Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  As I stood at the edge of the stage, about to be shoved into the spotlight, suddenly everything felt wrong. I was anything but ready. I should have spent more time straightening my hair before school. I should have worn my red cashmere sweater instead of my usual black cardigan over a concert t-shirt. I should have warmed up my voice backstage, or at least had a swig of water. Now it was too late to change anything; I was here. It was happening.

  “Our next contestant comes to us all the way from West Hollywood, where she’s a senior in high school and hopes to major in musical theater in college. Please welcome… Allison Burch!”

  I felt two strong hands on my back nudge me forward, and I awkwardly stepped onto the stage. I passed Danny Fuego, the devastatingly handsome, dimpled host of the show, who winked at me and patted me on the shoulder as he stepped behind the red velvet curtain into the backstage area. I would save my freak-out about physical contact with Danny Fuego until a more appropriate moment in time. It was pretty cute that he had joked about the distance I had traveled to be there that day… all of about three miles.

  The music overhead was deafening, and just as I had expected, the lights were so bright that I had to resist the urge to raise my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes. I quickly got my bearings and told myself sternly, this is it. Don’t blow it. There was a smattering of applause, as there was for every new contestant. After a deep breath, I walked to the middle of the stage and clumsily lowered the microphone down to my height. #66 must have been some kind of giant. I couldn’t make out the faces of the coaches, but I could see the shiny eyes and bright blue illuminated mobile phone screens of hundreds of people in the rows and rows of seats in the theater. The entire Dolby Theater was packed. Nothing like a little more pressure.

  “What are you going to sing for us today, Allison?” I heard a male voice ask me from the coaches’ table.

  “I’m going to sing ‘Always Yours’ by Pound,” I said, hearing my voice crack a little as I spoke into the microphone. As the words left my mouth, I leaned forward and realized the person to whom I was speaking was none other than Chase Atwood, the lead singer of Pound. Taylor’s father.

  Instantly my cheeks burned up with embarrassment. The crowd was going wild, and of course they were! What kind of fool gets on stage and announces she’s going to sing one of the coaches’ biggest hits? If I’d known that Chase Atwood was going to be one of the coaches that year, I never would have dared to leave school that day and gotten on the bus to Hollywood. Heck, I never would have even recorded an audition video. The last time I had spoken with Taylor was when she’d called me from a luxury suite at some hotel in Chicago. I’d hastily hung up on her because she had been whining about how much it sucked to be taken shopping at expensive boutiques by her stepmother and order room service every night. Her inability to appreciate how privileged she was had simply been too much for me to tolerate after a long, boring day of blending smoothies.

  If what I’d read in magazines was true, Pound’s tour had been cut short in August because Chase Atwood had entered a rehabilitation program in Malibu to treat his exhaustion. That had only been six weeks ago, but there he was, standing just thirty feet in front of me. He was waiting for me to impress him with my rendition of the song that had cemented his band’s place in history the year I was born. He probably had no recollection of briefly meeting me at his ex-wife’s wake just a few short months ago.

  “Wow. This’ll be the first time someone’s attempted to perform a Pound song this season,” Chase teased me. I sent a swift prayer to heaven for a lightning bolt to strike me down at that very instant and relieve me from actually having to sing. “Do it justice.”

  I heard the first few chords of the song’s introduction play on the overhead sound system, and a shiver rippled through me. I just had to focus. Focus. I had only met Chase once, at the wake for Taylor’s mom at the beginning of the summer, so the possibility that he recognized me as one of his daughter’s friends was slim. In fact, if he had any clue how much I knew about his life through Taylor, he probably would have been the one shaking with anxiety. And now he held the keys to my future; all I had to do was sing this song as well as I could sing it at home alone. There was a reason I had typed its title into my audition RSVP e-mail; I sang the chorus in a harmonized key different from the original version to make it more feminine. However, now that I was standing in the hot spotlight, the riskiness of this approach was obvious.

