Generation Next (3 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen, Jack Penman and Austin Slade of GenNext!”

The voice comes from nowhere, and now there's rowdy applause in the room, but this bunch are the least of my worries; there could be millions of people watching this all over the world. No pressure then. Duke gives the thumbs-up and a red light goes on above the camera, then the young dude in the denim shirt leans forward and shakes our hands all over again. I look at Austin, who is smiling, so I smile too. Then the denim shirt dude speaks.

“So, guys, welcome, so glad you could be here with us.”

“Thanks, we're excited to be here,” Austin says.

After a bit of small talk about the flight over and what we think about LA so far, all of which Austin deals with, the guy addresses me and I gear myself up to speak. Pull yourself together, you idiot. This is it; it's happening now. You can't screw this up.

“So, Jack, let's hear from you first on this. How did you guys come up with the idea for GenNext, something that has become so amazingly successful so fast?”

I stare into the guy's face for a moment and then I look at Austin. All I can think about is the video, which sends hundreds of scenarios shooting through my mind at once, none of them good. I look down at my new Converse shoes, resting on the bottom bar of the stool, and I hear Austin speak.

“Sorry, he's still a bit jet-lagged. Jack? Jack!”

“My shoelace is undone.”

I imagine this is just a private thought, but apparently not. Some of the audience are sniggering.

“Your shoelace? Jack, what's wrong with you?”

I look up at Austin and his mouth is twitching again. And then everything just . . . stops.

Can you imagine it for a moment? The eyes of the world are on you—quite literally—and you can't speak or even move. It's funny, I'm struggling to remember how it came to this; how I even got here. When was it? Has it really only been a matter of months since I walked into that classroom at St. Joseph's with all eyes on me? It might as well have been a lifetime ago. I was just the new boy with something to prove back then, but so much has changed in these short months. So much . . .

Hertfordshire, England, five months earlier

I was twenty minutes late when I walked into Mr. Allen's advanced media production class, and, on top of that, soaking wet. I mean, completely and utterly drenched—torrential downpour just as I jumped off the bus, so unavoidable really, but not ideal. Not when you're talking first impressions—you know what I mean, right? Your strategy is to walk into a roomful of people you don't know looking fresh and unruffled, like it's absolutely nada starting a brand-new school with brand-new students and brand-new teachers at the ripe old age of seventeen. Your strategy is not to fall through the door looking like you've just crawled out of a duck pond wearing a jacket that smells like a dishcloth. That wasn't how things had played out in my head while I was lying in bed that morning, anyway.

Mr. Allen looked up from his desk as he heard the door click shut.

“Are you Penman?”

“That's me, sir.”

“OK, well you're late,” he said, like I didn't already know. “Just find an empty seat and someone will fill you in on what you've missed. Class, this is Penman, he's just transferred.”

“Where from, the aquarium?”

There's always one smart-ass in the class, and this one was a guy with slicked-back dark hair, grinning and balancing on two legs of his chair with his feet on the table at the back of the room. There was a bit of sniggering from a few of the other students as I navigated my way across the floor, looking for an empty space in the already packed classroom. When I eventually spotted one and pulled the chair out from under the two-seater desk, the dark-haired guy piped up again from two rows behind me.

“Not there!”

This time I turned around and met his stare, which was clearly designed to intimidate. Then I smiled sweetly, turned my back on him, slowly continued dragging the chair out and sat down. That's the way, Jack, I told myself, pulling my textbook out of my bag, start as you mean to go on.
This
time at
this
school was going to be different—I'd promised myself that. No trouble, no being pushed around, no compromising or trying to fit
in just to be accepted. And no getting your head kicked in. Definitely no getting your head kicked in.

The classroom itself was smart and modern. Much more so than the rooms at my other school, which seemed antiquated compared to this one. I clocked a couple of very nice Canon cameras on tripods in one corner, and a row of spanking-new MacBooks lined up on the workbench along the far wall. The students seemed interested in what they were doing, too, which was a good sign. In my last media studies class no one listened to a word the teacher said and three of the cameras were stolen on the first week of term, so all in all this class seemed like it might be an excellent one to take, and with my AS levels coming up, I needed as many good classes as I could get.

