Generation Next (16 page)

With my body clock now completely out of whack, I spent that following Sunday evening in the living room with Mum and Dad, watching whatever they wanted to watch on the Sky planner and talking about everything apart from the actual thing we were all thinking about—the dreaded C word. Halfway through
House of Cards
I got a text from Ava asking me a) where I'd been all day, b) to call her, and c) if I'd seen the pictures from Friday night all over Twitter.

To be honest, I hadn't seen much of anything that day. In fact the only time I'd even picked up my phone was to send Ella a couple of WhatsApp messages asking her to call me. I didn't go into any detail; just said I had to talk to her. As Mum's news really started to sink in, I knew it was Ella's voice I needed to hear—and not even in a romantic way. Forgetting all the other feelings I had for her, Ella was my mate and I knew she'd know
the right words to say and the right advice to give me, because she always did. Only my WhatsApp messages were going unread, and by 9 p.m., when Ava texted, there was still no reply from Ella.

To be honest, the last thing I needed that night was to get into a conversation with Ava, who would probably just keep telling me what an idiot I was when I really didn't need to hear it. I'd see her and the rest of the GenNext team the following morning and whatever she had to say could wait until then. I did head straight to Twitter, however, only to discover that the pictures Ava was referring to were mostly of Sophia and me at The Abacus together: Sophia sitting on my lap, Sophia kissing me, Sophia's selfie of us pouting into the camera, directly lifted from her Instagram feed. There were a couple of other candid shots of us holding hands on our previous date thrown into the mix, too. The general twist on the story was that we were the new hot couple, and there were plenty of quotes from her to confirm the rumors, plus with her profile being what it was, I was bound to find myself plastered over the cover of
Heat
or
Closer
the following week, even though our brief relationship was already done and dusted.

I dropped my phone on to the chair next to me and pondered for a minute how completely my life had changed in the space of a few weeks and how utterly bonkers it all was. I mean, was I really sitting there telling myself that my face was going to be all over the covers
of national magazines in the next few days like it was nothing? How did that happen to someone like me—and with Mum's news hanging over my head, should I even really care anymore?

When I got out of bed that Monday morning, my eyes and my head felt heavy. In fact my whole body felt as though it was being dragged down with lead weights. The fact that there was still no reply to my messages from Ella wasn't helping matters either. I spent twenty minutes in the shower, just letting the water run over my body as hot as I could take it, and while I was shaving I told myself that however bad I felt, and however worried about Mum I was, I couldn't let myself go under. Dad said we had to stay positive until we knew for sure what Mum was going to have to deal with, and he was right. I just had to try to carry on as normal, whatever the hell that was these days. I also had to talk to Ella . . . as soon as possible.

When I arrived at HQ, Austin and Sai were buzzing around like crazy while AJ was pacing around in a slim-cut suit with his Samsung glued to his ear, yapping away and sounding very animated. In the midst of it all, Austin's brother Miles came bounding down the stairs, followed by his mum. “Sounds like a lot of noise and plotting is going on this morning,” she said, laughing, as
she set down five cups of tea and a huge plate of bacon rolls on the coffee table.

“Yeah, it's like CSI Hertfordshire down here,” Miles added.

“So what
is
going on?” I said, after Austin's mum had gone back upstairs. “Can somebody fill us in, please?”

In the end, Austin did the honors.

“So last night, AJ gets a call from CTA in LA . . .”

“Are you talking in code, mate?”

“It stands for Creative Talent Agency, which is a massive talent agency in Los Angeles,” he clarified. “Anyway, they have this artist, Harriet Rushworth, who's sold, like, a hundred billion records . . .”

“That many?”

I knew of Harriet Rushworth but I'd only heard one or two tracks. I vaguely remembered watching a bit of one of her super-high-budget videos on Vevo, but that was as much as I could tell you about her.

