Generation Next (22 page)

I do my best to smile. “What do you mean, ‘boy'?”

“You're right; I suppose you're not a boy anymore,” she says seriously. “That's why you have to face this ridiculous blackmail thing head on. You've got to be honest with your friends, because however angry they are, they'll be on your side once they know the truth, and you've got to tell Ella as soon as possible because she has a right to know, however bad it makes you feel. After
that, I think you should go to the police—your dad and I will go with you. You have to fight this for Ella's sake, Jack, and you have to fight for GenNext, too. You've worked so hard to build it up—all of you.”

“I know you're right, Mum, but
you're
what's most important right now,” I say. “Maybe we should just let Herald Media take over GenNext. Then the video will go away and we can all start again, and I can focus on making sure you get better.”

Mum thinks for a moment, then shakes her head resolutely, her eyes filling with tears.

“I've already told you, Jack, you can't put your life on hold just because I have to for a while. While I'm going through this treatment, whatever happens, I want to see you living your life and getting on with things. I know you'll be there if I need you, but you have to keep on living, for me as much as anything—it can't all stop, do you understand?”

I nod slowly, and then Mum draws me into a hug that lasts a long, long time. I can feel her heart beating against me and it dawns on me that the thought of losing her is more heartbreaking and frightening than anything else I'm facing or will have to face. I'm literally blown away by how much faith my mum has in me. If she can believe in me with all she's going through, then I can believe in myself . . . right? Right.

I'm in our living room, perched on the edge of Dad's favorite armchair, bright sunlight streaming through the window and warming my face. For a moment, my mind drifts back to Venice Beach and how peaceful I felt there for a few hours, despite everything. I could do with a little bit of that peace now. It's time to stop all this noise in my head, and this is a good way to start, I'm sure of it.

I glance at my phone: 1.20 p.m., so 8.20 a.m. in Canada. It's still pretty early but I can't leave it any later to call Ella; I've already had three more anonymous messages this morning—two of which I'm sure are from Hunter, one from another unknown number—warning me with escalating urgency that I have till 6 p.m. tomorrow to agree to the Herald Media deal or that's it. The video is out there.

I've been tying myself in knots for the last few hours, desperately trying to figure out what I'm going to say to her when I finally speak to her, what words I'm going
to use to convey something so horrible, but in my head none of the conversations end well, so I've decided just to wing it. It's the only way.

I dial her number, hoping she's up early enough to take the call, hoping she'll even pick up when she sees it's me, especially as news of the Harriet interview will have reached her by now. She doesn't. In fact it doesn't even ring, going straight to voicemail, so I leave a message.

“Ella, it's Jack. Can you call me, please, the minute you get this? It's important, really important. I hope you're OK. Speak soon. Bye.”

I head out to the kitchen, where Mum is nibbling at a sandwich and wading through a pile of leaflets and magazines she's picked up at the hospital: “We are Macmillan cancer support,” “Nutrition—food and weight concerns,” “Fitting treatment into your schedule.” It seems like an awful lot to take in, and she looks up at me, rolling her eyes.

“Just trying to get my head around all this,” she says as I grab my keys from the countertop. “Are you going out?”

“I'm waiting for Ella to call me back, so I'm going to sit in the park. I need to get out of the house for a bit.”

Mum shouts after me as I open the front door.

“Good luck, Jack. Ring me and let me know what happens.”

“I will.”

The park is busy today, full of kids trying to grab as much freedom as they can during the last weeks of the summer holidays. I head to the spot where Ella and I kissed a few weeks before—yeah, I know, I'm a soppy romantic—and I sit there on the grass staring at my iPhone, as if that's going to make the bloody thing ring. I guess I'm still a bit jet-lagged because after about fifteen minutes I suddenly feel shattered, so I lie back on the grass and close my eyes . . . just for a moment . . .

“Jack?”

A voice jolts me awake and I realize I've been in the deepest sleep—but for how long?

“Jack!”

I open my eyes and there's someone standing over me, a dark shape against the sun. I rub my eyes, trying to pry them open.

“Jack, are you all right?”

