Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  “So, you’re the one.”

  I snapped out of my reverie when I heard a male voice interrupt my thoughts. I found myself looking directly into the over-saturated turquoise eyes of Elliott Mercer.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, thinking for a second that perhaps I’d misheard him. “Which one?”

  “You’re the one everyone’s saying is going to win.”

  Chapter 6

  Elliott

  There was simply no denying it: Elliott Mercer had some kind of power over me.

  My initial impression of him the day we’d auditioned had been correct: he was nothing spectacular to look at from a distance. He was at least five inches taller than me with a head of wavy chocolate brown hair that had grown far past the tops of his ears and the collar of his chambray shirt. There were angry pink starbursts of acne along his jaw and a smattering across his forehead, making me wonder why he hadn’t gotten some of that mail-order soap to control it in the weeks that had passed since our auditions.

  But if you looked beyond the overgrown hair and the acne, it was plain to see that he had the face of a movie star. Square jaw, chiseled cheekbones, broad, straight nose, and full, soft lips. With a haircut and that skin condition sorted out, he would have been a veritable hottie. As I stood mere feet from him outside my trailer, my heart fluttered for a split second before I commanded it to stop.

  “I don’t know about that,” I replied. “You’re the one who writes his own songs, like Ryan Adams or Coner Oberst. I’m sure the coaches eat that up.”

  “More like PJ Harvey, if you feel the need to compare me to someone.”

  I stared him down, wondering what kind of weird boy would prefer to have his talent compared to a woman’s instead of another guy’s. Certainly no boy at the Pacific Valley School would have felt that way. “Who’s saying that about me?” I asked, finally catching on to his rather atypical greeting.

  He shrugged and kicked at the gravel on the ground with his filthy Jack Purcells. “Pretty much everyone.”

  I wanted him to elaborate because I wanted to know who qualified as everyone. “Well, that’s dumb. The show hasn’t even started yet. No one has any idea who’s going to do well.”

  Elliott cracked a wide smile so genuine and sweet that I wished I’d gotten to enjoy it longer before he looked down at his shoes again. “Wow, you have a lot to learn, don’t you?”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Elliott shrugged in a way that was barely detectable as his shoulders swam in his chambray button-down, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. “You’ll see,” he assured me and walked away down a row in between trailers.

  I stood outside my trailer letting the wind blow my damp hair for a minute or two, reflecting on that strange exchange. If Elliott was hearing rumors that I was the contestant he was going to have to beat, were the other contestants also hearing them? Had Robin been so snarky to me earlier that day because the word on the street was that I was going to out-sing everyone? Had information about auditions somehow been leaked to entertainment bloggers? In all the time that had passed since my audition, it had never occurred to me once to look myself up online to see if there was any industry buzz about my chances on the show.

  So fervent was my speculation about Elliott that I barely paid attention as I sat down in the chair of a scissors-wielding stylist. A production assistant herded all of us in “Group 2” (as we were being referred to by everyone on staff) back into the warehouse where we’d had our dance rehearsal. This time we were delivered to a room with salon chairs, sinks, and mirrors. Our group was split in half, and I was among those seated for attention first.

  “What are you going to do to me?” I asked the stylist to whom I’d been assigned. I thought grimly of fashionable Martha and Geoffrey, who’d seen so much promise in my looks back at my house a week ago. I wished they were there to deliver on that great makeover they’d promised me, but it seemed childish to ask where they were.

  “I’m thinking… layers. You’ve got a lot of weight, here. We could make you look a little older with soft layers,” the stylist said. She wore a sun-bleached t-shirt with a frayed neckline and had jarring blond streaks in her dry, curly hair. I wasn’t sure if I trusted her opinion when it came to personal style, but I didn’t have much choice. Everyone else in Group 2 was either reading magazines, awaiting their turn or nodding agreeably at whatever their personal stylist was suggesting. I had avoided experimentation with my hair since a very unflattering perm in seventh grade and was pretty satisfied with it just the way it was. However, I didn’t want to gain a reputation as being the difficult one in Group 2, especially since I’d been almost half an hour late to dance rehearsal. I thought it would be best just to go along with whatever the show wanted for me.

  With my back turned to the mirror, I was oblivious to the stylist’s progress until she spun me around thirty minutes later and sang, “Ta-da!”

  My heart jumped into my throat at the sight of my reflection. She had cut short, severe layers into my hair, the shortest of which fell just above the top of my ears. She’d also curled every layer outward, making me look like I’d just stepped out of a clothing advertisement from the 1980’s. I saw my horror reflected in her hopeful, wide eyes.

  “What do you think?” she asked cheerfully.

  “I-I-I…” I couldn’t find words that would assure her that I loved it but also magically turn back time to prevent this horrible atrocity from having happened to my hair. “It’s… great.” At least there wasn’t a camera crew present to capture my wooden performance.

  My fake smile was as stiff as if someone had let plaster harden over it. On the other side of the room where everyone else was waiting, I plunked down on the black leather sofa. Numbly, I picked up a magazine and overheard Robin say, “There’s no way anyone’s doing that to me.”

