Center Stage
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 10
Sunday morning, the first thing I did was call Warren. I would have called him the night before because the stuff with Julie really was weighing on my mind, but it was well after midnight on the East Coast before we finished, and it wasn’t anything he could deal with urgently.
“Charlie,” Warren answered. “What’s up? Everything okay?”
It wasn’t that early in North Carolina, but it was pretty early for me, which would account for his concern since I didn’t normally get up this early unless it was for school.
“Yeah, well, maybe,” I said. “Some weird shit went down at the show last night, and I wanted to run it past you. You know Julie Jackson, the winner of season one of the show?”
“Yeah?”
“They brought her in to replace Dakota. Not only that, they put her in before Dexter, and are having her do a duet with Vince. I know this might sound paranoid, but I think they’re doing it to boost Vince since they signed him to a contract. I was thinking that maybe they do the tour to get whoever they sign from the show out there, so they have to make someone big. Since I turned down the contract, they’ve decided to make that person Vince, and they’re pulling out all the stops for him.”
“That’s exactly what they’re doing. From a business perspective, it makes sense.”
“But why Vince? They have other people who were finalists and got a lot closer to winning. Why pick someone who didn’t make it out of the prelims?”
“Who knows? Focus testing, maybe. They might have identified a lack in a specific genre, giving themselves an opening; maybe the others didn’t test as well. Who knows? They have a pretty large team whose entire job it is to work out the odds of a new artist making it and how to best market them, so there’s probably a reason.”
“I guess my concern is that if they’re really annoyed I didn’t sign, they may try to bump me down and put Vince in my place, closing the show out.”
“Won’t happen,” he said almost as soon as I finished speaking. “For one, you have a contract that is very clear that you’re the headliner. For another, you’re on all the marketing. If they suddenly switch you out with someone else, it’s going to be a problem for them. No, they’ll do their best to build up Vince, but that’s as far as it will go.”
“Okay. I just wanted to know if it could happen.”
“Just keep your head down and focus on your performances. It’s easy to get drawn into the other stuff, but let me and Benny worry about that. You worry about doing your job. The more fans you make now, the better you’ll be set when we start our own tour.”
“Gotcha.”
“While we’re talking about the tour, did something else happen over the weekend? Something other than Julie showing up and all of that?”
“No. Why?”
“There have been reporters calling around, asking questions about the show, Dakota’s firing, and the involvement of another musician in the show selling drugs to people, including Dakota.”
“Really?” I said, trying to play it as cool as possible.
“Yeah, the tour producers are checking with everyone to see if they know anything or have been talking to journalists outside of for promotional spots.”
“No. I’ve only done the stuff you’ve set up for me,” I said.
After a long pause, Warren, in a very serious tone, said, “Charlie, if you know something, you need to tell me. There are clauses in your contract that cover this kind of thing. It would be very bad if you did and it tracks back to you, and we’d need to start dealing with it right away.”
I hadn’t realized that, and now I was worried how much trouble I could be in. I nearly broke and said something. The only thing that stopped me was that I trusted Emerson not to sell me out and I had legitimate reasons to be calling him. I was supposed to be out at his charity event in Oakland in a few hours and I’d done the event on Friday, so it would make sense that we talked. Not that they’d be going through my phone records. Or at least, I didn’t think they would.
“I swear, I didn’t talk to anyone,” I said.
“Okay,” Warren said. “If you do remember a conversation, maybe one you forgot, please tell me.”
I could tell that Warren didn’t believe me. That last comment was to give me an out if I changed my mind.
Thankfully, he didn’t press it any further, instead saying, “Anyway, I’ve got some good news. The streaming distribution deal started this weekend, and the day-one numbers on the new platform are huge. Way bigger than anyone expected.”
“Really?”
That sounded amazing, although I wasn’t sure what “way bigger” meant.
“Yes. We’d gotten you onto Cadence, and you’d done well, but that user base tends to be older and a little less open to trying new things. Part of our distribution deal got you onto Lyra, which has a younger and much larger base, and you shot up. Big time. You’re currently number eighty-two on their top one hundred streams, which is a huge deal.”
“That sounds great, although I’m not sure I understand what being number eighty-two means. Is it like thousands of streams or people listening?”
“Tens of thousands of unique listeners, and you crossed one hundred thousand streams in the first day.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
One hundred thousand plays of my songs. That was ... a lot. More than I could really comprehend.
“That’s just the first day. We don’t expect that level of listenership to carry through beyond the first week because people love the newest stuff, but if you can hold a fraction of that for a month or more, you’ll be in the top twenty, maybe the top ten on the platform. Which means serious money.”
“Wow. That’s big news. The guys will be very happy to hear that.”
“I know. I plan on calling them up this afternoon and giving them the news, although when I say serious money, remember we are giving a big chunk to the distributor.”
“But we’re still talking enough that they don’t have to keep down day jobs, right? We can get back to music full time?”
“Yes.”
“That’s excellent news. Really. I thought we wouldn’t be here until after the tour ended. I can’t believe we’re back.”
“Believe it, and it just gets better from here.”
“Man. Okay. I’m pumped now,” I said, and then realized I did have one other thing. “Speaking of getting bigger from here, I heard about this big party in New York during Music Week while we’re there next week for the tour. I was told it was a must-go-to thing, that there would be a lot of industry people at it, and I should go. I initially said no because I’m not a party person and I don’t want to put myself in a place like that, after my parents and everything, but ... they made it sound like I could actually hurt my career by not going.”
