Evan's alarm woke him at six. He rolled out of bed, tearing at the tendrils of sleep that held him to the pillow. He split the drapes to see the city waiting for them in the distance. The eastern sky was soft with dawn.

The idiocy of the night before resurfaced in his mind with all the welcome of a flooded basement. He cringed to himself.

You deserve to die, he told himself as he showered and dressed. You are a fucking loser. And you deserve to die.

A groggy Lily was sitting up in bed when Evan came out of the bathroom. She was texting with sleep-puffed eyes, her hair a medusa's snarl.

"I need something to drink," she said. "You want anything?"

Evan passed, and Lily went downstairs to the vending machine still in her PJs, coming back a few minutes later with a can of Sprite. She then spent a good half hour in the bathroom.

Evan sat on the bed and fretted over a day that would consist of him getting a wristband with a number on it, determining his place in line as a contestant.

When Lily came out of the bathroom, Evan did a double take.

She looked stunning, almost blindingly pretty in a dark, cottony sundress with a white flower in her hair. She was such a vision that Evan nearly choked up. It gave the previous night's events even more of a sting.

"Are we going to get searched today?" Lily asked him.

"Uh, what?"

"You know, is security going to search us? At the stadium."

"Uh, no," said Evan, still awestruck at her appearance. "No, I don't think so. I just get my wristband."

"K," said Lily.

"Why?"

"Just wondering."

Lily's angelic facade aside, it didn't look like she'd slept well. Her eyes were clouded and her expression sour. She smoked a cigarette, sipped her Sprite and texted as they forded the crowded freeway to downtown.

She's probably telling Daddy I tried to put the moves on her last night, Evan thought miserably. He's probably going to have me killed when we get back.

But Lily made no mention of the incident the night before, and Evan wasn't

going to bring it up. He felt as stupid as he ever had in his life. What did she think of him now? If he brought it up she might say he tried to rape her. What would he do then?

Best to not mention it unless she did, and if she did, and if she was hostile about it, he would just apologize like a gentleman and see what happened from there. It was done now.

Evan focused on the day ahead. He was tingling with anticipation.

Bridgestone Arena was located nearly right in the center of downtown Nashville, an enormous silver and glass building that resembled a giant spaceship with banners and flags flying from its roof. There was already a long, colorful line of people gathered around the arena's eastern side, hugged to the outer wall by metal fences and barricades.

The crowd was passive and kept to themselves, everyone either chatting amongst their inner circles or looking with heads held high towards the front of the line. There were cameramen walking around and filming random folks in the crowd, who would wave and whoop and make noise for attention. Little pockets of commotion would form whenever an operator lifted a camera to his shoulder.

Evan and Lily joined the back of the line after parking a few blocks away. Evan was surprised to find himself hoping the gaze of those cameras wouldn't fall on him. He felt painfully shy. The thought of one of the cameras catching him unawares gave him a serious case of the jitters. He felt naked, out-of-place, an imposter.

Lily kept to her precious phone and didn't say much. She wore her sunglasses up on her head, and her bare shoulders were smeared with sunscreen. Evan had dabbed some on his ears and cheeks in the car, not thinking to bring his own and not wanting to use up too much of hers.

The only time Lily spoke was to ask Evan what time the doors opened.

"8," said Evan. "The line should move fairly quickly, too."

Lily nodded, eyes on her iPhone. Evan longed to put his arm around her.

At precisely 8 o'clock there was a sharp give in the line ahead of them, and they all shifted forward like cattle. Evan was pleasantly surprised as the line lost nearly half its mass in the first five minutes alone. People filled in behind them, packing in from all sides.

The crowd was diverse in every way except age. The people that surrounded Evan and Lily were mostly in their twenties, although there were quite a few teenagers with their parents. The teens were trying to look mature and unphased. The parents looked either bored or even more excited than their kids.

Almost everyone Evan saw looked like they could be a finalist, like they could be hiding a magnificent, dazzling singing voice under their unassuming, everyday exteriors. Every single race was represented. There was a near-equal amount of females and males.

Evan saw pretty boys in preppy v-necked shirts, beauty queens with tiaras and sashes, stone-faced gangstas with their eyes covered by Maybachs, a few veterans decked out in full camo (his mind flashed to Jason, then away again), overweight cowboys, club kids with blue hair, scene girls with pink hair, dweebs with bowlcuts, frat boys with beer guts, boyfriends and girlfriends in Polos and blouses who refused to let their arms leave each other's waists, girl-next-door types looking like they were waiting on their next piano lesson, bombastic sistahs with hips as wide as the interstate, and more. All looked simultaneously self-conscious and confident. They all treaded water in a sea of desperate individuality.

I look like the most boring person here, Evan thought, with his brown, regular haircut and his t-shirt and jeans and shitty neckbeard and his average fatness. He had no distinguishing features whatsoever. No piercings, tattoos— even Lily had her jet black hair and her nose piercing and her tattoos and that wonderful white flower in her hair.

At one point a couple of younger girls came over and told Lily she looked like Idina Menzel.

"I don't know who that is," Lily responded.

"She's a Broadway actress," one of the girls said.

"You know, from Wicked," said the other. "And Rent."

Lily shook her head.

"It's a compliment," said the first girl. Both of them were probably sixteen or seventeen. They didn't look at Evan.

"Aww, is she pretty?" asked Lily.

"Yeah," said the girls, nodding.

"Oh, well, thanks," said Lily, smiling at them. "You just made my day."

"And she's an amazing singer, too," said the first girl. "Are you auditioning?"

"No, I can't sing."

She pointed at Evan.

"He's auditioning."

The two girls' eyes turned off as they looked up at sweaty, overweight Evan. He gave them a small wave and smiled in what he hoped looked like a friendly manner. They tossed their heads in his direction in an obligatory greeting and quickly melted back into the crowd. Lily went back to her phone.

A big-bellied, long-haired Samoan guy in front of Evan was strumming an acoustic guitar. A camera filmed him for a bit while the crowd clamored for attention all around, waving peace signs and gang signs and homemade posters and whoooo-wooo-woooing.

Evan hung back, his arms crossed in front of him. He tried to look inconspicuous and disinterested, too cool and confident to care. Lily looked up from her phone and watched it all with a bemused look on her face.

The line was truncated by metal barricades set in front of a short staircase about thirty feet from the arena's main entrance. Stern security guards periodically allowed chunks of the line through before cutting people off once a certain amount had crossed the threshold. There was about fifteen feet of empty cement between the security guards and the ends of the newly-formed lines, which filtered into the arena doors.

After what felt like ages of shuffling shoulder-to-shoulder with the horde of strangers, Evan and Lily finally ducked under the muscular arms of a security guard, joined the last segment of line, and crammed themselves into the arena.

Inside there were rows of folding tables set up with people in Idol t-shirts behind them attaching wristbands to everyone who stepped up. If one didn't know better, the event could've been a very popular church raffle or high school dance sign-up.

Getting the wristband took only seconds. Evan chose a line in front of a table, waited with Lily by his side, then stepped up when it was his turn and handed the seated woman his folded up paperwork. He showed her his driver's license and social security card, and held out his right wrist.

"Do not get it wet," said the woman as she put the wristband on him.

Evan turned and followed Lily out the doors, noticing how many male gazes she drew as they went against the flow of traffic.

They emerged into bright sunlight, the day only just beginning.

"Well," said Evan, examining his new green wristband with a ten digit number on it. "That was easy."