Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (39 page)

His impression was pretty spot-on. “Stop,” I teased, very happy to hear that he had not enjoyed his date as much as Tawny’s Selfie photos had suggested.

“How was your date?” he asked. We hadn’t traded details in Lee’s car on the way to the hospital. It would have required more explanation about the show’s inner-workings for Lee than we could have possibly squeezed into the brief drive.

For a split second, I considered exaggerating but couldn’t go through with it. It felt too nice to be back in Elliott’s presence and not have to pretend to be anything other than my snarky self for the first time all day. “My date was wasted,” I admitted. “Like, the whole time. He just drank and drank.”

Elliott’s eyes lit up with relief. “God, I’m so glad that he has an unattractive drinking problem. I was worried that he was going to sweep you off your feet.”

“So unattractive,” I assured him. “We should do something to celebrate surviving today. Like get tattoos.”

“What’s the Chinese symbol for revenge?”

On the other side of the mountain range separating the San Fernando Valley from Central Los Angeles, Lee Yoon was transferring all of the video he shot at the hospital to an external drive so that he could edit it into a segment in his Media Arts classroom. Everything was going according to plan. Tommy and Susan were probably at home in their mansions, having no idea that a storm was brewing for them to deal with the next day.

Kaela’s story about Robin’s debut with the Los Angeles Ballet ran the next morning on the cover of the
West Hollywood News
.
 
While it wasn’t quite the
New York Times,
the article caused enough of a stir that a grim-faced Claire pulled Robin out of our vocal training with Harvey. When Robin returned an hour later, she was fuming, and an angry vein popped out on her forehead while she rehearsed her song for Friday. She left the studio early to travel across town with the production crew for her big performance, and I had butterflies in my stomach as if I were waiting for Santa to land on the roof on Christmas Eve. By lunchtime, several high-profile websites had posted commentaries on Kaela’s article and the impact of high-profile, celebrity productions on the fine arts.

When Lee and my other friends from the Pacific Valley School took their seats in the balcony at UCLA’s Royce Hall for Thursday night’s performance of
The Nutcracker,
it was a lot fancier than they’d been expecting. They almost lost their nerve. The ornate coved ceiling and smell of brand new carpeting in the auditorium space were intimidating. My friends felt even more sinister for what they planned to do since the audience was mostly composed of happy families dressed in their holiday finest. But during intermission, they spotted production assistants wearing
Center Stage!
t-shirts out in the lobby and felt a resurgence of motivation. “Remember, this is about Allison,” Nicole reminded Kaela, Michelle, Colton, and Lee (or at least she told me later that she had taken it upon herself to keep them on task).

Robin teetered out onto the stage on tiptoes during the Waltz of the Flowers, which was one of the last sequences in the ballet. There was a smattering of appreciative applause from the crowd, presumably from fans of the show. But just as we’d hoped, there were also some
boo’s
and a strong din of chitchat (most likely from ballet enthusiasts who had read Kaela’s article). As planned, Lee and Colton shot video on their cell phones from their seats as Robin pointed and spun around. Cupping her mouth with her hands and leaning forward over the balcony, Michelle bellowed in her deep voice, “Whoooo!
Center Stage!”

 
My friends had figured (correctly) that the staff at the theater wouldn’t call the police on them for cheering Robin instead of jeering at her, but that they’d rattle her, anyway. And rattle her was exactly what Michelle did. Robin lost her balance and then miscounted her steps. Murmurs from the audience made her lose concentration again, and by the time her sequence ended, she was woefully behind in her routine. Rather than even trying to salvage it, she just danced offstage to polite applause.

Anyone unfamiliar with the ballet probably wouldn’t have noticed that she’d botched her routine. But after the performance, conversation in the lobby centered around why on earth the show’s director had ever agreed to allow an amateur perform a featured role.

“Mission complete,” Nicole told me when she called me to tell me how the performance had gone.

Local news channels mentioned the lackluster performance on their late night broadcasts, including interviews from attendees of the ballet that varied from indifferent to angry that Robin had been billed as a special guest. About an hour after Lee and Colton arrived back at the Yoons’ house in Beverly Hills, they uploaded the footage of Robin’s unimpressive performance to YouTube and Selfie. They also posted several gratuitous cuts of a ten-minute sizzle reel of the visit Elliott and I had made to the Children’s Hospital.

I squealed with glee when I received an e-mail from Lee announcing that the video was up. He’d really knocked himself out adding vignette effects, titles, and sentimental stock music during the part when Elliott and I first arrived and met Nurse Gibbons. I’d perhaps underestimated Lee’s talent; the video he’d prepared was every bit as professional as a segment on the nightly news. His director’s cut, with a sappy montage sequence of me and Elliott singing in slow motion while kids at the hospital swayed to the music, made me get a little weepy.

Of course, there was a good chance that our subtle sabotage on Robin’s performance would do little to influence voters on Friday night’s show. There was also a good chance that the video of me and Elliott singing to kids at the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital wouldn’t be seen by enough people to counteract the broadcast of our respective dates with Tawny and Nigel O’Hallihan. As I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep, I was very aware that the following night, I might be back in my bedroom in West Hollywood after having been voted off the show. But at least I’d leave the show knowing that I’d taken matters into my own hands.

“Just what in the—what were you thinking?”

Tommy Harper’s angry face looked like a supersized goji berry, wrinkled and scarlet. I’d never seen him as angry during the eleven weeks of the season as he was on Friday morning. From the way Susan cringed in the corner of his office, my guess was that she’d never seen him that furious before, either.

Elliott and I both sat in Tommy’s office in the chairs that had practically become our assigned seats for admonishment. Naturally we were both quite pleased with ourselves, but couldn’t let on. Lee’s director’s cut of our jam session at the hospital had exceeded all of our wildest dreams; it had become an overnight sensation online and several national morning news shows featured it during their broadcasts. Almost one million people had “liked” it on Facebook. Lee had done such a fantastic job of shooting and editing the video that most news outlets were claiming that the visit to the hospital and resulting video had been arranged by En Fuego Productions as if it were bonus content from
Center Stage!

This put Tommy and Susan in precisely the position we wanted them: unable to deny the show’s involvement with our charitable act without looking like total jerks. We’d gotten them. We’d gotten them
good
, and from the looks of Tommy, he was not accustomed to being gotten.
 

“You two destroyed all credibility for the storylines we created for tonight’s broadcast. What are people going to think when they watch the show tonight?” Tommy barked.

Elliott shrugged his shoulders and said in an infuriatingly unemotional voice, “That you guys made us go on awkward dates with weird famous people before we went to the hospital together and performed a secret show.”

“That—” Purple, Tommy shook a finger in Elliott’s face, unable to even form a complete sentence in his fury. “You—Why—”

Outside, in the parking lot, Elliott and I broke into a million giggles. We laughed so hard that I had to lean against the wall of the warehouse that contained Dance Studio Four. Elliott squatted and then doubled over. Erick St. John wandered by and muttered, “What have you two been smoking?” as he passed us.

“Man, we’re really in for it now,” Elliott said as he wiped away the tears from the corners of his eyes. “God only knows what they’re going to surprise us with tonight on stage.”

We’d both known the night we stayed up in my hotel suite plotting out the revenge we wanted to exact from the producers that any offensive moves on our part would result in retaliation on theirs. But whatever they wanted to throw at me later that night when the cameras were rolling, I’d be prepared. “I don’t care if they make me sing Hungarian opera music tonight,” I wheezed, still trying to catch my breath. “I’m probably getting voted off anyway, so it doesn’t matter anymore.”

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.