Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  Before our car arrived to drive us to the Dolby Theater for the taping, Rob the evil production assistant sheepishly entered the wardrobe department while Aubrey was doing some last minute alterations on my blue velvet dress. Signifying Tommy and Susan’s admission of defeat, Rob informed me that I was expected to record a Secret Suite entry before leaving the studio about what an honor it was to perform a concert for sick kids at the hospital. En Fuego Productions intended to embrace the rumor that the show had sponsored the charity concert, which both delighted me (because it meant that Elliott and I had succeeded in creating a situation that the producers couldn’t back out of) and infuriated me (because my mom, her friends from church, and Lee had done all the work). It was no big surprise to find Ralph and a production assistant in the Secret Suite when I arrived; they’d been sent to coach me on exactly what to say.

  No more funny business was the message Tommy and Susan were sending.

  “And here we are, folks. The moment we’ve all been waiting for over the last eleven weeks. Tonight we find out which one of our four semi-finalists will be sent home, and which three will advance to the season finale to battle it out for the grand prize: a record contract with Silver Echo Records and a chance to open for All or Nothing on their world tour next year.”

  Later that night, after we’d all performed our songs as metaphors about our journeys on the show and our documentaries had played for the studio audience, it felt like mini blasts of dynamite were exploding in my rib cage. Nicole had texted me several times, firing me as a friend for not telling her that I was spending a whole day with Nigel. Danny Fuego was doing his best to drag out the anticipation before totaling all of our votes. The strangeness of standing on the stage in a nearly empty theater for the Expulsion Series hadn’t worn off over the course of the past eleven weeks, and the anguish had increased instead of subsided.

  “Elliott Mercer,” Danny said, and Elliott stepped forward. “You’ve held first place nearly all season, except for weeks four and five when Allison stole the lead. How do you feel about your chances tonight?”

  He stuck the microphone under Elliott’s nose. With an ambivalent shrug, Elliott replied, “I feel pretty good. I mean, being on the show this long has been a thrill, so if I’m voted off tonight, I can’t complain.”

  With that, Elliott’s votes were displayed. Over four million, two hundred and twenty-seven thousand votes had been cast for him. He stepped back into line next to Robin, who flashed her glamorous smile at Danny.

  “Robin Karpov.”

  Robin stepped up to meet Danny in the spotlight. “You really want the grand prize, don’t you?” Danny taunted her.

  Shamelessly, Robin said, “I sure do, Danny.”

  I remembered how she’d intentionally brought on Christa’s allergy attack early in the season. How she’d looked right through me on our first day in Erick St. John’s dance class as if I posed no threat to her whatsoever. I thought of how I’d felt a little sorry for her the first time I watched the video footage of her fumbling through her ballet routine on the stage at Royce Hall, and something inside me steeled against her. If there were any justice in life, Robin would be voted off that night instead of me. I balled my fists at my sides.

  “Let’s see how America voted for you tonight.”

  Robin’s votes totaled over three million, four hundred and thirty-nine thousand. There was no way I was going to try to calculate anything in my head while I was standing on a stage in front of a camera, but she’d gotten more votes than I’d expected. The track of fake applause played on the theater’s sound system, and Robin resumed her place in our line between me and Elliott as a little trickle of alarm dripped down my spine. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry if my total wasn’t higher than hers. After everything I’d already endured that season, I wouldn’t give Robin the satisfaction.

  “Allison Burch.”

  I took a few steps closer to Danny, remembering how Nicole and Michelle had argued about him back in the cafeteria when I’d first been chosen as a contestant. Now, I looked at his handsome face wondering just how involved he’d been in the behind-the-scenes politics dictating the show. He was, after all, its executive producer. He must have had something to do with my having lasted until the eleventh week of production.

  “Allison, there are a lot of people out there who think you might win next week. What do you think about that?” Danny asked me.

  “Uh,” my voice faltered as I considered the most appropriate way to answer without straying from the strategy that Elliott and I had laid out, “I appreciate that. I’m thankful for every person who casts a vote for me.”

  I held my breath in sheer terror for the fraction of a second it took my votes to appear on the screen over the stage. Four million, one hundred and nineteen thousand, and change. A gush of air released from my lungs in relief. I didn’t necessarily care about winning anymore, but I did care about losing to Robin. When I turned around to resume my place in line, she’d abandoned the well-practiced act of politeness she’d employed throughout the whole season. Tonight she gave me a mean-spirited, resentful pout.

  “And Tia Florendo,” Danny said, motioning for Tia to step forward. Even wearing high heels, Tia was the shortest of us, and Danny towered over her. “Tia, you’ve been a bit of an underdog on this show, starting off a little slow and steadily building a large following of fans. What do you think your odds are tonight of making it to the season finale?”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m in very good company on the stage here, tonight, Danny. I’m honored to have made it this far,” she said.

  “Let’s find out if our viewers want to see you back next week,” Danny said. Once again, I found myself holding my breath until Tia’s tally appeared on the screen. Three million, nine hundred and twenty-seven thousand votes.

