Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (13 page)

Really. Smoking a cigarette. As if he genuinely didn’t care about his health or the condition of his voice. Or the fact that he wasn’t even old enough to legally buy cigarettes. I wondered
 
how a pack of cigarettes had come into his possession and whether or not he walked around with matches or a lighter everywhere he went. That day, he wore a blue t-shirt that looked as if it had been washed no fewer than five thousand times. It brought out the turquoise of his eyes so strongly that I could see the hue even from a distance. He caught me staring at him just as I was about to climb into the limo, and thankfully I had disappeared into the air-conditioned darkness before he saw my cheeks flush.

That Wednesday morning drive down to Hollywood for our rehearsal was
my
first time in a limousine. I tried to drink in every single detail—from the cheesy rainbow-colored lighting across the floor and ceiling to the ice bucket with a bottle of sparkling apple cider wedged in it, which of course Ian lifted to his lips and pretended to swig. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have the back of that limousine all to myself, to be able to watch the movie playing on the overhead television screen.

“God, there isn’t even any juice in here,” Christa complained about the lack of breakfast beverages. “Could they be any cheaper?”

I was already getting the sense that Suzanne and Robin were totally over Christa just three days into production. Eunice seemed to be as excited as I was to get the white glove treatment that morning. She curiously pressed every button she could reach to watch the lighting on the ceiling and floor change color schemes.

At the Dolby Theater, we were all introduced to a man named Mark. He was the director of live televised events (but presumably had no ties to the several other “directors” of the unit crews that shot the footage of us practicing at the studio). Also present for the first time that week were the big wigs: Tommy Harper and Susan DeMott, who both stood near the front row of seats having conversations with other people in suits. Tim Collins followed them around like a lost little boy. Danny Fuego was there, looking sexy in a skin-tight ribbed t-shirt and cargo pants. A mobile camera crew trailed two steps behind him. Claire lingered behind Mark with her clipboard, and it was a relief to know that she was around. Claire represented order and fairness in my opinion. It never truly felt like we were creating a television show instead of performing some kind of strange anthropological experiment unless she was there, explaining how everything was supposed to work.

At the start of the show on Friday night, we’d perform the show’s theme song together as a group. Danny Fuego would introduce the coaches, remind people watching at home how to vote, and begin introducing the guests. Video footage of our introductions would play on a large screen over the stage before each contestant would walk out into the spotlight to sing for the theater audience. The season premiere of the show was a two-hour special, and Mark very carefully controlled its timing.

“No funny stuff,” Mark he warned us.

Backstage, we were arranged in our groups and transported into four different holding rooms. GROUP 2 was scrawled in marker on a paper sign that hung on the black shiny door which led to ours. The room itself was nothing fancy at all, just two black leather couches, a mirror, two small adjoining bathrooms, and a television fixed from the ceiling in each corner. All four of the televisions were showing a morning talk show. None of us watched it; we congregated around the craft services table, and pigged out on miniature bagels and bowls of cereal.

Rob, the evil production assistant, arrived to inform us of the order in which we’d be performing. I was dismayed that I wasn’t one of the first to perform, and accepted my Post-It note from him with #14 written on it with a shrug. Number fourteen. Right in the middle. I sank into the leather sofa and pondered whether or not there was any advantage associated with my number. I couldn’t decide if it was better to make a good impression early in the broadcast and risk that viewers would forget about my performance, or sing last when the audience would have already run out of patience.

Robin was the first in our group to notice when the televisions flipped from the morning talk show to a live feed from the cameras focused on the stage. Danny Fuego was rehearsing his introduction, explaining how at-home viewers could vote for their favorite singers with their mobile phones. “You can cast your vote for up to five of your favorite singers on the show three different ways. First, you can call 1-800-555-8377 and then, using your phone’s keypad at the operator’s prompt, enter the number of the singer for whom you wish to vote. Second, you can text your favorite singer’s number to 1-800-555-8377. And last of all, you can go online to our show’s website and cast your vote after registering.” The phone number appeared on screen along with the web address for the show’s website.

Immediately I remembered Lee mentioning how he’d like to get organized as soon as I found out how voting would work on the show. I sent him a long e-mail with the directions as best as I could remember them, and told him I’d be singer #14.

“They don’t start counting votes until the broadcast begins,” Christa told me in a snide voice, snooping.

“I’m aware,” I snapped back and slid my phone into my purse again. Her smugness had caused my throat to tighten when I’d overheard her bragging to Eunice that the producers always placed the most promising talent
last
in the line-up. It had to be true, she reasoned, since the previous year, Curtis Wallace sang thirty-eighth on the season premiere. Christa had been assigned #32. I calmly tried to assure myself that Christa was full of hot air, but still... she had a point. If I remembered the previous year’s premiere correctly, Curtis Wallace
had
sung close to the end, as did the others who ended up becoming finalists: Liza, Jax, and Becky. My heart sank—my chances couldn’t have been dashed before the cameras even began rolling, could they?

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.