Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1)

by Caitlyn Duffy

  “I get it,” I told him.

  He smiled bitterly. “And the traffic ticket thing wasn’t even their first alternative suggestion. They were really pushing me to get a tattoo, which I totally refused.”

  “A tattoo!” I exclaimed. “Of what?”

  Elliott rolled his eyes dramatically, both embarrassed and amused by what the producers had schemed. “Some stupid Chinese character that they said meant glory but probably meant gullible American guy.”

  I laughed, trying to imagine Elliott striding into a seedy tattoo shop with an entire production crew behind him. “You’re not even legally old enough to get a tattoo! They could never have forced you to do that.”

  He shrugged. “Actually, I turned eighteen last week. That was part of their inspiration for the little plot. I sort of felt bad refusing to do it because it was this new writer’s suggestion, and I could tell he was really amped to get his story on the air.”

  I must have known that Elliott’s birthday was in early December, but I’d completely forgotten. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry that I forgot your birthday,” I said with sincerity. What kind of prospective girlfriend was I, forgetting his birthday?

  “Not a big deal,” Elliott muttered in the same voice someone uses when they really want the last piece of pizza but don’t want to be obvious how badly they want it. That made me feel even worse, realizing that the production staff probably hadn’t even done anything to celebrate his big day.

  “I mean, my mind was already made up about quitting before I ever stepped into Tommy’s office this morning, but even if it wasn’t, that crap Mark came up with would have pushed me over the edge. There’s no way, like, how could they even think I’d want to be reunited with my dad on television? He took off when I was six. He bought a brand new car using my mom as the cosigner on a loan right before he split, too, and since they were married, she got stuck with the debt. The year I was in first grade I don’t think we ate anything but hot dogs and potato chips. I mean, what can you even say to someone who did that to you?”

  “Geez, Elliott.” I’d figured his childhood had been pretty rough, but it sounded grimmer than I’d dared to imagine. No wonder he’d been on edge the night we’d gone to Lee’s birthday party; the Yoons’ huge Spanish mansion in Beverly Hills must have seemed grotesquely excessive to him. Maybe even my own house seemed like a luxury to him, and for a second I was self-conscious of my good fortune to have two somewhat normal parents. Somewhere behind us in the trees, not too far away, a coyote howled, and I sat up straight in fear. Trying not to sound like a condescending parent (although I detected a bit of my mother’s tone in my voice), I said, “Look, I don’t care about winning anymore, either—”

  “God, don’t say that. You’re the reason… I mean, if I quit, then you’ll win. And I know you really want it. More than I do,” he said.

  One of the tears that had started welling up finally breached my lower lid and ran down my cheek. Elliott was willing to drop out of a nationally televised contest so that I could win. If I hadn’t been sure I was totally full-throttle in love with him before then, that moment clinched it. But two feet away from me, he looked so lost. I couldn’t imagine what life had in store for him if he truly quit the show. I knew he couldn’t, either.

  “Past tense,” I insisted. When I sniffled, he turned toward me and noticed that I was wiping away a rogue tear. “If I still cared about winning, I wouldn’t have told Tommy and Susan this morning that I refused to make a stupid documentary until they came up with an idea for you that didn’t involve your dad in El Paso.”

  Elliott’s eyes met mine and he was clearly surprised. Maybe Chase had heard about how I’d put my foot down, but it looked like Elliott hadn’t. “You said that to them?”

  I nodded, and he shook his head. “You didn’t have to do that. I mean, really, Allison, that was dumb. I don’t need anyone fighting my battles for me,” he said.

  “I wasn’t fighting your battle, dummy. I was fighting ours. Forcing you go to El Paso was no different than them allowing Nelly to make my life miserable for the last two and a half months. You were right all along. The whole show is a mind game. Silver Echo Records is owned by the same media corporation as En Fuego Productions. Winning would just mean another whole year of having to do whatever they say. Maybe even longer.”

  Elliott swung his dangling feet back and forth. “Maybe we should both drop out. That would totally mess with their season finale.”

