Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 21 of 78

Kylie held the pen over the last verse slot and stopped. The house was still. Her mother's door was shut down the hall. Arianna sat across the table with the puppy asleep on her thigh. Two verses done. One chorus locked. The final verse waited in Arianna's handwriting on the board, half a line already there. Kylie set the pen down. "I need to hear you sing yours." Arianna looked up. "Sing what?" "Your verse. Out loud. I've never heard you sing anything out loud." Arianna's hand went still on the puppy's back. "I hum. I don't sing." "I'm going to record this Monday for my mother. If our voices don't sit right together, she'll hear it. She'll think I wrote your part for you." Kylie pushed the board an inch toward her. "I don't know your range. I don't know if you go high or stay low. I've been guessing the melody in my head for a year." Arianna set the puppy on the floor. "I've never sung in front of anyone." "Then sing in front of one person." Arianna went to the corner of the living room and lifted a guitar from its stand. She carried it back and sat with the body across her lap. The wood caught the kitchen light along the curve. She tuned two strings by ear without looking at the pegs. That told Kylie something already. "Play the chord under my first line," Arianna said. Kylie went to the piano and hit the chord. Arianna strummed the same shape once. Then she opened her mouth and sang her first line from Verse 2. Her voice came out lower than Kylie had guessed. Not thin. Steady. It sat under where Kylie's own voice lived, which meant Kylie could stack a harmony on top without fighting for the same note. Kylie sang the answering line above her. The two voices met on the last word and held. Arianna stopped. "That worked." "That worked," Kylie said. She came back to the table. She could hear the finished song now. She could hear where her mother would stop chopping vegetables and turn around. "Sing your verse start to finish. I'll write the harmony under it as you go." Arianna sang the full second verse. Kylie marked small notes above each line — where she'd drop under, where she'd lift over. When Arianna reached the last word, Kylie was already writing the top line of the final verse. The line came out in twelve seconds. It had never come before because she had been writing for a voice she'd never heard. She slid the board across. Arianna read it and picked up the pen for the closing line. Upstairs, a door opened. Footsteps started down the hall. Kylie kept writing.