Center Stage - Chapter 31

“...And running down,” I sang, finishing the last verse of Velocity, playing the last running riff that closed out the song.

“Nailed it,” Tran said from the booth as he locked the recording. “That’s a wrap. I love it when they’re easy like that. Great job, all three of you.”

He wasn’t wrong, this song had gone incredibly smoothly. We’d only done four run-throughs of it, making a handful of small adjustments before Tran announced that we were trying it for real. Even then, it had only taken two tries to get it right, and the first one had been so close. Seth had dropped a beat in the last verse, so we’d had to redo it once, but we got it on the second go.

I couldn’t really say why Seth’s song had gone so much smoother than everything else, but I was happy for it. Even with a week that went fairly smoothly, it was still tiring and I was ready to call it a day because we hadn’t just been polishing and recording songs.

We’d also been working on the album as a whole since Hal had us on a crazy aggressive timeline, with the production of it well ahead of even our studio time. He’d already started marketing it before we had a team in place, and they were doing final sound mixes and digitizing as we finished each song, with a goal of having the album released in just over two weeks.

It seemed crazy to me, but Hal wanted the album in people’s hands a full month before the tour. No one at ARC thought it was going to be much of a problem, though. I guess already having the long EP out and this just being an extension meant they could accelerate the timeline, but I assumed Hal knew what he was doing.

In the end, we’d decided on a track list starting with Appalachia Wanderer and then getting progressively more rock, slowing it down in the middle for Crossroads Heartache, and then picking it back up again, ending on Dirty Little Secrets. This worked well for the pacing, but it also spread out the stuff that had already come out for the EP, so people who’d gotten that wouldn’t just have to sit through a rerun of it in the middle of the album.

We filed out to the recording booth to hear what he had. Tran ran it through, and it really was a different experience hearing it balanced and played back as an entire piece, rather than just what I heard when playing it live.

“Yeah, I like it,” I said, slapping Seth on the shoulder.

He was still a little gun-shy about the song. As we listened to it, I looked out toward the lobby area, where I could see Jean standing near the window, staring out.

She’d been on high alert ever since Monday, not that I blamed her. It had freaked me out, and I’d spent the next day kind of jumpy, which was maybe why Tuesday had been our hardest session, going way over how long it should have taken us.

Then... nothing happened. By the time we got to Friday, I was ready to believe I’d misread the situation or the guy had gotten bored and gone home. Jean, however, was still taking it incredibly seriously, and I was still on official lockdown for the time being.

“So, I have an idea,” Tran said after we listened through it a second time.

“Okay?” I said, trying not to be skeptical.

He’d come through for us this week and we’d all worked together well, but still, I knew he had a tendency to try and take things in specific, preconceived ideas, so I was a little wary.

“I was thinking it would be interesting if we did a fourteenth track. I’m not sure if it should be secret and we just not mention it, or if we list it and say nothing, but how do you feel about a reprise of Appalachia Wanderer?”

“What kind of reprise?” I asked, not even bothering to hide the skepticism this time.

“Well, we’ve got End of the Blues which stays really close to its roots and we’ve got rust belt revival, which is really close to classic swamp Rock. So what I was thinking was it would be interesting to take Appalachia wanderer which really does have a lot of roots in classic bluegrass or mountain style music and really putting it back to that style.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I know. I remember when you were on The Stage you did that one song on banjo. I was thinking we could actually make sort of an updated mountain style keeping the lyrics in the melody but reworking it for that to show people where truths are. I figure Soundwave did that whole article on you and End of the Blues and how you showed a real understanding of that art style. So why not show them another one.”

“I don’t know if I’m good enough on banjo to pull that off, and we’ll still need a guitar part.”

“But we won’t need a bass part,” Lyla said. “And I kind of would like to show I’m more than a bass player. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

She added that last part as an aside, although I don’t know who she was apologizing to, since she was their bass player.

“Now, I’m not saying we play it exactly like that style. We still need to update it. Something pure mountain won’t play, but if you do what you did on End of the Blues, keep the core of the style but make it modern and more pop, I think it could do well. Even if it isn’t a hit, it bookends the album. I’ll mention it to Hal, but maybe it should be an album only track, give people a reason to buy the whole thing and not just the songs they want.”

“Works for me,” I said.

I wasn’t sure something like that would sell an album, but I would leave those kind of business decisions to them.

Most importantly, it was fun. They dug up a banjo from who knows where and I lent my guitar to Lyla, and for the first hour we just kind of played around, getting comfortable with it and having a good time. Tran played some example music while we picked along and got in the right headspace, and then we got down to work.

It was an incredibly long day and we didn’t get out of the studio till almost one in the morning, but the resultant track was … fun. It wasn’t the most amazing thing I’d ever recorded and didn’t have anything to it that added a huge wow factor, but hearing the playback you could tell we were having a good time. I wasn’t sure who the audience was for that kind of song, but it seemed like something interesting to try.

At least we were done. The second album was finished and we just had to wait for ARC to do its thing. The only difference this time was we were going to have real marketing dollars behind us and my profile was much bigger now.

It felt like, if there was going to be an album that was going to make it, this was going to be it.

***

“...so you’ll definitely be there on Friday, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kat said, her laughter a little higher pitched like it was every time she talked on the phone. “For the millionth time, yes! How many chances am I going to get to be with the man of the hour at a big LA party? I already convinced my coach to give me the weekend off, which wasn’t easy this close to Tokyo. So stop being such a worrier.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I just … it’s hard to believe how fast this is all happening. Every time I stop and think about how quickly we’re moving, it…”

I stopped talking when Jean walked in, with a very serious expression on her face. Considering she always looked serious, that was saying something.

