We’ve made it through our ballads, and Anna is finishing up our pop round. We’re more than halfway through this nerve-racking evening, and my insides are slowly untwisting.

I follow a production assistant back to the yellow room with the couch. A bottle of water is shoved into my hand and I drink. I keep shifting my feet, dancing a tiny jig on the ground, tap-tap-tapping my shoes, wiggling with my hands, which are clasped around the water bottle. I feel like a figure skater who has come off the Olympic ice and is awaiting her score. I want to whip around and grab the fingers of my coaches and smile and grip hard. But it’s only me in the room, and the television is flickering Anna’s image on the stage that’s only fifteen feet away from where I sit.

I reach for the remote and turn the sound up. Anna is smiling her perfect grin as she wraps her elegant fingers around the microphone and shakes her hips to the beat. It’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

Joanna and I discovered this song when we were in middle school and played it nonstop during sleepovers, so often that I can tell that Anna’s rendition right now is way too close to a karaoke performance. Something about Anna’s voice, her soft lilting tone, reminds me of a sleepover with Joanna—and my first kiss. Between giggles, with Cyndi Lauper in the background, Joanna and I practiced kissing on pillows, then on each other. When her lips were on mine, I’d experienced my first tingle of excitement, but just as I leaned forward to deepen it, she pulled away abruptly and said, “This is boring! Let’s watch Sleepless in Seattle!” I knew then that we were different from each other.

And that’s when I hear it. Anna’s voice ripples like a bullfrog. The note is flat, dead. Short, and she shifts back, but it’s horrified her. Anna’s expression is mildly terrified and, though she continues the performance, she’s off by a beat, rushes to catch up again, and doesn’t fully recover. She ends with a quick bow, a mortified hand leaping up to her mouth as the judges praise her.

As soon as they’re done, she’s running off the stage like a figure skater who’s tripped after a triple axel.

Two songs down, one to go.

*

I’M BACK TO biting my nails. It’s the final round of songs, and the camera sweeps over Stephen in an arc, showing the left side of his face, mouth agape. His full face comes into view, contorted in concentration and feeling, arm outstretched; now the other side of him, in silhouette, his perfect long nose and rounded lips outlined in streaks of light. The accompaniment tapers, he lowers his arm, he smiles.

Beside me, Anna is praying. I haven’t talked to a deity in a while but think that she has the right idea. Stephen hasn’t blundered. She has. And I’m up next with all of the pressure.

Stephen and I pass alongside each other in the backstage wings, one person leading him away, another leading me forward. My nerves are jangling again but I think my arrangement is a good one. My friend Edie picked it out for me, and she’s a music expert, so I trust her taste completely.

The lights are in my eyes, but I can hear the audience’s presence. There’s a transmission, a low-level hum, like a lightly plucked guitar string, that emits from a person. This auditorium is full of these little hums, a packed vibration, rippling out of their bodies and into mine. Their energy feeds me. I break out into a smile.

“Cassidy,” Matilda says. “It’s the last song. Of the last show you’ll do with us. On Sing It, America! Are you ready?”

“I am.” I breathe in deeply. I embody the song. I part my lips and exhale.

Stephen sang of lust and yearning, I sing of loss and love. We’re yin and yang.

*

THE NIGHT THE votes are counted is excruciating. The finale is a two-parter and we’re sent back to the hotel for the tallying. I find myself tucking my knees to my chest and thinking too much. What will I do once I win? Because I can’t imagine myself not winning. I was so good. So strong.

The night of the crowning, the three of us are one mass, holding hands as we enter the stage, clinging to one another in support. No matter how annoying I find Anna, I can’t let go of her, and no matter how much I want to beat Stephen, I find myself gripping his palm. Matilda draws this moment out long enough that the crowd is fiery with anticipation.

We’re squeezing, we’re squeezing, we’re squeezing.

“And the audience voted . . . and the winner of Sing It, America! is . . .”

