Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  “I’ll be on my way then.” Elliott shrugged before walking around to the driver’s side door of the Fiesta.

  “Wait, Elliott,” I blurted out. He hesitated, resting his hand on the door handle. “What are you doing here, and why are you warning me about Nelly?”

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew, you know? About her,” he said and then opened the car door with a click. “I don’t want you to get voted off. If I end up losing on this show to anyone, I would prefer that it to be to someone with actual talent.”

  I crossed our yard and curled my toes over the edge of the cement curb to watch his car drive up our street. His red tail lights grew smaller and smaller until they disappeared into traffic on the corner of North Crescent Heights, and into the greater kaleidoscope of orbs of light that led from the cross streets of West Hollywood up into the high hills north of Sunset Boulevard. I couldn’t be certain, but it sure seemed like Elliott Mercer had just—in a roundabout way—tried to become friends with me.

  Chapter 10

  Instant Fame

  Fame was instantaneous, and a complete surprise.

  While I’d suspected that some people might have Googled my name after our first broadcast, I was entirely unprepared for what awaited me when I woke up on Saturday morning. After sleeping in to an indulgent hour, I discovered that I had over four thousand Friendbook contact requests. Three random e-mails from kids requesting to interview me for their class projects. A still photo from my performance was being featured on a beauty blog as part of a “get the look” special, even though none of the cosmetics they were displaying had actually been used on my face for the show. #AllisonBurchFTW was trending on Twitter. Bloggers and reporters had been calling the house since the sun came up.

  It was hugely comforting to see that Kaela was already posting updates to my Friendbook fan page. I hadn’t even thought to ask her for help, but there was no possible way I could ever keep up with all of that by myself. My head was spinning when I emerged from my room and lumbered down the hall for breakfast.

  “So, you didn’t entirely suck last night. I was surprised.” In his typical backhanded way, my brother, Todd, complimented me on my performance when he called home on Saturday morning. He made no mention of the viewing party he’d held in his college dorm room, but I was flattered that he’d bothered to watch, anyway. He also informed me that he’d seen my picture on the cover of Expose Magazine earlier that morning at the grocery store. But my warm fuzzies for my brother faded when he mentioned how hot he thought Robin was, to which I responded, “Mom’s right here, and she wants to talk to you.”

  After Todd’s phone call, I took the bus to The Grove to have lunch with Nicole and Lee. It was surprising and flattering that several people approached me and told me I’d done a great job on Center Stage! while we ate at the Farmer’s Market.

  “Superstar,” Lee teased me in a sing-song voice.

  “We’re totally your entourage,” Nicole cackled. Her orange soda discolored her teeth, and Lee and I sinisterly didn’t tell her.

  It was a relief to be around my friends after an entire week of being surrounded by people who were older than me. It was also awesome not having to worry about a camera capturing me rolling my eyes, frowning, or shooting someone a dirty look. I didn’t want to tell anyone—not my friends, certainly not my parents—but I dreaded my return to the studio on Monday morning. I spied a small cluster of people from my group on the show—Ian, Brian, and Eunice—heading into Barnes and Noble that day. Spotting them was enough to make me succumb to my friends’ desire to see a movie. I sat in the dark theater eating popcorn without even paying attention to the plot. I was still trying to piece together if Nelly had been behind the jacket situation, and if she’d had any control over the order in which we’d performed. I would never have imagined when I’d auditioned for Center Stage! that the show would turn me into an amateur detective.

  “Seriously, who is that guy on the show?” Nicole grilled me when she drove me home.

  I pretended not to know who she was asking about, although it couldn’t have been anyone other than Elliott. A number of contestants were hot guys in their twenties, but every blog I’d dared to visit since getting home late on Friday night featured billions of posts by Elliott’s drooling fangirls. “Which one?”

  “Um,” Nicole began sarcastically, “the totally hot one. The guy from Temecula. Do you know him? I mean, do you have access to him?”

