Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (14 page)

“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 slump-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.

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.

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 by 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.