“Yeah, she's like cool pop, a bit like a slightly more edgy Taylor but with red hair. She's huge over there and in most of Europe . . . but she's not as big here yet . . . and they want to build her profile, so . . .”

Austin sounded like he could hardly breathe, so Sai shoved a bacon roll in his mouth and took over while AJ continued his ever more urgent-sounding phone conversation.

“They want to promote Harriet in the UK, but they want people to discover her rather than forcing a whole
cheesy marketing campaign down everyone's throats . . . and they think GenNext is the perfect tool.”

“They think the direction we've taken is sick and they've asked if we could fly over and film an interview with her for the site ASAP,” Austin said, his mouth still full of food.

“Seriously?”

“Totally!”

“We're going to LA?”

“We're going to LA!”

It took a few seconds for the data to unscramble in my brain, and when it did, I could hardly believe what I was hearing. This was huge. The chance for GenNext to actually go global and really make its mark—our little project that we'd started right there in that basement. It was incredible, only . . . I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to jet off to America with Mum's health hanging in the balance. OK, so maybe that part required some thinking, but right then and there I was simply going take a moment to bask in the glorious news and drink a cup of celebratory PG Tips. Surely I deserved that after the last couple of days, right?

“It's all set,” AJ announced, finally off the phone and grinning like a fool. “We can fly out on Thursday morning. My people at Metronome will coordinate the details with CTA and we'll do the interview with Harriet on Saturday. It's going to be big, fellas, in front of an audience going out live online worldwide.”

“Get in!” Austin said, fist-pumping the air.

Miles wasn't quite as thrilled. “You guys are so lucky—I want to go to LA.”

“Maybe next time, little bro,” Austin smiled, ruffling his brother's hair.

“Somebody needs to phone Ella,” I said—and yeah, that was pretty much where my happy moment ended.

“I wouldn't bother phoning her, guys.” Ava had just arrived and was standing at the bottom of the stairs, hands on hips, looking like she was about to burst into tears.

“What's going on, Ava?” I said, worried by the expression on her face. “Where's Ella?”

“She's gone, Jack. I spent half of yesterday trying to persuade her that she was making a massive mistake, but she wasn't having it.”

I put my cup down on the desk in front of me and stared back at Ava, my heart rate rising by the second.

“What do you mean, she's gone?
Where's
she gone?”

Ava sighed and sat down on the bottom step, running her hands though her bleached hair nervously.

“Come on, Ava, this is important,” Sai said urgently.

“You know her dad was about to go to Canada on business? Well, he asked Ella if she wanted to go with him, and she said yes,” Ava said. “At the moment she feels like she's done with GenNext; it's all been too much. She knows she screwed up big time with Hunter and she
feels like an idiot, and then there's the whole situation with . . . well, you know.”

“We don't bloody know,” I snapped. “The whole situation with what, Ava,
what
?”

“Look, don't shoot the messenger, right?” Ava yelled, jumping off the step and striding over to face me. “She felt stupid because she was trying to let you know how she felt about you, and there you were with Sophia all over you like chickenpox, and now she just wants to run away from it all, OK? Do you understand now?”

I suddenly felt like an icy fist was squeezing my heart.

“But there's nothing between me and Sophia; what was she thinking?”

“Try telling her that after she saw all that ‘hot new couple' crap online,” Ava said. “Look, Jack, it really isn't your fault. I'm not yelling at you, honestly. I'm just upset because after all these years of being the girl nobody wanted to hang out with, I finally had a best friend and now she's gone and it'll probably be ages before we see her again.”

Ava started to cry, tears spilling out by the bucketload, so I put my arms around her and pulled her close. I'm not going to lie, I felt absolutely gutted, but at the same time I couldn't stand to see Ava breaking her heart like that—it was awful. As Ava let it all out and I did my absolute best to hold it all in, we were joined by Sai, Austin and even Miles in a sort of weird GenNext group
hug that seemed to go on for ages, while poor AJ just looked on, bewildered.

