Center Stage
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 26
The rest of my night was a hellish blur. I spent it pacing or staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep. It was just impossible to wrap my head around the idea that someone wanted to hurt me for something I didn’t even understand. I got that there were crazy people in the world, but having it targeted at me was completely different.
Not that I did nothing all night. I’d called Kat to let her know what was going on, which turned into an hour and a half argument. She was determined that she should come home and I didn’t want her to be here. She wasn’t mentioned in the letter and the last thing I wanted to do was get her involved, especially since this guy was watching me.
We kept going back and forth, both of us mad that the other was being stubborn, until Mrs. Phillips heard our raised voices, took the phone from me, and put her foot down. That was enough to get Kat to agree to stay in Chapel Hill, but that didn’t really do much for me getting any sleep. I’d called the school, which was at least easy with the way we’d set everything up before my tour.
Still, I felt barely human when the doorbell rang, causing me to just about jump out of my skin. I actually started to go and open the door before Mrs. Phillips, who also looked like warmed over death, yelled at me to stop and check the monitor first. It hadn’t even occurred to my sleep-deprived brain that I should look to make sure there wasn’t a crazed stalker outside before I opened the door.
It turned out to be Isaiah, as promised, but it was still a reminder that I needed to pay more attention.
“Morning, Charlie. You look like hell,” he said when I opened the door.
“Feel like it too,” I mumbled, stepping aside to let him in. “Didn’t sleep much.”
“So, I’ve spoken to Sheriff Gibbs,” he said, coming inside and shutting the door behind himself. “Unfortunately, this is not something local law enforcement can address right now.”
“How’s that possible?” I asked, bewildered. “Someone’s threatening me!”
“Technically, nothing’s happened yet. The threat isn’t specific enough to be considered a crime, which is an unfortunate reality in situations like this. People generally know you can’t make specific threats, so they tend to skirt around the edges, threatening retribution or to ‘show you the error’ of your ways. Threatening, but still explainable. Sheriff Gibbs suggested that if we can identify who left the message, we could file for a restraining order, which is really only worth the paper it’s printed on, but it’s also the limit of what law enforcement can recommend. He did say they’ll increase patrols in the area, keep an eye out, but that’s about all they can do at the moment.”
“So what can we do?” Mrs. Phillips asked.
“There are some options, but first I want to make it very clear what the situation is here. The note being left on your door escalates this significantly. The language suggests someone with specific intent, even if the letter itself didn’t make legally actionable threats. This kind of threat is not uncommon among celebrities and people with high profiles, which Charlie is quickly becoming. Very often, people in your situation will blow something like this off as just a harmless crazy person leaving messages or an overzealous fan. While occasionally that is true, more often than not, it is not, which has led to situations that become very serious.”
He said very serious, but I understood what he was saying. He was saying deadly.
“But there are options?” Mrs. Phillips asked again, keeping her eye on the goal.
“Yes. We could increase your security more here, basically turning your home into a bunker, but that only protects you here and not when you’re traveling, which I understand is going to be more frequent. What I actually recommend is personal security.”
“Like ... bodyguards?”
“Yes. That is what I’m suggesting.”
“How would that work?” Mrs. Phillips asked.
“Someone would stay with Charlie while he travels or whenever he is outside your home, the school, or other secure facility. These would be people licensed and trained through Citadel to identify potential threats and intervene if necessary.”
“How many people?”
“Two to three, but not all at one time. Unless something large is happening that requires additional security, you’ll have one with you at all times and the rest will trade off as needed so they’re rested.”
“He’ll do it,” Mrs. Phillips jumped in before I could say anything.
“But that sounds...”
“Less expensive than your life,” she said, cutting me off. “You’re going to do this, Charlie. End of discussion.”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
She wasn’t like that often, but when she was, I knew better than to argue. Isaiah gave her a satisfied nod.
“What about my friends and everyone else around me. Do we need to get them some kind of protection?”
Isaiah shook his head. “For now, no. Your friends in Chapel Hill and your bandmates have the emergency app on their phones, and we’ve contacted the authorities in Chapel Hill so they’re aware of the problem, but the threat appears very targeted, directed solely at you. We’ll monitor the situation closely, though.”
“How long will this go on?”
“It depends on how long it takes to identify this individual and for them to do something worth getting locked up for.”
“That sounds like a long-winded way of saying forever,” I pointed out.
“There’s a reason people at a certain level of fame live with constant security. It’s the price they pay for that kind of notoriety.”
“Okay. I guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“For now, I’ll stay with you while we get the details worked out for a more long-term team to be assigned to you. I’ll travel with you to and from school and speak with the administration about the situation.”
