Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) (29 page)

It was still early enough in the morning that there would be no witnesses to my curious act, so I decided to wander past Elliott’s trailer. I would never dare to venture in that vicinity when the other contestants were around for fear of being caught in the act of snooping on him. Even if his trailer was pretty much the same as my own, the thought of taking a good, long, uninterrupted look at the place where he spent his private time during the day was irresistible.
Just a quick stroll,
I promised myself.
 

As I rounded the row of trailers and arrived in front of Elliott’s, I noticed a Hummer pulling into the studio parking lot. There was only one person involved with the
Center Stage!
production who drove such an enormous monstrosity, and that was Chase Atwood. As Chase parked across two spaces, I saw that he was not alone in the vehicle. With revulsion, I recognized Nelly Fulsom as the person in the passenger seat! Before I even had time to consider the potential explanations for their arrival at the studio together in the morning, Chase leaned over and kissed Nelly on the lips.

Aghast, I flattened my body against the aluminum siding of Elliott’s trailer to avoid being seen. Chase and Nelly were together! The photo of Chase and his wife shopping in Beverly Hills I’d just seen in a magazine over the weekend sprang into my head. Obviously Chase wasn’t trying
too
hard to work through a rough patch with his wife if he was kissing Nelly in his Hummer after presumably spending the night with her.

The implications of what I’d just seen made me distraught, too upset to even budge from my position in front of Elliott’s trailer. I might have seriously been the only person in the world who had any idea what was going on between them. It was possible that Chase’s recent stint in rehab had completely unraveled into a secret romantic relationship with a woman who was also possibly abusing alcohol.

Having had two massive truth-bombs dropped on me that morning, the first about Lee and Courtney potentially dating and the second about Chase and Nelly secretly hooking up, I was a distracted mess all day. Erick had taken to making those of us who remained practice yoga as training for composure, which
should
have been a piece of cake for me. But my inability to hold a pose caught Erick’s attention, and he demanded that I go take a walk outside and pull myself together. During vocal training, Nelly’s blithe mood unsettled me so much that I unenthusiastically agreed to sing whatever she recommended on Friday night.

“Wonderful!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together as if I’d just given her a pony or something. “I think
‘Lauren Canyon Sunrise’
would give you an opportunity to summon some emotion and connect with viewers.”

“Laurel Canyon Sunrise”
wasn’t exactly Country, but it was a folksy song from the early Eighties that sometimes my mother listened to when she was in a nostalgic mood. It was originally recorded by Jackie Boswell, a singer who lived in the hills north of West Hollywood in the company of a whole community of folk singers which included David Crosby and Joni Mitchell. It was reasonable for Nelly to think the song held meaning for me since I’d grown up in Los Angeles, but I was pretty sure I’d never been up in those hills in my whole life. “What should I say if Danny asks me why I chose this song?” I asked her.

“You’re a resourceful girl! I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Back in my suite later that night, I looked up the song’s lyrics and listened to it a few times, but my attention waned. I exhaustively searched for information about Chase Atwood’s rehab instead of practicing for Friday. No blogs were announcing that he and his estranged stylist wife were formally separating. Every story I read suggested that they were trying to work things out, which led me to wonder if perhaps Chase’s wife, Jill, believed that, too. If the growth of my dislike for Chase Atwood had been plotted on a graph, the connected points would have formed a steep upward trajectory. This secret, I vowed—this horrible, dark, secret that could tear Taylor’s family apart—would be one I’d take to the grave. I’d grow old and gray, and never tell a soul.

Then, of course, unable to keep such an awful thing to myself, I called Nicole despite the late hour. “I have gossip,” I announced. “You can’t tell anyone. Not
anyone.
I mean it, Nicole.”

“Oh, this is going to be good.”

I told her everything, about how mean Nelly had been to me and about seeing her with Chase that morning. Throughout the season, I'd avoided telling Nicole about any of my hardships, preferring instead to let her seethe in jealousy.

“Wow, he’s cheating on her with
Nelly Fulsom?
I would have thought Chase Atwood could do better than that,” Nicole said, surprising me with her response. “I mean, he’s hot.”

“Yeah, but Nelly’s super rich,” I said, and then remembered that there was no reason to defend Nelly or justify Chase’s interest in her.

“It makes sense, I guess, that he’d go off the wagon with someone else who has a drinking problem.” Nicole went on to inform me that Nelly had gotten a DUI in Nashville after the Country Music Awards three years earlier. Her publicists had made a huge deal about her stint at a rehab facility in Arizona.

“Geez. I wonder if Taylor knows,” I muttered aloud.

“Yeah, well,” Nicole said haughtily, letting her dislike for Taylor be known, “I feel bad for her about her mom and everything, but she’s kind of a smug brat. I bet she doesn’t even see her father that much.”

Even though Nicole was kind of right (about Taylor acting like a smug brat sometimes and about her not spending much time with Chase), I switched the topic of conversation to Lee and his new maybe-girlfriend. It felt viciously mean to be gossiping about Taylor despite the argument we’d had over the summer. She couldn’t help it that her father was famous. I didn’t know anything about her relationship with her stepmother, but it couldn’t feel nice to know that the only biological parent she had left was a philandering drunk. By the time we ended our call and Nicole informed me that Lee no longer ate lunch with the rest of our gang in the cafeteria (instead spending the hour in the yearbook office), my head ached so tremendously that it took me hours to fall asleep.

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.

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? Obviously 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 opened 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.