Arianna Smith's Arc

Chapter 2 of 23

Three days after Arianna uploaded her song, she checked the submission page again. Her heart sank. "Return to Sender" sat on page forty-something, buried under thousands of other fan demos. New uploads pushed it lower every hour. She scrolled and scrolled and could barely find it. No plays. No comments. Kylie's team would never dig this deep. Purr-cy hopped onto the desk and pawed the screen, as if trying to help. Arianna set him down and thought hard. A file lost in a list would never reach Kylie. But Kylie met fans in person. Arianna remembered the flyer taped to her fridge: a fan meet, this weekend, close enough to drive. Kylie always talked to fans there. If Arianna could get the song into Kylie's hands directly, the list wouldn't matter. She burned the song onto a small drive and wrote Kylie's name on it in red marker. She grabbed her keys. Her little red car waited outside the cottage, its painted butterfly bright against the winter gray. She drove the whole way with the demo on the seat beside her, hands tight on the wheel. The venue glowed under bright banners with Kylie's name stretched high. A long line of fans wrapped around the building. Arianna joined the end and clutched the drive. Hours passed. Her feet ached. When she finally reached the front, she saw Kylie behind a table, signing posters, smiling at each fan for maybe ten seconds. Arianna's turn came. Her voice shook. "I wrote you a song. It's real. It's about—" She held out the drive. "About loving you and never hearing back." Kylie's smile stayed polite. A staff member stepped in fast. "No outside files, hon. Everything goes through the submission page. That's the rule." She waved Arianna along before the drive ever touched Kylie's hand. Arianna stumbled out into the cold, the drive still in her fist. She had failed. Worse, she'd seen Kylie look right through her, one face in a crowd of hundreds. Her legs felt weak. She leaned against her car and let the wind sting her eyes. Then she noticed something on the venue wall. A big sign near the doors. "FAN SONG CONTEST," it read. "Kylie picks one submission to perform live. Voting starts Monday on the fan page. Most-shared demo wins." Arianna read it twice. The submission page wasn't a grave after all. It was a race. Her song didn't need Kylie's team to dig for it. It needed people to share it, to push it to the top on their own. She climbed into her car and gripped the wheel. The direct path had slammed shut in her face. But a new door had opened, one that scared her more. To win, she couldn't stay hidden in her pink studio. She would have to show her private song to the whole world and beg strangers to lift it up.