Center Stage - 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 on contract. I was thinking, 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 see 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 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 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 see.”

“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 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 this tracks back to you, and we’d need to start dealing with it right away.”

I hadn’t realized that, and now worried how much trouble I was in. I nearly broke and said something. The only thing that stopped me was I trusted Emerson not to sell me out and I had legitimate reasons for 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 been 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 thing 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 their 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 is younger and has a 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 the 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 and there is no 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 from all the drama of the tour. Even flying out early, I didn’t get home until lunch, 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, 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 last time 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 from a service assigned to me.

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 maybe I wasn’t the only one having weird adjustments to the way life was changing. She had it 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, what with all the touring and everything. My teacher, Ms. Hayes, suggested I get a tutor to help me balance 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, Kat’s just as busy as I am. She doesn’t have time to be tutoring 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 is 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 door knob 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 hadn’t ever 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 to keep from escalating 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 …”

“And that song you did with Dexter, ‘See You at Home’? That was so clever. I got the message loud and clear.”

“Listen, man, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I don’t know you, and I definitely didn’t invite you here.”

“Don’t say that!” he said, a lot louder than necessary, before pulling back a bit and calming down. “I know it was hard to find your address. You have to protect yourself from crazy fans out there. I get it, and I knew it was a test. But I figured it out and came, just like you wanted.”

I held up my hands. “I’m telling you, I didn’t want you to come here. This isn’t appropriate. You need to leave.”

“No!” he shouted, taking a step toward me. “You can’t tell me we’re friends, make all these plans together, and then pretend you don’t know me!”

“I don’t know you!” I yelled back. “You need help, man. Seriously.”

“Don’t say that to me!” He reached into his pocket.

Instinct took over, and I closed the distance between us, my right hand shooting out to grab his wrist, keeping it trapped against his body so he couldn’t pull out whatever he just grabbed, as my left hand gripped the back of his neck. I then stepped to the side, pulling him off-balance and using his own momentum to flip him over my hip.

He hit the ground hard, making an oof sound as the air was pushed out of his lungs. Before he could recover, I dropped down, my knee pressing into his back as I pulled his hand out of his pocket and wrenched his arm behind him, locking it in place. A cell phone clattered to the ground beside us, falling from his pocket.

He screamed as I paused against the joint.

When he started to struggle, I tightened my grip and said, “Don’t move.”

The arm lock was painful, I knew, but it wasn’t going to hurt him permanently unless he really fought me. I could hold him here without causing any real damage until help arrived.

“Charlie!” Mrs. Phillips called from the doorway, her phone to her ear. “I called the sheriff. He’s on his way.”

“Fine. Go back inside until he gets here,” I said.

He was blubbering by this point, a stream of insanity coming one after another as he tried to explain how it was all a big mistake, and he knew I was just surprised, but he could prove that he was the one I was talking to.

There was absolutely no way in hell I was letting this nutjob up until the sheriff Gibbs showed up. I just ignored him and kept holding tight, even though he’d stopped struggling.

We sat like that, me and the whack job, for about five minutes until I saw the reflection of flashing lights and heard a car pull up. A few moments later, Sheriff Gibbs appeared around the house, his hand on his holster.

“Charlie, what’s going on? Get off him.”

“Only once you have him,” I said, starting to loosen my grip. “This guy showed up and tried to come in the house. He keeps saying I invited him here through some kind of secret message in my show. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

As soon as I’d loosened my grip, he made a try to roll over and grab me, so I locked him back down again.

“No! We’re friends, he told me to come!” the guy said, over and over.

“Okay, I’ve got him,” Gibbs said, kneeling down next to me and grabbing onto the same arm I was holding onto.

As soon as I let go and stood back, the guy made a go for actually wrestling Sheriff Gibbs, although I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what he hoped to achieve with that. Gibbs pushed his face back into the dirt and got on top of him while he threw on a pair of cuffs.

At this point, the guy was throwing a full-out tantrum, screaming and crying, snot rolling down his face.