  Imagining the looks on Tommy and Susan’s faces if we both were to quit was enjoyable, I had to admit. “Come on. If we both quit, they can make up whatever lies they want about throwing us off the show,” I insisted. “And then Robin will win. You know it’s true.” If he’d really meant what he said in my driveway months earlier about wanting to lose to someone with talent, then I knew it would bother him for Robin to get the grand prize.

  His mouth twisted, and he shrugged. My blood ran cold with fear because his mind was made up; he had become completely disenchanted with the show. For a second, I wondered if maybe I had overestimated how much influence I had over him. It was possible that my insistence wasn’t going to be enough to keep him around for the next two weeks. After a prolonged moment of deliberation, he mumbled, “If she read that note I left for you, then she probably thinks she’s got the show in the bag.”

  “Well, she might,” I admitted. “If you disappear tomorrow and Tommy announces that you’ve quit, first, every blogger on earth is going to spontaneously combust. And then Robin’s going to spend the rest of the week strategizing how to get me voted off on Friday night.”

  He fought a smile forming at the corners of his mouth.

  “What if,” I began slowly, a plan beginning to take shape, “you don’t quit, and there’s a way for us to turn the tables on the producers and make sure Robin gets voted off on Friday? Wouldn’t that sort of be better than quitting?”

  Elliott fidgeted with his fingers, mulling the idea over. “You’d really be down for that?”

  I nodded, wanting so badly for him to agree not to quit that I was afraid to say anything more that might push his decision in the other direction. If he stayed on the show, I’d at least have him to myself for another week before he went back to Temecula and I went back to high school, and our lives forked off in different directions like the two halves of the tree in which we sat.

  He looked up from his lap directly at me, causing sparks to shoot out from my smoldering heart in every direction when his eyes met mine. “Only on one condition. Could we, just, like, start over? And pretend like none of this stuff that the producers did ever happened?”

  I so desperately wanted him to kiss me that I could hardly bring myself to say, “Yeah.”

  He scooted over toward me, making the tree branch shake a little. I gripped it with both of my hands to keep from falling off, and he leaned forward, his face inching toward mine. Just as I lowered my eyelids, anticipating the kiss I had dreamt about for weeks, he said in a breathy voice, “You have an ant on you.”

  “Oh.”

  He flicked the ant off my left cheek with his finger, and his eyes followed it as it soared through the air. I held my breath as his focus returned to me. His gaze lingered on my mouth before he blinked and glanced back up into my eyes. When he finally leaned closer toward me, we both remained very still, savoring the moment. Nothing had ever been more precious to me than the dry texture of his lips pressed against mine. I tried to remember my first impression of him, the day of my audition when I’d passed him on my way off the stage. He’d seemed so weird and gangly with so much hair and confidence. Like no one I had ever met before. I couldn’t recall the exact moment when I’d fallen in love with him; it seemed like maybe I’d even loved him when I’d first set eyes on him and hadn’t known it yet. I let go of the branch with my left hand and cupped his jaw, wanting him to kiss me more deeply, and then got a little dizzy when I remembered we were six feet above ground on a not-so-sturdy tree branch.

&nb
sp; “We should get out of this tree,” he whispered.

  “Right.”

  “I want to kiss you for real without both of us falling and breaking our necks.”

  Chapter 20

  Revenge

  Elliott and I devised a plan, one that we thought could potentially let us both fulfill our obligations on the show as well as teach the producers a lesson. We stayed up until dawn trying to think of ways that the producers might either figure out what we were up to or foil us with whatever they were going to suggest for Friday’s show. As part of our strategic design, we glowered at each other as we rode in the shared SUV to the studio the next morning. It was better—at least for now—for Tia and Robin to assume we were still avoiding each other.

  It was Tuesday, and we were asked to select songs about journeys as some kind of metaphor for our experience on the show. Robin authoritatively laid claim to the song “Let the Stars Guide Me,” which was the first song that had popped into my mind for the week’s theme. Its lyrics were inspirational and ambitious, and I pursed my lips in annoyance as Nelly congratulated Robin on her fine choice.