Ten minutes later, I left the others to fill Ava in on the news about LA and stumbled out of Austin's house into the greyest of days, and it really was gray in every single way. I felt dizzy and for a while I thought the bacon roll was going to make a reappearance right there on the pavement in front of me. I took a few deep breaths and then I walked for a while, just trying to get my head around the fact that Ella was gone and as far as I could figure there was nothing I could do about it. Not right then, anyway, and maybe not ever. A hundred thoughts flashed through my mind, one morphing into another and then another until I couldn't keep up with any of them. I mean, how was it possible for the universe to make so many bad things happen in such a short space of time? Could someone please answer me that?

As I reached the park and the spot where Ella and I had kissed just a few weeks before, my phone beeped and buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out. It was a text.

So what now? There seemed to be a lot of questions that needed answering and not very much time to answer them before we were due to jet off to America to interview one of its biggest pop stars. No one actually said it out loud, but the major question on everyone's mind was, could GenNext even survive without its front woman? I mean, Ella had been the face of the whole thing; she'd been the one that everyone was talking about when we first took off—she was the star—and while Austin, Ava and Sai all seemed convinced that I could step up and take over, I wasn't so sure. Any confidence I'd gathered in the last few months had been shredded in a matter of days to the point where I felt like I didn't know what I was doing anymore. All the drama with the video leak, and then Mum's terrible news, and now Ella . . . I'd sort of lost my way, to be honest. The only thing that didn't seem to be going downhill was GenNext's popularity.

After a few heated discussions with the management team at Metronome, it was decided that Austin and I would be the ones taking the trip across the pond, with AJ accompanying us to oversee everything. As much as Ava was dying to go to LA, she said she couldn't even consider missing her dad's fiftieth birthday party, which was that same weekend—particularly as she was taking Suki along and introducing her to the entire family. Poor Sai agreed to stay behind and hold the fort at HQ because his ridiculously strict parents weren't happy about the idea of him going, even though there'd be a member of the family with him.

We were only going to be out there for four days, but I felt pretty indecisive about taking the trip right up to the last minute, what with everything going on at home. After a heart-to-heart with Mum and Dad, who insisted I get myself “on that bloody plane,” I eventually caved. They might have had some reservations about the speed with which GenNext had taken off, but even they recognized that this would be a massive opportunity for us—and one that might not come around again. Mum was due to go for her tests the day after I left, but she insisted that I'd be back before the results came in, and that she'd keep me up to date with everything via WhatsApp and FaceTime. In the end, I told Austin I was good to go. I made a deal with myself that I wouldn't tell him—or the other GenNext members—about my mum until we got her results. I didn't want to put a massive dampener on
the trip . . . plus, saying it aloud to my friends would have made it feel even more real and frightening, you know?

The evening before we left for LA, Austin, Sai, Ava and I sat on the abandoned sofa on the roof of Sai's building so we could put our heads together one last time and agree on the vibe of the interview and the kinds of questions Austin and I were going to ask Harriet Rushworth. Earlier that day we'd completely immersed ourselves in her YouTube channel, watching all her music videos plus a bunch of her interviews from American TV shows and a guest slot she did on
Saturday Night Live
. I had to admit, she was pretty amazing. I mean, apart from being a talented writer and performer who made great pop music, she was smart, quirky and emphatic about giving back to her fans and empowering girls and young women. She certainly wasn't the type you could interview in a bath of chocolate milk. No, that wasn't Harriet Rushworth at all.

“The one thing it can't be is boring,” Ava said after we'd run over the questions for the thousandth time. She was frowning and waving her finger at us like a teacher reprimanding a class of naughty five-year-olds. “It's still got to be us; it's got to be edgy and quirky. Don't go all Hollywood just because that's where you are. At the end of the day it's still got to be GenNext, OK?”

Austin and I both nodded, and I felt a whole swarm of butterflies crashing around in my stomach.

