Arianna Smith's Arc

Chapter 6 of 23

The call was set for Thursday. Kylie wanted to hear her voice. Arianna kept reading the message on her fancy phone until the words blurred. Then panic hit. She had one song. One. "Return to Sender" got her here, but it was old now. Everyone had heard it. On the call, Kylie would want proof she was real. A songwriter, not a lucky fan who struck gold once. Arianna had nothing new to play. She drove to her studio to think. The little red car sat outside, the plate still shouting her love for Kylie. Inside, the pink walls and soft lights felt like a costume she hadn't earned. She sat at the mic and froze. Every idea sounded like copying Kylie's EP. She almost canceled the whole thing. Then her phone buzzed. Kylie again. "Nervous? Don't be. Just play me something honest. That's all I ever want." Arianna read it twice. Honest. That was the only thing that had ever worked. She thought about the last two days. The fear of the call. The terror that Kylie would find her boring. So she wrote that down. She wrote about waiting for a reply. About the space between sending and hearing back. She called it "One More Line." She recorded it rough. Her voice cracked on the bridge. She left it in. Thursday came. Arianna joined the call in her red shirt, hair pinned up. Kylie's face filled the screen. Black hair, red at the tips, a leather jacket, that crooked grin. Other artists sat in little boxes around her. Kylie skipped the small talk. "Arianna. You brought me something?" Arianna's hands shook the way they always did. "It's new. I finished it last night." She hit play and sang along live over the rough track. The studio went quiet. When she finished, no one spoke. Then Kylie leaned close to her camera. "You wrote that in one day?" Kylie said. Her voice had dropped. "That's not luck. Anybody can catch lightning once. You made it twice." Arianna couldn't breathe. "You mean that?" "I don't say things I don't mean. Not anymore." Kylie's jaw tightened for a second. Arianna remembered the EP, the betrayal behind it. "I want more. Not a demo. I want you here. My place. Studio session, just us. Can you come Saturday?" The other artists' boxes had gone stiff. One of them forced a smile. "Saturday," Arianna said. "Yes." Kylie smiled and ended her part of the call. The screen dropped Arianna back to a chat with a plain gray address in it. Cantrall Crest Mansion. The waterfall. The gates. Arianna set the phone down. She had proved she was more than one song. Now she had two days to be ready to sit in a room with Kylie Cantrall alone, with nowhere to hide.