When I pulled back the blankets on my bed and climbed under them in the dark, unfamiliar space, I stared up at the ceiling listening to the whoosh of the elevator going up and down. Eventually, I felt so creepy about sleeping in a foreign place that I switched on my nightstand lamp to its dimmest setting. Half an hour later, still sleepless, I turned on the television at a low volume and finally drifted off like that.
If I thought I was any safer after having survived the fourth Expulsion Series, I was dead wrong. During the first four weeks, one contestant from each group had been voted off each Friday. From now until the end of the season, a coach could pull a Wild Card to save all of the contestants on their team. Only three contestants were voted off weekly until the eleventh week, which technically increased my odds of surviving a little longer. However, on Monday I found out that Nelly had been concocting a perfectly devious way to get rid of me once and for all while she still could.
“This week, the producers are introducing something never before done on Center Stage,” she announced in her chipper-chipmunk voice for the benefit of the camera crew. It had followed us into our rehearsal room after lunch. She looked downright delighted with herself, even more than usual when cameras were rolling. There was a rather suspicious-looking glass fish bowl on top of Bobby’s grand piano behind her, filled with scraps of paper. “Each of you will be paired with a partner, and you’ll perform a duet on Friday night. You’ll be required to practice together, and while the at-home audience will cast their votes based on your individual performances, we coaches will be examining your ability to collaborate as artists.”
My jaw went slack. Duets? How was it going to be possible to perform a duet with someone—anyone, at that point—from my group when they were all avoiding me like the plague?
Groans and frowns met Nelly’s announcement. I suspected that if the camera crew hadn’t been present, the protests would have been far more uproarious. Since the cameras turned toward us to film our reactions, I tried to look enthusiastic. But internally, I was in a blind panic. A duet was like an invitation to engage in sabotage.
“Do we get to pick our duet partner?” Robin asked innocently, stealing a glance at Jarrett. The two of them, without question the best-looking duo remaining in our group, probably thought they could steam up the stage with their combined sexiness.
“Now, where would be the fun in that?” Nelly teased, putting her hands on her hips. The fringe on her peach leather jacket dangled from her elbows. “The pairs have already been chosen, and you’ll flip a coin to determine which of you will select the song you’ll sing. And the best part is… since it’s our Halloween broadcast, you’ll dress in costumes for your performance!” She pointed to the glass bowl. It contained scraps of paper with names of songs written on them.
I bit my lower lip, bracing myself for the worst. As Nelly began reading off the pre-selected duos from a piece of paper with the Center Stage! logo on it, my heart sank lower and lower. I didn’t even have to hear the names called out to know that Nelly was confident she had already dealt me my fatal blow.
“Robin and Ian!”
Robin and Ian high-fived for the camera.
“Jarrett and Eunice!”
Jarrett winked at Eunice and she nodded at him in approval.
And of course, “Christa and Allison!”
Christa cocked her head in my direction from across the room, and offered up a knowing smirk. I gave the camera my biggest smile, even though anger oozed out of every pore in my body. Obviously, Christa had known that this assignment was coming. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Nelly had cooked up this duet gimmick all on her own and had taken it to the producers as a ploy for ratings.
Robin and Ian were called up to the front first, and Nelly provided them with a quarter to flip. Robin called heads and won. She reached into the bowl to withdraw the song she and Ian would perform on Friday’s show. “Up Where We Belong,” she read from the scrap of paper for the cameras. Ian pulled his fist back in a yes motion, while Robin turned to Nelly, blank-faced. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Of course you have!” Nelly insisted. “Joe Cocker? Jennifer Warnes? It’s a classic!”
Next, Jarrett and Eunice flipped the quarter for the cameras and Jarrett pulled “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” from the fishbowl.
“Nice,” Nelly complimented them. “You guys can have a lot of fun with that.”
