In my last rehearsal with Harvey of “Lauren Canyon Sunrise” on Thursday, he assured me that I was doing a remarkable job of delivering the emotion that the song deserved. It sounded to him like I was singing from the heart, and that’s what would get me votes. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been to Laurel Canyon,” I admitted.
“Well, you’re practically there right now,” Harvey exclaimed. I knew that the famous residential neighborhood wasn’t too far from the studio, but I still felt like kind of an imposter singing the song as if Laurel Canyon was my home.
I was feeling glum all around on Thursday, and although I still very much wanted to win, everything seemed fuzzy and out of touch that day. When I stepped into the Secret Suite to record my interview for the week, the question awaiting me in the envelope had been sent in from a fan via Twitter.
“How have you grown as an artist since the beginning of the season?”
I leaned back on the bench, feeling pressured by the camera that was focused directly on me. The question seemed like a joke. How had I grown? All I’d learned on Center Stage! was that I couldn’t trust anyone. Nelly shot down all of my creative instincts, and every vote that I received while following her direction pushed me further down an artistic path that I had no interest in exploring. My experience on Center Stage! had taught me that show business was about letting people in power manipulate me and turn me into what they wanted.
Unable to answer the question with a lie in a way that would satisfy the producers, I leaned forward and pressed the red button to begin taping. “I’m really sorry, but I’m not sure how to answer this,” I apologized. With my envelope shoved in the back pocket of my jeans, I evacuated the Secret Suite so that Robin could log her scheduled entry.
On Friday night when I crossed the stage to sing, I still felt disconnected from my song. “What are you going to sing for us tonight?” Danny Fuego asked me, as I expected he would.
“Laurel Canyon Sunrise,” I replied.
“Excellent, excellent. I know that song holds a special place in the hearts of many young women.” Danny congratulated me as if I deserved praise simply for mentioning the song’s title. “What inspired you to choose it for us tonight?”
“It, um, is a song my mom likes to play around the house that’s always just kind of made me proud to be from California,” I lied. Truthfully, I usually complained when Mom played that album on the speakers in the living room because it was old lady music, in my opinion. It didn’t remind me of California or my own neighborhood at all, at least not the way more contemporary songs by my favorite singers did. But Danny seemed sated by my answer and the stage lights dimmed.
I sang the song with as much conviction as I could muster, trying to emulate but not outright copy the internet video of Jackie Boswell’s performance that I’d been studying. “Very nicely done,” Nelly praised me after the applause died down. But her words meant nothing to me; I was too focused on the inches between her and Chase where they sat at the coaches’ table. Now that I was hunting for clues, I saw electrical sparks dancing between them. Chase couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she spoke, and when it was his turn to offer me feedback, she beamed at him as if his compliments were intended for her instead of me. I cleaned up that week and didn’t have to worry about votes, but I was disgusted as I trudged backstage. Even though Chase wasn’t my father and Taylor and I hadn’t spoken in months, I was still furious on her behalf. I’d foolishly believed Chase was a great guy for the way he’d looked out for me and taken Elliott under his wing. But he was just a middle-aged creep.
After the show, Mom told me that the song was one of her favorites, which made me feel a little better about my performance. Jarrett was voted off that night and would be flying back to Miami, the hometown he shared with Tia, on Tuesday morning. He had a legitimate reason to be profoundly upset; I’d believed since the first week that out of all the contestants, Jarrett had a genuine shot at winning on the show. Not even Robin tried to console him; there wasn’t anything she could tell him to make him feel better. The mood on the bus back to the Neue Hotel was somber, and as I boarded, a quick glance down the aisle confirmed that Elliott had scored the seat at the very back. Despite the abundance of empty seats to choose from that week, Tia slid next to me and said quietly, “This is getting crazy. I never thought I’d make it this far.” She was in fourth place, closing in on Robin.
I smiled in agreement. But as I stared out the window of the bus I knew in my heart that I’d always believed I had a shot at getting this far. I just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
Chapter 16
Gratitude
Even though the rest of the country was looking forward to a short week for Thanksgiving, the contestants of Center Stage! still had a show to put on Friday night. We had officially reached the ninth week of the season. There simply wasn’t going to be adequate time for anyone who lived outside the Los Angeles to fly home, spend the holiday with family, and arrive back in time for the broadcast—especially because an early snowfall in the Midwest had resulted in a ton of cancelled flights. I was being allowed to leave the hotel on Wednesday night to enjoy the holiday with my family and sleep at home on Thursday night. This would have been awesome, except that there was a good chance Taylor Beauforte would make an appearance at some point during the day.
“Allison!”
On Monday, Chase caught me in the hallway on my way toward the cafeteria. My terror about having to face him must have been evident when I turned around because he smiled broadly and slapped me on the shoulder. “You look like you just saw a ghost, honey!”
“Sorry,” I managed to say.
As I stood just inches away from him, I remembered Nicole’s description of how hot he was. He was tan (probably fake), his hair was highlighted, and if I had to guess from the appearance of his bare chest, he probably waxed it. He was at least a billion times more fashionable than my dad, in his straight leg jeans and cool biker boots.
