Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  The morning lagged on, and everyone began draining their mobile phone batteries down to perilously low levels. It became clear that while timing was going to be tight on Friday when we were broadcasting live, no one was in any particular hurry that day as the crew fidgeted with lights. The video feed on our television monitors jerked from one camera to the next as the director finalized his shot list for Friday’s broadcast. There were long breaks in between everyone’s turn on stage, and no one was even singing yet.

  Watching everyone take their turn on stage in their street clothes without makeup was intimidating. They were directed to walk toward one of the two different microphones positioned at stands on the stage—one on the left side, the other on the right side. When it was Brian’s turn, he smiled at the wrong camera, and then clumsily turned toward the correct one. It seemed like a very complicated matter indeed to make the whole show appear effortless.

  “Allison.”

  The same crew member who had summoned me to the stage the day of my audition stepped into our prep room to fetch me for my rehearsal. I followed him backstage and fought a pang of nervousness in my stomach. I tried very hard to assure myself that all of this should feel familiar since I’d been on the very same stage just a few weeks earlier for my audition, but everything seemed different this time around. Stop it, I commanded myself. There’s no reason to be nervous! You’re not even doing anything today!

  There were already three contestants lingering backstage for their turns, and I could tell even with his back toward me that the tallest of them was Elliott. He slouched with one hand shoved into a pocket of his skinny gray jeans.

  “Our next contestant comes to us from the Longhorn state, where she’s a graduate student at Baylor University and sings in local Country-Western bars. Please give a warm welcome to Laura Higgins,” Danny Fuego cheerfully announced into his microphone. In the theater, which was empty other than for the crew, his voice bounced off the walls and sounded ghoulish. One of the three contestants standing in front of me, a young woman my height with her brown hair in a ponytail strode out onto the stage.

  “Okay, now Laura, when you come on stage, you’ve got five seconds to make it to your mark. You’re going to walk out here and stop at the X on the floor in front of the microphone over here on stage left,” Mark told Laura. She had stopped to await direction in the center of the stage. Elliott, the middle-aged black man standing on his right, and I all stood up a little straighter as Danny Fuego bounced backstage to join us.

  “Hey guys,” Danny greeted us in a low voice and embraced us in an odd group hug. I made a mental note to tell Michelle and Kaela that he smelled like Armani Code and not like B.O. “This is exciting stuff, huh? I’ve gotta go track down a bottle of water.”

  “Very interesting, isn’t it?” Elliott suddenly said to me when Danny raced back onto the stage with his bottle of water to make the next introduction.

  “What?” I asked in confusion.

  “All of this,” Elliott said, nodding his head around. I made the mistake of glancing up at his blazing turquoise eyes, which shined even more brightly in the relative darkness of the backstage area. I looked away quickly. Don’t have a crush on him! I commanded myself. You have a crush on Oliver Teague, who is hot and athletic and amazing. Don’t have a crush on this moody, acne-prone dweeb!

  “I wouldn’t call it interesting,” I said dully, wanting Elliott to think I was cool. “Tedious and necessary, maybe. Not interesting.”

  Elliott raised an eyebrow at me and smiled knowingly before saying, “You mean you don’t see what’s going on here?”

  I gave him a dirty look but had no idea what he was implying.

  “...give a big Hollywood round of applause up for Derrick Frasier!”

  The man standing on the other side of Elliott walked out onto the stage, leaving Elliott and me alone together in the shadows behind the red velvet curtains.

  “Take a closer look around, Allison. Question everything you see. This whole show is a mind game, and if you don’t figure out how to play it, you’re not going to be around long,” Elliott told me. I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally insulting me, or genuinely trying to do me a favor. But I still had no idea what he was getting at; the morning just seemed like a routine rehearsal for a television show, even though I had no previous experience to which I could compare it.

  “I’m going to be around a while,” I warned him.

  “Really? What song do they have you performing on Friday?” Elliott asked me in a challenging tone.

