Center Stage - Chapter 26

The rest of my night had been a hellish blur. I’d spent the night 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’d done nothing all night. I’d texted 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’d 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 home, but didn’t really do much for getting sleep. I’d called into school, which was at least easy with the way we’d worked out everything leading up to my tour.

Still, I felt barely human when the doorbell rang, causing me to just about jump out of my skin. I’d 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 maybe 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 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 beyond what local law enforcement can handle 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 law enforcement can handle. 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 the situation becoming 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 traveled or whenever he was 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 out 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 there 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 catch 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 under constant security. It’s the price to 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 on 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 friend 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 the school resource officer was never very far away from me, in the hallway when I’d get out of class, hanging out in the 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 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 interesting, having someone from outside of music sit in on a session like that, seeing how the sausage was made, as it were, and getting his questions after the fact was interesting. Most of what he seemed fascinated by was the incremental way it worked, with small changes, one after another, that morphed the song until it was very different from the original, instead of large sweeping changes.

Wednesday afternoon I got home to do some homework, and he left for a bit, like he had the last few days, I guess to do work of his own, before coming back to get me for practice. After the first day, he’s 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 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 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 talking bout places they goin, actin like they postin ta friends instead of da whole world. Stalkers watch that closely, and it’s a major tool for how they able to 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.

“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 my career, and how much it was needed these days.

“Good,” Isaiah said, clapping Mana on the back and turning for the door. “I’ll let them take it from here. Remember, they’re here to keep you safe. Work with them, and everything will be fine.”

The door had just closed behind him when my phone rang. I was going to ignore it because I wanted to get these three settled, but I saw it was Hal, which was one of the few people I couldn’t ignore.

“Hey, Hal. What’s up?” I said, holding up a finger to the three to let them know this would be a second.

“I’ve got some fantastic news for you.”

I did love it when he called with fantastic news.

“The album’s holding up beautifully. Physical sales are doing well, at least for how physical sales do at all these days, and digital sales are matching the streaming numbers, and we’re getting serious radio play.”

“That’s awesome! Right?”

“Of course it is. Even better, we’re getting a lot of requests for interviews on both TV and radio. As we get closer to the summer, or the album release, we’ll start talking about TV, since it will be easier to work around your school schedule, but I’d like to get on the radio interviews right away. We’re doing great, but I think there is some room on this EP still to go if we really push it.”

“Yeah, I’m good for that, but I still have to be at school by eight, and I’d kind of like to finish my senior year out good, since I don’t have any touring set up.”

“I see,” he said, becoming quiet for a moment. “I think we can work with that. I’ll give Quinn a call and see about setting up a schedule for call-ins to drive time spots on national shows, and sound out the rest about doing a pre-recorded drop in. We might be able to schedule a few before you go to school, but I’ll give you and Quinn the final call on that.”

“Sure. I’m happy to do whatever we need to.”

“Excellent attitude, Charlie. Now for the real reason I called. With how well things are going, I want you to start thinking about a full album. I know we’re short on time, I’d love to see it drop before the summer tour. We’ll still have some momentum from the EP, which’ll let those songs carry the full album. With some of the venues we’re looking at, I’d really like to see you fill them, and this will help us do that.”

“I saw this coming a little bit, so we already started working on new songs, but even with that, I’m not sure we can get all the songs studio ready in time to get in and record them, get through post and get it out.”

“Post we can get done quickly if we need to. That just takes money, and you’ve shown you can make that for us, so it’s worth it. But yes, I know it’s tight, although we’ll have a little more time than we originally budgeted for. I want your tour to be busy, like four shows a week busy, without any breaks so we can build real momentum, which means we can’t go until after the Olympics.”

I did mental calculations in my head, working through how far we were, how far we’d be, and about two weeks of studio time, if it was similar to the first album. The Olympics were near the end of July to August eleventh, and if they wanted a full month before school, we’d have to basically start the next day, or within a few days. Which meant having the recording done by the end of June to record during the first half of July.

“I think that’s doable.”

“Excellent. Have Warren call me and we can schedule studio time. The more lead you give me the better.”

“I will. Thanks Hal.”

He hung up and I looked down at my phone. That was good news, both how sales were going and getting a new album out. I didn’t know if there’d be an advance on that or if it was rolled up into what we were already paid, but either would be fine at this point.

The deal with ARC was going very well. I looked up, seeing my three new bodyguards looking at me.

Now I had to deal with this.

***

The next four days were interesting. It really wasn’t that different than when Isaiah had started following me, except that maybe I was still thinking of that as temporary and now that I had three people assigned to me, it felt a whole lot more real and permanent.

Isaiah had only followed me to school, band practice, and home, but by the time the trio got assigned to me, I was playing all weekend at the Blue Ridge, which made all three way more serious. Instead of one person on me, all three worked Friday watching me. Mana was practically glued to me when I talked to fans after the show, which I think freaked some people out.

Jean spent a long time with the chef. They spoke in Chinese for most of it, and I’d only learned a handful of phrases, so I didn’t follow it super closely, but whatever he said must have put her more at ease because Saturday and Sunday they only had two of them with me, with the morning shift person getting the night off so they could switch out and follow me in the morning.

So I had two of them with me basically at all times over the weekend.

Otherwise, they broke my day into three eight-hour chunks, with Malik drawing the short straw of midnight to eight AM, Mana from eight to four, and Jean from four to midnight. Although she said that schedule would be different if I was traveling.

