Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (2 page)

“You’re up in forty-five seconds, Allison.”

I felt like my knees were going to buckle, and my interlocked fingers were as cold as popsicles. So cold that I assumed my fingernails were probably turning blue underneath my Orange-You-Glad-I-Didn’t-Say-Banana gel manicure. I stood in the conference room that had been designated as a waiting area with the other contestants who were auditioning, and averted my eyes to avoid watching a girl around my age on a monitor. She was receiving feedback from the same celebrity vocal coaches who would be deciding my fate—and everyone else’s—that hot day in September.

One of the television show’s crew members had given me a laminated number on a lanyard to wear around my neck, and I nervously fidgeted with it. I was #67, the next in line to sing. My nerves were not exactly being soothed by the sound of #66 receiving cringe-worthy feedback on her performance. The poor girl had chosen to sing a popular ballad by pop star Tawny. That was her first mistake, in my opinion. No one could sing
“You Don’t Know Me at All,”
better than the superstar from Miami whose voice was as smooth as cocoa butter. The first coach, whose name I’d already overheard—Nelly Fulsom, a successful Country Western singer—was lambasting #66. She cruelly pointed out that the song showcased #66’s range but exposed her inability to hold a note with any measurable power for more than a few seconds. When I dared to steal a glance at the television monitor, #66 looked like she was on the brink of unleashing a tsunami of tears.

I quaked with anxiety. Even though I had been trying not to pay much attention, I’d thought #66’s performance hadn’t been too bad.

It was a Wednesday afternoon, and I had crept out the back door of Pacific Valley School before the start of sixth period (Calculus—seriously, who can do advanced math right after lunch?) to catch the stinky public bus bound for Hollywood. The local
Center Stage!
auditions were being held that day. My parents had no idea that I would dare to cut classes. I hadn’t told anyone that I’d submitted an audition video of myself singing my favorite song from
Phantom of the Opera
into my mobile phone’s camera. It wasn’t as if I had anyone to tell, anyway. My parents were the most anti-show biz parents in all of Los Angeles, and Taylor and I had stopped speaking after an argument over the summer. Nicole would have told everyone at school that I was trying to get onto
Center Stage!
and that
would have been mortifying. No one at my high school knew that I sang; even my involvement in our musical theater program was minimal.

So I had submitted my audition video in total secrecy, never expecting to receive an e-mail from the show’s producers inviting me to continue the audition process in person. It was such a shock to find that e-mail in my inbox; I hadn’t even decided to attend the audition until that very morning before school started. Sending in a video for consideration had been like dipping a toe in a cold pool, but showing up for the real audition with actual celebrity coaches judging the performances was like doing a nosedive. There would be no stepping back onto the diving board after I jumped, which was terrifying. It was possible that my audition would be viciously torn apart by the coaches in front of an entire television crew—not to mention the entire
country
—if the producers included it in the season premiere’s outtakes.

That was how I came to be standing in a hotel conference room adjoined to the Dolby Theater, surrounded by other hopeful singers, most of them a few years older than me. I had banned myself from watching the monitor too closely in an attempt to not get psyched out by other contestants. I hadn’t even wanted to know who the coaches were because if any of them were personal idols of mine, that would have been simply too much pressure. With any luck at all, the stage lights would be too bright for me to distinguish the faces of those who sat at the table with microphones and score cards, listening.
Judging.
The mere fact that celebrities strode across that stage in the Dolby Theater every year for the Oscar ceremonies was enough to give me goosebumps.

“Are you ready?” a crew member wearing a black t-shirt and a headset asked me gently. He motioned for me to follow him through a set of green double doors and down a long, carpeted hallway. At the end of the hallway, he held open another door, and all I could see through its frame was the darkness of the backstage area. The acoustics on the other side of that door were completely different than the muted quiet within the carpeted hallway.
 
The
Center Stage!
theme music blasted over the sound system, and a series of middle-aged crew guys with big bellies poking through their t-shirts directed me toward the edge of the stage. Everyone was mumbling in low voices on their headsets about where cameras were moving and when lighting needed to shift. Nothing felt real. It seemed as if I was dreaming, and my teeth were chattering.

As I stood at the edge of the stage, about to be shoved into the spotlight, suddenly everything felt wrong. I was anything
but
ready. I should have spent more time straightening my hair before school. I should have worn my red cashmere sweater instead of my usual black cardigan over a concert t-shirt. I should have warmed up my voice backstage, or at least had a swig of water. Now it was too late to change anything; I was here. It was happening.

“Our next contestant comes to us all the way from West Hollywood, where she’s a senior in high school and hopes to major in musical theater in college. Please welcome… Allison Burch!”

I felt two strong hands on my back nudge me forward, and I awkwardly stepped onto the stage. I passed Danny Fuego, the devastatingly handsome, dimpled host of the show, who winked at me and patted me on the shoulder as he stepped behind the red velvet curtain into the backstage area. I would save my freak-out about physical contact with Danny Fuego until a more appropriate moment in time. It was pretty cute that he had joked about the distance I had traveled to be there that day… all of about three miles.

The music overhead was deafening, and just as I had expected, the lights were so bright that I had to resist the urge to raise my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes. I quickly got my bearings and told myself sternly,
this is it. Don’t blow it
.
 
There was a smattering of applause, as there was for every new contestant. After a deep breath, I walked to the middle of the stage and clumsily lowered the microphone down to my height. #66 must have been some kind of giant. I couldn’t make out the faces of the coaches, but I could see the shiny eyes and bright blue illuminated mobile phone screens of hundreds of people in the rows and rows of seats in the theater. The entire Dolby Theater was packed. Nothing like a little more pressure.

