Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  That night around the dinner table, my parents seemed to have made a pact to prevent me from getting riled up about the show. Every mundane topic in our lives was discussed. We talked about the brake pads in my mom’s Nissan needing replacement to the upcoming wedding of the visiting nurse who dropped in my grandmother on weekdays to check on her arthritis. No one dared to mention the show until the end of the meal. Dad said, “Well, I guess right around this time tomorrow night, we’ll be at the Dolby Theater, watching you sing.”

  Mom kicked him under the table. “Don’t jinx anything, Rich.”

  My father threw his hands up in his defense. “I’m not making any assumptions,” he said. “Just saying. Your grandfather has all his buddies from the Lions’ Club coming over tomorrow night to watch the broadcast. He’s very excited.”

  “That’s cool,” I said, wondering how many of Grandpa Norm’s friends knew how to text in their votes.

  “And your brother’s having a viewing party in his college dorm,” my mother beamed. “He couldn’t be prouder.”

  “Everything’s in place,” Lee informed me when he called me later that night. I’d already changed into my pajamas and had started to suspect that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep at all. “The posters have been updated and I have a task force of freshmen hanging them up around school tomorrow morning. The school paper is running a cover story about you, reminding people to watch and vote. Kaela thinks that the WeHo News is putting something on their website and mentioning you in their daily e-mail digest, too.”

  It was impossible to believe that so many things were happening all at once, and all for me. On the other end of the phone, Lee sounded like he was a million miles away instead of just about five miles away in Beverly Hills.

  “Wow, Lee. Thank you so much for organizing all of this.”

  “Of course. Just remember me when you’re famous. Maybe, I could, like, direct your rockumentary or something,” Lee joked.

  As I hung up with Lee and settled down under my blankets, I realized that I would be famous in fewer than twenty-four hours. Maybe not for long if I lost my tempo while singing and flubbed my performance as badly as I had in rehearsals earlier that morning… but famous for at least one night. The very next time I climbed into bed, my life would be forever changed, for better or worse. Even though I knew I needed to sleep to be in top form the next day, I was far too restless. My muscles tensed as if I was at the starting line of a race, waiting for a gunshot fired into the air to thrust me into a sprint.

  Friday passed by in a blurry daze. In the morning, we rehearsed the group performance that would open the show with the other contestants out in the parking lot. Thankfully, that part was easy since the dance moves were simple enough for all of us to follow along, and no one had any solo parts to sing in the cheesy song. It was overcast but still uncomfortably warm. Although cloudy skies often “burn off” in Southern California before lunchtime, the sky was still gloomy at noon.

  During our individual appointments with stylists who would choose outfits for us to wear that night, I dared to wonder who would be voted off. Would it be Suzanne, the oldest among us? I scolded myself for assuming that American television viewing audiences would vote her off just because she was pushing the age limit on the show at twenty-four. Or maybe it would be either Chet or Brian, whose voices were similar even though they looked like complete opposites. Or me, with my laughably ridiculous song assignment. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the stylists fuss over Robin, dressing her in a tight red sequined dress. One thing I was certain of was that Robin would not be voted off during the first Expulsion Series. Robin was a true threat; she was going to be in the game right up until the bitter end.

  I inherited a stylist named Aubrey, who’d dressed Eunice and Ian. As I followed her over to the clothing rack near a row of mirrors, I once again marveled at how many people seemed to be on the show’s staff.

  “How would you describe your personal style, Allison?” she asked me, looking me over from head to toe.

  On sale? I suggested in my head. I was sixteen. My parents’ budget and my desire to avoid being ridiculed at school for standing out too much determined my personal style. There were girls at Pacific Valley who daily dressed in outfits I’d seen on mannequins in the windows of the most expensive stores at the Beverly Center. But I usually stuck with skinny jeans, t-shirts, and cardigans. It was rare enough for me to wear a dress to school that whenever I did, I could bet on being asked if I had to go to a funeral or something.

