“Yes, I’m your Academy Awards fairy godmother, and I’d do it again. Okay, I arranged for an Uber to come pick you up in half an hour and bring you here.” She told me my name was on the list and then ran over how to get through the different levels of security. She reminded me to bring my driver’s license.

“I’ll see you soon,” I told her. Then I spent the next half hour rushing around the apartment like a crazy woman, trying to get ready. I didn’t let myself think about Noah.

Okay, that was a lie. I thought about him constantly. He was going to be there. He’d been nominated for Best Actor for The Last Goodbye. I thought he deserved to win, but Chase Covington had played an alcoholic drinking himself to death and for some reason professional people in Hollywood thought his performance was better and had been giving him all the awards. I didn’t get it.

The car arrived and dropped me off at the first stage of security, where they went through my clutch. When they opened it, I realized that I’d forgotten to pack any snacks. This was very disheartening, since I knew I had hours and hours of waiting around in front of me.

I made it through the labyrinth of security guards and three other checkpoints before finally making my way into the Dolby Theatre. A guard directed me down a long hallway that he told me led backstage. There were even more guards standing along the wall who would stop me to verify that I was supposed to be there and kept pointing me down the same hallway.

The level of security was ridiculous—it was like a military operation. Like the president of the United States was going to appear.

Shelby was waiting for me backstage. She waved when she saw me, her whole face lighting up. She patted the empty folding chair next to her. Harmony had set up a quick meeting with her seat fillers to run over the rules for that evening. She passed around two clipboards together and told us there were two separate forms to sign. The first were the liability/publicity release forms that let them put us on camera. The second was a serious-looking nondisclosure agreement that said I wouldn’t talk about being a seat filler at this particular show. Well, given that my mom would only be vaguely interested and my best friend was sitting beside me, I figured it was fine to sign, as I had no one else to tell. Especially since Allan signed his without hesitation. The meeting of hers dragged on for what felt like an eternity since so many people were actually reading the releases, so I ended up watching the monitors behind her instead.