  It was so rare that I had any kind of access to a guy who Nicole considered to be hot (without him already having a crush on her) that I couldn't resist the chance to gloat a little. “Well, he was kind of at my house last night after we finished taping, so… yeah, I guess you could say have access.”

  Nicole took her eyes off the road, and I dug my fingers tightly into my car seat in fear. “He was at your house?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, trying to be nonchalant about the whole thing. “We’re, like, friends. I guess.”

  “Oh my God, Allison, seriously? If he ever comes over again, you have to call me immediately,” Nicole said as we pulled into my driveway. “He’s like Nigel O’Hallihan multiplied by Ed Sheeran. Like, I was basically crying during his song.”

  As Nicole backed out of my driveway, I made a solemn vow to myself that I would never, ever—not even if I were being tortured by terrorists—allow Elliott to meet Nicole Farley. Even as I headed inside my house, it offended me that she hadn’t assumed I’d want to keep him all to myself. Also, that it hadn’t crossed her mind that he might be interested in me. I, after all, was the one with the talent who’d ended up on television alongside him. Not Nicole.

  Adding to my general tsunami of confusing emotions that weekend, I received an e-mail from none other than Taylor Beauforte, my former best friend, and Chase Atwood’s daughter. I contemplated deleting it without reading before my curiosity got the better of me.

  Dear Allison,

  I saw you on my dad’s show last night. I had no idea you were going to be on or that you even wanted to be a singer! Anyway you were amazing.

  Your friend?

  Taylor

  For reasons I couldn’t explain, those three little sentences, especially her sign-off, made me feel like burying my face in my pillow and sobbing. I fought the urge to write back and beg Taylor to ask her dad to help me, knowing that I had no right to ask considering the way I’d ended our last conversation. Taylor probably wasn’t on good enough terms with her dad to negotiate favors on my behalf. Before I fell asleep, I drafted about forty possible responses in my head, none of which I actually sent.

  It was Sunday night again before I felt at all prepared to return to En Fuego Productions. After I e-mailed the homework I’d absent-mindedly completed to all of my teachers, I wandered out into the kitchen for a glass of chocolate soy milk. I knew my mom was going to scold me for consuming sugar right before bed.

  “You’re going to have nightmares,” Mom warned me as I’d predicted when I drifted into the living room with my glass of brown stuff.

  If she only knew.

  Competition became noticeably fiercer after the first Expulsion Series when we all saw with our own eyes the shame and pain of our peers who’d been sent home. On Monday during our second week, Kindles and iPhones with earbuds were whipped out during our vocal coaching sessions with Marlene. It was as if everyone had decided over the weekend that we simply couldn’t stand to hear each other practice anymore. However, I listened attentively, wanting to know what I was up against, even if my curiosity was probably masochistic. I nodded my head appreciatively for Brian, Eunice, and Ian as they practiced, imagining that if we were on Survivor, they’d be my top choices for a secret alliance. The feeling was probably not mutual.

  Beginning that second week, Nelly and I engaged in an undeclared, secret war. Every time I wondered if perhaps I was being paranoid and imagining that she had it in for me, she provided me with direction so downright crazy, it was obvious that she wanted me off the s
how.

  “I think Allison should sing this song an octave higher,” Nelly announced. We’d all been assigned Broadway show tunes, and I had been given the fatal song, “Begin the Beguine.” It was famously difficult to sing, according to the frantic online research I’d done on my own at home. “She has such impressive range.”

  Marlene protested, “It’s Cole Porter, Nelly. Are you out of your mind? It would be madness to make her pull that off on live television.”

  Nelly relented, but the game of tug-o-war being played by her and Marlene continued.

  The question that awaited me in the envelope with my name on it in the Secret Suite that week took me by surprise. It asked how I was getting along with the other contestants. I couldn’t very well say that everyone on my team was untrustworthy and vicious. Potential ways to respond ran through my head for nearly ten minutes before I finally pressed the record button.

