Tonight the Streets Are Ours

“She called again today,” Arden told Lindsey. She meant Arden’s mom. Lindsey, of course, knew this without it being spelled out.

It was ten o’clock on a Friday night, two weeks after the baggie of pot had been found in Arden’s locker, and now she and Lindsey were sitting on a futon in Matt Washington’s family room, watching an assortment of boys playing Grand Theft Auto.

Arden’s suspension had come and gone. After watching every Internet video that looked like it might be interesting, reading two books, and painting her toenails in rainbow stripes, she had spent her remaining prison sentence cleaning the house, which seemed not to have been swept, mopped, vacuumed, dusted, or treated in any other positive way since her mother left. When Roman and her dad came home, she expected them to laud her cleaning skills. She had literally gotten on her knees on the floor and scrubbed a toilet. She was essentially a scullery maid. But they did not seem to notice, or, if they did, they kept their noticing very well-concealed. And by bedtime, someone had left pee on the toilet seat again.

She had expected her father to have a stronger reaction to her suspension. She’d thought that he might stay home from work for those three days, monitoring her in person to make sure she wasn’t running off with her pothead friends or whatever. She’d thought that he might try to talk to her about what issues were plaguing her that might drive her to drugs, that he’d force her into therapy or Narcotics Anonymous. She’d been prepared for all kinds of overreaction, but instead all her dad did was yell at her for a while, search her room for a hidden drug stash, and then pay their neighbor to stop by the house randomly throughout the day to make sure Arden was still there.

Now she felt ridiculous for thinking that she might get anything more out of her father, for thinking that he’d be so easily derailed. She’d even thought her mother might come home to deal with her. That was silly.

Arden had returned to school, where she’d missed basically nothing in her classes—except for Spanish, which seemed to have morphed into an entirely different language in those three days. But her brief suspension had not gone unnoticed, and now gossip was swirling around school that Arden Huntley was actually, under her demure exterior, a badass drug dealer. That rumor was what had led to this unusual party invitation for her and Lindsey.

Actually, the invitation had just been for Arden. Lindsey rarely got invited anywhere on her own. But where Arden went, Lindsey went, too, an arrangement that everyone seemed to accept without question.

In a different world—a world where Arden’s mother was around—there was no way Arden would have been allowed out of the house tonight. Not when she’d been suspended from school less than two weeks ago. She’d be stuck at home, playing cards or engaging in other family-friendly activities, where her mom could keep an eye on her. But left to his own devices, that was not her father’s style. Left to his own devices, Arden’s father may or may not have even noticed that she’d gone out tonight.

“I am so wasted!” shrieked Beth Page in delight as she crashed into an unforeseen coffee table.

Arden and Lindsey exchanged a glance. They did not usually go to parties where people were so wasted. They did not usually go to parties with Beth Page.

“So did you talk to your mom this time?” Lindsey asked.

“Barely.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘I’m sure you want an explanation for why I left.’”

“And what was her explanation?”

“I don’t know. I just told her I wasn’t actually curious to hear it, and I gave the phone back to Roman.”

“And that was it.”