Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 10 of 78

Thursday afternoon Kylie stood at the piano and read Arianna's note again. Arianna had written a song for her. It was on Kylie's phone as a voice memo, sent last week, three minutes long, just voice and guitar. Kylie had listened to it twelve times. She had never written one back. Tomorrow Arianna would walk through the door and Kylie would have the necklace on the piano and grilled cheese in the pan and nothing of her own to play. She sat on the bench. She had written a whole EP about a girl who broke her. She could not write four lines about a girl who had not. She put her hands on the keys and played a C. It sounded like a doorbell. She played it again. Nothing came. She went upstairs and pulled a wooden writing board off her closet shelf. A neighbor's kid had made it for her last Christmas. It had a music staff carved along the top and two pink hearts on the sides. Blank lines waited under headings: Verse 1. Verse 1. Verse 1. Chorus. Chorus. She had never used it. She carried it down to the piano. She wrote Song for Arianna at the top in pencil. Then she stopped. Every line she tried sounded like a line she had already sold. Eyes like the ocean. Heart on my sleeve. She erased them. She did not want to hand Arianna a song that could have been for anyone. She put the pencil down and thought about what was true. Arianna had waited a year. Arianna had brought her puppy in a taxi. Arianna had a recipe in her bag. Arianna had said grilled cheese, on white bread, when I'm sad. Kylie wrote: You brought your grandma's recipe in a bag. She played four notes under it. She wrote: You waited a year and you didn't ask why. She played four more. The chorus came in one line. She wrote: I don't have a song yet. I have the start of one. She worked until the light in the living room turned orange. She filled Verse 1. She filled the second Verse 1. She left the third blank on purpose. She wrote a chorus that repeated I don't have it finished. She wrote a second chorus that said help me finish it. She closed the board and set it on the piano next to the red necklace box. Two gifts now. One finished. One asking to be finished together. She called her mother's driver and confirmed the grocery run for the morning. Then she sat on the bench and played the chorus once through, softly, so the dogs would not wake. It held. It was not the best song she had ever written. It was the most honest one. Tomorrow she would play it for Arianna and ask her to write the last verse.