Once I'd settled down at the desk, I turned to say a quick hi to the person I was sharing it with. You see, that was the other thing I'd promised myself—to make more friends at St. Joseph's and not be the reclusive geek I'd been at Charlton Academy. Anyway, that was when I saw her: blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, the most kissable mouth turned up in a half-smile. Literally the most stunning girl I'd ever set eyes on.

“Oh wow! Er, hello.”

At first glance, she seemed to have an air of effortless cool about her: the long-sleeved black and white striped T-shirt under a denim dress that kind of looked like dungarees but with a skirt instead of trousers, the funky
silver rings shimmering on both hands, the bright red Converse. It all looked so right.

It was clear that I hadn't been expecting anyone like her when I'd turned around; in fact it showed big time.

“I'm, er . . . hi. I'm Jack . . . Jack . . . Jack . . .”

What was my name again?

“Jack Penman is who I am, and that's my name.”

The girl looked through me like I was a total weirdo.

“You're dripping,” she said.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“You're dripping on my
Gatsby
.”

Slightly puzzled by this declaration, I looked down at the desk and noticed the small pool of water gathering on a well-thumbed paperback copy of
The Great Gatsby
. It fast became clear that the water in question was actually dripping off my hair, running down my nose and . . . well, you can guess the rest.

“Oh damn, I'm really sorry,” I said. “I got caught in the rain.”

“Never,” she said sarcastically, but then her half-smile blossomed into a full one and I was properly in love.

Like an idiot I picked up her wet book and shook it, sending the rainwater flying everywhere.

“Now I'm as wet as you, thanks,” she said.

“Sorry.”

It suddenly dawned on me that my relationship with this heavenly creature, whoever she was, had probably
begun and ended all in those few short seconds, but my suffering was short-lived as Mr. Allen stood up and addressed the class. He wasn't badly dressed for a teacher, and actually didn't look that much older than most of his students.

“All right, everyone, listen up. For this term's main project I'm going to need you to work in pairs. So this morning you're going to have to find yourselves a study partner, and I'd like you to do it quickly and quietly.”

I turned slowly to meet the eyes of the girl next to me again.

“Don't even think about it, Jack Penman,” she said sternly.

Oh well, at least she remembered my name. Then her expression cracked and she started to giggle, putting her hand out for me to shake.

“I'm Ella,” she said. “Ella Foster.”

“Hi there, Ella Foster.”

“So do you want to partner up for this project then, new boy?” she said.

“That would be . . . yeah, cool.”

You never want to sound too eager in that kind of scenario, do you?

“OK, brill. Let's do it,” she said.

So my initial instincts had been right. This was definitely going to be an excellent class to take.

Austin Slade had been in Mr. Allen's media production class that morning, but I didn't notice him till later in the day. It was lunchtime and I was making my big entrance into the sixth-form common room, which was clearly the hub of the entire school; totally different to the dry atmosphere of the communal areas of my previous school. In contrast, the St. Joe's common room was busy and bright, with a coffee machine
and
a snack machine, plus there was a huge amount of chat and noise, loads going on, and it was all happening to a soundtrack of Radio 1's
Live Lounge
playing merrily away in the background. Nice, you know? All in all it seemed like a pretty cool place, but at the same time maybe a bit intimidating, especially when you're the new kid. Ah, but hang on a minute. I stopped that thought in its tracks and had a little word with myself. No, Jack, there isn't going to be any of that crap. No intimidation this time, remember? Just walk into the room like it's yours; like you own the place. Start as you mean to go on, mate.

There were various cliques of kids dotted around the common room and I amused myself for a while trying to decipher which clique was which and, more crucially, what the pecking order might be. The “populars” were a mix of boys and girls, and mostly Year 13, I'd say at a guess. Their general demeanor was cool, calm and collected and they were easy to spot by the whiteness of their teeth and their immaculately ironed, expensive-looking clothes. The boys in this group all seemed to
have that hair that looks effortlessly swept forward and messy but they've actually spent four and a half hours fiddling about with it in the mirror, applying just the right amount of fresh-out-of-bed-look surfer-dude hair fudge. The girls were mostly of the hot variety and looked as though they'd just jumped out of a make-up artist's chair and were about to step in front of a camera. If, as a new student, you could get in with any one clique, this lot would be the prize. Just by looking at them you could tell that not only did they know where it was happening, they were mostly the people that
made
it happen.