  Next to me, Robin stood as still as a marble statue. A placid smile stretched across her face, and when Danny asked her to step forward, it seemed to take a second for her to accept the reality of what had just happened. Despite her cunning, despite her brazen confidence, she had been voted off. I couldn’t keep myself from glimpsing over at Elliott across the gap in the line that Robin’s absence had created. He was simultaneously peeking at me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Robin,” Nelly said into her microphone down at the coaches’ table, “It has been a privilege getting to know you and nurturing your talent since September. I am sure that America hasn’t heard the last of your voice, and I hope you view tonight as I do, as a beginning, rather than an ending.”

  Robin’s shoulders heaved as she inhaled before replying. “I am so very appreciative to have had this opportunity to train with you, Nelly, and to the producers of this show for all of the kindness they’ve shown me.”

  Once we were backstage, for the very first time since the season had begun, Robin fell apart. She burst into a torrent of sobs and had to be helped by production assistants out to the limousine waiting for us behind the theater. She howled all the way back to the Neue Hotel, and throughout the entire drive, Elliott held my hand in his, our fingers entwined. We’d managed to execute the first part of our plan. Now it was up to us to decide how far we wanted to go on the live broadcast of the season finale.

  With Robin gone, there was no longer any barrier between me and Nelly during the last week of the show. The reward for the coach whose contestant won the grand prize was a sizeable donation made to the charity of their choice. But Nelly’s dislike for me outweighed her desire to raise money for impoverished kids in her home state of Arkansas.

  “Well, it’s no secret that I’m not thrilled with this outcome, but it is what it is,” she lamented on Monday afternoon. “You’re allowed to select any song you’d like to sing this week, as long as the usage fees aren’t too expensive.”

  “What are usage fees?” I asked.

  Nelly scowled at me as if she couldn’t believe my ignorance. “Any time you perform a song on television, you have to pay license fees
to the writer and the music publisher, Allison. If you use the background tracks from the recording, you have to pay the musicians, too. How could you not know that by now?”

  Usage rights were a complication that Elliott and I had overlooked when we’d drafted the grand finale of our big plan. I made a mental note to look further into that later in the evening. However, Nelly’s frustration with me was the perfect segue into my carefully rehearsed request. “Well, I was kind of hoping I could perform ‘I Love You, But I Don’t Know What to Do.’”

  Watching her annoyance with me fade as pride bloomed in her eyes was priceless. “Oh, come on, Allison. You don’t have to blow smoke up my tail feathers at this point in the season. There must be a million other songs you’d rather perform.” But it was obvious that she was flattered. The song had been a huge hit over the summer, and it was the main reason she’d been chosen as a coach by the show’s producers in the first place.

  “It’s really the song I want to sing. It just kind of,” I shrugged, “fits my life right now.” Of course, I was referencing my relationship with Elliott, or more specifically, the on-again-off-again relationship Nelly thought I was having with him.

  Later that afternoon, I was escorted in a private car by Claire to a super fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills to be interviewed by a writer from a major entertainment magazine. Even though I’d already answered every question that was posed to me at least one hundred times that season, I crafted responses as charmingly as I could. The only time I hesitated while answering was when the writer leaned forward and asked me conspiratorially, “So, what’s the real deal between you and Elliott?”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Claire told me. She reminded the journalist, “Allison’s only sixteen.”

  “It’s alright. It’s complicated when you can either follow your heart or your dream, but not both,” I told the writer, who eagerly tapped my quote into her tablet device.

  The writer smiled at me with an expectant look in her eye and informed me, “You’re the buzz of Nashville right now. There are several Country music legends saying that you’re going to be the next big thing. What do you think about that?”

  “I think… that would make Nelly Fulsom very proud.”

  On Tuesday as I walked the quiet halls of Pacific Valley with a camera crew following me, it felt downright sinister to be roaming around while classes were in session. “This is my locker,” I told Ralph. I twisted the combination lock and opened my locker to reveal all of the junk that I’d abandoned in there before the season started. There was a picture of All or Nothing fixed to the back of my locker with a magnet, and I groaned with shame. “Don’t get a shot of that, please.”

  The crew had arranged for interviews with several of my teachers, and a few school administrators who I’d never even met before. Mrs. Flores raved about my abundant talent (even though she’d cast me in a minor part in the only high school drama production I’d ever performed in). Madame Peterson, my French teacher, insisted that she’d always known that I was destined for greatness (even though it was the F she’d given me on a pop quiz that had resulted in my having to quit my job at Robek’s). She playfully accused me of talking too much in class.

  It was as Mrs. Gambaryan gushingly recalled the day I’d told her that I had been chosen to appear on the show that it all clicked into place for me: I was the most famous Pacific Valley student ever. I was more famous than Megan Humbolt, the actress, and Bryce Lopez, whose television show had been canceled the year after his Emmy nomination.

  When I’d last walked the halls of my high school, I had been jubilantly certain that I’d never return to my studies there. Never again having to perspire through gym class or daydream through Calculus had seemed heavenly. But I caught a glimpse of Michelle at her desk as we passed by the closed door of a classroom, and it was a strange comfort that I’d probably be back in classes for the last week before Winter Break.