“I had no idea that you were friends with my girl, Taylor,” he began, which instantly made my limbs go numb.
“Oh,” I said, hearing my voice waver with nervousness. “I thought you knew. Or if you didn’t, I didn’t want to say anything, you know, like, as if I was trying to get special treatment.”
Chase shrugged. “Well, I can appreciate that, but it was very kind of you to come to her mother’s wake over the summer.”
I couldn’t exactly tell him that of course I went to the wake. Throughout elementary school, Taylor and I were partners for everything. We held hands on field trips. We picked each other first for volleyball teams. She was the first friend I chose whenever I was allowed to invite someone to come along to a movie or the ice skating rink. When you’re best friends with someone and her life changes, your life changes, too.
“Anyway, since Taylor’s coming home from school this weekend to spend some time with me and her stepmom in Malibu, I wanted to invite you over,” Chase said. “We’re going to have a little get-together on Wednesday night. We’d love for you and your parents to join us.”
The invitation blindsided me; I was so busy thinking about Nelly and cheating and breaking the ice with Taylor and whether she was making out with my brother on a regular basis that I dumbly nodded my head. “Oh, cool.” When I considered how terrible Nelly could make my life if she were to find out that I was socializing with Chase and his wife outside the confines of the show, I backtracked. “But won’t the producers object to me socializing with you during the season?”
“Nah, I don’t think Tommy and Susan will mind. I’ll clear it with them if it makes you feel any better.” He smiled so charmingly I would have sworn I saw a little twinkle in his eye as if he were a cartoon character. Then, he added as an afterthought in a knowing voice, “Besides, Elliott will be there.”
So many questions. Had Elliott not mentioned to Chase that we hadn’t spoken in over month? And was Chase so unobservant that he hadn’t noticed the tension between us? Obv
iously he and Taylor weren’t close enough as father and daughter for her to have informed him that we were hardly best friends anymore. As fiercely curious as I was about Chase’s home in Malibu (since it had served as Elliott’s temporary residence), I was going to have to find a way to decline the invitation politely. An evening in a celebrity’s home with my nerdy parents, my sharp-tongued enemy, her boyfriend (my brother), and a totally hot boy who hated my guts was a recipe for a nervous breakdown.
Rob rudely interrupted our vocal training exercise that afternoon, earning himself a resentful pout from Robin. “Allison, you’re supposed to come with me,” he said.
Scared, I stood and exited the vocal training room with him. No one had ever been summoned out of a rehearsal before. I wondered if Chase had spoken with Tommy and Susan about inviting me over on Wednesday night and they had flipped out when they learned I was childhood friends with Chase’s daughter. Maybe there was some legal language in the thousands of pages of contracts stating that I’d have to serve jail time if it was discovered by the show’s producers that I had concealed an existing personal relationship with a coach. I will deny everything, I promised myself as Rob pointed to a couch outside Tommy’s office, and I dutifully sat down. I will claim we were classmates—that was it. I will deny ever accepting Chase’s invitation to come over.
“Allison! Come on in,” Tommy said, throwing open the door to his office. Susan was already sitting on one of two leather chairs across from Tommy’s big desk. The office wasn’t particularly fancy, or at least not as fancy as I would have expected. Framed posters from previous seasons of Center Stage! hung on the walls. I took a seat, and Tommy plopped down in the chair behind his desk.
“We wanted to have a word with you, Allison,” Tommy said, and I could tell that he was about to reprimand me.
Please don’t let me be kicked off the show because of Taylor! That would be so epically unfair!
“You may have noticed if you watched last Friday’s broadcast that we didn’t include a Secret Suite diary from you,” Susan said in a voice that was mildly patronizing. She smiled sweetly at me, but in a way that suggested she thought of me as a misbehaving child.
Of course. The Secret Suite. I remembered how I’d recorded myself claiming that I didn’t know how to answer the question that had been left for me, and my cheeks turned bright red. It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal last Thursday when I’d opted out of recording a video clip, but now I could see that I had committed a great offense.
“Oh,” I bluffed. I couldn’t have told them that I had been too distraught over witnessing Chase and Nelly making out in the parking to have logged an entertaining video entry. Marlene had been right; the producers didn’t want to deal with any contestant who made waves. And Elliott had been right as well; we weren’t providing the show with the hot romance that the producers thought they’d get from us. I couldn’t expect any favors. “I wasn’t feeling good that day. I had a migraine.”
“Well,” Tommy began, exchanging a furtive glance with Susan before leaning back in his chair. “Part of the agreement you signed when you committed to this show was taping a weekly video interview about your innermost thoughts. It’s valuable content that we edit into the show and feature in social media channels. We’re expecting you to live up to your end of the deal, Miss Burch.”
“Of course,” I nodded.
“Let’s make sure we don’t need to have this conversation again before the end of the season,” Susan said, which was my cue to leave.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dad’s Volvo rolled into the parking lot of the Neue Hotel to claim me for Thanksgiving. We had mercifully been given a half-day of training, practicing our songs with Harvey in the morning so that we could board the bus and return to the hotel before lunchtime. The point of this was to give the show’s staff the afternoon off to prepare for the holiday with their families, not to benefit the contestants. Harvey begged all of us to practice our songs on our own before returning to the studio on Friday morning. That week, we had been assigned movie theme songs. I’d been given (not surprisingly) a sappy love song from an animated blockbuster I’d never seen.
