Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (6 page)

“Can we be there?” Nicole asked, swinging her hair over one shoulder. “Like, to talk about how we always knew you were going to get famous?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask if friends could be there.”

Lee slapped the cafeteria table with the palm of his hand. “The field trip tomorrow is off. We have work to do. We need to get a fan club website built, and some posters made, pronto. Who’s in?”

The next day, Lee commandeered a bunch of kids to come over to my house and start what he referred to as my “PR campaign.”

“Pictures. I need pictures of Allison going all the way back to when she was a baby,” Lee ordered my mother. He looked around our living room, presumably for photo albums. “And family movies, if you have any.”

“We’ve got plenty of those,” Dad proudly stated. He traveled off down the hall to pull out the box of digital camcorder tapes from when Todd and I were little, before he had the kind of video camera with a built-in memory card.

“Oh cool, these are totally vintage!” Lee exclaimed when my dad returned with the shoebox full of tapes. “Can I take these home? I’ll transfer them all to DVD for you.”

“Sure,” Dad shrugged. “Just be careful with them; they’re Richard Burch masterpieces, and I don’t have any backup copies.”

“Do you still have the camera that shoots on these? Could I borrow it? I’m a filmmaker,” Lee rambled.

“What do you need all of that stuff for, Lee? The production crew is going to shoot an introduction for me to use on the show,” I reminded him. My dad padded back down the hall to dig the old video camera out of the closet in my parents’ bedroom. He seemed pretty thrilled that a kid my age was taking such an interest in his ancient, amateur moviemaking equipment.

“Your website is going to need a bio, and news agencies will want footage of you to use as B-roll during interviews with you. Trust me on this,” Lee told me.

Lee transformed our patio into a poster production center. I cringed as spilled glitter gently drifted on the wind into our in-ground pool and over to our neighbors’ lawns. Lee’s younger sister, Laura, had accompanied him. She was a veritable hand-lettering wizard. She and one of her eighth-grader friends prepared no fewer than thirty posters on pink poster board. Lee instructed them to leave space at the bottom of each one so that I could add directions on how to vote for me as soon as I knew how the show would structure voting that season.

Kaela sat in one of our deck chairs with her iPad and set up a new Twitter account, a Friendbook fan page, and a very simple website. When she showed me all of her progress, I was thankful but wanted to scream because she’d used my sophomore yearbook picture essentially as a publicity photo. Somehow I’d always known that lousy photo would ruin my life because the day it was taken I’d overslept and forgotten that it was picture day at school. My hair was greasy; I hadn’t had time to put on makeup. “It looks great,” I lied to her.

Nicole came over after her shift at Robek’s, and Dad grilled veggie burgers and tofu dogs for everyone.
 
“It’s very sweet of you to come over in support of Allison like this,” Mom told my friends as we all chowed down.

“This is an enormous opportunity,” Lee informed my mom as if she perhaps was unaware that starring on a television show was a big deal. “Allison’s going to be very famous. I hope you and Mr. Burch are prepared for all of the responsibilities of being showbiz parents.”

All of the activities made me dizzy and seemed presumptuous considering that the show hadn’t even started taping yet. I was going to be embarrassed if, for some reason, the show didn’t materialize, or if I got kicked off in one of the first few weeks. “It’s too bad Taylor Beauforte can’t be here,” Colton mused in between bites of food. “She’s gotta be so excited for you.”

No one knew about my fight with Taylor over the summer except Nicole because I was pretty sure no one kept in touch with her other than me. To all of my other friends, Taylor was a distant memory of a girl we’d known in middle school. Michelle had never even met her since she’d gone to a different public school system than the rest of us before her parents had switched her into Pacific Valley.

“She has much more important things to do these days,” I quickly said.

