His excellence unwound what little confidence I’d had when I’d left the Group 2 holding room. It just wasn’t fair that Elliott got to perform from the heart whenever it was his turn, and I always had to spend my time on stage trying to outfox Nelly. I cracked my knuckles. I bit my lower lip. I sincerely hoped with all my might that what I had planned for Christa would be well-received by all of America. She quietly hummed beside me to keep her vocal chords warmed up.
Before we stepped onto the stage after Danny Fuego announced our song, the production assistant standing next to us motioned for us to wait. My Secret Suite video diary for the week was projected onto the huge screen on stage. I held my breath, a little horrified, as it began to play and hoped that Elliott was being directed back down the hallway toward his group’s prep room, out of earshot. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the producers had structured the show’s format so that our duets were separated by my video confession. Elliott had been absolutely right: they were playing us.
“The whole country wants to know: are you and Elliott an item?” I heard my voice ask in the video footage that everyone in the whole theater was watching. It had been the question waiting for me in the envelope when I’d entered the Secret Suite alone, and I’d been expecting it. The answer I provided had been carefully crafted by me and Lee on Wednesday night. “I don’t know,” I’d told the camera with my most innocent, earnest face. “Have you ever really liked a boy, like, dreamt about him and wanted him to like you back, but had no idea how he felt about you?”
And then, to my great surprise, the producers hadn’t cut my footage where I thought they would. I continued, “I really like Elliott. But he’s my competition, and I don’t think a girl should step back and let a boy grab the prize without making him sweat a little.”
I didn’t have to see the screen to know what happened next; I had even practiced winking with Lee to make sure it would look okay on camera.
“Ugh,” Christa mumbled under her breath.
The production assistant nodded at us to advance onto the stage. Stomping and whistles greeted us. Adrenaline pumped through me as I grabbed my mic and waited for Christa to belt out her first few lyrics. I was energized with both terror and desire to hear the audience’s reaction to my big surprise. Maybe Elliott thought that seeming like a hopeless romantic would earn him favor with audiences, but young female viewers wouldn’t vote for the girl who was enjoying an on-camera romance with the boy they thought was cute. Their envy wouldn’t get me anywhere; I needed their admiration.
Once the audience recognized the song we were performing was a countrified version of the Leeza and Tawny hit, they clapped along with the beat. I chimed in for the first chorus, “Get your hands, keep your hands, off my man!”
I waited patiently for the fiddler to play his little solo (Nelly had insisted on a fiddle), and then I fired up the engine in my throat. As Lee and I had discussed, I launched into my best Dolly Parton impression. Almost immediately, the audience realized that I was mimicking the Country legend’s high-pitched, sweet timbre and broke into nuclear applause. Lee hadn’t any clue which song I’d be performing that night, only that I needed his opinion on which female Country Western star I could best copycat. I hadn’t changed my voice at all while practicing with Christa and Nelly. Up until that moment, I’d had to trust Lee’s opinion that my impression was adequate to justify risking the Expulsion Series.
Thanks to my training with Marlene, I didn’t have to worry about retaining volume or staying on key even though I was doing something unnatural with my voice. Down below the edge of the stage, a look of abject horror formed on Nelly’s face. She was the one who’d insisted on a Country Western interpretation of the duet, and I was serving her up one with rhinestones on top. The studio audience was going ballistic.
When the song reached its second chorus, I sang my harmony in an octave even higher than the first time around. I heard the uncertainty in Christa’s voice as she struggled to hear herself over me. She lost her note and went off-key for just a second while she tried to adjust her harmony to keep up. Her confidence was rattled. She was panicking. I ended the song on a note in the highest octave I could reach, “Keep your hands off my man!” I held that note longer than she held hers, letting my voice soar as high and as far as the very back row of the balcony. The whole time, I prayed my voice wouldn’t unexpectedly crack and ruin everything.