“I know of it. I don’t know if it would hurt your career by not going, but it is a good opportunity. I’ve been once before, and it was a hell of a thing. I actually had thought about talking to you about it, once I checked to see if we could get an invite.”
“So you think I should go?”
“If you really don’t want to be in that kind of environment, then I’m not going to pressure you. If you can stand it, though, then yes. You should go. You see what happened just by getting a distributor, and they’re a very minor player without a marketing push, so all of this is just coming from your current profile on the tour and everything. We can expect some large falloff once you’re out of the news unless we get marketing dollars behind us. And that means a label. And that means networking.”
“Damn, I was afraid you’d say that. Alright. I can suck it up and go. Are we going to bring Seth and Lyla?”
“Yes. I was going to check on tickets for them too. If it makes you feel better, I’ll go with you, keep you out of trouble.”
“Honestly, yes, that would make me feel better.”
“Okay, consider me there. Let me make some calls and see what kind of invites I can get us.”
“Okay. Thanks, Warren.”
“Hey, you keep making my job easy, and I’ll keep bending over backward to do it,” he said.
It was clear Monday, when I got back home, that I really needed this one day to recover and transition back into my normal life after all the drama of the tour. Even flying out early, I didn’t get home until lunch time, but that still gave me time to catch up on homework I didn’t get done over the weekend and relax a little bit.
When I’d called the guys about how well we were doing on streaming, I’d even postponed band practice until Tuesday night, giving me basically the whole day free.
Not that I had nothing to do. Besides homework, I still had some things from the previous week that I hadn’t gotten cleared up which needed to be done. Most importantly, finding a tutor.
I actually needed that fast. Doing my homework, I found that there were multiple sections I didn’t understand. I knew I could probably call Kat and get her help, but I didn’t want to start that precedent. She’d stayed strong the last time we talked and she was as busy as I was. I did some research online for tutors, but the services out there all seemed kind of scammy and I didn’t want to just get a random person assigned to me by a service.
But I couldn’t find anything on individual tutors, at least not that seemed real.
“Can you help me with something?” I asked Mrs. Phillips when she got home.
“Oh, music to my ears. I swear, it feels like ages since one of my kids needed anything. What can I do for you?”
I know she was teasing me, but I realized that maybe I wasn’t the only one making adjustments to the way life was changing. She had a lot changing in her life too. Hanna was gone, Kat was gone, and I was never around. I needed to spend more time with her, let her know how important she was to all of us, especially after everything she’d done for me already.
“I’ve been really struggling to keep up with my schoolwork lately, with all the touring and everything. My teacher, Ms. Hayes, suggested I get a tutor to help me handle everything.”
“That makes sense and I know you had Kat tutoring you before. It’s probably not a bad idea.”
“No, but my problem is that Kat’s just as busy as I am. She doesn’t have time to tutor anyone. I don’t even know where to start looking for someone else, especially since they’ll need to be able to work with me remotely when I’m on the road. I tried to do some searches online, but I can’t tell which are even real.”
“Okay, that is a problem. Yeah, I think I can help with that. Let me make a few calls and see if I can find someone who would be a good fit for you.”
“That would be amazing. Thank you so much.”
“Charlie, you don’t have to thank me. I’m happy to do it.”
“Well, since you’re in the help-giving mood, can I run one more thing past you?”
“Oh, did I win the lottery?” she said, smiling. “Sure, go ahead.”
I know she was teasing, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t all a joke either, reinforcing my earlier thought.
“So there’s this big music industry party coming up in New York. Warren and everyone else says I need to go, that it’ll help me find a label for my album, but I’m nervous about it.”
“Because there will be drinking?” she guessed.
“Yes. I just ... I haven’t been to something like that since my parents died, you know? And I’ve seen the way some of these industry people behave. There’s going to be alcohol and probably drugs, and I don’t know if I’m ready to be around that kind of thing.”
Mrs. Phillips reached out and took my hand. “Charlie, listen to me. You are one of the strongest, most principled young men I know. You’ve always been firm in your convictions, even in the face of peer pressure. If you have to go to this party for work, then you have to go. I know it will be hard to be around that, but I also know you’ll manage it.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so. You’re not weak-willed, Charlie. You’ve faced challenges that would break most people, and you’ve come out the other side. Just remember who you are and what you stand for, and you’ll be okay.”
I was about to say something else when the security lights behind the house flashed on. At first, I didn’t think anything about it since sometimes animals would come out of the creek behind the house and set them off.
Until the back doorknob rattled.
“What the hell?” I said, moving to the window.
There was a guy standing outside, with his hand above his eyes and face pressed to the window, trying to see inside. Wellsville is a very small town where everyone knew everyone, and I definitely had never seen this guy before, making it all the weirder.
“Stay here,” I told Mrs. Phillips, heading for the back door.
I stepped out the back door, pulling it shut behind me, and said, “Can I help you?”
“Charlie! Oh my God, it’s really you!” he said, whirling around, an astonished look on his face.
“Do I know you?”
I knew I didn’t, but I was trying not to escalate the situation.
“Uh, yeah? You told me to come here, remember?”
“What? No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did! I’ve been to every concert since Nashville, and I’ve heard you every time you spoke to me. I thought ... I mean, I knew you were just being nice, but then on Saturday, when you said what you said, I knew you meant it and I had to come out to see you.”
Okay, so this guy was insane.
“I don’t think...”