Arianna Smith's Arc

Chapter 1 of 23

Arianna Smith had written eleven love songs for Kylie Cantrall, and not one of them was finished. She sat in her little pink studio at midnight, staring at scratched-out lyrics. She wanted to marry Kylie someday. But you don't win a famous singer's heart with half a song. You need one true song, the kind that stops her cold and makes her ask who wrote it. Her cat pressed against her ankle. Purr-cy had crossed blue eyes and white paws, and he never left her side when she worked late. She scratched his ears. "None of these are real, Purr-cy," she said. "They're just pretty words." That was the problem. She had copied how Kylie wrote. She used the same phrases from Kylie's sad EP, the same fake-glossy heartbreak. But Arianna had never had her heart broken. She only had this huge, quiet love she'd mailed off in letters and never heard back from. She crumpled another page and threw it. Purr-cy chased it across the floor. Then he jumped onto the keyboard and struck three notes by accident. Low, low, high. Arianna froze. The sound was small and honest, nothing like Kylie's polished tracks. She played the three notes again herself. Then she stopped trying to sound like Kylie. She set down the printed lyrics. She thought about the truth instead: the fan letters with no reply, the Valentine card, the shirt she wore until it faded, the name tag necklace with Kylie's name stamped under her own birthday. She started writing what actually happened. "I sent my heart in envelopes. You never wrote me back." She sang it soft, off-key, with Purr-cy watching. It was not clever. It was not glossy. But it was hers. By three in the morning she had the whole thing. One verse, one chorus, one bridge. She called it "Return to Sender." She recorded it in a single take, cracked notes and all. When she played it back, her eyes stung. For the first time, a song sounded like her, not like an imitation of the woman she loved. She walked out to her cold porch to breathe. Pumpkins still sat on the steps from fall. Her small palm tree shivered in the winter wind, way too tropical for this weather. She'd bought it as a promise to herself, a warm place she and Kylie might live someday. Arianna held her phone. The song was ready. Now she faced the next wall. She had one true song, but Kylie had never answered a single thing Arianna sent. A finished song meant nothing locked inside this studio. She opened Kylie's fan submission page. The rules were clear: send a demo and maybe, maybe, the team would listen. Thousands of fans tried. Arianna's thumb hovered over the upload button. She pressed it. The bar filled to one hundred percent. Her song was out in the world now, headed toward Kylie. There was no calling it back.