Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 20 of 78

The house was quiet after her mother's door clicked shut. Kylie stayed at the piano with Arianna's hand under hers. Two days. One song. And a mother upstairs who still thought this was a rebound from Malachi and Malia. Kylie needed her mother to hear something that could not come from heartbreak. Something only Arianna could have pulled out of her. "We're not finishing it tonight," Kylie said. "We finish it wrong if we rush." Arianna nodded. She pulled the writing board back onto her lap. Pink hearts on the sides. Three verse slots, two choruses, one already half full in their trading handwriting. "Second verse is mine to start," she said. "That was the rule." "Start it in the morning. When she can see you do it." Arianna looked up. "In front of her?" "She thinks I built you to replace someone," Kylie said. "She needs to watch you write a line I couldn't write for you." They slept in separate rooms. Kylie lay awake listing every line Malia had ever fed her that turned out to be a lie. None of them had ever been written down. Malia had never picked up a pen for her once. At six the label called. Kylie heard her mother answer in the kitchen, calm, short sentences, the word "family" twice. The call ended in under four minutes. Her mother did not come find her. At eight Kylie carried the board to the kitchen table. Her mother was drinking coffee. Arianna came down in yesterday's sweater with the puppy under one arm. Kylie set the board between the mugs. "You wanted to hear it finished Sunday," Kylie said. "I want you to watch the middle get built. Right now. So you know where it comes from." Her mother set the coffee down. Arianna picked up the pen. She wrote one line under Verse 2. She did not look at Kylie for approval. She slid the board across. Kylie read it. It was about the puppy on the taxi floor the first day they met — a detail her mother did not know, could not have known, that no rebound song would ever reach for. Kylie wrote the answering line. She passed the pen back. They traded four times. The puppy chewed the corner of the tablecloth. Her mother did not interrupt. When Verse 2 was full, her mother reached across and turned the board toward herself. She read it twice. "That's not a rebound line," her mother said. "That's a year of a life I wasn't in." "It is," Kylie said. Her mother pushed the board back. "Finish the last verse without me in the room. I already heard what I needed." She stood and carried her coffee down the hall. At the doorway she stopped. "I told the label you're taking the month. They'll fight it. That's my problem now, not yours." The door shut. Kylie picked up the pen.