Survival Show by JUNO DAWSON, author of ‘Her Majesties Royal Coven’, is a new YA thriller where the main character enters Starmaker, a deadly TV show where if you lose, you’re eliminated – Literally!
Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Taryn Beck and her family don’t have much, and her younger brother needs vital medication to survive. Medication they can’t access or afford. Taryn secretly enters Starmaker, the most watched reality TV show in the world.
The rules are simple; ten young women from all over the globe compete to join an all-singing, all-dancing pop group. If they win, a life of luxury and wealth awaits . . . But there’s a catch: the five eliminated contestants are literally eliminated.
Taryn soon realises that reality TV is far from real – as she and her fellow trainees are pitted against each other in cruel challenges, she is determined to expose this brutal regime and destroy Starmaker from the inside.
Get ready for the performance of Taryn’s life.
**********
EXTRACT
I can’t cook. I can’t mend motors. I can’t even steal, so it seems I have two talents: I have trained my bladder to hold out for six hours so I never have to pee in the rancid toilets at school, and I can sing.
Only one of these skills will come in handy tonight.
Tonight, it’s Merrill Saunders’ fiftieth birthday party. The festivities have fallen on what Mum always used to call Fools’ Spring; the two or three clear, dry days in March when you can kid yourself that winter is in retreat. Pessimist that I am, I know it won’t last, but for this evening, at least, it’s warm enough to make a campfire, risk the rations and sing. I tune my guitar by ear and wait for my audience to settle.
I hope I never get bored of singing. I hope people never get bored of hearing me sing. I know it’s arrogant, but I really am good at this one thing and I love doing it. I think that’s pretty lucky. I sometimes catch myself thinking about singing, how odd it is. Using your voice to make tunes is mad when you consider it. Did we learn from the birds, or vice versa? If I think about it too long, my head feels weird.
All I know is music is magic. I know it makes my heart float up a little higher in my chest; and I know it makes this desolate armpit we call home bearable. For good and bad, music reminds me of Mum. She was a singer too. She used to say that if I wasn’t singing, she knew I was ill and not just trying to get out of PE.
I can use this little bit of magic to help the settlement. I sing for them. I sing for Jenson because if I don’t, I’ll wail. I feel so guilty. We failed him today. As it snaps and crackles, the fire casts ghoulish shadows across my brother’s face. He looks puffy, bloated somehow. He sits, sandwiched between Molly and Dad.
‘Get on with it, wee Taryn!’ Merrill Saunders brays, clutching a cider. ‘I’m freezing my arse off out here.’
‘Okay, okay!’ I wouldn’t want to let a bit of crippling anxiety about my brother dying spoil her big day. Some settlers start calling out requests. The older refugees like the classics: Beyoncé or Adele, while the children like whatever is doing the rounds on Network G. But I know Jenson likes N-TRU5T so I start with an acoustic version of their ballad, ‘Me Without You’.
‘This is for Jenson. I hope you’re feeling better soon,’ I say and an expectant hush falls over the camp.
It could be your smile,
or the way that you drive;
it might be your eyes
or the times when you spiral;
it’s true,
There won’t be a me without you . . .
I don’t doubt that the boyband wrote this song for their army of teenage girl fans, but tonight it’s about my brother. He was born sick. We have always fought for him. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t fighting for him.
I’m a Betweenie, the generation that came between the war and the floods. Jenson is a Waterbaby, born after the seasurges devoured most of the south coast, driving us north of
the border.
The long summer nights,
we laugh when we fight;
lazy long Sundays,
together on Mondays so blue.
There won’t be a me without you.
I catch his eyes through the bonfire flames, and it’s locked in. It’s a promise.
I play until after midnight, when my throat is raw and I put my foot down after several rounds of one more song. Poor Jenson looks shattered, and we peel away from the now quite merry birthday party in the direction of our unit. Tobey Faraday falls into step alongside me. His hand-me down clothes are much too big for him. His skinny neck pokes out of his dad’s old coat like a turtle’s head emerging from its shell. ‘That was really lovely, Taryn.’
‘Thanks, Tobey.’
‘Would you maybe like to, like, you know, jam sometime? I play the keyboard.’