When I rose from my chair to approach the piano, my legs felt weak. Christa had reached the piano before I did, and as Nelly handed her the quarter, she called, “Tails,” and handed it to me. I half-heartedly tossed the coin in the air and caught it, not particularly caring if heads or tails came up. Whether I drew the song assignment from the bowl or Christa did, it was certain to be the worst song ever written for two vocalists to share.
“Tails,” Christa announced smugly for the camera after glancing at the coin on my hand. She reached into the bowl and withdrew a scrap of paper. “Hands Off My Man.”
It was all I could do to hold back my squeal of joy. I knew that song inside and out, backward and forward. Taylor and I sang that pop jam for an entire summer in the back seat of my mother’s car. Taylor would take the Leeza parts while I sang Tawny’s lyrics. My mom would always comment under her breath that she couldn’t believe what kind of smut was on the radio whenever I got to the line, “That body’s so tight, get your hands off it now or there’s gonna be a fight.” I was grateful that my mom never watched MTV or Vevo, because if she’d ever seen the music video for that song she’d never let me listen to the radio again.
I could sing the heck out of “Hands Off My Man.” I was pretty sure I could destroy Christa on Friday night… the trick was going to be holding back to make her think she had it in the bag up until the night of the show.
“Dang,” Eunice said, shaking her head. “I love that song.”
On the bus back to the hotel, Elliott confided in a low voice that he’d been assigned “Texas Highways” to sing along with Jermaine from his group. Even though I was pretty sure that two grizzled old Country Western stars had been the first to perform that song, Elliott seemed psyched. I pressed my lips together and managed a resolute “hmph.” Surely Chase’d had a little something to do with making sure Elliott was assigned a decent song.
“What’d you get?” he asked me as the bus turned into the Neue Hotel lot.
“Hands Off My Man,” I said, careful to make sure Christa, who was sitting two seats behind us, didn’t overhear me discussing our assignment. “I’m a little scared. Nelly paired me with her mini-me, that girl Christa.”
“She’s definitely up to something,” Elliott surmised. I didn’t dare ask what he thought Nelly was plotting. “You should look online and make sure you’re familiar with every version of that song ever recorded. Just in case she tries to make you sing some crazy jazz or reggae version of it on Friday.”
It would never have occurred to me that Leeza and Tawny might not have been the only artists to have ever recorded that song, but Elliott had a good point. Lots of popular songs were remakes. If it had ever been released as a Country Western song, I was in deep trouble because if there was anything Christa could do better than me, it was deliver a convincing performance as a cowgirl.
It was already seven o’clock by the time we arrived back at the hotel. Although all of the contestants staying there had the option of ordering dinner via room service, Elliott and I entered the restaurant together and took a seat near the windows looking over the not-so-scenic highway.
“It’s weird, living in a hotel, right?” Elliott asked.
My eyes ran through all of the options on the menu. It listed every food my mother had ever forbidden me from eating. Gluten! Saturated fat! Belgian fries with dipping mayonnaise!
“Yeah,” I agreed, looking up from the tempting appetizer options. “I thought I’d enjoy it, but I kind of feel like someone’s spying on me all the time.” It was also plenty weird sitting across from a b
oy who had kissed me forty-eight hours earlier, not knowing if he was my boyfriend or what.
“I’m afraid to touch anything in my room,” Elliott confessed with a bashful smile. “Like, if I use the coffee maker or too many towels, Tommy and Susan are going to knock on my door and hand me a bill.”
After the waitress had cleared away our plates, Elliott said, “Hey, I kind of want to work on some guitar chords tonight, but do you want to hang out tomorrow?”
While I wasn’t thrilled to go back up to my hotel room alone, it was a small relief that Elliott wasn’t trying to elbow his way into my room right off the bat. It made me nervous to think a boy I really liked was staying at the same hotel as me without any production assistants around to prevent us from hanging out wherever and whenever we wanted. Now that the season was in its fifth week, the handful of production staff members staying at the hotel probably would have been more concerned about us venturing out of the hotel to cause a social media frenzy than they would have been if Elliott had moved into my room. I mean, I wanted to hang out with Elliott and kiss him more. But I’d never even had a boyfriend before. I was fearful of things moving too quickly.