“What are you going to sing for us today, Allison?” I heard a male voice ask me from the coaches’ table.

“I’m going to sing
‘Always Yours’
by Pound,” I said, hearing my voice crack a little as I spoke into the microphone. As the words left my mouth, I leaned forward and realized the person to whom I was speaking was none other than Chase Atwood, the lead singer of Pound. Taylor’s father.

Instantly my cheeks burned up with embarrassment. The crowd was going wild, and
of course
they were!
 
What kind of fool gets on stage and announces she’s going to sing one of the coaches’ biggest hits? If I’d known that Chase Atwood was going to be one of the coaches that year, I never would have dared to leave school that day and gotten on the bus to Hollywood. Heck, I never would have even recorded an audition video. The last time I had spoken with Taylor was when she’d called me from a luxury suite at some hotel in Chicago. I’d hastily hung up on her because she had been whining about how much it sucked to be taken shopping at expensive boutiques by her stepmother and order room service every night. Her inability to appreciate how privileged she was had simply been too much for me to tolerate after a long, boring day of blending smoothies.

If what I’d read in magazines was true, Pound’s tour had been cut short in August because Chase Atwood had entered a rehabilitation program in Malibu to treat his exhaustion. That had only been six weeks ago, but there he was, standing just thirty feet in front of me. He was waiting for me to impress him with my rendition of the song that had cemented his band’s place in history the year I was born. He probably had no recollection of briefly meeting me at his ex-wife’s wake just a few short months ago.

“Wow. This’ll be the first time someone’s attempted to perform a Pound song this season,” Chase teased me. I sent a swift prayer to heaven for a lightning bolt to strike me down at that very instant and relieve me from actually having to sing. “Do it justice.”

I heard the first few chords of the song’s introduction play on the overhead sound system, and a shiver rippled through me. I just had to focus.
Focus.
I had only met Chase once, at the wake for Taylor’s mom at the beginning of the summer, so the possibility that he recognized me as one of his daughter’s friends was slim. In fact, if he had any clue how much I knew about
his
life through Taylor,
he
probably would have been the one shaking with anxiety. And now he held the keys to my future; all I had to do was sing this song as well as I could sing it at home alone. There was a reason I had typed its title into my audition RSVP e-mail; I sang the chorus in a harmonized key different from the original version to make it more feminine. However, now that I was standing in the hot spotlight, the riskiness of this approach was obvious.

All of my dreams
were riding on this performance. Singers who made it past this audition in Hollywood were brought back for a twelve-week televised competition, throughout which at-home viewers could vote for their favorites via text message. The winner of the competition won a record deal and a chance at opening for All or Nothing, a wildly popular Irish boy band, on their world tour. I was a little ashamed to admit that I liked their cheesy music, but they were
cute.
I wanted the opening slot on that tour most of all
.
I didn’t even realize how desperately I wanted it until I was standing in that spotlight, with all eyes and cameras on me. It was all within reach: the private jets, the screaming fans, the magazine covers.

But it all started with this song.

I took a breath and found my voice. The first verse of
“Always Yours”
told the story of young love, and I sang it softly, as if I were reminiscing, just as Chase Atwood sang it on the original album recording. By the time I reached the end of the second line, I knew I was doing a decent job and was grateful that the lyrics returned to me with ease. The audience was clapping supportively, and I could hear the murmur of people singing along, even though that was strictly forbidden on the show. Thankfully, there weren’t any monitors on the stage allowing me to see the reactions of the coaches. I forgot that they were there as I moved into the refrain, and steadied myself for the chorus. I consciously tried to slow down, inhaled calmly before increasing my volume, and felt warmth radiate from my chest, down my arms, and into my fingertips as I hit all of my notes. The crowd’s applause swelled.

Fortunately, due to the nature of the show, contestants never had to sing their audition song in its entirety. There was a three-minute limit on auditions, so I only had time to sing the first two verses and the chorus twice before the music faded. The second time I reached the chorus, I lifted the last lyric to an unexpected high note and held it as long as I could to bring a more formal ending to my performance. My voice outlasted the background track, and I held that final note as long as my lungs could sustain it, thrilled by how my perfect pitch washed over the entire theater from floor to ceiling. As soon as I stopped singing, I impulsively raised my hand to my eyes to block out some of the stage lights for a better visual of the audience’s reaction. There was thunderous stomping in the stands, hooting, whistling (which was awesome), and wild clapping.

Then, what I saw happening at the coaches’ table almost made my heart stop. I saw Nelly Fulsom wiping tears from the corners of her eyes, and Chase Atwood on his feet, clapping appreciatively. To Chase’s left I saw Lenore James, a very famous R&B singer, and next to her sat a short black man who I didn’t recognize, wearing gold chains. Only once I finished did I feel the muscles in my shoulders relax, and I began breathing heavily, trying to recover. It was over. I was practically home free, guaranteed a spot on the show. At least I thought I was. Wasn’t I guaranteed? Had any contestants earlier in the day received such an enthusiastic response to their performance only to be denied a spot in the line-up? Suddenly I was panicking again and knotted my fingers behind my back. I would need a minimum of two coaches to vote for me to continue in the competition, and at least one to request to have me on their team.

“Allison Burch,” Nelly Fulsom said sternly into the microphone on the table in front of her. “That was simply amazing. Was that your first time on a big stage?”

“Other than at school, I guess,” I said into the microphone, stunned at how loud my speaking voice suddenly sounded. I was embarrassed to admit that my only role so far in my high school’s drama program had been as the Irish nanny in
Mame!
It was one of the smallest speaking roles in the entire production, and I had been almost paralyzed with fright every time I opened my mouth to say my lines.