Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 39 of 78

Kylie set the phone back down before she dialed. Saying no was easy. But her mother had warned her that a flat no ends the talk. The label would hear one word and walk away for good. If Kylie wanted to make music with Arianna on their terms, she needed terms to offer. "We can't just say no," Kylie said. "My mother needs something to hand them. Real numbers. Real rules." Arianna sat at the piano. "Then let's write them down. Like we wrote the song." Kylie found a blank sheet of paper. She thought of every trap the label used to control people. Long contracts. Owning your name. Owning every song forever. She wrote the opposite of each one. "One song," Kylie said, writing it. "No album promise. No tour promise." "We keep the song," Arianna added. "We wrote it. It's ours. They only help release it." Kylie nodded and wrote that too. "And we say when. Not them. If we want a second song, we come to them." The puppy padded over and pressed against Arianna's leg. She scratched his ears without looking down. "What about money?" Kylie hadn't thought about that part. She always let her mother handle money. But this was hers and Arianna's now. "We split everything even," she said. "Fifty-fifty. Whatever the song earns, we share it." Arianna went still. "Even? I only wrote half." "You wrote half," Kylie said. "That's even." They read the list twice. Four terms. One song, they keep it, they decide the timing, they split it even. Kylie's hand shook a little. It was small. The label wanted years and got four lines instead. They might laugh. They might hang up. Kylie picked up the phone and called her mother. "We have our answer," Kylie said. "But not just no." She read the four terms slowly. Her mother stayed quiet through all of them. "That's it?" her mother asked. "Four things?" "That's it. Tell them exactly that. Don't soften it. Don't add years." Her mother was silent a moment. "They may say no." "Then they say no," Kylie answered. "But they hear our offer first. Not a wall. A door." Her mother agreed to call the label that afternoon. Kylie hung up and looked at Arianna. The bright windows of the manor threw sun across the paper. "It's done," Kylie said. "She's giving them our terms." Arianna took the sheet and held it against her chest. "We made the offer together." Kylie sat beside her at the piano. For the first time, she had not written her own future alone. She and Arianna had built it line by line, the same way they built the song. Now the choice belonged to the label. But whatever they answered, Kylie and Arianna had spoken with one voice.