Arianna Smith's Arc

Chapter 20 of 23

Arianna held the keys to the beachfront house in her palm. She and Kylie stood in the empty front room. Sunlight poured across bare floors. No couch. No table. No bed. Their voices echoed off the walls. "It's ours," Kylie said, turning in a slow circle. Then she stopped. "But we can't sleep here. There's nothing." Arianna's stomach sank. She had won the house. She had forgotten the rest. "Everything's still at the mansion," Kylie said. She counted on her fingers. "The bed. The TV. All of it. Miles away. We don't have a truck. We don't have anyone to carry it." She rubbed her forehead. "I could call the label. They'd send people in an hour." Arianna shook her head. "No. We don't owe them this. This is ours, not theirs." She thought about the cameras outside the old apartment. A label crew meant phones, meant leaks, meant their new gate opened on day one. She set the keys on the windowsill. "Let me handle it. Give me today." She opened her phone and searched. She found a local moving company with good reviews and a same-day slot. She called. She gave the mansion address and the beach address. She paid with her own card. Her hand shook, so she pressed it flat on the floor, the way she always did. The man on the phone said two trucks, four workers, three hours. They drove to the mansion first. Arianna had never liked how big it felt. The movers followed her through the gate. She pointed at the pieces that mattered. The king bed with its soft canopy. A wide tan shelf with a flat black TV on top. Boxes of Kylie's clothes. Her records. Her keyboard. She left behind the heavy things that belonged to the old life. Kylie watched her choose and said nothing. Then she touched Arianna's arm. "You know what to keep," she said. The trucks rolled slow toward the coast. Arianna and Kylie drove behind them. By late afternoon the workers carried the bed through the gate. They set it in the big room upstairs, facing the water. They placed the shelf and TV against the wall below. Arianna watched the empty house fill. Room by room, it started to look lived in. She paid the crew and locked the gate behind them. The click of the lock was the best sound she'd heard in weeks. Inside, Kylie flopped onto the canopy bed and laughed. "We live here," she said. "We actually live here." Arianna sat beside her. Through the window she watched the waves. No cars idled on the street. No lens flashed. Then Kylie's phone buzzed on the new shelf. She read it and frowned. "It's the label," she said. "They want us at a launch event. Friday. In front of everyone." Arianna looked at the locked gate below, then back at the screen. The walls kept the cameras out. But the label still had a key.