  Robin’s self-important, nose-in-the-air mood was surely the result of her previous afternoon spent in satin pointe shoes. The more I observed her behavior, the more convinced I became that she was confident today would be the day when Tommy would announce that Elliott had dropped out, increasing her shot at winning by about a million percent. Knowing something that she didn’t for the first time all season kept me strangely upbeat throughout the day.

  “I’d like to sing ‘No Matter How Far,’” I announced after giving the theme some thought. The song described traveling the world but always keeping home in your heart. It was an old Country tune that had been re-released as a pop song, so I doubted that Nelly would fight me on it.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Bobby congratulated me from behind the piano before Nelly silenced him with a sharp glance over her shoulder.

  Since Robin and I were the only contestants left in Group 2, we agreed (at Robin’s suggestion) to split our morning session with Harvey so that we could each rehearse for half the amount of time in privacy. Robin decided that I should practice first so that she could lay out on a lawn chair near her trailer and catch some rays while the sun was still high, which was fine with me. I resisted the impulse to text Elliott and suggest that he practice guitar in his trailer so that Robin would hear him and realize he wasn’t gone just yet. He and I had agreed not to use our cell phones to communicate since it was likely that the producers were monitoring all of his communication on the phone they’d given him.

  Harvey worked with me to try to correct one of the more technical issues of my performance (my glottal attack), which was something the audience probably wouldn’t hear, but over time might damage my vocal chords. Thankfully, Nelly announced that she was going to visit the cafeteria for an iced coffee and didn’t return.

  Elliott and I were both summoned to Tommy’s office after our lunch hour. Whatever the producers had in mind for Friday’s broadcast, they intended to tell us at the same time. We greeted each other in amused silence, and just before we entered Tommy’s office, I had to flatten my smile away with my palms to appear solemn.

  “We have a proposal for you.” My voice was shaky even though I’d practiced what I was going to suggest to Tommy and Susan well into the wee hours of the morning. Now that it was show time, I was maddeningly nervous and hated myself for not being gutsier. Elliott sat in the chair next to mine across from Tommy’s desk. His expression was stony. Throughout the crafting of our plan, his one stipulation had been not having to kiss Tommy and Susan’s butts under any circumstances. I could see for myself that he was totally over both of them.

  “A proposal?” Tommy chuckled. He looked over at Susan, who was leaning against a cabinet, and winked at her as if we were children telling jokes for their amusement. “Well, let’s hear it.”

  “What if you produce a documentary about both of us opening for All or Nothing tomorrow night at the Fonda Theater together? We think that could be good.”

  I braced myself for his reaction, fully aware that my suggestion was preposterous. I knew that he and Susan were likely to shoot it down; Elliott and I were counting on it. We were proposing it only to throw them off track.

  “Oh, you think that could be good, do you?” Tommy patronized me. “Well, Allison, it would have been a madcap adventure trying to pull that plan together if we’d started yesterday morning, but yesterday morning you had a point to prove. I’m afraid now it’s a little too late.”

  I drew upon my acting skills, the ones Ralph had praised, to frown disappointedly.

  “The show’s promoters had to book an opening act,” Susan informed us with insincere regret. “They’re flying in a band from Chicago. They just couldn’t wait for us to sort out this little disagreement.”

  “But,” Tommy interjected, returning our attention to him, “We have been discussing a similar approach to telling your stories on this week’s show.” His eyes traveled across the room to Susan, and when they returned to us, he folded his hands on his desktop.

  “Since your fans are so obsessed with how your little love story fell apart, Susan and I think it might be of great interest to them if the two of you move on and date other people.”

  Neither Elliott nor I moved a muscle. This was a curveball, for sure, but we weren’t about to let Tommy and Susan have the satisfaction of seeing that they’d ruffled us.