The audience stomped in the seats with such vigor that I seriously thought that the balcony might collapse. With convincing gratitude, I turned and bowed toward Christa. I tipped my ridiculous cowgirl hat at her as if her presence on stage had contributed at all to the greatness of my performance. She was as red in the face as her scarlet snap-button Western blouse, and her expression reminded me of one of Dad’s favorite phrases: spittin’ mad.
“Allison Burch!” Nelly growled into her microphone at the coaches’ table. “Whoever woulda guessed you’ve been hiding a Country music legend under your hat all these weeks!” She sounded pleased, but I could hear the rage simmering under her false amusement. I’d successfully foiled her, and it took all of my concentration to prevent the muscles in my face from contorting into the happiest smile of all time.
My mobile phone was buzzing like crazy with texts from Lee, Kaela, Michelle, and Nicole when I returned to the Group 2 prep room. #MakeHimSweatALittle was already trending on Twitter and the show hadn’t even been broadcast to every time zone yet. I’d gotten over ten thousand new fans on Friendbook in the minutes that had passed since I’d taken the stage.
Best of all, my phone buzzed with a one-word text message that meant more than everything else.
ELLIOTT 6:04 P.M.
amazing
“Very nicely done, Allison!”
Marlene greeted me with a bear hug. I felt rotten for not having given her advance warning about what I planned to do, but I hadn’t wanted to risk her cautioning me against surprising my own coach. Besides which, she’d only heard us sing the duet four times during our very brief sessions with her during the week, so I hadn’t even had an opportune time to tell her. “Star material, that’s what I keep saying about this girl.”
“You sneak!”
Christa’s strangled scream immediately drained all of my joy. In unison, Marlene and I turned to see her standing a few feet away near the door, pointing at me, tears streaming down her face. The entire prep room fell silent. Ian had been chewing a piece of pita bread coated in hummus, and he swallowed hard.
“You never did any of that in rehearsals! It was supposed to be a duet! You broke the rules!”
Marlene approached Christa with her arms outstretched to make peace. Her tone was calm and soothing. “Christa, there aren’t any rules around how contestants prepare for duets. This was the first time we ever featured them, and this show is about competition. Every time you step onto that stage, you’re fighting for your chance to win. None of you should ever forget that.”
But Christa was inconsolable. She smacked Marlene’s hand away when Marlene tried to set it on her shoulder. “Don’t touch me! Everyone knows you just want her to win!”
Christa took a few steps into the prep room toward the entrance to our bathroom, returning her furious stare to me. “Nelly’s going to kick you off. You’ve really done it now, Allison! Just you wait!”
The slam of the bathroom door was loud enough to inspire a production assistant to peek into our holding room and remind us that the studio was broadcasting live.
Everyone else busied themselves with their Kindles and iPhones, trying to avoid making eye contact with me. It didn’t feel very good when no one jumped to my defense, but the advice Marlene had just given was valid. If I got kicked off the show, it was in everyone else’s best interest. I couldn’t expect them to show me any sympathy.
“Never mind her,” Marlene assured me. “Let those votes roll in.”
LEE 9:15 P.M.
Are you in trouble?
I texted back:
The rush from my performance had eroded since I’d returned to the prep room. A thick layer of guilt had replaced it while I listened to Christa’s sobs leak through the bathroom door. Stalactites of anxiety began to form at the top of my stomach. Maybe… just maybe, Christa was right, and Nelly was going to march straight up to the producers and demand that they punish me. Sure enough, after the last set of contestants performed and we were officially waiting for the taped show to air on the West Coast, Nelly stormed into the prep room to give me an earful.
“Just what was that out there, Allison? I am your coach. There aren’t supposed to be any surprises when you come out on that stage!”
She was angrier than I’d ever seen her before, with tiny rivers of perspiration dripping down her forehead. She’d even stomped her foot while addressing me, making all the little tassels on her tight suede vest jiggle. Her anger was so vehement that it was kind of comical. All of the other contestants now looked up with interest, hungry to witness my punishment.