  “Um, just chill, I guess,” I replied. Whatever Robin’s style is, that’s what I want, I thought to myself. Red sequins. Something to make everyone watching at home say, “Wow.”

  “Let’s keep it relaxed then,” Aubrey suggested, flipping through items on the rack that had all been chosen for me in advance, evidently all in my size.

  After I had changed into what Aubrey selected for me, I analyzed my appearance in the mirror with a frown. I didn’t look bad, but I still looked like me. A pair of distressed white jeans, a paper-thin black t-shirt, and a cool long gold rope necklace with a pink quartz charm dangling from it had been prepared for me. It would have been a cool look for a school outfit, but it hardly seemed glamorous enough for my television debut… especially when I looked past the curtain that separated me from the other women in the room and saw Christa modeling her outfit for her stylist’s feedback. She modeled tight black leather leggings, a boucle-knit sweater tank over a black gauze camisole, a heavily studded and jeweled Country-Western belt, and some platform boots. With all of that blond hair blown out and curled later that night, Christa was going to look like she was performing on the Grammys.

  “Try these on,” Aubrey said, plunking down a pair of black leather ankle boots in front of me. The boots were snug. They were tight enough that if I had been trying them on at the mall instead of considering wearing them for an hour on television, I would have politely declined to buy them.

  “Cool,” I said, thinking that they made me look edgier. “What about, like, a jacket?”

  Aubrey returned with two options: a cropped black leather jacket that made me look shorter and thicker around the waist than I preferred, and a fitted crepe jacket with tiny studs on the arms. The studded jacket was definitely not something I’d ever select for myself if I saw it while out shopping. But once I was wearing it, I felt like a superstar.

  “I think we have a winner,” Aubrey said as I modeled it. Once I changed back into my regular jeans and t-shirt, I was a thousand times more eager for the day to end so that I could slip back into my outfit for the performance. I had placed a lot of faith in the possibility that my studded jacket might distract audiences from my odd song.

  All of us had mistakenly assumed throughout the day that we’d have a little down-time to rest before the broadcast. By noon, my eyes burned from sleepiness, and I had a hard time keeping myself awake on the limo ride to Hollywood. For some inexplicable reason, I’d thought that we would surely be brought back to the studio in Studio City before it was show time. But as our limos circled around the Hollywood and Highland mall so that we could filter into the Dolby Theater’s back service entrance, we were just a little over three hours away from show time. That was it—I’d be going home directly from the theater after the show aired. If viewers voted me off that night, I’d never find myself on the lot in Studio City again.

  “And left, two, three, four and back, two, three, four!”

  Inside the enormous Dolby Theater, Erick St. John barked orders at all of us on the stage as we stumbled through the motions of the opening group performance. By the following Monday, four of us would be gone. Banished. Expelled. For the rest of the season, they’d watch the rest of us compete from their televisions at home. One contestant from each of our four groups would be voted off by the viewers at home, with only one chance for salvation. The four coaches would draw for a Wild Card, and the one who chose it would have the option of swapping the contestant chosen b
y the at-home viewers for expulsion with another extremely unfortunate contestant in their group.

  In the Group 2 prep room, we were served lunch when the hair and makeup team arrived to begin prepping us. Numbly, I nibbled on raw carrots and ranch dip but had no appetite even though I’d been too nervous for breakfast. While no one was outright rude to me, people were not exactly going out of their way to be friendly toward me, either. Because I had an older brother, I’d grown accustomed to expecting kids older than me to baby me a little. But in this crowd, I wasn’t getting any special treatment. That evening, I wasn’t a child anymore. I was a peer, a competitor. All I could do was try not to take it personally as Liandra and Eunice thumbed through gossip magazines together, and Ian and Jarrett ogled Robin as she stretched her body into provocative yoga poses.

