I’m backstage, about to dish out four years of guitar training. Three times a week, after school, Monday-Wednesday-Friday. No exceptions. And it’s made me great. Not superstar material, but I don’t have to be. As long as I’m better than everyone else in this room.

 

I survey my competitors. The girl to my left is tuning her bass, and the unfortunate girl on my right has a tuba. The room is packed with women readying various instruments on both sides of me. It extends past my vision, blurring at the peripheries, like two mirrors face-to-face.

 

This isn’t about them, though. This is about me, and my guitar prowess. And I’m ready to show them what I’ve got.

 

A door opens up in front of me. “Group 3-A, step out.” Me, the tuba girl, and the bassist line up to walk through it. I’m last, where the best should be. I do not look at them, and they do not look at me. We each step through.

 

Before me lies a stage with a single spotlight trained down in the center. In front of the stage is a panel of three judges. They are the most influential of my peers, the people whose opinions matter most to me. Among them are my mother, my favorite teacher, and my best friend. The audience behind them is nearly everyone else I know in my life – every acquaintance, every classmate, every stranger I’ve ever interacted with. I know that the judges and the audience will each score my performance, with the judges’ scores weighing more than the audience’s. I also know that my score will be the highest. I am the guitar player, after all.

 

“Tuba player, begin your performance.”

 

I don’t know where the voice comes from, but she obeys. She steps into the spotlight. Without a word, she raises her shining tuba to her lips, inhales, and belts out a long, low note. It hangs there for a moment, solitary and grand, before she chases it with another. They string together into a classical and familiar melody. It’s impressive, even regal – but I am not nervous. It’s not that she’s not a fantastic tuba player; she’s nailing each note, and her movements are emphatic and passionate despite their precision. It’s simply an unimpressive instrument. For her to make waves with a tuba, she’d have to be good enough for a professional orchestra. And she’s just not quite there.

 

The judges are clearly of the same mind. They exchange cruel commentary, and the audience talks amongst themselves, evidently disinterested. Without pretense, a number suddenly flashes above their heads: thirty-two. Its glow illuminates her flushed face, and she stops playing. She removes her tuba from her lips to plead, but is gone before she can utter a single word. Not escorted off the stage, not fallen through a trapdoor beneath her, not even shot. Just there one moment and gone the next.

 

“Score lower than current highest score. Bassist, begin your performance.”

 

As the bassist steps forward, I find myself troubled by the tuba player. It’s not that she was eliminated; that was hardly a surprise, and was a good development nonetheless. No, it was something about her face. It looked familiar, somehow. I look from her to the bassist. They’re identical, I realize – or were, anyway. Twin competitors, maybe?

 

A new number shining down on them pulls me from my thoughts: eighty-nine. “Score higher than previous highest score. Bassist, step backstage.” She complies, walking smugly past me. I hadn’t been paying attention, but apparently her performance had been impressive. I hear a scream from somewhere behind me – the previous high score holder, I presume – and wonder what instrument she had surpassed before I hear, “Guitarist, begin your performance.”

 

I snap out of my daydream: it’s showtime. I step forward without stage fright; the best has no reason to worry. I look down to strum… but my reflection in the glossy body of the guitar is staring back at me. It is the same face as the bassist, the tuba player, and – come to think of it – every performer I’ve seen. For the first time, I'm unsure, and my arm remains suspended in the air. What kind of place is this? How is the audience so big? Why is-

 

It doesn’t matter. Play if you want to exist. A command, a promise, and above all a directive. My questions are quashed, and I snap back to what matters: my performance. Showcasing exactly what three times a week of afterschool practice for four years looks like.

 

My new focus consumes me. My sole purpose is to elicit the best possible sound from this guitar. Every chord, technique, and strumming pattern I’ve learned is for this moment. I look down again to strum, and this time there is no hesitation.

 

I play the newest pop sensation for my teacher. I play an old classic beloved by my mom. I play some weird punk niche shit for my friend. I play each of these all at once, every member of the crowd hearing what they want to hear. And I’m nailing all of them. I finish with a victorious/vintage/rebellious flourish, and look up to see the number that I deserve: one hundred.

 

“Highest possible score achieved. Program terminated.”

 

The bassist rolls her eyes. I don’t bother to watch her disappear, because everything else is blinking away too. The judges, the audience, the stage underneath my feet are all ceasing to exist, and I begin to sense the lie in the promise, because what sense would it make for me to remain among nothingness?

 

You’ll exist, in a way.

 

* * *

 

Lindsay smiles at the result on her phone screen. The app declares the instrument she’d be best at is: guitar. That sounds cool. She scrolls through the details tab. Oh, three times a week is a lot, though. She switches up the settings, thinking, How about… twice a week? as she presses the recalculate button.