“I’m sorry, Nelly,” I apologized in a weak voice. I was annoyed with myself for being nervous; my parents didn’t raise me to be afraid of people, especially not self-important ninnies like her. But it was possible that Lee and I had underestimated her reaction. She’d already demonstrated that she had an impressive influence on the producers of the show. It had been reckless of me to test her limits.
“Oh, you’re not sorry. But you will be. You’d better pray you get voted off tonight, or you’ll wish you were,” she said, her eyes like tiny slits, her voice quaking with anger.
A lull fell over the room after Nelly marched out, and it felt like the strange, charged atmospheric calmness right before a rare Los Angeles thunderstorm. No one dared to move or say a word until Eunice placed her hand gently on my shoulder and said, “Don’t pay her much mind. You did what you had to do, girl.”
Not even finally receiving a tiny bit of sympathy from another contestant in my group eased my nerves later when a production assistant arrived to guide us backstage for the Expulsion Series. I took my place at the back of the single-file line, still wearing my hateful cowgirl costume, as we walked down the hallway to the double doors. As Danny announced the scores for Group 1, I cowered behind Ian’s brawn. Not surprisingly, Elliott and Jermaine received the most votes, keeping Elliott in the top spot on the show and ensuring Jermaine’s safety from expulsion. Elliott high-fived Jermaine.
Then Danny directed his attention to our group. “Allison and Christa,” he said, motioning for us to step forward. Both of us did, and I felt the heat of the spotlight traverse my face.
The studio audience had been sent home hours earlier, so there was no applause to squelch my fear about what Nelly was going to do. I shrank as Nelly sat back in her chair at the coaches’ table and crossed her arms over her chest. It was the moment of truth.
“Well, first of all, I want to say that when singing a duet, an artist has a responsibility to complement their partner’s performance for the benefit of the song. What I heard as the two of you were up there singing was Christa struggling to keep up with Allison, and Allison forging ahead without a care in the world.”
I held my head high, not sure how to react without looking like either an unapologetic jerk or a pompous moron on television.
“Allison certainly can do a fantastic impression of Dolly Parton. But as a performer, if I were on national television singing a duet and my partner tried to upstage me, you can bet your sweet bippy I’d be plenty angry,” Nelly continued. I stole a peek at the other coaches. They were attentively listening to her rant. “And I hope the audience watching at home saw what an awful position you put your partner in.”
She turned to Chase, who grimaced as if he felt apologetic about disagreeing with her. “I thought you guys did a great job. I mean, I agree with what Nelly’s saying about being respectful during a duet. But I think Christa’s performance was fantastic. And Allison, I’d be lyin’ if I said you didn’t knock my socks off tonight.”
Jay Walk’s comments were far less kind for Christa. “Maybe because I came up in hip hop, I have a different perspective on this. In my experience, when I walk on stage—doesn’t matter if it’s a duet or whatever—it’s every man for himself. So, Allison, you rock on with your bad self.”
Lenore frowned at him and then up at me where I stood on stage. She rested her chin on her hands, taking care not to scratch her face with her long acrylic fingernails. “You know, I’m torn on this, ladies. I honestly am. I think Allison stole the show, and Christa’s performance suffered for it. I don’t know how to feel about that. This is a competition. I don’t think it’s right to punish Allison for letting her talent shine.”
My pulse raced with anticipation for Danny to just put our votes up on the screen hanging above our heads. I could hardly stand still, and I knew I was probably gnawing a hole through my lower lip, but I couldn’t stop fidgeting.
“Alright. Well, let’s see what the viewers at home thought of the performance!” Danny announced, throwing his arm in the air to have the technical producers of the show display our votes on screen.
I whipped around, fearing the worst, and felt my knees buckle when I saw my tally: over seven hundred thousand votes. That night’s performance put me in the lead of all the contestants, knocking even Elliott out of first place. The theater spun before my eyes and I nearly fell over from excitement before Danny caught me.