I know I should feel safe, having someone with me and protecting me, but I suddenly felt like I’d lost a whole lot of freedom.
Having Isaiah follow me was a change, to be sure. He was basically everywhere I was at all times, and my friends at school had questions about the large black man walking me to the front door and waiting for me to come out of the school. I also couldn’t help noticing that while I was in the school the school resource officer was never very far away from me, in the hallway when I’d get out of class or hanging out in a nearby section of the cafeteria.
While I did appreciate the security, although I had a strong suspicion Mrs. Phillips was behind the increased attention in school, it did make me feel a little claustrophobic, always having someone watching me like a hawk.
Isaiah even came by and watched us at practice as we worked on our new songs. He was pretty cool about it and had questions when we got home later that night before he headed out to his hotel. I guess once I was in the safety of the house, with the reinforced windows and doors and security system, he felt he could let his guard down.
It was actually a little weird, having someone from outside of the music industry sit in on our practice sessions like that, seeing how the sausage was made, as it were, but getting his questions after the fact was interesting. He seemed most fascinated by the incremental way we worked, making small changes, one after another, that morphed the song until it was very different from the original, instead of making large sweeping changes.
Wednesday afternoon I got home, planning to do some homework, and he left for a bit, like he had the last few days, I guess to do some work of his own, before coming back to get me for practice. After the first day, he stopped ringing the doorbell and just let himself in, since he had the code to the front door, which had been switched from keys, I guess to make it more secure.
The surprising part was that when he came back, he wasn’t alone. Two men built like linebackers and a surprisingly small Asian woman followed him into the house.
“Charlie, meet your permanent security detail,” he said, gesturing to the trio.
“This is Jean Cheng, who will be in charge of your detail. And these gentlemen are Kaimana Vaitai and Malik Drayton. They’ll be your round-the-clock protection from now on.”
“You can call me Mana,” the larger of the two men, who looked like he could be from Hawaii or somewhere like that, said.
I was just over six feet now and I came up to his chin. On top of that, he was maybe three times as wide as me. The house seemed actually smaller with him in it. Surprisingly, his voice didn’t match his appearance and was almost gentle.
“One of them will always be with you,” Isaiah continued. “When you plan to leave the house, you need to call your detail so they can arrive before you step out. And after school, you stay put until they come to get you. No exceptions.”
I wasn’t crazy about that. I’d adjusted to Isaiah’s presence, but he was almost petite next to Malik and Mana. And then there was the woman in charge of the three, who had this serious stare that was almost unsettling.
“So, I’m going to be under house arrest for a while.”
“It’s not house arrest, it’s protection,” Isaiah corrected.
“I want to be clear, Charlie. We take our job very seriously. We’re not here to babysit you,” Jean said, stepping forward. When I opened my mouth to object to how she put that, she held up a hand. “I’m not passing any judgments, but I want to make our position clear. We’ve turned down working for celebrities before because they thought security’s job was to act as a butler, servant, or enforcer. It’s none of those. We’re here to protect you from people who want to hurt you. And you should consider that most people like that wouldn’t send a note. So you need to take having security seriously.”
I swallowed, feeling a little intimidated by her intensity. “Okay.”
“I know you’re young,” Jean said, her voice softening just a fraction, “but we’ll be treating you like a client, and we expect you to offer us the same professionalism.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Let’s talk about how we gonna handle public outings and social media use,” Mana said. “Specifically, we need ta discuss giving out information about your location on social media. People tend ta be very free with talkin’ ‘bout places they goin’, actin’ like they postin’ ta friends instead of da whole world. Stalkers watch that close, and it’s a major tool for how they able ta track their victims.”
Mana had an interesting way of speaking, which actually made him suddenly much more approachable, in spite of his being roughly the size of a house. Their social media policy, however, wasn’t going to work for me.
“I do public appearances that have to be announced as part of my job. I’m not going to be able to just not mention them.”
“We understand that,” Jean said. “Those are the exceptions. We’ll work with you on that and secure those sites when it comes up. But in general, you need to be careful about what you post.”
“Got it. You know I don’t do all of my posting, right?”
“We do,” she said. “And we’ll have a talk with your managers and public relations people to make sure they know what the limits are.”
“Okay.”
While it seemed like a lot to ask, since it seemed like I was losing a lot of control over my life, I could see their point. It wasn’t that I was that attached to social media, since I didn’t even have it before a year or two ago. But in that time, especially in this last year, I’d been shown how effective it was for advancing my career, and how much it was needed these days.