That night, after all of my friends’ parents picked them up and Nicole gave Michelle a lift home, I read the biography that Kaela had authored for me on my new website. “Allison Marie Burch was born on February 19
^th
, 1997 in Los Angeles, California. She lives in West Hollywood with her mom, dad, and sometimes cat Buster who primarily lives with the neighbors when they leave food for him outside. Her older brother, Todd, is studying International Relations at the University of Connecticut. Allison has always wanted to be a professional singer, and it’s her greatest dream to sing at the Hollywood Bowl. In addition to singing, she enjoys shopping, swimming, driving—î

I appreciated Kaela’s subtle jab at my parents for denying me a car.

“And she is a killer Scattergories player.”

I heard a knock on my door frame and turned to see my mom lingering in the doorway in her pajamas.
 
“Hi, Mom. Thanks for being cool about my friends coming over today.”

“It was great to have everyone over. It’s been years since I’ve seen all of those kids in one place,” my mom said.
 
“I think that kid Lee has a crush on you.”

“Absolutely not. He has a crush on Nicole.”

My mom smiled knowingly. “Yeah, well, I don’t know about that. Don’t forget, you and your dad have a game tomorrow.”

Not a single cloud flawed the periwinkle sky the next day as my dad and I sat in our blue upper-level seats at Dodger Stadium. It was a hot day, one of the last truly sweltering days we’d have before the weather eased up for the fall. As he always did whenever we went to a baseball game together, Dad ordered an enormous icy cold beer the moment we took our seats, and throughout the game we loaded up on peanuts and popcorn. At the end of the third inning, the Dodgers were behind by two. Dad sent me to the food kiosk to fetch hot dogs,
real
hot dogs, not the fake meat kind we ate at home, and nachos. Sometimes I wondered if my father genuinely liked the game of baseball, or if he just loved sitting outside on hot summer days, eating garbage my mom would never permit in the house.

“You’re sure you’re ready for all of this showbiz stuff, tiger?” Dad asked me after he wiped the last of the mustard from his hot dog off of his face.

“I’m sure,” I told him, even though as the start date of production grew closer, I was becoming more freaked out.

“You know, when I first met your mom, she was studying to be an actress.”

I almost dropped my giant 40 oz. diet soda in my lap. “Get out.”

“It’s one hundred percent true. I had just started the graduate program at UCLA in aerospace engineering, and your mom was a senior in the undergraduate Communications program. She was studying to get a job working in news media to make her parents happy. But she was taking a theater class at Santa Monica Community College at night, and was cutting classes all the time to audition for commercials and soap operas.” My dad’s eyes never left the baseball field as he reminisced. The Cardinals were at bat at the top of the fourth, and they had a man on first.

“What? I didn’t know Mom wanted to be an actress!
Or
work for a news company. Why didn’t she ever tell me any of this?” I asked.

“Ah, it’s all ancient history, Allison. And she probably wouldn’t be too happy that I’m telling you about it now. She did one or two commercials and got her hopes up, and then just couldn’t land another gig. That’s just how the business works; it’s not stable. There’s never any guarantee that you’re making progress toward anything.” He reached beneath his sunglasses with one finger to rub his eye. “Anyhow, after a few months without getting any call-backs, your mom just gave up on it. Things weren’t moving fast enough to hold her interest, and she got really down on herself. We almost broke up, actually. She became depressed and thought her life wasn’t worth living if she couldn’t do what she wanted. I cared about her, but I took it personally that I couldn’t make her happy.”

I was flabbergasted. My mom had been depressed?
My
mom, who did yoga every day and saw the sunny side of everything?

“So, what happened?”

“She got a call from CBS about her resumé, and landed a job there as a junior editor in the newsroom. She did that for about two years, and she was good at it, but she wasn’t able to handle the stress. Every time we’d plan a vacation or have something important going on in our lives, there would be a terror attack or political scandal, and she’d have to go into the station. So, she quit without having another job lined up. We got married; she became interested in yoga and nutrition, and then your brother came along.”

“Wow,” I said.
 
I could seriously not imagine my mom putting on a business suit every day and working in a high-stress newsroom.

“The point I’m trying to make is that your mom had a big dream, and because it was more difficult to achieve than she was expecting, she gave up on it. I don’t know if she regrets not pursuing acting, but I know at the time, her heart was broken. I think she believed that because she had a lot of talent, things would just magically happen for her,” Dad continued.