  “I...” I trailed off, suddenly not wanting Elliott to know which song had been assigned to me. He’d find out the following day, anyway, when we had sound check. But his intense curiosity put me on edge. “You’ll find out tomorrow, won’t you?”

  “Aw, c’mon,” Elliott teased. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

  It’s quite possible that my mouth fell open in surprise at such blatant flirting on his part just as Danny Fuego called my name on stage. “...please welcome Miss Allison Burch!”

  I stumbled forward into the flood lights shining on the stage, and thankfully remembered to smile widely. I tried to push Elliott out of my mind as Mark told me where to stop, where to look, and a production assistant demonstrated how to lower the microphone. But my pulse was racing thanks to his rather forward comment. With brighter lights on me and the roar of introductory music filling the entire theater up to the rafters, this was incomparable to the day when I’d last nervously, unassumingly stepped out onto that stage.

  By the time I returned to the Group 2 waiting room, Elliott had returned to my thoughts. On both of the monitors, I could see him standing awkwardly in the middle of the stage. What was it about him that got under my skin? And was he so pesky to everyone, or had he singled me out for his special kind of torture? In a terrible, secret way, I truly hoped that I was the only girl on the show who received so much attention from him.

  It didn’t make any sense that he’d chosen me when there were so many other girls among the forty contestants, unless, of course, he was genuinely interested in me because of my voice. My experience so far in high school had firmly convinced me that all of the stuff parents say about not all boys chasing the best-looking girls was a pack of lies. I'd watched every single guy at Pacific Valley, from the nerds all the way across the dude spectrum to the jocks, throw themselves at girls like Nicole and Morgan.

  Not at me.

  I looked up and noticed Robin on the television monitor, hitting her mark on stage and flashing a mega-watt smile at the camera. Unlike the rest of us that day, she looked amazing on screen and had even taken the time to apply lip gloss before walking across the stage. I exhaled loudly, so annoyed with myself. There was always a tube of lip gloss in my handbag, but rarely did I remember to smear it on.

  That afternoon, Nelly sat in on our workshop with Marlene. We were all on our best behavior while she was present, naturally still trying to get on her good side. Unexpectedly, she was in a seemingly good mood and was generous with her feedback on all of our performances even though she frequently ducked into the hallway to take calls on her mobile phone, and sent text messages furtively when she thought no one was looking. It was as if someone had kidnapped the real, short-tempered Nelly Fulsom and had replaced her with a kind-hearted stranger who was ever-so-sorry to be too busy on her cell phone to coach us.

  “Someone took her nice pills today,” Ian muttered after Nelly warmly welcomed us back from our lunch in the cafeteria.

  “Christa, you need to stand up straighter, girl. If Marlene’s tellin’ you to sing from your diaphragm and not from your throat, you can’t do that if you’re hunched over,” she instructed her young look-alike. All of us noticed that Nelly ignored an incoming call during Christa’s rehearsal. She crossed the room to straighten Christa’s shoulders where the blonde stood next to the piano.

  “I know it’s hard, especially for young women, to maintain good posture. If you’ve been slu
mp-shouldered for a long time, it may feel unnatural to stand up straight. But straighten out that back and push your shoulders out,” Nelly told her. “It makes all the difference in the world.”

  Christa stood as straight as a soldier. I stole a peek at Marlene for her reaction since she’d been advising Christa to stand up straight all week. If she was irked by Nelly’s comment and Christa’s dutiful response, Marlene wasn’t letting on.

  When it was my turn to stand near Bobby at the piano, I happily handed him a print-out of the sheet music that Lee had modified. “What’s this?” he asked, examining it. The pit of my stomach was prickly with anticipation for my group’s reaction to the work I’d done with Lee the night before. “Well, I’ll be a blue-nosed gopher,” Bobby said in amazement. “This girl went and re-wrote the sheet music.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Marlene said, beaming with pride.

