Mia stared at her screen. The download link had vanished. The search result was gone. She searched her hard drive—the MP3 was there, but when she tried to play it again, it was just static. No. Not static. The sound of rain.
Then silence. Five seconds. Then a click, like an old tape stopping.
She knew it didn’t exist. Not officially. Taylor and Justin had never recorded a duet called “Cannonball.” But the internet, in its wild, forgotten corners, sometimes held ghosts.
Mia clicked download.
A storm of rain—real, hissing rain—filled her ears. Then a piano chord, out of tune, like a music box left in a flooded basement. A voice, too soft to be Taylor’s, too raw to be Justin’s, whispered:
“We were a cannonball with no cannon / Just two kids in a freefall, baby, what happened?”
“You jumped before you knew the water was gone.” Taylor Swift Justin Bieber Cannonball Mp3
He replied: “Lol no. You okay?”
Mia’s skin prickled. She had never heard this song. No one had. But the melody felt like a memory she’d forgotten having—of summer car rides, of the last day of eighth grade, of her mom singing off-key before the divorce.
Mia looked at the file’s metadata one last time before it corrupted entirely. Under “Artist,” it didn’t say Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber. Mia stared at her screen
It said: Leah & Sam. 2012. Before the fight.
Mia closed her laptop. She didn’t sleep that night. She just listened to the rain outside her own window—and wondered whose cannonball she was still falling from.