  Chet hovered over the snack table grazing like a buffalo, drowning his anxiety in salsa verde and smothering it with slices of pepper jack cheese and Triscuits. Emotions were running high, and we were all cracking under the pressure in our unique way as the minutes passed. Liandra chatted a mile a minute on the phone with people back home. Eunice bopped her head along to music pumping through her headphones. Jarrett cracked his knuckles systematically across both hands. Brian clicked through cable stations on the television. Suzanne dropped into the Lotus position and meditated in a corner.

  I longed to close my eyes and drift off to sleep on the couch, but there was too much commotion in the room for that. The stylists had unpacked their makeup kits near the two tables with mirrors. One blew Christa’s hair out with a round brush, giving her bouncing, gleaming curls. She then clipped fake locks underneath it all to give Christa even more hair. It was getting closer, so much perilously closer to when we’d all have to step out onto that stage in front of a real audience and sing the cheesy theme song together. Only this time we’d perform without Erick reminding us of the steps. Once I was out on that stage performing the opening number, time was going to shift into warp speed and then it would be my turn to sing—alone.

  One of the stylists told me to fetch my outfit for the broadcast from the rack out in the hallway. I stepped out of the stiflingly warm Group 2 holding room and was surprised to find that the hallway had turned into a major thoroughfare. Production assistants hurried past, chatting on their headsets. Mark, the director, rushed past in his baseball cap and plaid flannel, followed by a stream of other guys wearing heavy tool belts, all talking at once. A glimpse down the hall revealed that the prep room for Group 1, Chase’s team, was just twenty feet down the hall across from ours. I imagined what might happen if Elliott stepped through that door. Seeing those turquoise eyes once more before I had to venture out on the stage alone would be some kind of good luck, I figured. I was so caught up in my little fantasy that didn’t notice until I was stepping back into the Group 2 prep room with my outfit on a hanger that the wrong jacket had sent.

  “Oh my God,” I gasped. I couldn’t wear the wrong jacket on stage. The cropped one that had been sent made me look stumpy and childish. The thought of wearing it on stage made me feel sick to my stomach, and performing under those hot lights with nothing over my paper-thin black t-shirt was also out of the question. It was practically see-through, and I was wearing my most un-fancy, uncool bra. When I’d gotten dressed that morning, I never considered that all of America would probably see my underwear right through my shirt on television. How could Aubrey have sent the wrong jacket? I had specifically insisted on the other jacket with the studs, and she had agreed that it was a better choice.

  My eyes darted around the prep room wildly. Everyone but Eunice and I had changed into their “wardrobe selection” for the broadcast. The men looked far more stylish and hip than they had all week. Brian wore a leather vest, which made him look significantly less like a nerdy bookkeeper from Dallas. Jarrett looked like an actual hip hop star, wearing a black button-down asymmetrical shirt by Maison Martin Margiela and dress slacks he was trying not to wrinkle. A savage torrent of panic shook me. How was it possible that only my outfit had gotten messed up?

  “Are you going to get changed, hon?” a stylist wielding a curling iron asked me. “It’s after three. We should get a move on your hair.”

  “There’s a problem,” I said hoarsely. “Someone sent the wrong jacket. I can’t wear this one.” I couldn’t possibly perform wearing the shirt I'd put on that day, a threadbare t-shirt I’d gotten on Field Day during my freshman year at Pacific Valley. I would have sworn that I noticed Robin and Christa exchange smirks when they overheard me, but I didn’t pay their response any mind. The stylist assured me that she’d request a production assistant to fetch the right jacket. That made me feel a lot better, but I should have known there wasn’t any way someone was going to drive over from Studio City in less than an hour at the start of rush hour. But naïve and trusting fool that I was, I changed into my black t-shirt and jeans, and stepped into the boots. I sat down in the stylist’s chair so that she could apply a thick layer of foundation to my face.