Close to them—but not too close—were what I'd call the fringe group. This was a smaller group of kids who clearly lived in the shadow of the popular group and basically followed the same principles but weren't really all that popular and their teeth weren't as white. This was a noisier, more attention-grabbing crowd, the girls generally showing a bit more flesh and yakking a lot louder about what they'd been doing the previous night, and the boys swearing every other word so they looked hard. Then there were the usual scattered cells of athletes, geeks, hipster kids and loners. Standard, really.

As I stood at the door, I pondered on which of these random groups might spot me and invite me over to join them. Maybe none of them would. Maybe it would be a repeat performance of Charlton Academy, where I spent ninety percent of the time with only a laptop for company. I was lost in thought, reminding myself of my
pledge to make more of an effort to be social, when I heard someone shouting at me.

“Penman! Oi, Penman! Come over here, man.”

I scanned the room to see which of the cliques the yelling might be coming from. I knew it wasn't going to be the popular kids—they were much too cool to shout across the room at anyone—and it obviously wasn't the sporty lads in their Adidas tracksuits, or the small nest of vampires dressed in black in the far corner, or even the . . .

“Penman! Over here!”

Of course. It had to be . . . the geeks.

“Over here, man.”

To be fair, the kid shouting at me didn't look all that geeky, but the rest of his associates were the quintessential school boffins. I made my way toward them.

“Austin is the name,” the kid said, sticking out his hand.

As I went to shake it, he pulled it away quick and pushed it through his floppy hair.

“Funny,” I said, not really laughing.

“I saw you in media production earlier,” Austin said, grinning. “Are you into all that stuff? Filming, editing, videos and all that?”

He nodded toward his small group of pals, who were lounging over a small sofa and a couple of leather armchairs.

“We are. Plus games, of course. Anything techy, really.”

“Yeah, that's my thing too, a hundred percent,” I said.

“Cool beans, Penman. Well, you looked a bit lost standing in that doorway just now, so I thought you could do with a few introductions.”

I nodded. “Sweet, thanks.”

Austin playfully slapped the head of a boy sitting in front of him.

“This here is my man Sai,” he said. “He's from Sri Lanka.”

“Wow. That must take a while on the bus, mate,” I said.

I noticed the pretty girl in a beanie hat sitting next to him start sniggering.

“No, I live in Hemel Hempstead,” Sai said, dead serious, causing much laughter within the small group.

Austin continued, unfazed.

“Anyway, Penman, I noticed you were sitting next to
the
most smokin' babe in the class earlier.”

I scowled back at him. Smokin' babe? Seriously? Mind you, his remark, however cringeworthy, did stir a flickering reminder of the girl in question. Ella Foster. And what a nice flickering reminder it was.

“Yeah, she's OK,” I said, as if I'd hardly noticed.

“She's more than OK,” Sai muttered under his breath.

Austin turned his attention to the girl next to Sai, who was still sniggering.

“And this is—”

“Ava,” she said, jumping up and sticking out her hand. “I'm Ava, and you're Jack, right?”

I noticed that underneath the beanie hat, her hair was a washed-out pastel lilac color, and she was wearing black fingerless woolen gloves—indoors, and it wasn't even cold. I ignored this quirk and shook her hand anyway.

“That's right, I'm Jack. I just transferred from—”

“Why?” she barked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you transfer? Did you do something terrible in your last school? Were you forced to leave?”

“Er, I . . .”

“My cousin Dermot laced the fruit punch at his school prom with vodka,” she said, “and after five glasses of it, he tried to snog his chemistry teacher outside the gym, but she tripped over some bunting and fell backward down the stairs and broke her tibia. Was it that sort of thing, the reason you were forced out?”

“I . . . I wasn't forced out.” I laughed nervously.

“Well it must have been something,” she said, “or why change schools in Year Twelve? That seems quite unintelligent to me.”

“It
was
something,” I said firmly, “but not that.”

“Yeah, sorry, this is our Ava,” Austin interjected. “She's pretty much a genius but sometimes a little outspoken, you get me?”

Ava made a sudden move closer to me and looked me dead in the eye.