  “I think I knew when I made the cast of the show that it was going to be a lot of work. I really appreciate how much I’m learning, I mean, the opportunity to train with professional coaches here has been amazing. But all of the other contestants live together at a hotel, so I feel kind of left out. Maybe I expected that I’d make friends here on the show, but that hasn’t been the case. I definitely feel like Elliott and I are outsiders.” I paused to select my words carefully. “Probably because we’re younger than everyone else.”

  On Friday night, I sang “Begin the Beguine” in the key in which it was written at a mid-range octave, and remained in the top spot in our group. A big-time Broadway producer who was a special guest commentator that night told the camera, “She really nailed it,” after my performance. We said goodbye to Brian that week. Afterward, I rode home in the back of Dad’s car in silence, thinking about how Brian had given up on his dream of singing to take care of his injured parents. It upset me that he’d been expelled so early in the season; of all of the people in my group, he had been the most pleasant toward me.

  During our third week, when we’d been assigned classic pop songs from the 80’s, Nelly had the brilliant idea that Erick St. John should assist me in perfecting the art of spinning around like rock legend Stevie Nicks. She imagined this would be the icing on the cake of my performance of “Edge of Seventeen.” I guessed that she’d accepted futility in trying to rope Marlene into my downfall, and was recruiting new accomplices. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to outsmart Nelly this time. Erick concluded for himself after spending two hours with me that I was too clumsy to spin around. At all.

  “She’s a total lost cause,” Erick said, turning me back over to Nelly at lunchtime. “We’re going to spend the rest of this week working on just stepping side to side and perfecting dramatic arm motions.”

  I knew it wasn’t a figment of my imagination when Nelly glared at me.

  The third week of production was tough because without Brian in our group, and with Nelly’s attacks on me becoming increasingly transparent, I sat alone in the cafeteria. Passing the hour by myself was unbearable; I’d never been an outcast like that before in my whole life. I spent the entire hour texting with Nicole and Lee, wishing I could teleport myself back to the Pacific Valley cafeteria. Naturally it had occurred to me just to make a move on Elliott, but he was mysteriously absent from our lunches at Da Giorgio.

  That was the week when Robin ousted me from the #1 spot in our group with her rousing performance of “What a Feeling,” originally performed by Irene Cara. Although I was completely freaked out when our votes were tallied that Friday night, my applause for her was genuine. I was still in second place in Group 2, with Christa trailing me by a lot of votes in third. Suzanne was sent home that night, and I looked around the stage at who was left, feeling a little nauseous.

  That weekend, I watched the broadcast out of curiosity. My teeth almost fell out of my head when I saw what the show’s editors had done with my footage from the Secret Suite. They cut from Robin saying, “I feel like there’s a lot of love in our group. I’m making friends with people I’m probably going to keep in touch with for the rest of my life, and it’s a great feeling,” to a shot of my saying, “Maybe I expected that I’d make friends here on the show, but that hasn’t been the case. I definitely feel like me and Elliott are outsiders.”

  I paused. I rewound. I watched again.

  The horror. The editors had used footage from my self-interview from the second week of the show and cut the part when I’d explained that Elliott and I were the youngest contestants! They’d made it sound like I was just a mean little brat who wasn’t getting along with anyone. Making matters worse, they followed my quote with footage from Elliott’s time in the Secret Suite.

  “Allison has a pretty great voice.”

  Then they cut back to me smirking. I couldn’t remember smirking at all while I’d been taping myself, but maybe I’d been self-consciously grimacing as I’d turned the camera on and off. They’d obviously used that footage to make it look like I was responding to Elliott’s compliment.

  “I guess I can understand if all of the other contestants want to give us some space,” Elliott continued.