  Next, the camera crew drove me to a soup kitchen near Skid Row. The kitchen’s staff greeted me warmly and gave me a tour of their facility, explaining that they fed anywhere from one hundred to one thousand people each day, seven days a week. I was told I’d be assisting in the food preparation and service for dinner, their busiest meal of the day. A woman named Mary gave me an apron, and the camera crew filmed me as I slipped it on and began peeling potatoes. I had only peeled two potatoes—barely making a dent in the enormous bowl of Idaho spuds in front of me—when Ralph requested that Mary shift me to a station at one of the stoves. There, he directed me to stir a pot of simmering beans with a wooden spoon for the camera.

  When the soup kitchen doors opened at five o’clock, I stood alongside several other volunteers in the serving line. I scooped mashed potatoes and plopped them onto plates held by the men and women who’d lined up that night to receive a meal.

  After a few minutes of serving, Ralph announced, “Alright. We’ve got all the footage we need.”

  “But the service just started,” I objected. From where I stood, I could see that the line of hungry patrons extended beyond the open doors of the church basement and into the street outside.

  “We need to get the van and the camera equipment back to the studio before eight,” Ralph told me. “And the producers would flip if we left you here on your own. This neighborhood is very dangerous.” The crew looked antsy to hit the road. I realized that it had never been their intention to have me volunteer for the entire meal service. They only cared about making it appear as if I’d volunteered. It was so offensive that they’d talked the soup kitchen staff into welcoming me that I was embarrassed and apologized in a low voice to Mary when I handed my apron back to her.

  “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know they weren’t going to let me stay for the whole meal.”

  She smiled and assured me, “Don’t worry, dear. The simple fact that you’re getting the name of our soup kitchen on television means we’ll probably see more donations than usual this holiday season.” Her kind words made me feel a little better until my private car was almost back to the Neue Hotel, and then they made me feel worse. It was kind of sad, in my opinion, that people would be inspired to donate to a soup kitchen simply because a girl on prime-time television had been forced to pretend that she volunteered there.

  On Wednesday, Claire took me to Culver City for a photography session to accompany the interview I’d given on Monday. There, makeup artists fussed over me, and a stylist dressed me in three different amazing outfits.

  “What about this?” I asked the stylist, taking a fitted batik-dyed dress off the rack.

  “You have nice taste,” the stylist said, holding the dress up to my frame.

  “That’s a little sophisticated for Allison,” Claire cautioned. “The producers want us to keep her image consistent.”

  Soon, I promised myself, I would be able to pick out my own clothes again. The dress was returned to the rack. Instead of wearing it, I was styled in a pink button-down blouse with short, puffy sleeves and a suede skirt—an outfit that might as well have been selected by Nelly, herself.

  The week passed in a blur of grueling rehearsals, most of which ran later into the night than they had at any other point during the season. The finale would open with us performing a song together along with the coaches. Practicing a number with Chase was pure misery because he was a perfectionist. He’d request that we take it again from the top every single time the slightest mistake was made. “I’m gonna pop him one, right in the eye,” Lenore threatened under her breath.

  Nelly was more invested in my performance of her big summer hit than she’d been in any contestant’s execution of a song since the show began. She made me practice it the way she’d originally written it, and then decided it sounded better when I sang it in a different key. She had me rehearse it with the studio track from her original recording, and then with an acoustic guitar accompaniment, and then she overhauled it as a slow song composed for the piano and violin. That version was beautiful enough to
make me regret that I wouldn’t be singing “I Love You, But I Don’t Know What to Do” on Friday night.

  But of course, I couldn’t tell her that.

  On Thursday afternoon when I stood in front of the mirror practicing in the vocal training room, it struck me for the first time how much I’d physically changed since the start of the season. My body had firmed up from all of the morning exercise routines. Even my face was a little more contoured than it had been over the summer, making me look a little older.

  But it was my poise that made me look like a different girl than I’d been that very first morning when Mom had dropped me off at the studio. I stood up straight with my shoulders back and carried myself like a real singer. In September, I’d been a girl with no confidence and no performing experience. I was finishing the season as a girl who’d captured the attention of an entire country every Friday night for eleven weeks.

  “Very nice work, Allison,” Nelly praised me when my last note of the song trailed off. “You might just have a shot at the grand prize, after all.”

  Claire instructed me to pack up any personal items in my trailer that evening before returning to the hotel. There wouldn’t be any reason to come back to the studio on Friday; we’d be rehearsing the finale at the Dolby all day. I folded up all of the dirty t-shirts and socks I’d abandoned in my trailer over the course of the last two months and sat down on the couch. It didn’t seem real that the show had already come to an end, and for a second I got a little nostalgic about the last few minutes I’d ever spend in my trailer. Then I remembered the silver envelope that Marlene had handed me on her last day at the studio. I’d been suffering from such an intense headache that afternoon; I’d slid it into my backpack, promising myself I’d open it at her suggestion—when it was the right time. I found the envelope in the external pouch of my backpack exactly where I’d put it weeks earlier. Inside of it was a notecard with a watercolor painting of a bird on it.