Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) Read Online Free Page A

audition, I knew I was a halfway decent singer, but I never, ever in a million years expected to do as well as I’d done.   The only time I’d ever been acknowledged for my singing talent before was when Mrs. Flores, our choral group director, had told me, “Nice pipes,” after my audition for Mame!.
    My entire body felt magnetized by the adrenaline surging through me. I had not only landed a spot on the show, but might have had a legitimate shot at winning it!
    “That performance was honestly just… phenomenal. Are you excited to compete on the show?” Danny asked.
    “Yes, I’m so excited,” I managed to say. And before realizing how conceited I sounded, I blurted, “I came to win this thing.”
    “That’s what we like to hear! A girl with some fire in her heart!” Danny exclaimed. “We’re so happy to have you here, Allison, and I wish you the best of luck in this competition. Next up, we have a young man named Elliott Mercer, who comes to us from Temecula, California. Give a warm welcome to Elliott!”
    Beyond the camera crew surrounding me and Danny, I saw a tall, skinny guy with a mop of messy dark hair on his head being ushered toward the double doors by crew members. I assumed that this guy was Elliott. He looked more like a scruffy, foul-mouthed skateboarder than any kind of aspiring star. He had a little acne and wore dirty jeans, and as he passed me, we made brief eye contact. He had bright, sparkling turquoise eyes which made him cuter than I would have expected from his profile, but I still wouldn’t have placed him in the same bracket as Oliver Teague. Oliver was my long-time crush at Pacific Valley, our school’s star forward on the soccer team. Once, Oliver Teague sort of nodded at me in the hallway before American History, and I had to go to the nurse’s office to lie down on the cot for a while because I was hyperventilating.
    I wondered if Elliott had seen my performance on the monitors in the waiting area, or if he had been trying to block me out just as I had been trying to block out #66. Not to sound like a braggart or anything, but I sure wouldn’t have wanted to follow my own performance.
    A broad-shouldered woman in a bright red blouse who introduced herself as Claire, an associate producer on the show, led me across the waiting area. The parents of other contestants waiting to audition watched me with vague—but not necessarily genuine—smiles, probably wondering if I had just crushed their kids’ dreams of making it onto the show. As I followed Claire down a hallway, I heard Chase Atwood asking Elliott questions about his musical preferences on the overhead sound system. We stepped into a small conference room that had been set up as a temporary production office behind the stage, complete with computer stations and phone lines. We made our way toward Claire’s desk, and several people looked up from their computers and told me, “Great job out there!”
    Claire told me to have a seat and prepared a stack of papers for me to review.   “We’ll need you to sign a release, terms and conditions in case you become our winner—fingers crossed—insurance forms, hmm… where is that tax form?”
    As Claire distractedly searched through her file cabinets, I noticed that one of the people sitting closest to me at a long work table had a live video feed streaming onto the enormous monitor on his desk. The coaches were asking Elliott questions about his singing and background, and he seemed somewhat timid to be voluntarily performing in front of a rowdy audience. He looked down at his feet and mumbled into the microphone as if it pained him to be the recipient of so much attention. I’m a senior in high school. Never really sang in front of a large crowd before.
    Two more senior producers stepped into the office to meet me, which distracted me from Elliott’s introduction. Never before in my life had a grown-up wearing a fancy suit requested my acquaintance, and now there were