  Great. I hoped that the other contestants hadn’t made a point of watching the broadcast. If Elliott and I hadn’t been considered oddballs before that creative bit of editing aired; we certainly would be by Monday morning. I vowed to be a lot more careful in how I phrased my responses in the Secret Suite from then on. It seemed like the editors intended to create some romantic camaraderie between me and Elliott—the two of us against the world—when, in fact, there was only a glimmer of camaraderie. If I didn’t in with the other contestants, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  The fourth week of production marked the end of the season’s introductory period and included a little curve ball. Our fourth Friday night performance would be a little routine that the producers liked to call “roulette.” We’d each prepare three songs that had been assigned to us, and on the night of the broadcast, we’d have no warning as to which of the three would be played by the house band. We’d hit the stage about one-third as prepared as we’d been the previous three weeks.

  “This week sucks, huh?”

  It had been almost three weeks since Elliott had appeared in my driveway, and nearly as long since the last time we’d exchanged words. I’d pretty much given up on the idea that he might have any kind of special feelings toward me. Even though my eyes had combed the grounds of the studio lot for him just about every day, my glimpses of him were rare. That was probably a good thing since I practically jumped out of my skin every time I saw his mess of brown curls towering over the heads of everyone else. I would have died of shame if he knew that I fangirled over blog posts featuring pictures of him every weekend just like every other girl in America.

  I agreed, “Yeah. All three of my songs are duds. It’s a lose, lose, lose situation.”

  We lingered outside the Studio B, which I’d come to understand was the formal name of the warehouse in which our vocal lessons were held. It was a few minutes after lunch on Wednesday. I’d abandoned the cafeteria early since I had no reason to sit there after I’d eaten my salad and suffer the dirty looks I received from the other contestants. Even though Robin had surpassed me in votes the previous week, I was still a target of jealousy. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the men in my group would never be mean to Robin, no matter how much of a threat she posed to them.

  “Yeah,” Elliott said, smiling as he looked at his feet. “Mine are all pretty lame, too. I’m not even sure which one I’d choose if I got to pick.”

  I didn’t have much of a response to that since I wasn’t about to inform him which three songs I’d been assigned. I didn’t expect him to share his with me, either. “You skip lunch every day,” I stated.

  Turquoise eyes met mine, and then darted away.

  “Yeah. I’m not exactly popular in my group. Chase keeps telling me to put myself out there, stand my ground. You know, make friends. But they don’t want to be frien
ds with me.”

  I waited a moment, letting the silence stretch between us like a slowly expanding bubble of chewing gum. I didn’t want to seem overly eager to reply. “No one even wants to talk to me in my group. Nelly’s made it pretty clear that she wants me out, and nobody wants to get on her nerves by being nice to me.”

  More silence. I wondered what Elliott was like at school. If he was every bit the loner he was at the studio. If we’d have been friends if he were enrolled at Pacific Valley. If Nicole would have thought he was hot if she’d met him before he’d become a reality television star.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly with more energy than before. “Do you like ice cream?”

  “Who doesn’t like ice cream?”

  “We should go get some. Tonight. I’ll get you at your house around nine,” he said and walked away before I could object or negotiate terms.

  Throughout our vocal lessons, I was in another world. The scene that had just unfolded outside Studio B replayed in my head on an endless loop. Elliott Mercer, indie-songwriting television heartthrob, had just asked me out. Me. Of course, there was a possibility that I had misinterpreted the invitation when perhaps he just wanted to get ice cream and talk about how hot Robin was. That would suck, and it would serve me right for erroneously assuming that Elliott Mercer wanted to go on a date with me.

  By the time Dad pulled into the parking lot in his Volvo that evening, I had convinced myself that Elliott was going to stand me up as part of some cruel trick on which he’d collaborated with Nelly. So extreme was my paranoia that I was even certain a camera crew would be planted somewhere in our hedges to capture all the times I would forlornly part the curtains to look at our empty driveway. But, I decided, I would curl my hair and put on my tightest pair of skinny jeans after dinner anyway.