“We'll keep it cool,” I said.

“And you are going to FaceTime or Skype with us every day, right?” Poor Sai looked like he was going to cry, and I felt crap about leaving him behind.

“Yes, Sai, how could I go a single day without seeing that cute little face?” Austin laughed.

Ava jumped up and stood in front of us, looking deadly serious and even more like a teacher.

“Joking aside, this might be make or break for us,” she said. “Yes, we were lucky to pull everything back after Jack's little escapade—no offense, mate—but now we've got to withstand losing Ella and that might not be easy, because she was just . . .”

Nobody answered and nobody had to; we all knew what she meant. Everyone stayed quiet for a few seconds; all I could hear was the sound of birds and distant traffic. Then Ava made for the door.

“Right, I'm off to scope out a pressie for my dad's birthday. Good luck, boys; you'll kill it, I know you will.”

Austin followed suit and jumped off the sofa.

“Yeah, and I need to take Jess on a second date before I head off, just to make sure she realizes what an all-round amazing dude she's landed.”

“Lucky Jess,” Ava laughed, rolling her eyes.

“Look, I need to leave her wanting more of this,” Austin said, lifting up his T-shirt and exposing what he clearly felt almost passed for a six-pack.

“Tell them what you're
actually
doing with her, though,” Sai said.

Austin looked down at the floor sheepishly.

“My mum's making us a lasagna and we're watching
Avengers Assemble
on DVD with Miles.”

Ava and I laughed, and that felt good, you know? After everything that had happened in the past few weeks, I was determined to get my act together for this trip to LA. To make it the start of something great for GenNext.

We said our goodbyes and then I headed home. There was no question about what I was doing that night, aside from packing, of course. I was simply going to hang out with my mum. Yeah, I know it doesn't sound very rock 'n' roll, but that was all I wanted to do.

Just as I reached my house, a car blasted its horn and almost scared the crap out of me. I whipped my head around to see a white Beamer with blacked-out windows parked opposite my house. I scanned the area to see if there was anyone else around that the blast might have been aimed at—there wasn't. Weird, right? Deciding to ignore it, I turned back and started walking toward the house, but then the car horn blasted again, only this time it was relentless, so I headed over to find out who the idiot was behind it. As I got closer, the driver's seat window lowered slowly, and there it was . . . of course . . . Hunter. He was grinning like a maniac and doing this stupid little wave, like he was greeting a toddler.

“Hey there, pretty boy,” he said, just as I reached the side of the car.

“No Ferrari, Hunter? You must be slumming it,” I said.

“Must be, driving around this neighborhood,” he said.

I wasn't in the mood to play games. “What do you want?”

“Not much,” he said, leaning out of the car. “I just wanted to see how you were getting on after that embarrassing little performance of yours leaked online. What an unlucky coincidence that someone just happened to have their iPhone camera on at the moment you were making a total mug of yourself.” He shook his head in mock disapproval.

I'd been right all along, of course. Who else would have gone to so much trouble to make me look like an idiot for all the world to see? Who else would want to screw everything up for me like that?

“Why did you do it?” I said. “Why does somebody like you even care about me and what I'm doing? You've got a big house, loads of money; what possible reason could there be for you to start messing around with my life?”

“As usual, you're proving what I've always known about you, Penman: that you've got a very high opinion of yourself,” Hunter said lazily.

“Whatever,” I said. “Was there anything else I can help you with?”

“There is actually,” he said, his false smile falling fast as his jaw tightened. “I want to know if it's true about Ella.”

“If what's true?”

“That she's gone; left the country or some rubbish.”

“You mean she didn't tell you?” I gasped in mock surprise. “Isn't that strange . . . Oh no, wait! She dumped you, didn't she, Hunter? That's right, she dumped you because she found out what a complete and utter loser you are.”