“Ella?”

OK, for the first few seconds I totally think I'm dreaming. Then she kneels down on the grass next to me and pulls me into a hug and I know it's real. I'm definitely not dreaming.

“Ella, what the . . . what are you even doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

She lets go of me and I sit up, still unable to believe that she's right here in front of me. She sits down on the grass, so close that our legs touch and I can see the freckles on her nose. She looks incredible—tanned and
healthy, her hair an even whiter shade of blonde after weeks in the sun.

“I literally just got back, two hours ago. I picked up your message when I charged my phone, went straight round to yours and saw your mum,” she says. “When she said you were at the park, I sort of guessed where you might be.”

“But . . . I . . .”

“God, it was such a mistake going to Canada,” she says, on a huge outward breath. “I suppose it was a knee-jerk reaction to everything because I felt like I needed to run away, but I'd only been gone five or six days and I just missed home so much. I missed my mates and I missed GenNext and . . . I really missed you, Jack Penman.”

“Really?” I say, still thinking that this entire conversation might just be a dream or a sun-induced hallucination. Ella, here, just when I need her the most.

“I know, what's wrong with me?” she says, screwing her face up and giggling. “Perhaps I need some kind of medical help.” Then, quite suddenly, she stops and looks dead serious. “I really did miss you, Jack. When I'd had time to think properly about everything that happened, you know, with us, with Hunter, it just seemed like it was something we could fix if we really tried. Nothing is unfixable, is it?”

I smile back at her nervously, my stomach churning, wondering if she might be of the same opinion in five
minutes' time when I tell her what Hunter has done and what Callum plans to do.

“I'm just glad you're back,” I say, and I pull her close to me again. I wish the moment could last and we could just stay happy like this for a while longer. But we can't; I have to tell her what's going on. I take a deep breath and bite the bullet.

“Ella, there's something I've got to tell you. Actually, there's something I've got to show you,” I say, pulling my phone out of my pocket with a heavy heart. “It's something that isn't very nice and I know it's going to hurt you, but . . .”

Ella's face falls and I feel her stiffen and pull away from me.

“Jack, you're scaring me; what are you going on about?”

I scroll through my messages and locate the video, tentatively handing her the phone.

“There's no way to really explain this, so I'm just going to . . .”

I watch Ella's face as she hits play, her eyes filling with angry tears as she takes in the video. I feel terrible. Every so often her gaze flicks upward to me in disbelief, and then she looks down again, her face flushed, tears dripping down on to her trembling hand as she holds the phone.

Once it's done, she turns away from me, shaking her head as if she's simply refusing to believe any of it.

“I don't know what to say,” she says, her voice cold and flat. “I trusted Hunter; we've known each other since we were kids. And the most ridiculous thing about this video is I didn't even . . . I mean, he and I, we didn't even . . .” She shrugs her shoulders hopelessly. “But who cares, right? Anyone who sees this will think that we
did
, so does it even matter?” Then she looks back at me, her jaw tightening. “Why have you got this on your phone, Jack? What's this about?”

I jump up from the grass and offer her my hand.

“Let's walk. I've got a lot to tell you.”

By the time we reach the kids' swing park, I've filled her in on the entire story. Weirdly, she hasn't said a word the whole time we've been walking, just listened with an expression of deep concentration on her face. But then again, I have been talking for a good ten minutes, barely taking a breath. By now, I'm wondering if she just blames me for everything and I might be about to lose her all over again.

At the gates of the swing park, she stops suddenly, her brow furrowed in thought.

“How long have we got before they post the video?”

I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance down.

“Just over twenty-four hours. Look, Ella, maybe we should just ring them and tell them we'll do it. I'll call the rest of the team and explain everything, and I'm pretty sure they'll see that we don't have any choice, even
though they are pissed off with me. Then all this will go away and we can get on with our lives.”

Ella shakes her head and walks through the gates. She heads over to the swings, sitting down on a vacant one. I follow suit, parking myself on the swing next to her.

“I know I've let you down,” I say, staring at my feet. “I've never been good at handling bullies, you know?”