“There she is, the superstar,” my brother said when I climbed into the back seat. I hadn’t seen him since the middle of August, when we’d dropped him off at LAX with Dad’s big navy blue suitcase, so tightly packed that it seemed like an explosion between California and Connecticut was inevitable. Three and a half months had passed, and he didn’t look any different. But it was odd to see him back in Dad’s car again as if he’d never left at all.
“It was so nice of them to give you guys a break,” Mom said from the front seat as we pulled out of the lot. “Your grandmother would have been very disappointed if you weren’t home for dinner tomorrow.” It had not escaped my attention that she was wearing mascara and lipstick, a rarity for her. Even though she claimed not to be impressed by celebrities, she had obviously made more of an effort than usual to look stylish that day. I’d never figured out a way to back out of Chase’s invitation, and that lousy sneak had gone and called my parents to give them his address and directions.
When Dad turned north onto the 101 Freeway, I asked, “Aren’t we stopping at home, first?” All morning long, I had been yearning to step inside my house. I even missed Buster, although the last time I’d been permitted to visit home, Dad hadn’t been kidding about making me clean the litter box.
“Chase said we should come by at two so that you guys can go swimming,” Mom said. I could practically hear how hard she was trying to sound casual when she was clearly thrilled to now be on a first-name basis with a rock star.
I sighed loudly to make my annoyance known. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
Mom shrugged and replied, “I’m sure you can borrow one of Taylor’s.”
Todd gave me a knowing look from across the back seat. He was obviously aware that Taylor and I weren’t speaking. I wondered if he knew about the e-mail she’d sent me early on in the season, and how I’d not bothered writing back. Completely ignoring her attempt to contact me seemed a bit rude, I realized. Now it was too late to do anything about it. It would have been pathetic to have e-mailed her on the drive to her father’s house in an attempt at last-second damage control.
Chase Atwood’s house in Malibu was a Mediterranean-style palace located at the top of a steep incline. The view beyond the edge of the bluff overlooking Paradise Cove was stunning even from the cobble-stone drive that led up to the front doors of the magnificent house. When Mom climbed out of the Volvo, she was so awed by the royal blue waves crashing in the distance that she nearly dropped the giant Tupperware container of tropical fruit salad she had brought.
“Dang,” Todd said, impressed.
Chase met us at the front door. “I’m so glad you could make it,” he greeted us, accepting the Tupperware from my mom. Her eyes drifted past him and into the house’s stone-walled foyer, at the end of which stood two identical black lacquered Chinese cabinets. An enormous modern painting, at least ten feet in height, hung on the wall above them. My thoughts immediately switched to Elliott. How many times had he passed through this doorway while he was staying with Chase?
“Daddy! Mom said I can only go in the deep end if you or Taylor comes with me, and Taylor doesn’t wanna!” A little girl who appeared to be about four years old with snarly, curly hair ran barefoot down the foyer and wrapped her arms around one of Chase’s legs.
“This is Kelsey, everyone. Kelsey, this is Allison, her mom, her dad, and you must be Todd.”
My brother turned crimson. That was probably the first time he’d ever met a girl’s parent as the boyfriend.
We followed Chase past a flight of stone stairs illuminated by an overhead skylight and into a sprawling living room with wrap-around picture windows, through which we could see water in every direction. My brain scrambled to take in all of the details of the living room: overstuffed couches, Southwestern rugs, and an enormous fireplace. The room open
ed directly into a kitchen. A tall, slim woman with blond hair to her shoulders was cutting fresh ears of corn behind the kitchen counter. A rack of expensive-looking copper pots hung from the ceiling above her like a photo in the Ikea catalog, although I knew that people like Chase Atwood were not likely to shop at Ikea. Those copper pots had been probably been bought at a store I’d never heard of, for a sum larger than any amount of money I’d ever personally owned in my life.
“Hi, there!” the woman greeted us with a huge smile and wiped her hands off on a dishtowel before shaking with Mom and Dad. “I’m Jill, Chase’s wife. And you must be Allison and Todd! I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you both!”
My chest felt tight as I shook Jill’s hand. She wore a platinum wedding band on her ring finger. Her bright smile and shiny eyes were clear indications that she was a woman still very much in love with her husband, a woman who was very hopeful for their future together. A woman who had no idea that somewhere in Beverly Hills, a Country music star was pining away for Chase, probably in a pair of fringed suede pajamas. “Nice to meet you,” I mumbled with a forced smile.
“And Todd! Taylor tells me that you’re going to Spain over the holidays!” Jill beamed at my brother.
“Yeah,” Todd said enthusiastically. “I’m studying International Relations, and my debate team has been invited to participate in a model U.N. in Madrid in December.”
I looked at my mom in confusion; no one had mentioned to me that my brother was going to Spain! But then of course it was hardly mature of me to be jealous that he got to go on a trip to Europe when I was starring on a television show.
Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) Page 27