You and Me (Plus Everyone In Between Us)

Finding Something

"Welcome contestants to the first day of the competition," Fairouz announced, as the cameras trained onto all angles of the room. I ducked my head down just in case they came to me. "I am so pleased you are all here in the race to find new singing talent. Although all of you are talented, only two people can win and become the next global pop stars. So you need to work hard."

"However," Brian continued. "You aren't alone, we the judges will be mentoring you and giving you valuable feedback to move forward into your journey."

"Including the guest judge you've all been waiting for," Fairouz said, a smile on her face.

The door flung open and there Andre was smiling, as applause and cheers from our small crowd wet towards him. He stood there with his trademarked smile basking all the attention in. He gave an awkward side hug to both Fairouz and Brian. Despite Andre coming in earlier, everyone has seemingly been starstruck by his presence again.

"Hello everyone!" he shouted. "How are we all doing?"

Everyone gave him a collective 'good'.

"Amazing!" he exclaimed. "I'm so excited to be a judge on this show because it's changed my life tremendously! I was once like you guys just a year ago, so I know everything that comes with it. The good, the bad, and the ugly."

He paused for a bit, and I and everyone else realized we were supposed to chuckle in that timeframe. I forced one out with a cough.

"I'm very excited!" Halle continued. "This season is going to be so good! As you know, there are three categories of contestants: the girls, the boys, and the groups. Each judge will be mentoring you."

"I will be mentoring the boys," Fairouz announced first. The boys chuckled.

"I will be mentoring the groups," Andre announced. Everyone there cheered.

"And I will be mentoring the girls," Brian finished.

He would be my mentor. He seemed too serious. Hopefully, he wasn't bad.

"As you know, every week comes with a theme and challenge," Halle began. "This week is originality. You need to sing a song that represents a part of your character and who you are."

I smiled. This was going to be too easy. What other part of originality was an original song?

"I wish you all good luck this week and I will see you on Saturday," Halle said, before leaving the room alongside the judges. A producer came to talk in their place and began to yell out room names each batch of contestants would have to go to.

Everyone rose at once and funnelled out of the door.

"Dude," Grace said, grabbing my shoulder."Where the hell were you?"

I sighed. "I think I got hungover, which didn't make sense. I don't remember drinking that much. My alarm didn't go off."

"How did you get here then?" Grace asked before she subtly wrinkled her nose. "And why do you smell like coffee?"

"It's a long story," I sighed. "I'll explain to you guys at lunch, okay?"

"Alright," Grace agreed. "And sorry for not checking on you. I thought you were already at the studio."

"How come?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Ray said that you'd be going early after you took a walk in the morning," they continued. "We'd thought you'd already been practising."

"I never said that," I defended.

"That's weird," Janelle questioned. "We should've asked. Sorry again."