by Oli White
‘Yeah, we’re a pretty tricky bunch, us management types; I feel your pain, Jack,’ she said. ‘But aren’t AJ and your management team helping with all this stuff?’
‘They are, but this last week AJ’s been out in LA dealing with the festival organisers and sponsors and God knows what. I’m really conscious of time and … I don’t know. It’s just much bloody harder than I thought it would be.’
Ava stepped forward. ‘You have such a great roster of artists at your disposal, Suki, and you know everyone …’
‘Not everyone, just most people.’ Suki laughed. ‘So what do you need, guys? I mean, I could help you with ideas and maybe pull some favours with the artists I know. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds pretty decent,’ Austin said.
‘I’d have to look into it all,’ Suki went on, ‘but why don’t we start with me sitting down with Jack, and you could talk me through some of the artists you’re thinking about. Go from there. Look, I’m absolutely certain we can get a couple of great acts on board. It’s what I’m good at.’
That was one of the things I liked about Suki – her confidence. She knew her strengths and she wasn’t afraid to let people know exactly what they were. It’s something I still didn’t totally have a grasp of, even after everything that had happened the previous year. Sure, I was getting much better at it. Better at believing in myself. But sometimes – just sometimes – when I felt like I was roaming a little too far out of my comfort zone, I still sensed the shadow of that insecure, bullied kid who had to start all over again at a new school. I just didn’t let any of the others see it, that’s all.
Ella leaned over and grabbed Suki in a hug, with Ava nervously following suit.
‘That’s great, Suki,’ Ella said. ‘There’s just so much to think about, and maybe we’re a bit out of practice with all the madness.’
‘Out of practice how?’ Suki said, jumping out of her chair. ‘God, the amount you lot have achieved on your own is incredible. Don’t lose sight of that.’
‘What Ella means is we let go of the reins to a large extent during exams,’ Austin said. ‘Yeah, we did a couple of great interviews to keep the profile up, but … I don’t know. Maybe we’re just not going in with enough confidence. Maybe the people we’re talking to consider GenNext to be last year’s big thing and now they’re looking for something new.’
‘Oh God, we’re Myspace,’ Sai said.
‘Shut up! We are not last year’s news,’ I said, defusing what was fast becoming a major panic. ‘Ella’s right, though. We’ve been resting on our laurels a little bit, but let’s leave that in the past. With Suki’s help we’ll be rocking again, right?’
Suki grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair. ‘Jack’s right. This Total Festival is totally my thing, excuse the pun. OK, I’ve got to dash off to meet a mate now, but I’ll deffo plunder my contacts later. I reckon I’ve got a couple of artists on my roster that could generate huge interest and help make the GenNext Total Youth stage the place to be at the festival.’
‘Any big names?’ Sai said, his eyebrows shooting up and down.
‘You really only need one reasonably big name, Sai, just for the kudos and the publicity and to pull in the sponsors,’ Suki said. ‘And let’s face it, the super-big names are going to be on the main stage anyway.’
‘True dat,’ Austin said.
Suki’s eager brown eyes darted from one of us to the next. When they landed on Ava, I’m pretty sure I noticed Suki’s cheeks redden slightly. ‘OK, that’s all settled then.’
‘Great,’ Ava said, rather too breezily, and I wondered if she really meant it.
Once Suki had exited HQ, the five of us forged ahead with even more purpose. Ava and Sai busied themselves with ideas for the big announcement to our viewers, and Austin finally unveiled his brilliant new special edition GenNext logo.
After a string of late nights, however, I was running on fumes by mid-afternoon, and it was only when I felt Ella gently shaking me that I realised I’d fallen asleep in the middle of writing an email.
‘Why don’t you call it a day?’ she said as I prised my cheek away from the glass top of my desk. ‘You’re no good to anyone like this.’
I puffed out a massive sigh and shook my head. ‘Too much to finish. Besides, it’s not fair with everyone else doing their bit, is it?’