  All of my dreams were riding on this performance. Singers who made it past this audition in Hollywood were brought back for a twelve-week televised competition, throughout which at-home viewers could vote for their favorites via text message. The winner of the competition won a record deal and a chance at opening for All or Nothing, a wildly popular Irish boy band, on their world tour. I was a little ashamed to admit that I liked their cheesy music, but they were cute. I wanted the opening slot on that tour most of all. I didn’t even realize how desperately I wanted it until I was standing in that spotlight, with all eyes and cameras on me. It was all within reach: the private jets, the screaming fans, the magazine covers.

  But it all started with this song.

  I took a breath and found my voice. The first verse of “Always Yours” told the story of young love, and I sang it softly, as if I were reminiscing, just as Chase Atwood sang it on the original album recording. By the time I reached the end of the second line, I knew I was doing a decent job and was grateful that the lyrics returned to me with ease. The audience was clapping supportively, and I could hear the murmur of people singing along, even though that was strictly forbidden on the show. Thankfully, there weren’t any monitors on the stage allowing me to see the reactions of the coaches. I forgot that they were there as I moved into the refrain, and steadied myself for the chorus. I consciously tried to slow down, inhaled calmly before increasing my volume, and felt warmth radiate from my chest, down my arms, and into my fingertips as I hit all of my notes. The crowd’s applause swelled.

  Fortunately, due to the nature of the show, contestants never had to sing their audition song in its entirety. There was a three-minute limit on auditions, so I only had time to sing the first two verses and the chorus twice before the music faded. The second time I reached the chorus, I lifted the last lyric to an unexpected high note and held it as long as I could to bring a more formal ending to my performance. My voice outlasted the background track, and I held that final note as long as my lungs could sustain it, thrilled by how my perfect pitch washed over the entire theater from floor to ceiling. As soon as I stopped singing, I impulsively raised my hand to my eyes to block out some of the stage lights for a better visual of the audience’s reaction. There was thunderous stomping in the stands, hooting, whistling (which was awesome), and wild clapping.

  Then, what I saw happening at the coaches’ table almost made my heart stop. I saw Nelly Fulsom wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, and Chase Atwood on his feet, clapping appreciatively. To Chase’s left I saw Lenore James, a very famous R&B singer, and next to her sat a short black man who I didn’t recognize, wearing gold chains. Only once I finished did I feel the muscles in my shoulders relax, and I began breathing heavily, trying to recover. It was over. I was practically home free, guaranteed a spot on the show. At least I thought I was. Wasn’t I guaranteed? Had any contestants earlier in the day received such an enthusiastic response to their performance only to be denied a spot in the line-up? Suddenly I was panicking again and knotted my fingers behind my back. I would need a minimum of two coaches to vote for me to continue in the competition, and at least one to request to have me on their team.

  “Allison Burch,” Nelly Fulsom said sternly into the microphone on the table in front of her. “That was simply amazing. Was that your first time on a big stage?”

  “Other than at school, I guess,” I said into the microphone, stunned at how loud my speaking voice suddenly sounded. I was embarrassed to admit that my only role so far in my high school’s drama program h
ad been as the Irish nanny in Mame! It was one of the smallest speaking roles in the entire production, and I had been almost paralyzed with fright every time I opened my mouth to say my lines.

  “Are your parents here with you today?” she asked.

  I hesitated before responding. I might have fudged my age a little on my application to avoid the requirement of having one of my parents sign a release form and accompany me to the audition. “Um, no,” I said. “If I didn’t do well, I didn’t want them to know I’d failed.”

  “Well, honey, you did anything but fail today,” Nelly told me, “and I bet your parents would be real proud of you if they were here right now. I would be honored if you would join us on the show, and particularly if you’d compete on my team.” The crowd roared. My throat swelled so tightly that I wondered if I was going to choke right there, on camera. Thankfully, the broadcast wasn’t live. The producers could edit out my demise if needed.