Ella starts swinging back and forth gently, looking at me like she needs me to clarify. Suddenly I have the urge to tell her everything. I need her to understand my past, really understand it.

“I've never told you this, but the reason I left my old school and came to St. Joe's in the first place is because I was bullied,” I say. The words feel strange; I've never said them out loud before. “It got so bad that I was beaten up and ended up in the hospital, and then when I got to St. Joe's I assumed . . . I hoped everything would be different and better, and then I met you and the others, and it was. It was incredible, to be honest. And then everything went so crazy with GenNext . . . and now this has happened, and I don't understand how we've ended up here. It's just a different kind of bullying, from people who are old enough to know better. I feel like I tried to beat the bullies and I've failed, you know? They've just turned up in a different shape and size.”

“God, Jack, that's . . . that's horrible,” Ella says softly. I look up at her to gauge her reaction to what I've just
said. Her face is a mix of anger and sympathy and I feel relieved.

Then: “No!” she says suddenly, bringing the swing to a halt with her feet.

“No what?”

“No, we're not going to call Hunter or Callum and tell them we're going to do the deal. We're not going to give in to them, Jack.”

“Ella, if we don't, you know what's going to happen,” I say, jumping off my swing and grabbing the chains of hers, facing her dead on. Her face is determined, her eyes blazing.

“So, what, are we going to spend the rest of our lives bowing down to the bullies of this world? Is that how it's going to go?” Now she sounds really angry. “No thanks, Jack, I've been there, done that.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I've . . . I've been bullied, too. When I was fourteen.”

She looks down, and I try to hide my surprise. Ella's the last person I can imagine being bullied.

“What happened?” I say. I reach down and take her hand. She hesitates a moment and then curls her fingers around mine.

“When I was at school in Hong Kong, there was this group of American girls who took an instant dislike to me the minute I joined the class,” she says. “I hadn't done anything wrong—God, I'd barely even spoken to them—but for some reason they were out to get me. They wrote
nasty stuff about me on Facebook, cleverly disguised at first but everyone knew who they were talking about and it got quite vicious. All I could do was try to ignore it. I'd walk into class and pretend I didn't care, but inside I was torn up. Then they stepped it up. For a while they were writing stuff every day and it was all anyone was talking about. I ended up locking myself in my room, not eating, too upset and scared to turn on my phone or my computer. It probably sounds like nothing now, but when you're fourteen and not very confident, it can really screw with your head.”

“It doesn't sound like nothing at all,” I say. “It sounds like classic cyber-bullying, by a group of nasty girls who just wanted to feel better about themselves by giving you a hard time. What happened in the end? Did it go away?”

“Not completely,” Ella says. “I got the messages taken down, but those girls never really had to answer for what they did. They always had one up on me, and even ages after, whenever I saw them, I'd walk past with my head down as if I was the one who'd done something wrong.”

“God, Ella, that's awful,” I say.

“You're damn right it's awful, Jack, and that's why I'm not going through it again.
We're
not going through it.” Ella stands up and puts her arms around my neck. Without even thinking, I slip my arms around her waist, so that we're standing as one. “Look, if Callum posts the video online, it's going to be really bad for me. Everyone at school will see it, my family. I don't know how I'm
going to face people; in fact I'll probably want to jump on a plane straight back to Canada. But if it comes down to it, then I'm just going to have to be brave. Yes, it'll be a hideous embarrassment and I'll feel like I have to justify myself to everyone, but I'm not letting those idiots shame me without a fight. I'll make sure everyone knows who did it, and why.” I can see from her expression that she means it, one hundred percent, and I feel bloody proud of her. “Plus,” she says, “the alternative is much worse—giving up GenNext, which is what it will mean if we sign the deal, right?”

“Yeah, but after the Harriet interview, is there even much left to give up?” I say. “I screwed up pretty badly; everyone thinks we're finished.”

“Oh come off it, Jack,” Ella says. “Everyone has an off day, right? It'll be forgotten by tomorrow. If I can style out a sex tape, you can style this out. What we've done with GenNext is so amazing—we've got to fight for it.”