She grabbed a nearby chair and sat down close to me, smiling wearily. ‘I’m as knackered as you are, Jack. Maybe if we both go home, we could have a power nap and then I could come over to yours and watch some Netflix. Get takeaway. Just do something normal for once.’
‘You mean like a date night?’
Ella wiggled her eyebrows. ‘Exactly.’
‘And can I choose the box set?’ I said, sleepily.
‘You can choose the box set,’ Ella said.
‘And can I have a kebab?’
‘You cannot have a kebab,’ Ella said. ‘But I’ll allow Domino’s or, if you’re very good, Nando’s.’
Ella’s idea sounded deliciously appealing, but then I glanced around the room: Austin printing out dozens of his new logos and plastering them all over the wall; Ava on the phone giving hell to a merchandise company; Sai banging away at his keyboard with a very intense expression on his face, writing God knows what. When I looked back at Ella, I suspected she was thinking the same thing as I was. ‘It’s not going to happen, is it, this date night?’
‘I fear not,’ she said, pushing her long blonde hair out of her eyes and flipping it back over her shoulder. ‘It’s a nice dream, but …’
‘… but let’s get on with our work, right?’
Ella nodded, kissed me softly on the mouth and then wheeled herself backwards towards her desk a few feet away.
As it turned out, I got home even later than usual that night. The house was in darkness so I crept in, quietly slipping off my trainers and dropping my bag gently in the hall in case I woke Mum and Dad. Half asleep, I grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen, but as I made for the door to head upstairs, the security light in the garden flashed on. I imagined it was probably a fox that had set it off, but I wanted to make sure. As I turned back towards the garden, I noticed that the patio doors were slightly ajar. Putting down my glass, I stepped outside, to find Dad sitting in one of his brand-new garden recliners. He was obviously miles away, because he didn’t hear me approaching.
‘Dad?’ Given his regular early starts, he was the last person I expected to see stargazing at 3 a.m. ‘What are you doing sitting out here? It’s not even that warm.’
He looked like he’d been shaken out of a daze; almost like he was as surprised to see me in our own back garden as I was him. ‘Oh! Hello, Jack. I didn’t … You’re late.’
‘I’m always late these days. It’s the festival preparations,’ I said. ‘But you should be in bed, shouldn’t you? You’re up in about four hours.’
He did a little half-laugh. ‘Oi, I’m supposed to be the dad here.’ Then I watched as his face fell back into a sombre stare.
‘Is everything all right, Dad? Have you had a row with Mum or something? Is that why you’re out here?’
Dad shook his head. ‘Don’t be daft; when do we ever row?’
This was true; they were more likely to be seen having a cheeky vomit-inducing smooch in the corner than an argument. Then an unsettling notion began worming its way into my mind. ‘It’s not anything to do with Mum’s health, is it, Dad? There hasn’t been any … any news?’
‘No, son, not at all.’ Dad shook his head. ‘Your mother’s fine; please don’t worry about that. I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all.’
I muttered a silent thank you, relief sweeping through me. It was then I noticed the semi-crumpled letter in Dad’s hand, the white envelope in his lap.
‘What’s that, a tax bill?’ I said.
He looked down at the letter and then back up at me. ‘Oh … no. This is just … some bloody irritating client who’s giving me grief about … something
that’s really nothing to do with me, to be honest.’
There was something strangely vague about his manner, but he didn’t look like he was in the mood to be pushed.
‘A client writing a letter instead of an email; that’s pretty old-school, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Couldn’t he at least upgrade to a fax machine?’
Dad managed a smile and then got up from the chair. ‘You’re right – I should be asleep, and so should you. Night, Jack; make sure you get to bed soon.’
‘I will do, Dad. Night.’ I watched him as he drifted into the kitchen. He seemed a bit more … weary than usual. It was weird.
