Tonight the Streets Are Ours

In the end, my fantasy of breaking up with Chris came half-true: although we indeed broke up, he never went to extreme lengths to win me back—or any lengths, actually. I guess that’s the thing about fantasies: if you’re lucky, they come partway true. And usually only the part that you have control over.

I kept reading Tonight the Streets Are Ours. Not every day, but sometimes, when I was up past my bedtime and everything was too quiet, I would look at it, even though I don’t know what I expected to find there. I did it even though there’s something shameful in it, in consciously trying to be fooled again by Peter’s stories, now that I know better.

Shortly after the start of my senior year, Peter posted that his memoir, Tonight the Streets Are Ours, would be released by a major publishing company, one that has published best sellers and award-winners. The post in which he announced this accumulated more comments than anything else he’d ever written in his journal. It seemed as if every girl on the Internet visited Tonight the Streets Are Ours just to express her personal excitement.

Not too long after that, Peter removed every last post and replaced them with a single message saying, My debut book will be coming out next year—click here to preorder your copy! And I clicked there. And I preordered my copy.

The disappearance of Tonight the Streets Are Ours left me with an odd sense of loss. I’d believed that maybe I had some impact on Peter’s actions, even though he didn’t act like it at the time. I’d hoped maybe he would think it over and realize that I was right: this book was exploitative of Leo and Bianca, the people he claimed to love, and it was wrong to publish it.

But really I think I had no impact on Peter. Our time together was just one in a string of nights, and when your life brings you luxury and adventure every day, one more adventure makes no difference to you. And if you do not write it down—as I asked him not to—then, once enough time passes, it will be as if that night never happened at all.

When I graduated from high school, I went to a good college in a small, quiet town about two hours north of New York City. I got in partially thanks to Lindsey, who voluntarily went to Mr. Vanderpool and took responsibility for the marijuana in my locker, striking it from my transcript; and thanks to Mr. Lansdowne, who wrote an absurdly complimentary letter of recommendation on my behalf.

By the time Peter’s book finally came out, I was in my second year at college. I got my copy and sat with it under a tree in the quad, and I started to read. Reading Peter’s words again felt like reuniting with an old friend. But I was surprised to see that the book was written and branded as a novel, not a memoir. Fiction, not reality. All the characters’ names had been changed: Bianca’s not called Bianca, and even the protagonist wasn’t named Peter. Leo was split into two characters: the main character’s inexplicably missing big brother, and Bianca’s undeserving boyfriend—no relation.

I wondered if Bianca somehow convinced Peter not to use real names or brand this story as nonfiction. I wondered if perhaps his literary agent or publishing company found out the truth about Peter’s stories. I wondered whose choice this was and whether I had any impact on it. I still don’t know these answers.