  Bobby rolled his fingers across the ivories to produce the slow intro chords for my version of the song. I eased into it at a slower pace, just like I’d practiced at home. Everyone in the classroom fell silent and watched with a frown. The mood in the room became so serious that I almost stopped singing. Nelly leaned forward and put her head on her hand as if she were thinking so hard about my performance that it hurt. After I sang the chorus the second time and wrapped up the song, Marlene shook her head in disbelief as she clapped.

  “You did it, kid. You made that song your own. We’ve got a little work to do, but you’re almost there,” Marlene told me, which made me feel like I was filled with solid gold from head to toe.

  “That’s the Reggie Bujol song, isn’t it?” Nelly asked curiously.

  I had forgotten that Nelly had been totally uninvolved with us since Monday afternoon when Claire had issued our songs. If she’d bothered to read the list of our assignments, she’d clearly forgotten them.

  I nodded, and she continued, “I’m not sure it’s such a good thing that I couldn’t tell. I mean, it’s a classic, and if folks at home don’t recognize it at that slower pace, that’s not going to work in your favor.”

  Just like that, I felt the wind rush out of my lungs. My eyes shot over to Marlene, who had crossed her arms over her chest, taciturnly disagreeing with Nelly. I was at a total loss; I felt like I’d nailed my song, but Nelly didn’t approve of my approach.

  “So what do you think…” I trailed off, reorganizing my line of questioning. “How should I sing it?”

  “Speed it back up,” Nelly said without much consideration. “I think the pace is what’s throwing me off. You see my point, right?”

  Her point was invalid, but I nodded. I was sure there were tons of young people who wouldn’t recognize Christa’s song, or the Broadway show tune that Suzanne would sing. But all I could do was numbly move my head up and down in agreement with Nelly because she was my coach. She called the shots.

  That afternoon, I was scheduled for my first video diary entry in the Secret Suite. I wandered into the studio alone, locked the door behind me, and read the instructional dashboard about how to turn the camera on and off. The experience was kind of like taking a picture in a photo booth at the mall, only it felt very awkward to be sitting all alone with a giant light shining right in my face. There was an envelope waiting for me with one question written on an index card inside of it:

  Who do you think is going to be your biggest threat on the show?

  Nelly! The answer popped into my head with such ease that I was happy I hadn’t hit the “record” button in the booth yet. I composed myself and ran through my answer in my head a few times.

  “I haven’t seen all of the contestants on the show perform yet, but if I had to guess who my toughest competition is going to be, I’d say… Elliott. He has a pretty great voice, so yeah. He’s going to be tough to beat.”

  I pressed the red button to stop recording, wondering if perhaps (too late) I should have named Robin or Christa as my greatest potential threat. But Elliott had seemed like a much more natural answer. He was in a league all his own.

  Later, the blacktop in the parking lot took on the red hue of the setting sun, making me feel like I was waiting for my dad on the surface of another planet instead of in Studio City. I wondered what Elliott had meant earlier in the day when we’d stood backstage at the Dolby Theater. I couldn’t figure out why he suspected that the entire show was rigged. He must have made observations about the show’s operation that I had overlooked—but of what?

  Dad was running late, and didn’t reply to my text message (probably because even though he was an engineer, I was convinced he didn’t understand how to use his iPhone). I leaned back against the studio’s main building and checked my e-mail. There were three messages from teachers back at Pacific Valley just checking to see if I had any questions about the homework packets they’d sent me on Monday, which I’d already half-heartedly completed. Hearing laughter, I turned to see Lenore James exiting one of the warehouses with a girl who was one of the contestants in her group. They were laughing like loons about something, and Lenore doubled over and clutched her belly as she shook. Once Lenore drove off in her brand new white Audi and her contestant boarded the last of the courtesy shuttle buses to the hotel, the parking lot was empty and silent.

  “Oh, hey, you’re still here?” a voice behind me asked a while later. I turned to see the same handsome guy who had been standing backstage with me and Elliott at the Dolby Theater earlier that morning. He was a contestant on Jay Walk’s team. “Do you know if there’s another bus back to the hotel?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Sorry. I live in West Hollywood and I’m waiting for my dad to pick me up.”

