Free Center Stage! (Center Stage! #1) by Caitlyn Duffy

gave up on it. Things weren’t moving fast enough to hold her interest, and she got really down on herself. We almost broke up, actually. She became depressed and thought her life wasn’t worth living if she couldn’t do what she wanted. I cared about her, but I took it personally that I couldn’t make her happy.”
    I was flabbergasted. My mom had been depressed? My mom, who did yoga every day and saw the sunny side of everything?
    “So, what happened?”
    “She got a call from CBS about her resumé, and landed a job there as a junior editor in the newsroom. She did that for about two years, and she was good at it, but she wasn’t able to handle the stress. Every time we’d plan a vacation or have something important going on in our lives, there would be a terror attack or political scandal, and she’d have to go into the station. So, she quit without having another job lined up. We got married; she became interested in yoga and nutrition, and then your brother came along.”
    “Wow,” I said.   I could seriously not imagine my mom putting on a business suit every day and working in a high-stress newsroom.
    “The point I’m trying to make is that your mom had a big dream, and because it was more difficult to achieve than she was expecting, she gave up on it. I don’t know if she regrets not pursuing acting, but I know at the time, her heart was broken. I think she believed that because she had a lot of talent, things would just magically happen for her,” Dad continued.
    My eyes drifted out over the baseball field. Maybe this was why she hadn’t been so enthusiastic about my news.
    “So if she seems a little precautious about your chance to be on this show, it’s only because she’s worried about you. I’m worried about you, too. If things don’t go your way, you can’t get discouraged. If singing truly is what you want to do with your life, this show is only one of a lot of different ways to make that happen. And if you really want it, just like with anything, you’re going to have to persevere.”
    “Okay, Dad. I get it,” I assured him, touched that he had shared all this info with me. It didn’t make me any less nervous about the weeks ahead, but it did at least help me understand why my parents hadn’t seemed more excited.
    On the drive home after the game (Dodgers lost by one point in the ninth), Dad turned up the volume on Sonic Youth’s Goo to a level that really would have irked Mom. He took his hands off the wheel to play air guitar. I felt like my dad and I had come to a kind of understanding. Now it was up to me to make good on my word that I wouldn’t be devastated if I didn’t win. I knew that was going to be a lot easier to promise than to do.

Chapter 4
Lights! Camera! Buster!
    “Hey Rudy, can you adjust the back light over here?”
    It was finally Thursday morning. The Thursday morning, the day when En Fuego Productions had set up a full-fledged production in our living room. Mom had fervently fretted the night before about making our house presentable for television viewing audiences, but she seemed pretty pleased to be having her hair and makeup done by the two-person team sent by the show.   A woman named Martha in a checked button-down shirt was blow-drying Mom’s hair straight, and a man named Geoffrey with a pencil mustache was applying beige eye shadow to her lids.
    When it was my turn for attention from the hair and makeup team, Martha ran her hands through my long brown hair and said, “Wow, we’ll have a lot to work with here.”
    “Oh, I can’t wait to give you a real makeover,” Geoffrey told me.
    “What are you going to do to me?” I asked, a little scared.   If I was in dire need of a total makeover, I wanted it immediately!
    “Not much today, sweetheart. We save the big makeovers for the show. It’s a whole episode, turning our contestants into real pop star material. You have a lot of potential. Great bone structure. It’s going to be easy making