“Hey Kat,” I said after a beat. “Jean just came in and she looks like she needs to talk to me about something. I’ll talk to you tonight and see you on Friday.”

“Okay,” Kat said. “Let me know if it’s something bad, okay? I’ll talk to you tonight. Love you.”

I hung up with Kat, sat up on the couch and asked, “Something wrong?”

“No. We need to talk about your album release party this weekend. You’re going to have to cancel it.”

“What? Why?”

“We’ve been able to track the owner of the car, and it’s not good.”

“What do you mean, not good?”

“His name is Christopher Nobel, and he’s a securities system engineer from San Fernando. I spoke to the local authorities and he’s on their radar. He’s apparently been displaying increasingly erratic behavior over the past few years, and it cost him his job several months ago. It seemed like that was his true breaking point, and the few friends he had started reporting him to the authorities for wellness checks, which is when he abandoned his house. I guess from his job, he’s very aware of how trackable people become, because he stopped using credit cards, stopped logging into services, and basically dropped off the earth. He must be driving across the country, because he also hasn’t boarded any public transport.”

“But how did he get so obsessed with me?”

“It’s not clear. He’d been … agitated by public figures in the past, including an arrest just over a year ago for harassing a local TV news reporter in San Fernando, following her and showing up at her work. He was obsessed with her supposedly corrupting her viewers. He’s obsessed with public figures and their effect on young people, and after her he got obsessed with you, talking often about your appearances on The Stage. I guess because you’re both young and a public figure, you were the perfect storm for him.”

“Hold on, if you know who this guy is, why don’t we just arrest him?”

“That was our hope, once we identified him and we’ve already spoken to the police. Unfortunately, he’s vanished. They’re looking for him now.”

“Because he’s not using cards or whatever?” I asked. “We know his license plate.”

“He ditched his car after we spotted him outside the studio. This is what I’m trying to tell you, Charlie, this isn’t your average stalker. He’s smart and has the skill set that helps him. Looking into his history though, I am convinced he is very real and very dangerous.”

“Because he’s so good at avoiding police?”

“Yes, but also because he’s not just an obsessed fan or someone from your past with a grudge. We’re dealing with a person who has serious mental issues and has fixated on you. And it’s not just that he’s good at avoiding police, his technical knowledge makes it a problem. Once we learned his occupation, we had our techs go over the breach at your house, which we’ve never been able to figure out how he got so close to you without showing up on camera. Our best assessments say that he managed to disable part of the monitoring system, putting it into some kind of loop for the few minutes he needed to get to your door.”

“Ohh,” I said.

Until that moment, it had not occurred to me that I might be unsafe, after they put in all that monitoring at the house. Admittedly, now that I had round the clock guards, it was a different thing and I was less worried. A bit of retroactive fear set in.

“It also seems he was able to get into the school’s security cameras, which is how he had details of your day at school.”

Another thing I hadn’t even thought about. I’d been so focused on just why he was out to get me and him getting to my class, it hadn’t even occurred to me how strange it was that he’d been able to know what I was doing at school. It should have, since they were very good about making sure only people who should have been on campus were there.

“Okay, you’ve got me scared,” I said.

“I don’t want you scared, but I do want you to take this seriously.”

“I am. Trust me, no one is taking this more seriously than me. So what should I do about it?”

“I think the best thing we can do is to limit his ability to get to you, which means limiting your public appearances.”

For a second, I almost said okay because she did really have me freaked out. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because the next thought I had was that it wasn’t just about me. I had a lot of people counting on me, and becoming a recluse wouldn’t help them any more than if this guy got to me. I also didn’t want to live my life like that, being forced into permanent hiding.

“How is that going to be possible? Besides the release party, there’s so much going on. The Olympics are coming up, and I have the tour after that. How in the world are we supposed to limit my public appearances with all that going on?”

“Obviously, some things will have to be canceled,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“No,” I said, shaking my head firmly.

“The tour should be workable,” Jean continued, ignoring my protest. “Venues have extensive security measures in place, and they’re controlled areas with metal detectors. But the others have just too little control, especially out of the country. They will have to be canceled.”

“Absolutely not.”

Pressing her lips tight in frustration, she said, “Charlie, you have to listen to us. It’s our job to keep you safe…”

“I understand that,” I said, cutting her off. “But I’m not shutting my life down. The album release is the biggest thing in my career and is going to make or break this tour. If it fails, I’m back to doing bars and begging for a dollar. I’m not going to handicap myself and my career. And there’s no way I’m missing Kat at the Olympics. No way.”

Jean tried to interject, but I held up a hand, stopping her. “I know you’re doing your job, and I’m not trying to ignore your recommendations. I get it, I do. But there are limits to what I can do, or what I will do. I’m not going to let this guy win and ruin my life. It’s your job to figure out how to keep me safe as I go about my life and responsibilities, not to lock me in a room forever. I’ll follow the rules you put down to the best of my ability, but I’m not going to stop living because this whacko is out there. We need to figure it out. You need to figure it out.”

Jean’s jaw clenched. For a second, I thought she might make good on her threat and walk off the job.

Instead, she sighed and said, “Fine. We’ll come up with a plan to make it work.”

“Thank you. I know it’s not easy, but I appreciate you working with me on this.”

“Damn right it’s not,” she mumbled. “I’ll start making arrangements and brief the rest of the team. We’ll have a detailed plan for you soon.”

She kept mumbling as she walked away, and I was pretty sure I was glad I couldn’t hear what she was saying.