly my last brush with alcohol had gone. Austin leaned across the table, chinking his champagne flute against mine.

“Ah, Jack Penman! Not so long ago we were sneaking Baileys Irish Cream out of your mum and dad's drink cabinet, and now look at us: celebrating our success and sipping champagne at our own private event.”

“Mate, you were the Baileys burglar,” I laughed. “Can't trust you to do anything right. But I'm happy we stuck together, because as you said, look at us now.”

“Are we going to have a dance later, Jack?” Ava interrupted. “I'm dying to see you wiggle that cute little ass of yours.”

“I'm not sure I'm prepared to wiggle anything, Ava, but I might join you on the floor, yeah,” I smiled.

Ella threw her head back and laughed.

“I'm really glad you're here tonight and everything's OK, Jack,” she said.

She was smiling, but there was something a little weird about the way she said it. Maybe it was because I hadn't seen all that much of her lately outside of GenNext, or the fact that the last time we did see one another we'd both been so angry. Anyway, I shrugged it off, mainly because Ella did seem genuinely pleased to see me and looked utterly beautiful. I had to admit it to myself, after all these months my feelings for her were still just as powerful as ever, and however much my confidence had grown as far as women were concerned, when it came down to it I still felt tongue-tied when she was around.

Things got even stranger later on when Ella grabbed my hand from behind as I was halfway across the dance floor on my way to get some water, pulling me backward and spinning me around to face her.

“Jack, where are you going?”

“To the bar; I need a bottle of water. Do you want some?”

“Oh. Well I just wanted to tell you something, that's all,” she said nervously.

“Can it wait? I'll be back in a sec.”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“What is it?”

“God, I don't know why, but I actually feel a bit nervous telling you this,” she said.

The club lights were flashing in my eyes, the music was blaring, and the dance floor was packed with people gyrating and twirling and generally throwing themselves drunkenly around to Rudimental, yet there we were in the midst of it all, just standing facing one another like two mesmerized statues.

“Nervous? What are you going on about? Is it something to do with GenNext? Because you know I usually think your ideas are great.”

“No, it's not that.”

She took both my hands in hers and smiled, and then I smiled too, like it was catching or something, and then—

“Jack! Jack, babe, I'm here!”

The happy expression on Ella's face quickly morphed into something quite different and she stopped smiling.

“What's
she
doing here?”

I spun around to see my date for the evening waving at me from the edge of the dance floor. She was almost two hours late; in fact I'd kind of forgotten she was coming at all.

“Sophia, you're here!” I shouted. “That's . . . that's amazing.”

Yeah, I know. Awkward. And just when Ella was clearly about to lay something mind-blowingly important on me—or at least that was what it felt like. Maybe she was ready to finally acknowledge the fact that we'd kissed, that we'd had a moment that meant something. Whatever it was, it was going to have to wait a while.

I made my way to where Sophia was standing and greeted her with a kiss just as Ella swept past me with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. I knew I'd blown the moment. Whatever she wanted to say, it certainly wasn't going to happen while Sophia was around—I was sure of that.

It didn't take long for Sophia to make her presence felt at the party; that seemed to be one of her more blindingly obvious talents.

“Hey, bitches!” she yelled as we reached the table, air-kissing everyone and no one in particular.

Ava looked up at Sophia and then at Ella and then at me.

“Oh, hi, Sophia, how are you?” she said weakly, but Sophia barely registered it.

“OMG! Trust me to get it wrong,” she yapped, looking everyone over and giggling. “I feel totally overdressed. Jack, you never told me you were all going to be so dressed down and casual.”

Yeah, that didn't go down too well, as you can imagine. Ava and Suki's faces were like a couple of thunderclouds, and Ava's arms were crossed defensively. For a
nanosecond, my mind flashed back to the interview I'd done with Sophia, and how unimpressed Ava had been at the time.

“For those of you who haven't met her, this is Sophia,” I said nervously. “My, er . . . date.”

I clocked another weird little look flash between Ava and Ella—what the hell was going on?

Sophia sat down on my lap, throwing her arms around me and kissing me, and as she pulled her lips away, I could feel the remnants of a gummy smear on my cheek. Ella had this uneasy, fixed half-smile on her face, and suddenly this kind of annoyed me slightly. Yeah, so Sophia was a bit of a live wire, but why should Ella care, especially given her own dodgy romantic choices? Wasn't I entitled to bring a date like everyone else?

“Oh, are you guys like properly seeing one another now?” Ava said, trying to sound bright and breezy but clearly a bit taken aback. “I thought Jack was coming on his own tonight.”

She hadn't meant anything by it, but it was a bit like banging a tiger's cage.

“Well sorry to disappoint you, darling. I can leave if you'd prefer.” Sophia smiled like she was joking . . . but she actually wasn't.

“Oh no, I just meant—”

“And what does that even mean, ‘seeing one another'?” Sophia said, talking over Ava. “It's such a ridiculous expression, don't you think, Emma?”

“It's Ella,” Ella said icily.

“Of course we're ‘seeing one another,'” Sophia went on. “I think, Ava, what you really meant to ask is are Jack and I—”

“Er . . . she just meant that Jack hadn't mentioned bringing anyone tonight, that's all.” Sai jumped in just in the nick of time.

“Well don't worry, sweetie, I can afford to buy my own drinks, you know,” Sophia said, stroking her Marc Jacobs handbag exaggeratedly.

“Help yourself to champagne, of course,” Sai said.

“I don't need telling twice, babes.” Sophia snatched a champagne flute off the table. “Are we getting another bottle?”

Austin did the honors and poured Sophia a glass while Ava caught my eye and drew her hand across her throat as if she were pretending to slash it with a knife.

“What do you think of my uncle's club, Sophia?” Sai asked.

“It's all right, darling, but there's nobody here, is there?” she said, and we all glanced around the room, which was positively heaving. “No one worth knowing,” she clarified.