Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (23 page)

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, Allison,” 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.

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa while we were watching re-runs of
The Simpsons.
I had no idea what time it was, but Elliott was shaking me awake. An awful noise coming from the hallway put me into a panic.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my mouth moving more slowly than my thoughts.

“The fire alarm’s going off. We should go outside.”

I stood up uneasily, not fully awake yet, and walked over to the sliding door on the balcony. Sure enough, other hotel guests were filtering out into the parking lot through the lobby doors on the ground floor. Surprisingly and kind of infuriatingly, there were a few paparazzi parked in the lot. Photographer snapped photos of
Center Stage!
contestants as they stumbled out of the hotel, most of them wearing robes over their pajamas.

We stepped out of Elliott’s room and into the hallway at exactly the same moment as one of the contestants from Group 4, who raised an eyebrow knowingly at us. I was about to say, “It’s not what it looks like, we were just watching TV,” but Elliott was already pushing me toward the stairwell. The alarm was ear-splitting, and it didn’t even occur to me that I didn’t smell smoke until we were in the stairwell mechanically following everyone else down the steps.

“Where’s the fire?” someone behind us on the stairs asked.

“I think it’s on the fourth floor,” someone in front of us answered over their shoulder.

“It was on seven,” a third voice chimed in.

Elliott and I had just
been
on seven. It hadn’t seemed like anything was on fire when we’d stepped into the hallway with its glamorous walls covered in black lacquered paint. The general state of confusion was just like a typical school fire drill. No one seemed to know what was going on, and rumors were running rampant even though it was hard to tell where they were originating.

In the lobby, tired-looking hotel staff members with bags under their eyes congregated near the front doors as firemen in yellow plastic suits directed us to exit into the lot. Elliott threw his arm around my shoulders and held me close as we stepped out of the hotel and into the chaotic scene. Ian was raising hell and demanding for us to be allowed to go back to sleep. Paparazzi camera crews ran about, trying to capture unflattering photos of contestants and conduct impromptu interviews about the surprise middle-of-the-night fire.

A video camera crew was interviewing Robin, who stood in a tiny satin nightie without a hint of shame in the center of the parking lot. The moment her interviewer saw me and Elliott, he motioned for his camera guy to follow him, rudely cutting Robin off mid-sentence.

“Elliott! Allison! Did we just see you two together up there on the same balcony?”

“Beat it,” Elliott told the interviewer, who was a hipster in his twenties wearing fake black glasses frames.

“What happened up there?” the interviewer asked me, sticking his microphone directly in my face.

I wondered if we were all going to be in serious trouble the next morning with Tommy, Susan, and the other senior producers for being caught on camera at the hotel when we’d been placed there specifically to
avoid
media exposure. “We were just sleeping and we heard an alarm,” I said, not realizing until after the words left my mouth that I’d just given the interviewer the hottest scoop in town.

I’d made it sound like Elliott and I were sharing a room.

“Oh, really?” the interviewer asked in an incriminating tone.

“I mean, we were watching television and fell asleep,” I backtracked, my voice shaking.

“Riiight,” the interviewer grinned knowingly. “So you two
are
a couple?”

Elliott dropped his arm from around my shoulders and stuck his hands back in their usual place: the pockets of his jeans. “Seriously, man,” he warned the interviewer. “It’s none of your business.”

“None of my business? I’d say it’s the whole country’s business. Haven’t you been reading the fan blogs about the show this season? You two are all anyone’s talking about.”

Thankfully, a fireman with a bullhorn called the parking lot to attention before the interviewer from the Hollywoodland website captured more of our frustration on camera. “Alright, everyone. The excitement for the night is over. It looks like this was a false alarm. Apologies for the disturbance,” he said.

There was a swell of grumbling and complaining as the crowd began pushing its way back into the hotel lobby. It was chilly outside. I was alert with fear that Elliott and I had just been framed in a scenario that could land us in very hot water.

“Do you think they’re going to put that interview on their website?” I asked him worriedly as we climbed the stairs back up to our respective floors to avoid the lengthy wait for an elevator.

“I sure hope so,” he replied.

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Elliott, seriously? If my parents see that…
anyone
who sees that is going to think that we’re like—”

“A couple?” he interjected. “What’s so wrong with people thinking that?”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. There wouldn’t be anything
wrong
with that. But six weeks earlier, I’d never even
kissed
a boy, and now every television owner in the United States of America was going to think that I was sneaking around with Elliott at a luxury hotel. I was still only sixteen. It was a surefire bet that the awkward topic of sex was going to be raised during each and every interview I gave for the rest of the season.

“Look,” Elliott said, growing frustrated but avoiding my eyes by looking at his feet. “All night you were freaking out about Friday’s show because you think Nelly’s plotting to get you kicked off. You
still
don’t see what’s going on here. She can’t kick you off if you’re getting ratings. They won’t let it happen.”

I was trembling. I didn’t know what he was trying to imply… that he’d only been
pretending
to like me to create an illusion for the cameras that we were romantically linked? As if that was a way to secure both of our positions on the show?
He
didn’t need any extra security—he’d earned more votes in his group than any other contestant since the first week of the show. We both fumed in silence as a contestant from Group 3 trudged up the stairs past us in his pajamas and slippers.