  By four o’clock, Marlene had joined us in the prep room to warm up our vocal chords. She’d brought with her a contraption that she explained was a portable facial steamer so that we could take turns inhaling steam before taking the stage. She guided us through some diaphragm stretches, singing scales up and down a few octaves, and some lip rolls. Our room had taken on a pungent odor of barbecue sauce, coffee, and fried hair thanks to the curling iron, and Jarrett opened one of the windows for a little fresh air. He turned back toward all of us with a blockbuster smile on his face and said, “Hey, guys. Come over here and take a look at this.”

  We flocked to the window. A swell of noise from the crowd that had gathered below along Highland Avenue greeted us. This was the studio audience, people who had bought tickets online and had, from the looks of it, been lining up for hours. The line extended to the end of the block and wrapped around the corner. Some of the people in line looked upward at us with curiosity, but they had no idea that we were the contestants they’d paid good money to watch perform.

  Although the show was being broadcast live from Hollywood at five o’clock, it would air first on the East Coast. A taped version would be broadcast in Los Angeles three hours later. The time periods for when each television viewing audience could vote was broken up by time zone. We’d be sequestered at the studio until eleven o’clock at night while the votes from the West Coast were tallied. The Expulsion Series would be taped that very night and put on the Center Stage! website, and the four contestants who’d been expelled would appear on the Billy Hall Late Nite talk show on Monday night.

  Our moment of wonder was interrupted by a production assistant, who burst in with static blasting from his walkie-talkie to fetch us. “Alright, everyone. I need you to fall into formation for the opening act. We’re going to head backstage because we’re on in fifteen.”

  On in fifteen. My heart simultaneously swelled and sank. No one had brought my jacket to me. I had no choice but to take the stage in the ugly, snug-fitting one, at least for the opening act. Everyone else in Group 2 formed a single-file line in the order that Erick had dictated for the group dance performance. I lingered in the back, out of place, wringing my hands with worry.

  “What’s the matter, star material?” Marlene asked, noticing that I was dawdling.

  I explained how I had chosen a different jacket, but then how—bafflingly—the wrong one had been brought to the theater. Marlene pressed her lips together in a straight line. Something told me that she knew exactly how the wrong jacket had made its way to the theater.

  “Wear whatever you’ve got for this opening number,” she commanded. “No one knows who you are yet, and you’ll just be a face in a crowd. I’ll take care of this.”

  Marlene scurried out of the prep room. This time I was certain that Robin and Christa had been watching my conversation with her closely. Christa shrugged at me with a smile that was both angelic and threatening.

  My entire body went cold with ji
tters as soon as we left the prep room. Group 1 made its way backstage alongside us, and out of the corner of my eye I scanned the line hoping to catch a glimpse of Elliott. Not that I especially wanted him to witness me wearing the hateful leather jacket, but I just needed to see him. I was curious about what kind of phony hipster outfit the stylists had selected for him. Had they gelled back his unruly mop of hair? Had he allowed them to put pancake makeup on his face to take some of the red bite out of his acne?

  “I see you managed to avoid sequins.”

  My limbs tingled at the sound of his voice. I turned to find him—Elliott—just a few feet behind me, lagging behind the rest of his group. He wore his usual shy smirk, along with what appeared to be his customary dirty skinny jeans and Jack Purcells with filthy soles. He’d resisted makeup although his hair looked like it had been moussed and twisted into a more organized disaster than its natural state. Someone had convinced him to wear a dark, denim button-down shirt, which looked freshly-ironed.

  “No sequins,” I agreed, not wanting to reveal to him how much I’d come to treasure even the tiniest bit of affection from him in the course of just five days.

  “Let’s get this mess over with,” he joked as we both stepped into the darkness of the backstage area. Our groups split off in different directions, and I didn’t dare allow my eyes to trail after him as he veered to the right.

  The production assistant urged us all to be quiet, although we needed no urging. The studio audience was already filling in the rows of seats in the theater. I wondered if my parents had arrived and taken their seats yet in the area that had been roped off for families. My mind wandered over to Pacific Valley School. I imagined all of my friends crowding around tables in the cafeteria before I quickly remembered that they wouldn’t be watching for another three hours, when the show aired in Los Angeles.