  Chase sat back down in his chair and scooted forward to reach his microphone. “I have a daughter about your age, and you just made me miss her a whole bunch,” he said. I bit my lower lip. Of course he didn’t know that Taylor and I had bobbed for apples together at Halloween parties, traded Barbies, pushed each other on swings, and made each other friendship bracelets out of embroidery floss from my mom’s sewing kit. The realization that I was potentially going to have to come clean with Chase Atwood about knowing his daughter—and quarreling with her—if I were to make it onto the show hit me like an anvil dropped on my head. “You’ve got my vote, too. When I wrote that song, it was very personal and emotional for me, and you brought all of that sensitivity and energy to your performance. I’d like you to consider joining my team. I think we could turn your potential into something magical.”

  Something just underneath my sternum broke in half, and I couldn’t breathe. I had my two required votes; I’d be on the show! But more incredibly, I had Chase’s complete attention. I knew how badly Taylor had longed for that, even if she had acted like it didn’t bother her that he was so uninvolved in her life before her mom died. Sometimes he would call on her birthday and send postcards from weird tropical islands every few months. He lived on the other side of the country with his new wife. Even though Taylor saw pictures of the two of them dining and cavorting in Los Angeles all the time in celebrity gossip magazines, he never requested to spend time with her when he was in town. And now he wanted me on his team. He wanted to be my mentor. It made me feel victorious and horrible simultaneously.

  Before I had a chance to reply, Lenore James (who was as famous for her comically enormous earrings and messy divorce from a raunchy comedian as she was for her velvety voice) was rambling a mile a minute about what she believed she could do to shape my voice. And then the short guy who I would learn backstage was rap artist Jay Walk was telling me he thought I was hot. He said I had the potential to go all the way to the top.

  “What these other fools aren’t telling you, girl, is that I have my own record label. If you stick with Jay Walk, I can sign you to my label whether you win the grand prize or not. Something to think about,” the rapper was telling me.

  My head was spinning. My vision was blurring. I heard the Center Stage! theme song rising and I knew that the camera was closing in on me, capturing every little twitch of my face as I deliberated which coach’s team to join. The voice of Danny Fuego informed the audience that this was the first time that season in all of the audition cities—New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, and Atlanta—that a contestant had been requested by all four coaches.

  My eyes fell upon Chase Atwood, who was looking directly at me. I couldn’t deny it: Taylor’s dad was what my mom would have referred to as “a hunk.” It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if Taylor’s fancy boarding school classmates constantly hounded her for details about him.

  “This is such a tough decision,” I muttered, sensing tension build in the audience. I knew I didn’t have long to make up my mind. I just had to blurt out a name, and I surprised no one more than myself when I sputtered, “Nelly. I’d like to be on Nelly’s team.”

  Backstage, I was ambushed by Danny Fuego and a roaming camera crew.

  “Allison Burch! Our first contestant to receive unanimous votes from all four coaches! How do you feel?” Danny asked, shoving a microphone under my nose and placing an arm around my shoulders. His woodsy cologne was overpowering.

  “I feel like I’m… going to pass out,” I said, perhaps a little too honestly. My pulse was thumping in my veins as if someone was beating a snare drum inside my heart. I just wanted to sit down, just wanted to drink some water and calmly think through what I was going to tell my parents. Before I arrived at my audition, I knew I was a halfway decent singer, but I never, ever in a million years expected to do as well as I’d done. The only time I’d ever been acknowledged for my singing talent before was when Mrs. Flores, our choral group director, had told me, “Nice pipes,” after my audition for Mame!.

  My entire body felt magnetized by the adrenaline surging through me. I had not only landed a spot on the show, but might have had a legitimate shot at winning it!

  “That performance was honestly just… phenomenal. Are you excited to compete on the show?” Danny asked.

  “Yes, I’m so excited,” I managed to say. And before realizing how conceited I sounded, I blurted, “I came to win this thing.”