“Careful, there,” he said, amused by my emotional reaction.
A few feet away from me, Christa made no effort to wipe away the tears that began freely falling from her eyes. The hundred thousand or so votes she’d received were the fewest she’d earned all season. The enormous swell of relief that filled me blocked any empathy I might have otherwise felt for her as she trembled. Although I knew that Christa hadn't done well, I didn’t realize just what a terrible place I’d put her in until all of the votes for our group had been revealed. Christa had been bumped to last place, and she sniffled the entire time votes were presented for contestants in Groups 3 and 4.
There was still a chance that Nelly could spare Christa from being sent home—and Christa’s last hope was my greatest fear. If Nelly drew the Wild Card as she had on the night of the season premiere, she could keep Christa on the show and together they would torture me for the entire sixth week of production. Nelly stared intently at Christa, as if trying telepathically to communicate to her, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this!” I broke out into a cold sweat of dread.
Just as he had during the first broadcast, Danny invited each of the coaches to select a colored card from those projected on the screen over the stage. Chase chose red, as he always did. Nelly inhaled deeply, trying to make up her mind. She’d been choosing yellow ever since the premiere when it had been lucky for her, but she hadn’t turned up a Wild Card since the first time. Tonight, her eyes lingered on the yellow card, and she seemed uncertain even as she surprised everyone by saying, “I’ll take blue, Danny.”
Jay Walk requested green, and Lenore was left with yellow. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as tension-building music swelled around us on overhead speakers.
“This is the last week, ladies and gentlemen, when the coaches will be able to overrule the votes of the viewing audiences at home with a Wild Card. So tonight, Cynthia, Kevin, Billy, or Christa might have a shot at continuing their run on Center Stage!”
Just get on with it! I screamed inside my brain.
Danny called across the stage for the cards on the screen to be flipped. “Let’s see who’s chosen this week’s Wild Card!”
The cards on screen all animated to reveal themselves in unison.
“Yellow!” he roared.
Lenore stood up from her seat and did a little jig of joy. Nelly looked as if she had been slapped—hard—across the face. Chase turned to her and offered words of comfort. He even gave her a friendly little rub on the back, but it did nothing to soften her expression. There was no
way Lenore would use her Wild Card to poach Christa instead of saving her own contestant. As the other contestants in my group threw their arms around Christa to cry with her in a big huddle, my eyes sought out Elliott on the stage. But he was shaking hands with Kevin, the guy on his team who was being sent home, and it seemed like my unexpected victory was the last thing on his mind.
Walking down the hallway toward the back of the building where we’d board the bus returning to the Neue Hotel, I saw Nelly yelling and gesticulating wildly at Tommy Harper, who listened without interrupting. They were backstage, and I only saw them through one of the open green doors as production assistants carried equipment, partially blocking my view. But it was plain to see that she was giving him hell. The harsh reality of what I was witnessing dawned on me: there was a reason the coaches were asked to select from digitized Wild Cards on a screen instead of drawing tangible, paper cards. It wouldn’t have mattered which color Nelly had chosen that night. The producers knew she would have used the chance to send me home, so they denied her the opportunity by giving the lucky card to Lenore.
Elliott was right. The show was rigged. Not completely rigged; the audience votes still set the course for the show’s progress, but the producers very carefully kept it moving in the direction of their choice. I’d been worrying about Nelly for nothing. Well, not for nothing, because in my desperate attempt to outwit her, I’d created a social media buzz for the show unlike any other season had ever experienced. The realization made me feel nauseous because it meant that I’d been wrong to blow up at Elliott. It was inconsequential whether we had a genuine relationship or if the show’s editors were just constructing a storyline to make it seem like we were.
Right then, standing in the hallway of the Dolby Theater, I knew I had to figure out if Elliott’s interest in me was genuine, or just part of his larger strategy to win the grand prize.
Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) Page 23