  Tommy continued, “Allison. Since Nigel O’Hallihan is in the city for the show at the Fonda and we already have a relationship with the band’s manager, you’ll be joining him for a whirlwind date tomorrow afternoon. You’ll take a walking tour of the Getty Center, followed by a late sushi lunch at Yamashiro in Hollywood. Then you’ll arrive together at the Ford Theater in a limousine where a mob of paparazzi will greet you.”

  As far as punishments go, being forced to spend a romantic day with an extremely handsome Irish pop star was far from harsh. However, making it seem like I had dumped Elliott to instead hook up with Nigel O’Hallihan completely destroyed my chance of winning on Center Stage!. There was no way I’d ever get enough girls to vote for me after that to surpass Elliott’s fan base, especially if jealous All or Nothing fan girls unleashed their claws online. But Elliott was going to win anyway, so I had to accept this assignment with an eye toward how I could spin this mandatory afternoon with Nigel to my future benefit. Striking up some kind of friendship with one of the boys from All or Nothing might be beneficial for my career, so perhaps Tommy and Susan had inadvertently done me a favor.

  “Elliott.” Tommy turned to Elliott and twiddled his thumbs. Elliott crossed his outstretched legs and leaned back in his seat with his arms folded over his chest as if to challenge Tommy with his body language. “It probably will come as no surprise to you that you’ve attracted quite a following among well-known female celebrities. As soon as our producers started calling around, you wouldn’t have believed how much interest we got from publicists volunteering their clients for this little segment.”

  My eyes shifted toward Elliott. If Tommy was trying to make me jealous, he was doing an effective job. Suddenly this little scheme of Tommy and Susan’s seemed more perilous for me than I had initially realized. I’d never had any competition among the female contestants for Elliott’s attention, but if the producers were to send him out on a romantic date with a Victoria’s Secret angel, there was no telling what might happen! I had never considered myself to be the “jealous type” before, but I’d also never had a boyfriend before. It hadn’t felt very nice when Nicole had been buttering Elliott up at Lee’s birthday party.

  “You may have read in the gossip blogs that Tawny recently broke up with her boyfriend.” Tommy turned to Susan and asked, “What was his name?”

  “Grayson,” Susan replied.

  Elliott didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t read gossip blogs, and he didn’t listen to pop music, so I didn’t think he ev
en knew who Tawny was. But I knew all about her, and I was petrified for the words I knew Tommy was going to say next. Tawny was a six-foot-tall beauty from Florida who had won three Grammys the previous year. I twiddled my thumbs; any mention of Tawny was not a good sign. She and her troublemaking rap star boyfriend Grayson were practically R&B legends. She’d been kicked off the Selfie photo app twice for posting too much nudity.

  “Tomorrow, you will meet Tawny at the Beverly Wilshire for lunch in her private suite. Then the two of you will be driven to the beach in Malibu for a surfing lesson, followed by a romantic dinner at Tawny’s favorite restaurant, Giovanni’s, on the coast.” Tommy smiled like the devil, downright delighted with his sinister plan to break us up for real.

  My eye started twitching from anxiety. Inside, I was freaking out a little bit—I mean, who wouldn’t have been? Elliott was going to have lunch with a sexy R&B star in her hotel room?

  But Elliott’s expression didn’t change at all. He simply said, “I don’t know how to swim, so I hope the show has good insurance.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Susan dismissed Elliott’s concerns.

  “That will be all,” Tommy said. “Mark will let the concierge at your hotel know what time the crew will be picking each of you up.”

  Elliott and I stood to leave. The air in the office was stale, and I was desperate to get outside and take a deep breath. Satisfied with the job he’d done of informing us of our assignments, Tommy eased back in his chair. “And don’t leave the hotel again,” he said sternly, causing us to both stop in our tracks. “The concierge informed Claire Robinson that the two of you took Elliott’s car for a little spin last night. I shouldn’t have to remind both of you that you’re under contract and that you’re legally responsible for conducting yourselves in accordance with the terms of the show. One of those terms is representing the show and production company in a positive light. I’m sure we can all agree that getting a speeding ticket late at night or being caught in a public park after closing hours would be considered negative.”