My eyes drifted out over the baseball field. Maybe this was why she hadn’t been so enthusiastic about my news.

“So if she seems a little precautious about your chance to be on this show, it’s only because she’s worried about you. I’m worried about you, too. If things don’t go your way, you can’t get discouraged. If singing truly is what you want to do with your life, this show is only one of a lot of different ways to make that happen. And if you really want it, just like with anything, you’re going to have to persevere.”

“Okay, Dad. I get it,” I assured him, touched that he had shared all this info with me. It didn’t make me any less nervous about the weeks ahead, but it did at least help me understand why my parents hadn’t seemed more excited.

On the drive home after the game (Dodgers lost by one point in the ninth), Dad turned up the volume on Sonic Youth’s
Goo
to a level that really would have irked Mom. He took his hands off the wheel to play air guitar. I felt like my dad and I had come to a kind of understanding. Now it was up to me to make good on my word that I wouldn’t be devastated if I didn’t win. I knew that was going to be a lot easier to promise than to do.

“Hey Rudy, can you adjust the back light over here?”

It was finally Thursday morning.
The
Thursday morning, the day when En Fuego Productions had set up a full-fledged production in our living room. Mom had fervently fretted the night before about making our house presentable for television viewing audiences, but she seemed pretty pleased to be having her hair and makeup done by the two-person team sent by the show.
 
A woman named Martha in a checked button-down shirt was blow-drying Mom’s hair straight, and a man named Geoffrey with a pencil mustache was applying beige eye shadow to her lids.

When it was my turn for attention from the hair and makeup team, Martha ran her hands through my long brown hair and said, “Wow, we’ll have a lot to work with here.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to give you a real makeover,” Geoffrey told me.

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, a little scared.
 
If I was in dire need of a
total
makeover, I wanted it immediately!

“Not much today, sweetheart. We save the big makeovers for the show. It’s a whole episode, turning our contestants into real pop star material. You have a lot of potential. Great bone structure. It’s going to be easy making you look gorgeous,” Geoffrey assured me.

However,
that
day, for my introduction to America, I would not be made over to look gorgeous. I would, sadly, look like plain, boring Allison Burch, eleventh-grader. I sat on our plaid couch fidgeting as the gaffing crew adjusted hot lights and white bounce boards to get the highlights and shadows on my face just right. Wall-to-wall distractions filled my entire house; there was a catering table in our hallway, and our bathroom was in constant use.
Flush, flush, flush
.
I could read my mom’s mind to know that the amount of toilet paper being consumed was at the forefront of her thoughts. As per her wish, there was a noisy truck outside from which long black electrical cables snaked across our lawn and through our front door, which was propped open by bricks.

Under normal circumstances, my mom would have been having a major freak-out about ants and flies coming into the house, but she was acting remarkably chill. She’d even taken the morning off from Levity and had a substitute yoga teacher lead her usual Thursday morning Prana Power Yoga class.

“Alright, Allison. We’re just about ready. We’re going to ask you some questions, and when you reply, it would be great if you could answer with part of the question. For example, if I ask you,
how did you first become interested in singing?
You should reply by saying,
I first became interested in singing when…
Do you follow?” A guy who had introduced himself as Ralph, the unit director, asked me. Ralph had a Southern accent and wore a baseball cap, even indoors.

“I follow,” I said. I didn’t recognize any of the people who’d infiltrated our house for the shoot from my audition day. I had imagined that Danny Fuego would be at my house to interview me in person, but I guess that was somewhat unrealistic. The production company had to shoot forty contestants’ introductions across the country in a week before the season premiere. I had at least thought that Claire would be there, and had even asked one of the production assistants if she’d be stopping by. But the production assistant’s expression told me that he had no idea who Claire was. Soon I would learn the difference between
production crew
and
production staff
.
The production staff, who worked for the producers of the show, rarely left their desks in the air-conditioned studio.

“Alright, Allison. So, on three. Three, two, one, and rolling. So, Allison. Tell us what inspired you to try out for
Center Stage!.”