As tired as I was, it took me ages to get to sleep after that. I was unsettled but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I mean, Dad’s explanation of why he was sitting outside at three in the morning was straightforward enough – he couldn’t sleep, right? The only thing was, he was fully dressed, so it looked like he hadn’t even tried. A year ago I probably wouldn’t even have given it a second thought, but after Mum’s cancer I found it difficult to take anything at face value. Her illness had rocked my otherwise strong sense of security and reassurance as far as my parents were concerned, and sometimes I wondered whether I’d ever fully get it back.
Eventually I drifted off and had a good long sleep, and by the time I left the house the following morning, heading for HQ, I’d decided to put Dad’s odd behaviour and post-midnight weirdness out of my mind. Let’s face it, with the festival looming and still so much to achieve, I had quite enough on my plate.
THE COUNTDOWN
The festival was upon us so fast that it made my head spin. It was getting hotter and hotter outside, with summer well under way, but true to form, the GenNext crew barely saw daylight as we continued to pull everything together. The month of brainstorming, liaising and negotiating felt like it was happening on fast forward, but at the same time I don’t think I’d ever felt more alive.
Suki settled back in with the gang brilliantly, and my initial concerns about her and Ava being all weird and ex-coupley around one another turned out to be unfounded – as far as I could tell they were getting along just fine. Suki proved her worth right off the bat, securing a couple of our wild-card bands – Beautiful Creatures and The Way We Live – super-fast, via her contacts. OK, so they weren’t superstar names yet, but both bands had been getting a hell of a lot of media attention and had recently received the Zane Lowe seal of approval on Beats 1, which was good enough for me. In fact, the online announcement about these additions to our Total Youth line-up was the catalyst for a whole slew of amazing stuff.
Just two and a half nail-biting weeks before the festival, what started out like any other Tuesday turned out to be the day everything ramped up a notch – several notches.
It seemed like a pretty standard start to the morning as I headed along the hall towards Austin’s basement, the sound of Miles’s customary grumbling about the amount of coffee runs he’d been sent on the previous day drifting up the stairs as I descended.
‘Seven times, Austin! Seven!’ Miles, still in his pyjamas, was marching around the room after his brother, who couldn’t have looked less interested. ‘Is that all I am to you people, a tea boy or a kitchen maid? Yeah, that’s it … I’m a maid. It’s like Downton Abbey around here.’
‘Morning, guys, everything all right?’ I said, still trying to wake up. ‘Is there any coffee?’
Miles gave me the stink eye. ‘You lot need to find me some other stuff to do or I’m staging a one-man mutiny.’
‘I’m not in the mood for this, Miles,’ Austin said, not even looking around at his brother. ‘If you don’t want to be involved, then don’t be.’
Miles spun around and stalked towards the door, snarling up at me as he pushed past. ‘Good luck with him today; he’s had a massive row with you-know-who.’
‘Jess?’ I suggested.
‘No, Jack, Kim Kardashian,’ he said and swept out of the room.
AJ was back at the helm by then, and by the time he and the rest of the crew made it down to HQ that morning, it was so full of the boxes of promotional GenNext T-shirts we’d had especially made that we could hardly move. I was just attempting to clear a space around my desk when I heard the ping go off on Suki’s MacBook. That was when things started getting crazy.
First off, Ava took a look at the email over Suki’s shoulder and then started bouncing up and down like a maniac.
‘OH. MY. GOD.’ Her eyes were out on stalks.
‘What?’ Sai said, jumping up. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Only Laura Harris!’ Ava shrieked.
‘Oh, now that’s cool,’ Ella said approvingly. ‘Very cool.’
‘Who?’ Austin said, scratching his chin.
‘She’s an Aussie EDM DJ-producer based in LA,’ Suki said. She wasn’t leaping around like Ava was, but I could tell she was pretty happy with what she’d just read. ‘She’s supported The Weeknd and Disclosure … she’s played at all the big dance festivals …’
‘And she’s hot,’ Ava said. Suki raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.
‘And she’s in?’ I said.
‘Yep! She’s in,’ Suki said.
AJ narrowed his eyes and smiled. ‘Are you sure you’re not after my job, Suki?’