With Elliott back on the hotel’s seventh floor for the night, my thoughts returned to my duet dilemma. I was certain that Lee would have some ideas on how I might be able to throw off Christa’s performance on Friday. But I knew I’d be breaking the rules if I gave him too many specific details about what the challenge entailed. I called him, hoping it wasn’t too late for him to answer.
“Allison, why in the world would you want to practice singing in a Country Western twang?” Lee asked in response after I requested his assistance in nailing what I was sure, after speaking with Elliott, would inevitably end up a honky-tonk performance. If Nelly was going to insist that we perform our duet in a way that showcased Christa’s talents, I had an idea as to how to appeal to her fans. But I wasn’t sure I could pull it off convincingly. “I mean, you probably can’t even name one Faith Hill song. You don’t know anything about Country.”
“Yeah, but can you help me? I mean, could you come up to my hotel in Studio City after dinner one night this week and help me practice?” I asked. “I’m not allowed to leave the hotel now that we’re in the fifth week. I’m practically a prisoner here.” Having Lee’s assistance during that first week of the show had made all the difference in my confidence when I’d taken the stage. Unlike me, Lee was knowledgeable about music theory. He’d know the best way for me to outshine Christa during our performance without it seeming like I was just showboating.
I heard an unexpected hesitation on the other end of the line. “Well, tomorrow one of my friends is coming over and after dinner we’re hooking up a car mount.”
I had to interrupt him and ask what a car mount was. It was a removable platform he could attach to the hood of his car, on which he could place a video camera to shoot car scenes for his independent films. His parents had bought him a Toyota Yaris for his birthday, and he hadn’t even texted me since Saturday to tell me.
“Oh,” I said, a little hurt that he hadn’t sent me a picture of his new car or mentioned it sooner. “That’s awesome. Now you don’t have to beg Nicole for rides anymore.”
“Correct,” Lee proudly confirmed. “I am a free man.”
He promised to try to visit me on Wednesday after dinner; we said our goodbyes, and I felt lonelier than ever. It seemed like I’d hurt Lee’s feelings at his birthday party more than he was letting on. I wasn’t sure why that made my stomach feel sour; Lee had somewhat callously hit on Nicole at least a thousand times in front of me since freshman year without apologizing. It wasn’t fair for him to act like he had a bruised ego because suddenly there was—for the first time in freakin’ history—a boy who was interested in me.
Sensing Lee’s attempt to distance himself from our friendship made me feel worse than anything else that had happened to me in the last five weeks. If Nelly wanted to hate me and sabotage my chances of winning, at least I couldn’t take that too personally; she didn’t even know me. But Lee knew me practically as well as my parents knew me. If he was mad at me, then I must have been crueler toward him than I’d realized. After having watched Nicole treat boys like discarded Kleenex for so many years, I had always thought that breaking hearts would be kind of fun. But if I’d inadvertently broken Lee’s heart, it didn’t feel like much of a win at all. I had to remind myself that there was no reason to feel miserable; the boy every girl in America was fantasizing about had a crush on me.
Elliott was right: “Hands Off My Man” had originally been released as a single in the sixties by RCA Nashville. It was recorded by young Country Western stars Dottie Lewis and Marla Cartwright (neither of whom I’d ever heard of before). Luckily for me, they’d performed the song on a television variety show back then, and the grainy black and white footage was available on YouTube. Their version was a hokey, banjo-pluckin’ argument between two girlfriends. Its lyrics were much more innocent than in the modern release. But there was no mistaking that it was the same song.
The next day, we were given a welcome reprieve from dance instructions. In pairs, we were sent into small rehearsal rooms. Due to the nature of Friday’s performances, we were all going to get significantly less instruction from Marlene than usual because the coaches wanted to see how well we were able to work together. Collaborating with Christa was even harder than I imagined it would be because I could barely stand to look her in the eye. “You have a higher range than I do, so Nelly thinks you should take the harmony,” she informed me in the shrill babyish voice she sometimes favored. The harmonious part of that song was sung by Tawny in the recorded version, and while I was already accustomed to singing it, it wasn’t as prominent as the lyrics sung by Leeza. Singing the harmony would make it a little more difficult to overtake Christa, which naturally Nelly knew.