The crowd’s screams drown out the sudden hum in my ears. It’s like someone turned the sound off in the room. There’s a shimmer of shiny confetti floating continually down onto the stage like snow, as if we are on a daytime game show. I see Matilda in her tottering heels, backlit by stage lights, as she hugs Stephen St. James. The auditorium is an electric blue, reflecting the cool light off all the shining surfaces. Anna is crying and hugging me. I realize that my eyes are wet too, and I’m hugging her back. This, this isn’t happening. This can’t be real life.

It wasn’t my name.

Part I

Self-Titled (2000–2001)

The Los Angeles Times. November 18, 1999. Arts & Entertainment.

“Sing It, America!,” the singing competition that has taken the television world by storm, ended Wednesday after Tuesday’s two-hour, heart-stopping voting finale. Anna Williams, 16; Cassidy Holmes, 17; and Stephen St. James, 20, were the three chosen finalists. Mr. St. James, of Atlanta, Georgia, won the audience’s hearts—and hands, as they dialed in overwhelming numbers to vote for him at the end of Tuesday night’s performances.

The show creators are happy with the outcome and are planning a “bigger and better” “Sing It” season two. “It was an amazing experience,” said Mr. St. James. “I feel incredibly blessed.” Mr. St. James’s grand prize includes a three-album contract with Big Disc Records and a spokesperson role with sponsor Mountain Cola.

The Houston Chronicle. November 18, 1999. Entertainment. Page N2 (blurb).

Houston’s own Cassidy Holmes, 17, failed to win her coveted “Sing It, America!” crown on Wednesday evening’s show finale. The Meyer Park High School student was one of three finalists in the competition, but was voted as a runner-up instead of the grand-prize winner.

Stephen St. James of Atlanta, GA, was the champion of the night, beating out Ms. Holmes and fellow contestant Anna Williams, of St. Paul, MN.

The series’ premiere season was one of the most popular on its network, with more than 20 million viewers watching Tuesday’s performances and Wednesday’s winner reveal.

1.

December 27, 1999

Houston

Cassidy

Clouds of white blew off the top of the beaters as I dusted more powdered sugar over the running mixer. Finely milled fluff settled on Katie’s head, giving her eyelashes and her hair a gray cast. Melanie sneezed.

“Not into the mixing bowl!” Katie exclaimed, shoving her body between the cookie dough and Melanie, who wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

Mom was relaxing after our frenzied Christmas, watching reruns of The Jet-Setters while sitting on the overstuffed living room couch. During a commercial break she muted the TV and glanced over the tops of her glasses. “We already have enough Christmas cookies to last us until Valentine’s.”

Katie snorted. “Patrick and Robbie will eat all those before supper.” From our spot at the counter, covered in baking trays, measuring cups, and spoons, we could hear the intermittent slap-pop of a basketball in the driveway. Every now and then there was a shout of indignation that carried into the house.

Mel washed her hands and picked up a wax-wrapped stick of butter to grease a baking tray. She was the quieter of the two, and—I suspected—the late bloomer. Until this year, the twins had been happy to dress alike and do everything together, as a pair. Now, as they were entering their teen years, they were growing more into themselves and branching away from each other. Katie had cut her hair short while Melanie kept hers long. While Katie was starting to get a little attitude, Mel was still wide-eyed and sweet. I hoped she’d stay that way.

The front door slammed and Patrick appeared, stretching over us to reach into a cupboard for a glass.

“You smell like armpits,” I complained. “Your stink will get in the batter.”

“You mean, it’ll improve it,” he said, filling the glass with water from the sink.

“Shut up,” I grumbled. I was a little put out that I had to give up my room—which had been Patrick’s room—during Christmas vacation, but such is life when you have four siblings, three of whom still live at home and one who comes back for the major holidays. I knew Patrick was stinking up my mattress with his smelly feet and displacing my stuff with his.