I sat up as straight as I could, wondering if the camera were capturing any embarrassing details of our kitchen (visible behind me over the back of the couch). Television viewing audiences did not need to witness the unseasonable Christmas dish towels hanging on the door of our stove, or the National Aerospace Society calendar that hung over our counter, marked up with doctors’ appointments.

“I was really nervous about auditioning for
Center Stage!
because it’s always been my dream to become a singer, but I haven’t had too many opportunities to perform. It seemed like the perfect time to see if I have the right stuff to make it, so I took a chance.”

“Tell us a little bit about your life here in… where are we? West Hollywood.”

“I was born here, in Los Angeles, and a lot of my friends’ parents work in the entertainment business. My mom teaches yoga here in West Hollywood, my dad designs airplane engines, and my brother goes to college in Connecticut.”

“That’s great. Describe your love of music for us,” Ralph encouraged me.

What an infuriatingly generic and dumb question!
I struggled to compose a response in my head that would be memorable to TV audiences. “I’ve loved music my whole life, all kinds of music. My mom uses music as part of her practice to help people relax and find balance. All of my favorite memories growing up have to do with music, from singing Christmas carols together as a family during the holidays, to singing along with the mariachi band whenever we have dinner at The Big Sombrero.”

Behind Ralph, I saw my mom smile at that. I hadn’t sang at a restaurant in a while, but only because we’d stopped going to The Big Sombrero when Mom found out that they cooked their beans in lard. My parents had roared with laughter the first time I’d gotten out of my chair at the age of six and crooned along to
Mexico Lindo y Querido,
which I’d learned in my bilingual first grade class. The mariachi band had appreciated my bravado because they made a lot of tips when I sang along.

“What would be your greatest fear as a contestant on the show?” Ralph continued.

Gee, Ralph, that would probably have to be Chase Atwood finding out that I told his daughter off and hung up on her three months ago,
I thought. “Um, well, probably I’d be most afraid of…”

I became distinctly aware of an awful gagging noise behind me.
 
Buster, our terrible traitor of a cat, defector of our family, was stretched out across the top of the couch directly behind me, coughing up a hairball.
Gack! Gack!
He sat up, thrusting his tongue in and out of his mouth as he unabashedly tried to vomit the clump of hair stuck in his windpipe. I had no idea how long he’d been back there, as I hadn’t heard him jump up from the floor.

“Buster, you are
disgusting!”
I reprimanded him sternly and turned back around to the crew. “My greatest fear about being on the show would be looking like an idiot when I’m trying to act all cool. Just like this.”

Ralph and the cameraman shook with laughter. The guy holding the boom mic over my head was laughing so hard that the microphone pole was quivering. I tried to be a good sport about it, but my composure was ruined, and all I could do was be thankful that at least I wasn’t being broadcast
live
.

“I’ll take care of this. Come on, Buster boy.” My dad swept in and carried Buster off, still yacking, down the hall.

“Sorry. That cat thinks of himself as a star, so naturally he just
had
to get in front of the camera,” I grumbled.

“No problem at all, that’s what we like to see,” Ralph assured me. “Just you in your regular daily life. Okay. So back to business. Do you think you have what it takes to win
Center Stage!?”

My eyes darted from my mom over to my dad, who had just returned from his little trot down the hall to lock Buster in a bedroom. “I think I have a great voice, and fierce determination. Whether or not that’s enough to win is up to America to decide.”

I flashed a smile intended to endear myself to audiences at home, and just for a second, I felt like Katniss in
The
Hunger Games
.
Her fate depended on how many viewers liked watching her on a television show. I wasn't going to perish in the woods if audiences didn’t like me enough to vote for me to receive airlifts of bread, as was the case in Katniss’ considerably grimmer situation. But if I were to lose just because I was
unlikeable
¸
that would have been way worse than losing because the other singers were better than me.