  As my anger percolated, Rob, the evil production assistant, appeared in the doorway and pointed to me and Brian, the skinny guy whose head was shaved. “Are you two ready to go?” he asked. “Anyone who’s ready for lunch can follow me.”

  Brian hopped up eagerly from the black leather couch. I returned the magazine to the Lucite tabletop. Following Rob anywhere seemed like a bad idea, and I wasn’t ready to face the world with my new hair style yet. But I couldn’t deny the fact that my stomach was rumbling. All I could do was solemnly pray that Elliott was suffering at the hands of a stylist in a similar manner. I was already dreading the moment when my friends would see my new look for the first time.

  We followed Rob past the maze of trailers and across another parking lot to the studio commissary, Da Giorgio, which was a cafeteria no fancier than the one at my high school. “Don’t let the name fool you,” Rob warned me and Brian. “Their pizza sucks and that’s just about the only Italian specialty they serve.”

  Brian and I both filled our trays with food from the salad bar and sat down awkwardly together at a table in the otherwise empty cafeteria. Although even the oldest contestants were no more than eight years older than me, it seemed like their lives were totally different from mine. Brian had been training as a classical opera singer in college but had to drop out to take care of his parents two years ago after they were both seriously injured in an auto accident.

  “I don’t care about winning,” Brian shrugged, and I believed him. “I gave up on my dream of being a professional singer a while ago, so even to have made it this far is kind of blowing my mind.” I considered how awful it would be if both of my parents were seriously injured, and I hoped I would never find myself in that situation.

  I heard my cell phone buzz with a text message as I ate the last of my romaine lettuce. I was digging through my bag to find it when Rob reappeared in the doorway of the commissary with another delivery of Center Stage! contestants. Out of the corner of my eye, I happened to notice with great annoyance that Robin was among them. The only change that had been made to her silky dark hair was the addition of
a trendy purple streak.

  The text was from Lee, surprisingly the only one of my friends who’d checked in with me so far that day.

  LEE 12:18 P.M.

  Sup?

  I hesitated before writing back. There was a possibility—given everyone’s weeknight curfews—that Lee, Nicole, Kaela, and the rest of my friends wouldn’t have a chance to see my new hair in person before the first broadcast of the show. For a second, I considered leaving my new hairstyle as a terrible surprise for them. Then, as proof of my impatience, I took a selfie picture of myself and texted it back to Lee. They butchered my hair and I’m hideous now. I tapped the send button on my phone and picked nervously at the remaining pumpkin seeds on my plate.

  LEE 12:21 P.M.

  You’re not hideous. You’re fine.

  I exhaled with so much exasperation that Brian looked at me in surprise. Of course Lee wouldn’t understand the horror of having to appear on national television with awful hair. He was a boy, and not even the kind of boy who wore hair gel or sexy-smelling body spray. I couldn’t trust his opinion at all.

  No one in the commissary knew what we were supposed to do next. We all had an idea of the general plan for the day, and everyone was on edge because our first big meeting with Nelly was supposed to follow lunch. However, we had no clue how long we were supposed to wait in the commissary, or where our meeting with her would take place. After Brian and I had been in the cafeteria for far longer than an hour, I started wondering if we’d been forgotten just like I’d been taken to the wrong place earlier that morning by Rob. It was a little bit comforting that this time at least all of Group 2 was together, so if we were all late or missing from our next lesson I wouldn’t be the only one in trouble.

  “It’s already one-thirty,” Christa complained. She was turning out to be a despicable, prim Class President-type; she’d even returned her turkey burger to the cafeteria employee behind the grill and asked for a new one, claiming it tasted gamy. “How long are they going to leave us here?”

  Finally at almost two o’clock in the afternoon, an older guy wearing a sports jacket with elbow patches drifted into the commissary toward the two tables where we had all congregated. He cleared his throat and said, “Hello, everyone. I’m assuming you must be Group 2 on the Center Stage! production. I’m Tim Collins, an associate producer with the show. I just wanted to assure you that everything’s just fine. Miss Fulsom ran into some traffic trouble on her way to the studio, and she’ll be here shortly. I apologize for this delay in your routine today. We’ll be moving along again in just a little while.”

  We all breathed a collective sigh of relief. We hadn’t been abandoned; Nelly Fulsom was just late. Traffic trouble. At least that was a plausible excuse, actually the most plausible excuse for being late to appointments in Los Angeles. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, everyone in Group 2 drifted away from the table and back into the cafeteria area to grab a second helping of something or other. After another half hour, when it was nearly three, two production assistants arrived to fetch us.

  In a large room where a full camera crew had already been set up, Nelly sat on a stool with her guitar balanced on her lap. The makeup artist who had been patting oil-absorbing powder onto her face scurried away as we shuffled in from the hall. Wearing a rhinestone-studded denim button-down shirt and suede miniskirt, with her shoulder-length golden hair blown out into loose waves, Nelly looked every bit the Country music superstar she was. A few feet away, a pianist sat at a baby grand piano lazily playing scales. The bright production lights were practically baking the room, and I became very aware as we congregated around Nelly that the cameras were already rolling.