Suki winked and blew him a kiss. ‘You’d better stay on your toes, old man.’
‘I’m twenty-nine!’ AJ laughed.
Austin shrugged like he was unimpressed by it all. ‘Yeah, but this Laura bird; is she big enough to be our big name?’
‘She’s pretty bloody big, Austin,’ Suki said, clearly unimpressed by his attitude.
‘Well, I haven’t heard of her,’ he said, killing everyone’s buzz.
‘It’s not all about Justin and Kanye, Austin,’ Ava snapped. ‘For a start, artists of that magnitude are never going to play on the third biggest stage at a festival, even if it is a massively famous one, and besides that, we need a more boutique feel to the Total Youth stage; something more cutting-edge. That’s the whole point! It’s about having artists that speak to our audience.’
‘She’s right, mate,’ I said. ‘This is all good.’
He shrugged and turned his back on the rest of us. ‘OK! You all know best, apparently.’
I watched as he kicked aside a few boxes of merchandise and sat down at his computer. Obviously the latest row with Jess had left its mark, but to be honest, it was hard to keep up with them. I mean, only a couple of days earlier he’d been telling me about the romantic night in he’d spent with her – with way too much detail, I might add. Maybe he was just extra tired. I made a mental note to grab a quiet moment with him later and make sure he was OK, before the Total Festival mania completely took over my brain again.
By five that afternoon I was knackered and ready for some fresh air; a brief escape from the windowless whitewashed rectangle I felt as though I’d been living in for the past few weeks. Ella followed me up the stairs and outside, and when I sat on the front wall of Austin’s house, she sat down next to me, resting her head on my shoulder.
‘So what’s been your main task of the day?’ I asked, putting my arm around her.
‘Oh, I’ve mostly been looking at shoes,’ Ella laughed.
‘Of course you have.’
‘And holidays,’ she went on. ‘I looked at holidays. Because after all this is done, I want to go on a really awesome expensive holiday.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yes. Somewhere exotic; just the two of us, Jack. Somewhere there’s sand, sea and a beautiful beach dwelling of some description.’
‘What, no internet?’
She gave me a playful head-butt. ‘Where’s your sense of romance?’
‘I think I left it in the back of an Uber about a week ago,’ I grinned.
Ella looked up at me, the bridge of her nose crinkling in that incredibly sexy way it did. ‘It is going to work, isn’t it – all this? We will be able to pull it off?’
‘Of course we will,’ I said.
‘Although some days I do feel like we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, you know?’
Ella nodded, her head moving against my shoulder. ‘You’re not worried, though?’
‘No. Why, do I look it?’
‘Not as such – but you do seem a bit distracted at times,’ she said.
My mind flashed back to Dad sitting in the garden in the middle of the night, acting all weird. I’d done my best to shove thoughts of it to some deep, dark corner of my mind, but there had been something distinctly off about his behaviour ever since. It was like he had this constant faraway look in his eye, and it was bugging me. But was it that obvious? Was this the distraction Ella was seeing in me? I don’t know why I was surprised she’d noticed. Ella was just about the most perceptive person I’d ever met. That was what was so great about our relationship: nothing got past her, and whenever I felt a bit low or crappy, she always said exactly the thing I wanted to hear before I even knew I wanted to hear it.
‘Actually, if I’m distracted, it’s nothing to do with GenNext or the festival,’ I said.
‘Then what?’
‘Well, Austin for a start,’ I said, deflecting the real issue. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with him and Jess but he’s being really negative today. It’s not great for general morale, is it?’
‘And what else?’ she said, immediately sussing that I wasn’t telling her the whole story. ‘Come on, you can tell me.’
‘My dad’s been acting a bit … off,’ I admitted hesitantly.
‘Your dad? That’s random. What kind of off?’
‘Well, a week or so ago I found him reading a letter in the garden at three in the morning, looking all stressed, and since then he’s been really … I don’t know … cagey. I can’t put my finger on it, Ella.’