  “Oh, right, right,” the guy said with a knowing but warm smile. “You’re that girl who’s still in high school.”

  “Right. That’s me,” I confirmed grumpily.

  “I’m Derrick,” the guy said, reaching out to shake my hand. I’d never done more handshaking in my whole life before that week; high school kids had little reason ever to shake on things.

  “Allison. Nice to meet you,” I said, trying to muster some positivity despite my sour mood based on Nelly’s feedback.

  “I stayed late to work on some dance moves with Jay and now I’m not sure how I’m going to get back to the hotel,” he said. He looked around the parking lot as if maybe there was a shuttle bus hiding somewhere. “It’s tough to be in this town without a car of your own. I’m missing my Mustang back at home right about now, for real.”

  Derrick wandered back into the studio to ask the receptionist to summon a private car service to fetch him. My annoyance with Nelly formed a heavy, cold rock under my rib cage. Lenore James was sharing jokes with her contestants, Jay Walk was spending his own, personal time helping his contestants perfect their dance routines. From what I’d seen so far, Chase Atwood was practically becoming BFF’s with Elliott Mercer and driving him around like a private chauffeur.

  There was no doubt about it, I accepted in the front seat of Dad’s car once he finally showed up: I’d had my pick of all four coaches, and I’d made the worst possible choice. Now it was up to me to figure out how to save myself.

  Chapter 8

  Dirty Tricks

  On Thursday, my fears about sound check were put to rest when I realized that there was no audio feed to the monitors in our group holding rooms. We were guided to the backstage area individually so that none of the other contestants heard us practicing. To keep things moving quickly, we only performed the first minute of our assigned songs. One minute was just long enough for the band that accompanied our performances to rehearse once with us before we had to sing for real in front of a live studio audience the next evening.

  “What are you going to sing for us tonight, Allison?” Danny Fuego asked me during my rehearsal, even though it was ten in the morning, not night. He already knew darn well what song I was going to sing because I could see its title in the teleprompters over the front rows of seats.

  “I’m going to sing ‘All
for You’ by Reggie Bujol,” I replied in my happiest voice, with my biggest grin. Going through the motions as if it were Friday night and there was a real studio audience sitting in the empty seats made me ashamed to put too much gusto into my performance.

  Amused, Danny grimaced at the cameras and remarked, “Now, that’s quite a song for a young lady like yourself.”

  He shoved the microphone back under my nose for a response, and I helplessly said as I felt my cheeks turn pink, “I guess.” What I was thinking was, but I didn’t choose it! I tasked myself with finding a wittier response before the broadcast the following night, when Danny was surely going to ask me the very same question.

  “Well, let’s hear what you’ve got, Allison!” Danny said. He slunk off-stage. The band behind me excitedly jammed right into the song’s intro chords at a pace that sounded even faster than the song’s normal tempo. In front of me, just beyond the edge of the stage, I could see the lyrics of the song slowly scrolling upward against a bright blue background on two monitors. In trying to read them, I was a split-second late in singing the first line of the song and scolded myself in my head, ignore the teleprompters! You know the lyrics! Don’t even look at them!

  It didn’t seem as if any of the coaches milling around in the front row with the producers were even paying much attention as I sang, which was a good thing. Practicing the song with bold physical motions in the privacy of my bedroom was one thing. But now that I was on a stage with spotlights shining on me and cameras pointed at me, it was impossible to feel natural waving my arms around. Knowing that Robin and the other members of Group 2 were probably cackling at me back in our holding room made my enthusiasm level plummet.

  I caught a glimpse of Marlene sitting in the second row off to the side, watching me with her head in her hands. Even though she was stone-faced, I could tell from her expression that she sensed my doom, too. Help me, I pleaded at her with my eyes. Only thirty hours remained before I’d take the stage again, when the cameras would transmit my performance to televisions all over the planet. I was certain as I walked back to the holding room that if I performed the way Nelly wanted me to, I’d be back at Pacific Valley the following week after getting voted off. Elliott’s comment earlier in the week about my chances of winning made me feel even lousier.