Generation Next Read Online Free PDF

kind of self-assurance about her that I could only dream of having, and in the brief moments when we did speak that morning, she looked me in the face and I felt like she meant every word she said. OK, so it was only small talk about the weekend and the mountains of homework we both had, but there was an honesty about her that fascinated me. She most definitely wasn’t a girl who just spouted words for the sake of it, and I liked that. As the week went on, I spotted her around a few times, just hanging out between lessons or at lunch, and I wasn’t surprised to discover that most of her friends seemed to be of the popular variety. Still, she always waved or smiled and said, “Hey, Jack Penman,” whenever she saw me, and that was good enough for now.
    Later that week I panicked slightly when Ella didn’t turn up for Thursday’s media production lesson and I was left without a study partner for the start of the filming project we’d been assigned. When I heard one of the popular girls say that she was home in bed with mild tonsillitis, I reassured myself that since it was unlikelyyou could still die from mild tonsillitis in this day and age, she would eventually be back in class and I could continue getting to know her better. Then I spent ten minutes googling and reading about tonsillitis, just to make sure that you couldn’t die from it.
    Before I knew it, Austin’s gaming night was on, and with no better offers for that Friday evening, I went along, hoping it might be at least a little more exciting than I’d imagined. Look, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as if I was unhappy about making friends—jeez, I needed to after the disaster of my last school—but a bunch of nerdy tech kids playing computer games wasn’t exactly out of my comfort zone, you know? And the evening that lay ahead certainly couldn’t be put into the category of trying something new.
    As it turned out, Austin and his mates weren’t what I was expecting at all, and I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into his house and his chatty, smiling mum directed me downstairs to where they were all hanging out in a converted cellar. Ducking my head under the low ceiling above the steps, I could hear laughter and music, and once inside I was greeted by three faces who all looked happy to see me.
    “You came.” Austin sounded more than a little surprised. “Come in and get comfy, man.”
    Over by a large TV at one end of the room, Austin’s fourteen-year-old brother Miles was engaged in anintense World of Warcraft battle, while Sai and Ava were hunched in a corner over a MacBook, messing about with what looked like a serious graphics program.
    “So what skulduggery goes on down here?” I asked, looking around at Austin’s neat set-up.
    The whole room was white, including the concrete floor, which had been smoothed over and painted, and there were LED spotlights on the ceiling as well as two or three lava lamps dotted around and a mini-fridge stocked with Diet Cokes, bottled water and cartons of juice. The room was also kitted out with a Sonos speaker system, currently playing Justin Bieber, and there was a desktop with a thirty-two-inch monitor sitting on a table plus several laptops of varying brands and a couple of iPads lying about. This was a pretty sweet den and I was slightly envious that I’d never had a headquarters as cool as this to work and play in.
    “What do you want to do?” Austin said. “These nights were just gaming get-togethers at one stage, a laugh, but now we mostly hang out and work on stuff.”
    “What stuff?” I asked, heading over to see exactly what kind of program Sai and Ava were working with.
    “Well, er . . . if we’ve got school projects to do, we get together and help one another out, and we, er . . . we’ve been trying to come up with ideas for our own project, too.”
    “What kind of project?” I asked.
    “That’s the problem, man,” Sai said, turning around. “We haven’t decided