  “That’s what we like to hear! A girl with some fire in her heart!” Danny exclaimed. “We’re so happy to have you here, Allison, and I wish you the best of luck in this competition. Next up, we have a young man named Elliott Mercer, who comes to us from Temecula, California. Give a warm welcome to Elliott!”

  Beyond the camera crew surrounding me and Danny, I saw a tall, skinny guy with a mop of messy dark hair on his head being ushered toward the double doors by crew members. I assumed that this guy was Elliott. He looked more like a scruffy, foul-mouthed skateboarder than any kind of aspiring star. He had a little acne and wore dirty jeans, and as he passed me, we made brief eye contact. He had bright, sparkling turquoise eyes which made him cuter than I would have expected from his profile, but I still wouldn’t have placed him in the same bracket as Oliver Teague. Oliver was my long-time crush at Pacific Valley, our school’s star forward on the soccer team. Once, Oliver Teague sort of nodded at me in the hallway before American History, and I had to go to the nurse’s office to lie down on the cot for a while because I was hyperventilating.

  I wondered if Elliott had seen my performance on the monitors in the waiting area, or if he had been trying to block me out just as I had been trying to block out #66. Not to sound like a braggart or anything, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted to follow my own performance.

  A broad-shouldered woman in a bright red blouse who introduced herself as Claire, an associate producer on the show, led me across the waiting area. The parents of other contestants waiting to audition watched me with vague—but not necessarily genuine—smiles, probably wondering if I had just crushed their kids’ dreams of making it onto the show. As I followed Claire down a hallway, I heard Chase Atwood asking Elliott questions about his musical preferences on the overhead sound system. We stepped into a small conference room that had been set up as a temporary production office behind the stage, complete with computer stations and phone lines. We made our way toward Claire’s desk, and several people looked up from their computers and told me, “Great job out there!”

  Claire told me to have a seat and prepared a stack of papers for me to review. “We’ll need you to sign a release, terms and conditions in case you become our winner—fingers crossed—insurance forms, hmm… where is that tax form?”

  As Claire distractedly searched through her file cabinets, I noticed that one of the people sitting closest to me at a long work table had a live video feed streaming onto the enormous monitor on his desk. The coaches were asking Elliott questions about his singing and background, and he seemed somewhat timid to be voluntarily per
forming in front of a rowdy audience. He looked down at his feet and mumbled into the microphone as if it pained him to be the recipient of so much attention. I’m a senior in high school. Never really sang in front of a large crowd before.

  Two more senior producers stepped into the office to meet me, which distracted me from Elliott’s introduction. Never before in my life had a grown-up wearing a fancy suit requested my acquaintance, and now there were two standing in front of me.

  “Hi there, Miss Burch. I’m Tommy Harper,” a man wearing pinstripes with gray, thinning hair said, extending a strong hand. “I’m the Executive Producer of Center Stage!” Tommy was suspiciously tan, and the bald top of his head gleamed. When he shook my hand, I noticed his chunky pinky ring.

  “And I’m Susan DeMott,” a woman with sleek dark hair introduced herself, pumping my hand up and down. Her forehead was oddly smooth in contrast to the area under her eyes, which was crinkly with wrinkles. “We are so excited that you were able to join us today and audition, Allison. We think this is going to be a very exciting season. Our staff will be in touch with you within the next few days to tape a brief segment for the first episode of the show.”

  Behind them, on the monitor, I couldn’t help but notice that Elliott’s track had started playing, and he cradled the mic between his hands, getting ready to start his song. I didn’t recognize his audition song by its guitar introduction and wondered if maybe he was into cooler indie rock music than me. That was doubtful, though; I read indie music blogs like a fiend. I’d even been listening to Zenith, the side project of the Detroit Hobgoblins’ lead singer, on the way to the Dolby Theater that afternoon. Elliott squeezed his eyes shut and began to sing, and suddenly I knew the surefire ease in the competition that I had just presumed for myself only minutes ago was no longer a guarantee.