“That was great, Allison. Just great,” Ralph assured me. The crew began wrapping up in the living room so that they could interview my parents out on the deck by the pool, and I panicked. Maybe I should have thought more about what my strategy would be on the show. The four contestants who’d made it to the semi-finals during the last season had all fallen into perfect stereotypes: Liza Martucci, the bombshell from the Bronx; Jax McBride, the handsome cowboy from Oklahoma; Becky Wylde, the punk rock princess from Seattle; and Curtis Wallace, the sexy R&B singer from Atlanta who could dance like Michael Jackson. All of them seemed to have had their acts together when it came to projecting an image. I was just a plain old American high school kid. In the two weeks that had passed since my audition, I should have been preparing some kind of persona instead of daydreaming about Nigel O'Hallihan.

While I punished myself for being so boring during my interview, I heard a car pull into our driveway. Suddenly, even though it was eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning, all of my friends piled into my house in an explosion of noise and activity.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“We couldn’t very well let you be on television without video-bombing your interview,” Colton teased, throwing his arms around me.

“Yeah! If you’re getting famous,
we’re
getting famous,” Kaela added. My friends descended like vultures upon the catering table.

Lee handed a memory stick to Ralph, who looked at it as if it were a rock from a distant planet. “You may be needing this. I took the liberty of editing a video biography of Allison for when she’s in the final round.”

Ralph attempted to hand it back to him, and Lee waved it away. “That was very presumptuous of you,” Ralph said to Lee, “but we’re not allowed to make any assumptions about which contestants will make it that far.”

“You’re not making an assumption.
I
am,” Lee replied. “Trust me. You’re going to need that. I’m Lee Yoon, independent filmmaker, by the way.”

Ralph looked humored but impressed by Lee’s confidence, and shook his hand with an amused smile. “I’m Ralph Reed, location unit director. Nice to meet you.” He dropped the memory stick into the pocket of his jeans.

When the crew finished interviewing my parents, the unit production manager suggested, “Let’s get the friends, too.”

“We might as well. They’re already here,” Ralph shrugged. One by one, my friends were taken out to the patio for quick interviews. I leaned against our sliding door, watching Martha fluff Kaela’s hair. Kaela dreamily watched Colton, who was smiling at a handsome production assistant wearing a plaid button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up, stretched tightly over his well-defined biceps.
 
Lee studied the production unit’s interactions as if trying to commit the entire process of conducting interviews on a patio to memory.
 

Ralph took a shine to Michelle during her interview. He clearly got a kick out of her gruff voice and reluctant smile as she showed him the wrist brace she wore due to a soccer injury. Mom chatted with Nicole as if they were old friends. She hadn’t ever gotten a reason from my brother as to why he and Nicole hadn’t gone out on more dates. I got the feeling that she wished Todd had taken Nicole more seriously.

The golden early autumn sun bounced off the calm waves of our pool in rapid arcs and slivers. Just for a second I saw my life with perfect clarity. I wondered if I were to become famous whether or not I’d ever have another moment like this: my closest friends, my parents, the familiarity of my house. Did I want to be famous badly enough to risk what I already had and loved? As soon as the thought occurred to me, I tried to banish it; I had no reason to believe that I’d have to compromise
anything
for success. But deep down at the bottom of my heart, as I watched Lee give his interview, I thought of Taylor and knew better. There was always a compromise for fame.
 
It was a law of physics, practically: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If I was lucky enough to have a shot at becoming a celebrity, I was sure I’d find out what that compromise would be.

The next day at school was bittersweet. I had sworn my friends to secrecy not to tell the other kids at school until closer to the season premiere, but I was a little annoyed that they’d followed my orders. When I folded up my white lab coat and hung it on a hook in the Chemistry lab cloak room next to Kaela’s, I felt a small victorious thrill.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll never wear you never again, Chem lab coat!
I thought to myself.
 
Ms. Shakur reminded us to all read Chapter 2 and urged us to prepare for a quiz on Monday about isotopes. My days of caring about isotopes were over, at least temporarily, even though I’d promised my parents I’d keep up with homework. My teachers had informed me that they’d e-mail me weekly assignments during my absence and wished me the best of luck.