  Not only were the cameras rolling, but they were pointed at us. No one had warned us, but suddenly it was show time. We blinked, astonished and unprepared, in the bright lights. Impulsively I reached to hide my hair, and quickly realized there was no point in trying. In the back of the room, far behind Nelly, I caught a glimpse of Claire and her clipboard.

  “Welcome, everyone, welcome! Welcome to Center Stage!” Nelly bellowed in her Arkansas accent. “I’m so happy that all of y’all are finally here and we can get started makin’ your dreams come true. Now—î Nelly hopped off her stool and clapped her hands together. “I’m sure y’all know how the show works, but just to refresh your memories, you’ll either be selecting—or I’ll be assignin’ you—a song to perform each week. You’ll work under my guidance to practice that song to perfection. Then, each Friday night, you’ll perform in front of a live studio audience on national television, and our at-home viewing audience will vote on who goes home, and who continues to compete… on Center Stage!”

  She went on to explain that we’d each be responsible for checking into the Secret Suite twice a week at assigned times to log our video journals. Sometimes we’d just tell the camera set up in that room how we’d been feeling about our progress. Other times, the producers would leave questions specifically for us to answer. If we were to remain on the show until the final weeks, viewers at home would be able to submit questions to us through social media.

  Nelly’s temperament was so bubbly and unnatural that it was surprising when she said with an abrupt drop in enthusiasm, “Did you get all that?”

  The guy behind the camera nodded.

  A gust of air seemed to escape from Nelly, and she visually deflated before of our eyes. In less than one second she transformed from a sparkling, gutsy dynamo into a washed-out, cranky witch with dead eyes. “Good,” Nelly snapped, sounding much tireder than she had a second earlier. “Alright, people. Cathy, here, is gonna assign your songs for this Friday’s taping. If you don’t like what you get, that’s too dang bad. That’s the whole point of the show: findin’ out just how far you can stretch your talent.”

  Claire didn’t even flinch as Nelly referred to her by an incorrect name. We watched in a state of horror, not wanting to believe that Nelly was behaving so rudely and unpleasantly toward all of us, including the show’s production staff. Glazed smiles stretched across all of our faces because we’d each arrived at the studio that day thinking we had our own special connection with Nelly. None of us were prepared to surrender hope just yet by enraging her with a scowl or an eye roll. This was the moment we’d been waiting for all day, to prove ourselves as worthy of being on Nelly’s team, and now she seemed completely uninterested in even speaking to us. If there hadn’t been so much riding on Nelly’s personal approval, there might have been smirking or mumbling among us.

  Our frozen, surprised reactions might have indicated to her that her behavior was out of line. She softened her tone a little and added, “Your voice coach is going to give you your first lesson today on the basics of reading sheet music and warming up your vocal chords, and we’ll all start working together one-on-one tomorrow. Who’s their trainer, again?”

  Claire, behind her, referenced her clipboard and cleared her throat before replying. “Marlene.”

  “Great. You’ll be in good hands,” Nelly told us unconvincingly. I would have bet that Nelly probably couldn’t have picked Marlene, whoever she was, out of a crowd.

  And with that, production assistants escorted Nelly through our little assembly and out of the room, leaving us with Claire. As Nelly passed me, the cool, crisp sleeve of her light denim shirt brushed against the skin on my arm, and I caught a whiff of her intoxicating, tuberose-scented perfume. She still—despite her bratty behavior—represented so much of the future that I wanted for myself. I longed for salon-perfect hair on a mundane Monday, the power to make everyone wait around for me, the glamour to make an otherwise tacky outfit seem chic. The moment she left the room, the energy fizzled out completely. For the first time since waking up at the crack of dawn, I realized I was extremely tired. This day was not turning out how I had expected it would at all.

  A thought so hideous that I irrationally hoped no one could read my mind occurred to me: I wasn’t enjoying any of this.

  In a single-file lin
e, we followed Claire down the hall for vocal training in another room. When Marlene confidently strode in, my initial impression of her was dead wrong. What I saw when she entered the room was an over-the-hill woman with crow’s eyes and an unfashionable salt-and-pepper head of hair styled into an outdated feathered cut. She wore a faded black Harley Davidson logo t-shirt over tight distressed jeans with a white leather fringed vest. Her throaty voice, as she addressed us, “On your feet, soldiers,” sounded like the gravelly articulation of a man twice her size.

  Claire nodded at Marlene with admiration before departing. “You’re in the army now, and this is boot camp,” Marlene told us, looking us up and down as she paced. “A lot of people who consider themselves to be good singers don’t actually know the first thing about singing. Singing doesn’t come from here,” she said, cupping her own throat with her hand. “It comes from here.” She placed both of her hands under her rib cage. “Between now and Friday, I’m going to turn you into real singers. This isn’t going to be easy. We don’t have much time to tear apart the bad habits you may have formed in learning to sing on your own without formal training. And you’re probably going to think that you can just get by in this contest by singing the way you always have. Let me assure you, if you think you don’t have anything to learn in this classroom, you will be voted off the show. Does anyone in this group have any formal voice training?”