I don’t catch the laugh before it pops out. I have heard him sing. Sad-boy-anthems with a lot of emotive hand gestures. ‘Sorry, I . . . the word jam threw me.’ He looks hurt. I know – because my sister is sure to remind me daily – that Tobey has a crush on me. It’ll pass. He’s only fifteen, a year older than Jenson. ‘I think I might be a solo artiste at heart.’
He looks crushed. ‘Okay. Got it. Maybe I can play you my stuff sometime?’
The rest of my family has arrived at our unit and I want the night to be over. ‘Sure.’ I mean it. I take pity on the boy. Enough people had to suffer my early attempts at song-writing. I’ll pay it forward. ‘Night, Tobey.’
He heads back to his family’s unit and I weave my way through the grid system to catch up with Molly and Dad. The QE II camp was supposed to be temporary housing; somewhere for us to wait while the Scottish parliament sorted out permanent addresses for English refugees.
The units are ugly, single-storey trailers, fifty of them, all standing on small stilts to avoid rainwater. When we were little, and it was dry, we would crawl into the space underneath them, hiding from each other or playing commandos. We didn’t mind that rats the size of terriers made their home there. These days, I’m astounded at how devil-may-care we were about the disease they spread. What were we thinking? I’m oddly nostalgic for an era when I didn’t know what Weil’s disease was. I head inside. The evening is warm enough to save on generator fuel for a night. The solar panels on the roof are worse than useless for nine months of the year. It’s Scotland.
‘Right, you lot,’ Dad commands with a clap of his hands. ‘Straight to bed. No arguments, I mean it.’
The mere thought of the six a.m. alarm is dreadful. Mol and Dad are up at dawn for the shuttlebus to the construction site, while Jenson and I have school. My grades are just good enough that I’m allowed to study until eighteen rather than having to enlist in either the army or Labourforce. I tell Dad that I need a minute to let the performance adrenaline subside, and he permits me to stay up if I make us both a chamomile tea. Deal.
The main room of our unit is a poky kitchen-dining-living room space with a built-in table and benches. As I clatter around at the kitchen end, Dad turns on the little TV screen set into the wall over the dining area. Network G news. I don’t know how he can watch that stuff before bed: dengue fever in Central Europa; nuclear bickering between India and Pakistan; the Pure Nation Party winning the Red States election. Enough to give anyone nightmares.
I hand Dad his mug as he frowns at his crappy old phone. In this family, we do hand-me-ups, not hand-me-downs. I gave that handset to Mol before she gave it to Dad. He swears under his breath and slams down the phone.
‘What’s up?’ I slip under the table to sit opposite him.
He rubs his stubbled jaw and lowers his voice. ‘Nothing.’ I glare because he’s lying. ‘There’s more issues with Pharmaid.’
Oh, I know, but I play along. Molly and I vowed that Dad would never find out what we were planning with the delivery van. ‘What now?’
‘Something about the floods in Europa meaning delivery is being prioritized over there.’
‘They’re not sending anything?’ I ask, incredulous.
‘They’re saying delays, whatever that means.’
When the UK voted to be independent from Europa, is this what they had in mind? ‘Do we have enough to get by?’
We both know what I mean. ‘We might need to halve his dosage.’
Nope. Not an option. Any lingering joy from the campfire is rinsed in a second. Without his meds, my brother runs the risk of needing a liver transplant. He’s been on the waiting list since he was eight, so the odds of one miraculously being available in the next fortnight seem slim. ‘What about the charity application?’
‘Nothing. I guess there’s the Doctor Lottery.’
Since I turned sixteen, I’ve joined my sister and dad in entering the weekly prize draw. If you get all six numbers, you get a private operation in a fancy hospital. Any surgeon, any surgery. ‘I read somewhere that there’s a greater probability of being attacked by a shark than there is of winning the lottery.’
‘Is the shark medically trained?’ Dad asks and I manage a wry smile. ‘Anyway, we can’t afford to enter any more times than we already do.’ I hear the guilt in his voice at having to include his daughters in this ongoing struggle. With Mum gone, Molly and I had to grow up pretty fast. It has never felt like duty and I have zero regrets. Jenson needs us, simple as that. It is what it is.
My father rests his head in his hands on the canary-yellow Formica table. ‘What about Project Population?’
I blink and lean forward in case I’ve heard incorrectly.
‘Excuse me?’
He looks at me, eyes pink-rimmed and bloodshot. ‘It’s a lot of money, Taryn.’