“Jesus Christ,” the sheriff said as he pulled him to his feet. “I’m going to get him to the station. Can you come by in an hour or so and file a report? I don’t think it’s a good idea to have someone like this back out on the street until he gets an eval, and it’ll be easier if you file charges and give a statement.”

“Sure. Let me get cleaned up, and I’ll be down,” I said, grabbing the guy’s dropped cell phone and handing to the Sheriff

Taking it, the Sheriff kind of grunted at me before frog-marching the guy off to his cruiser.

“Are you okay?” Mrs. Phillips asked, coming outside.

“Yeah. Just... glad that’s over. That was wild.”

“I think you might want to talk to Warren and Mr. Eaves about this. I don’t know if there are more out there like him, but you’ve been on TV a lot lately, and I really don’t want that kind of thing to happen again.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry that scared you. I’ll call them as soon as I finish at the station.”

“It’s okay, Charlie. It’s not your fault. I just think we should count ourselves lucky this wasn’t worse. He could have had a gun, or anything. We need to take this seriously.”

“I agree completely. I’ll call them.”

“Good. Go inside and get cleaned up,” she said, brushing off some of the dirt on my shirt.

I knew this kind of thing happened, but … I was a F-tier celebrity at best. Celebrity even seemed a bit too strong. I wasn’t in movies, and my TV was talk shows and a reality show, not exactly the kind of thing that got you stalkers.

We went inside and watched the sheriff put the nut-job in his car and drive away. I was feeling jittery, mostly from the adrenaline dump, but also because I’d never expected anything like this to happen.

If I was jittery, Mrs. Phillips was downright panicked about it, though.

“We need to call Mr. Eaves,” she said, walking away from the window and heading to her purse to get her phone.

“I’m not sure this guy has any money worth suing him, even if this was something we could sue him over. Seems pretty clear he’s going to claim insanity and instead of doing time.”

“Not for that,” she said, dialing and then. “Hi Tori, this is Jennifer Phillips, I need to speak with Arthur, please … No, I’m sorry, this is an absolute emergency … Yes … Thank you.”

She sat down on the couch, waving me over and putting her phone on speaker.

“Jennifer, is everything alright?” Mr. Eaves said, a moment later, sounding concerned.

“No Arthur, it’s not. We just had something terrifying happen. A crazed man came to the house and tried to get in the back door. He was going on about how Charlie secretly messaged him from stage and he had some kind of invitation, but it was all delusional. Charlie ended up having to wrestle the man to the ground before Sheriff Gibbs showed up. He’s at the police station now, but … this was pretty terrifying, and I’m worried with everything that’s going on with Charlie, this might not be the last time.”

Honestly, until she said that, it hadn’t occurred to me this might be anything more than a one-off event.

“I see,” he said, his voice very serious. “Hold on one moment.”

Before we could say anything, hold music replaced him and Mrs. Phillips and I looked at each other.

“That was weird,” I said.

“He probably has to check something.”

Three minutes ticked by, long enough I started wondering if he forgot about us. I was contemplating hanging up and calling again when the hold music suddenly went away and Mr. Eaves was back.

“Sorry about that. I have Benny and Warren on the phone.”

That was unexpected.

“Uhh, hi guys.”

“Charlie, you okay?” Warren asked. “Arthur told us what happened.”

“I’m alright. The guy didn’t try anything, he was just … out there. He was crazy, but he didn’t have a knife or anything.”

“This time,” Benny said. “Honestly, we should be apologizing. This is something I, at least, should have seen coming, but I didn’t expect it this soon.”

“Crazed fans?”

“Crazed fans, stalkers, people looking to make a buck. Your profile has shot up pretty high over the last few months. You’re not a household name yet, but enough people know you that you’re going to start bringing in bad elements.”

“Paparazzi too. Charlie had a run-in with one in San Francisco. Only a stringer, but it’s started. These guys can be as dangerous to his career as any stalker is to his life.”

“They can be dangerous to his life too. They’re reckless and I’ve had clients end up in the hospital after one of these guys sideswiped his car trying to get a picture.”