By the end of the sentence I was almost shouting, and Hunter had such fury in his eyes I had no idea what was going to happen next. I could only ever remember someone looking at me with that much hatred once before: the time those two idiots attacked me at the back of the bus, putting me in the hospital. It crossed my mind that Hunter might be about to try the same thing, but instead he just sat there in his car, fuming.

“It was your fault she finished with me,” he spat finally. “It's your fault she's gone, and don't think for a minute I'm going to forget that.”

“If that's what you need to tell yourself to help you sleep at night,” I said, turning to walk away.

I was over this now; I just wanted to get indoors, back to my family. As far as I was concerned, this chapter of my life—the chapter that contained Hunter and anything in his world—was closed.

“You can walk away with that smug grin on your face if you like, Penman, but trust me . . . it won't last long.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned around to face him again.

“What's that supposed to mean?” I said.

“You know me, Jack.” There was a sudden eerie calm in his voice. “Watch this space; the fun's not over yet.”

He started the engine and I felt my blood run cold. Now I really did feel like I was back on that bus. Surely he was just spouting off, right? Surely all this crap was over now. Still, I wasn't going to let him have the last word. Not this time.

“You're no gangster, Hunter; you're just a rich kid with too much time on his hands. Pathetic. Do everyone a favor and go drive that thing of a cliff, will you?”

This time there was no retaliation from Hunter; he just chuckled to himself and shook his head like I was some sort of idiot. He revved the car loudly and then pulled it into reverse so suddenly that I had to jump backward out of the way. I watched him speed off, following the car with my gaze until it was out of sight around the corner, leaving me standing in the middle of the road feeling extremely unnerved.

OK, so I was fazed for an hour or two by Hunter's threats—wouldn't you have been? By the next morning, though, after I'd thought about it with a clearer head, I realized how weak and pathetic it all was. I truly almost felt sorry for the guy; I mean, what was he going to do
anyway? I certainly wasn't going to put myself in a position to be caught up in any more of his scams to ruin GenNext. Hunter was over; he just didn't want to admit it. In fact, as far as I was concerned, the minute the chauffeur-driven black Jag XJ pulled up outside my house at 7 a.m. to take me to the airport, it was a case of Hunter who?

“I like your style, AJ,” I said, climbing into the car after dumping my bag in the boot.

“I thought we should start as we mean to go on,” AJ laughed from the passenger seat.

Austin had been picked up first, and I scooted on to the back seat next to him. He looked a bit bleary-eyed and tired, but gave me a smile as if to say,
yeah—this is actually happening
, so I nodded like I'd read his mind.

As we headed along the motorway toward Heathrow, AJ took us through the details and schedule of the trip. It was just four nights, but pretty full on.

“First off, Harriet Rushworth is throwing a launch party tonight and we've been invited,” he said. “Now, you know LA is eight hours behind the UK, so by tonight you'll be like zombies if you don't get a few hours of shut-eye on the plane. That shouldn't be a problem, though, because you'll have a nice flat bed to sleep on.”

“Seriously?” Austin perked up.

“We're being flown out Virgin Upper Class,” AJ said, grinning. “Now tomorrow morning, not too early,
I've agreed to a meeting with a company called Herald Media. I've checked them out and they're a very big deal out there, with a ton of money and an impressive client base. I've got an idea they want to talk about partnering with GenNext or something along those lines. I'm not certain that's something we want at this stage, but I spoke to Angela Linford, the company president, and she seemed very keen to meet with the two of you. In fact she's paying a pretty decent fee just for us to turn up at the flipping meeting. It seems like overkill if you ask me, but they're enthusiastic—
very
enthusiastic—so I've agreed to go with a proviso that we don't have to commit to anything, fee or not.”

This was a surprise to me, and not necessarily a good one. I'd already staved off one company with an interest in GenNext and now here was another one already. Still, instead of blowing AJ's idea out of the water without at least hearing him out, I decided to bide my time and keep positive.