So Mana had dropped me off at school in the morning, and Jean had picked me up that afternoon. Mana had definitely gotten more attention, but I think people gave Jean a wider berth. It was pretty incredible to watch people be visibly more afraid of a five-foot-six woman than a behemoth.

As soon as we got home and she made sure the door was shut behind me, she disappeared into the kitchen and was more or less invisible. I didn’t even know where she was half the time, but if I walked anywhere toward the front door, poof. There she was. I knew they’d rented an apartment in town where the off-duty people would go to sleep, but otherwise, they were always around. Mana and Malik were much less stealthy about it, usually sitting on the couch reading or on their phones. Well, Mana was on his phone. Malik was always reading every time I saw him and we weren’t in public.

I put them out of mind and pulled out my homework, sitting at the dining room table, ready to get started working right as my phone rang. The people in my life had my schedule down to clockwork, and they always seemed to know right when I was going to start homework before they called.

“Hey, Quinn,” I said when I answered, seeing her name on the screen. “What’s up?”

“Charlie, your radio interviews over the past few days have been fantastic. You’ve really nailed the talking points we discussed.”

Hal hadn’t been joking about wanting to set me up on a lot of radio interviews. I did three live ones Friday just before I went to the Blue Ridge to play, recorded almost a dozen pre-taped interviews over the weekend, and even had a very early call in at six am, which had been pretty early for me. I had another three today between five and seven, with the later ones scheduled for west coast stations.

“Thanks, Quinn. I tried to remember everything we went over.”

“It shows. Your spot with WTLR was particularly strong. They called me this morning asking you to come back again next week for some guest role in a game they play with listeners. Their audience really liked you.”

“Awesome. I’m game for whatever you want to set up.”

“I’m glad to hear that because I have a lot more spots for you. Try to start working in mentions of the upcoming tour and album. I know they’re only asking you questions about the EP and being on The Stage, but you can’t wait for them to ask about what you’re pitching. You need to find a way to work it into the conversation.”

“Sure, Quinn. I’ll try.”

“Good. Don’t take it as criticism, you really are doing a good job, we just need to make sure we’re getting the most out of these interviews. You’ve gotten the EP to the third overall, with direct and digital sales, which is an amazing achievement, especially when you consider that the two ahead of you, Ronnie Ralston and Trisha Loren, are massive and nearly impossible to beat. You’re even nearing Trisha’s heels, although there’s still a big gap to second. Just keep plugging away at it though and we might beat her.”

“I know. Hal called me just before he called you on Thursday and told me how well sales are doing. If we top out at number three, I’ll still be thrilled. I never thought we’d get this far, let alone on the first thing we released after getting signed to ARC.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’ll be happy if you top out at three, but I’ve been told I’m crazily competitive.”

“Which is why I hired you,” I said, which actually got her to laugh.

“You hired me because you’re smart. Anyway, I’m not done with the news yet. SoundWave just published a glowing review of your EP.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They loved you. Let me read this part. ‘Charlie Nelson’s newest EP, his first after the short-lived album Country Road released by MAC just over a year ago, is a revelation showcasing a raw talent that belies his young age. The first track, Dirty Little Secret, is fun and co-written by the band’s bassist, who has shown with the only other track she penned that fun is her trademark. The real draw, for this reviewer, at least, is The End of the Blues, which is a showcase of knowledge in both blues as it affects the culture of Rock and of the art form itself. It’s rare to see this kind of introspection and understanding of other genres even from industry vets, let alone a newcomer like Nelson. If this EP is any indication, we’re witnessing the rise of a major new talent. Charlie Nelson isn’t just one to watch – he’s one to listen to, right now.”

“Wow.”

I was floored. I’d been reading SoundWave since … forever. I swear I might have learned to read from it. Any club my dad would play, there’d be one or two in the green room or backstage area, and dad got copies all the time, so we had them in the motorhome with us. To think that I was going to be mentioned in it by name was … mind-blowing. It’s something dad had daydreamed about, and now here I was, living it.

“Yep. Like I said. Glowing. But that’s not even the best news. They have a new artist special coming up in July, and they’ve asked for you to be on the cover and want to set up a shoot for you.”

I couldn’t even get a word out. I was literally struck dumb.

“Charlie? You still there?”

“Y … Yeah,” I managed to get out. “That’s great, Quinn. Of course, I’ll do it.”

“I thought you might. They want to get the photoshoot done soonish, so they have time for post and to give their layout team time.”

“You know my schedule. Talk to Warren, and you guys tell me when and where, although if I’m going to be on the cover, I want Seth and Lyla on it with me. I know they want me to be front and center and the focal point, and that’s fine, but I didn’t do any of this alone.”

“That’s going to be a sticking point, Charlie. We don’t want to lose this.”

“I know, and I don’t want to lose this, but this is the first review that even mentions either of them, which is bad enough. I want people to at least know I’m not just doing all this myself. This is important to me, Quinn. You told me you would be a bulldog for me, so now’s the time to show it.”

“Well, when you put it like that, how can I say no to a challenge.”

Her tone was sarcastic, but I chose to act like she was being serious because I wanted her to get this done.

“Good, that’s the attitude I like to hear. Thanks for all the good work, Quinn, and I’ll be waiting for Warren to put it on my schedule.”

She muttered something about teenagers and hung up.

SoundWave. Holy crap.