“It sounds like you gentlemen already have an idea of how to handle this?” Mrs. Phillips said. “I will tell you now, I am not thrilled about the idea of having people trying to break into my house.”

“Nor should you. We are very lucky this turned out to be as harmless as it was, and use this as a wake-up moment to take action before things become serious. I think it’s time to start talking about some kind of private security,” Mr. Eaves said.

“Like a bodyguard? I don’t need that. I’m fine, I can protect myself.”

“You will probably end up with personal protection, considering all the travel you’re doing, but private security is more than that. They will look at your home and workplaces to ensure they are safe and recommend steps to correct any problems there. They will also monitor those and interface with law enforcement in Wellsville as well as anywhere else you might be.”

“Protecting yourself is also more than just being able to fight, Charlie,” Benny said. “These people, they might have guns, knives, who knows what else. Being able to throw a punch isn’t the same as identifying threats early and having the skills to avoid those fights entirely.”

“And they won’t always be this easy to spot,” Warren added. “Some of these nuts, they can blend right in until they’re on top of you.”

“I’m not sure I want to live like that, always looking over my shoulder.”

“This was always the downside of achieving any level of notoriety,” Mr. Eaves said. “It’s also what the security is for. They’ll look over your shoulder for you, so you can focus on what you need to. They’re trained for this.”

“It’s not just about your safety either,” Benny said. “These services, they help indemnify you from lawsuits in the pursuit of their jobs. They have insurance to cover that.”

“Lawsuits?”

“Say you hurt someone defending yourself. Even if they started it, even if they trespassed, they can still sue you. Sure, some of these are crazy people, but others, they might pick that fight just for the chance to take you to court and get a payday.”

The idea had never even occurred to me.

“That sucks.”

“Welcome to being famous, kid. The rules are different here,” Benny said.

“I’ll warn you up front, private security isn’t cheap, though. Even with your cut of the streaming revenue, it’s going to be a burden.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to decrease the other guys’ cut to pay for this. They shouldn’t have to suffer because of me.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be an option. Besides, while you left for your LA tour, they both had a talk with me. They told me if you need something for your career, they want to help with that, since you’re the main reason they’re seeing success. Besides, when the band starts touring, they might come under scrutiny too. They probably won’t need personal protection like you will, but they’ll need some kind of security plan for their homes. Besides, any threat to you on stage will definitely affect them too. We can add that into the overall cost.”

“I still want to foot the overall bill for it. It’s my responsibility.”

“Okay, we can work with that. It shouldn’t be too big of a shock, though. If everyone gives up a part of their streaming increase, we should cover it. It means none of you will see a noticeable bump in income, although there will be some. But, we’re still in good shape for our own tour dates in April.”

“Okay. As long as they’re not still struggling. Fine. Man, just when it seems like things are turning around, we get another expense.”

“I hate to say it, kiddo,” Mrs. Phillips said. “But that’s true with any small business, which is essentially what you’ve become. Every move that makes you more money comes with more costs, so any improvement is always incremental.”

“I guess,” I said sullenly.

I’d had like, a week to adjust to the idea of not being broke anymore and everyone starting to make real money. Now I was back where I was. Well, broke may have been a strong word for it, but not making the money that matched how things were going. You hear you’re selling out shows and your streaming numbers are rocketing, you expect at least some kind of payday.

“It’s also time to start thinking about a PR person,” Benny said. “You’ve been doing well so far, and the thing with Emerson King is great, but it’s going to get harder and you’re going to run into problems that could affect your sales. You’re going to need a professional to navigate the media landscape.”

Another handout. Another mouth to feed.

“I assume that’ll be expensive?”

“They’ll take a cut of your back end, probably,” Warren said. “When we get with a label, they will take over that expense though. So this is just for in between.”

“Fine. I’m not loving all this, but I get it.”

“Good. We’ll find someone and let you interview them,” Benny said. “Alright, sounds like this is all handled. I’ve got real work to do.”

I guess I did too, if only to afford all the new expenses crazy people were going to cost me.