I sulked throughout the lunch hour because Lee didn’t reply to my text message, even though I tried to perk up when Elliott made a rare appearance at Da Giorgio.
“Wow,” I marveled as he sat down. Across from me, he grinned from ear to ear. “Are pigs flying around outside? What are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d check out the scene,” he said, surveying the cafeteria.
“It’s quite a scene,” I said sarcastically. “I mean, there’s eggplant tetrazzini today. It doesn’t get any hotter than that.” I paused, noticing that he had a boring tuna fish salad on his tray. “Seriously, Elliott. Why are you suddenly interested in the studio commissary?”
“I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to know that we’re, you know…” He trailed off before taking an enormous chomp out of his sandwich.
“We’re what?” I teased, because I was curious, myself. If we were dating, I needed clarification from him. “Friends?”
He finished chewing and swallowed. “Yeah. Friends. Or, you know, whatever.”
I looked past his shoulders, and if it had been his intention to turn heads and start gossip, he’d accomplished his goal. Christa was giving us the evil eye. An entire table full of contestants from Group 3 whispered about us. Robin made eye contact with me and then said something in Jarrett’s ear, causing him to chuckle.
“Why?” I asked. I was kind of flattered if Elliott wanted everyone to know that we were an item. But he was so intensely private that I suspected announcing our romance to the world was not his true intention.
Elliott smiled as he chewed. “You still don’t get how this works.”
“Elliott, seriously,” I said, trying to put the pieces of whatever logic he was referring to together in my head. “If you think that Nelly’s going to back off just because we’re, like, together, you’re crazy. She wants me off the show. I can’t make any mistakes.” I sighed, thinking about how nerve-wracking Friday’s broadcast was going to be if I didn’t step out onto that stage with a well-rehearsed plan for singing more loudly and flawlessly than Christa.
“Television is a business, All
ison,” Elliott said matter-of-factly. “Audiences mean dollar signs. The higher the Nielsen ratings, the more expensive the commercial time is for advertisers. That’s what people like Tommy Harper and Susan DeMott care about.”
He noticed that my jaw was practically hanging open and then blushed just the tiniest bit. “What?” he asked, self-consciously.
“How did you know all that?”
“I took Media Criticism last year. I know this stuff. The bottom line is, no matter how much sway you think Nelly has with them, if you’re the one that people are tuning in to watch, the producers aren’t going to let her push you off the show.”
His theory did little to ease my anxiety. Adding to my feeling of certain doom, Marlene was unusually critical of me during our practice session that afternoon. “Come on, Allison! This is supposed to be fun. Lighten up a little!”
But I couldn’t stop glowering. I didn’t want to sing scales in a room full of people who couldn’t wait to backstab me. I wanted to switch teams immediately and not have to worry about a childish fake cowgirl with a nasty blond weave trying to ruin my life. By the time I boarded the bus bound for the hotel that evening, I was in a rotten mood. Even though I was sure I could sing “Hands Off My Man” like nobody’s business, how could I predict what other little surprises Nelly was going to line up for Friday night? I was convinced she had finally found a way to get me voted off for good.
“Allison. Wake up.”
My eyes blinked twice, and the room came into focus. Instantly, I knew I wasn’t home, and reality washed over me in waves. Center Stage! Neue Hotel. My room, but not my room. Elliott’s suite. Elliott’s hotel suite was a carbon copy of mine, right down to the little gold sticker on the fresh roll of toilet paper that the housekeeping staff had placed in the bathroom while we were at the studio all day. He hadn’t been kidding about being afraid to use things in his hotel room. Two pairs of jeans hung in the closet along with one denim jacket, and other than those items and the guitar case in the corner, it looked like the room was unoccupied.
Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) Page 21