‘Oh shut up . . .’
He goes on. ‘No, you shut up. I am Dad, you are daughter. The payout would cover private healthcare and then some. Set you guys up until—’
‘No!’ I slap my hand on the table and Molly emerges from our bedroom.
‘What’s the drama?’ Mol scowls, toothpaste on her spots.
‘Dad wants to go to Project Population.’
‘NO.’ My big sister is even more no-nonsense than I am. ‘If anyone’s going to the project, it’s me.’
I swear very loudly.
Dad rolls his eyes. ‘What are you talking about? I’ll get more than you will.’
True. It’s a very simple system. Five hundred English dollars for every year you’ve been alive. The reasoning is that the elderly put a greater strain on the system, so they’re incentivized to retire. It’s quick; it’s painless; it’s lucrative. And it’s so popular that the programme has been adopted around the world. It’s cheaper for the government to kill you than it is to care for you.
I was young, but I remember the prime minister standing outside New Downing Street to make the announcement. With carefully choreographed ‘caring’ hand gestures, he explained that desperate measures were needed once the supply chains began to crumble. We were told there simply wasn’t enough food to go around, not enough hospital beds to care for the sick.
See, I find that doubtful, now, given how well-fed the Prime Minister looked at that podium. I’m not convinced he and his family are living off ration boxes, whatever the news-reels say.
‘It’s not what Jenson would want,’ I say, keeping my voice low. The last thing he needs is this on his plate. ‘Or us. Dad, we can’t do this without you. We already lost . . .’ I don’t need to say the last word.
Molly gets herself a glass of water. ‘I’ll speak to Trent Davis,’ she mutters, not looking us in the eye.
I swear again. ‘Are you insane?’
‘Better ideas?’
I glare at her across the unit. ‘He’s scum. He’s a drug dealer, Mol.’
She looks at me like I’m dense. ‘We need drugs.’
‘No!’ We all turn to see Jenson lingering in the threshold to his box room. ‘No one is talking to Trent, and no one is applying for Project Population. Not yet, anyway. I will. When I turn eighteen.’
A sentence so ghastly we’re all frozen for a second. Then I go to him, but he holds out a hand to bar me. ‘I decided ages ago. I’m a burden.’
To hear him say those words makes me want to punch a hole in these flimsy walls. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. It is not your fault you’re ill. It’s not your fault the free hospitals are falling to pieces. Nothing is your fault.’
‘It’d be easier for everyone,’ he says, holding his chin high. ‘I shouldn’t even be here anyway.’
It’s true. Just eighteen months after he was born, the two-child cap was introduced.
Dad pulls him into a hug. ‘I don’t want to live in a world without you, son.’
I wrap my arms around them both and, in turn, feel Mol’s body press against my back. If nothing else, we are a unit in our unit.
I can’t sleep. Eventually I give up and tiptoe from our bedroom into the living area. I don’t turn on any lights. I tuck my bare legs under me and plug my phone in to charge. It only really functions if it’s attached to power but I hate using the generator more than I have to. I’m about to open the Network G app to watch some brainless reality drivel until I get sleepy, but I see that I have a little red number 1 in my inbox. Probably from one of my teachers reminding me about an assignment due date. I’m tired so I have to read the subject header a couple of times before I can process it. I hold the phone closer to my face to check that I’m not imagining things. I have one unread email and it’s from Starmaker.
It’s so long since I applied, I forgot I ever submitted my audition. It was what? Four months ago? At least.
Congratulations TARYN BECK
Thank you for submitting your audition video. We’re pleased to say your application was successful and we’d love to learn more about you!
Click HERE to arrange a video call with one of Team
Starmaker.
Your life changes right here, TARYN!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juno Dawson is a #1 Sunday Times (London) bestselling novelist, screenwriter, and journalist and a columnist for Attitude magazine. Juno’s books include the global bestsellers This Book Is Gay and Clean, and the series Her Majesty’s Royal Coven. She also writes for television and has multiple shows in development both in the UK and US. Juno grew up in West Yorkshire, writing imaginary episodes of Doctor Who. She later turned her talent to journalism, interviewing luminaries such as Steps and Atomic Kitten before writing a weekly serial in a Brighton newspaper. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, The Pool, Dazed, and The Guardian.
Visit Juno Dawson’s website here
0 Comments