Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Why doesn’t anybody love Arden as much as she loves them?

By the time Arden had dropped off Lindsey and driven home, it was late, but still she wasn’t tired. Everything seemed rotten. She had unwittingly expected something about tonight to transform her, yet she had come home exactly the same, and somehow, therefore, even worse. Now she prowled around the house, looking for distractions. Her father was locked in his study—she didn’t go in, but she could tell he was there from the light coming through the crack under the door.

Arden’s dad had always worked hard. But ever since her mother moved out, it was like something deep inside of him kept telling him that the reason she left was that he wasn’t successful enough. And if he could just be more successful, then he could prove to her, or to himself, that he was worthy of her love again. He’d been working on being more successful for a month and a half now. He might be getting somewhere with that, but he’d not come any closer to bringing his wife back home.

Arden thought about her mother’s words on the phone earlier that day. I’m sure you want an explanation for why I left. She wondered if this explanation had been offered to her father, too. She wondered if he’d listened to it. She couldn’t imagine that her mother had left because her father wasn’t ambitious or hardworking enough. She thought that’s what he was doing to win her mom back not even because he thought it would work, but just because it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Roman had fallen asleep on the couch, Mouser catnapping on his feet, the overhead lights still on, the paused video game on the TV awaiting his next command. Arden watched him for a moment, the rise and fall of his little chest. In moments like this (when he was unconscious, basically), Arden’s love for her brother overwhelmed her, almost like a physical pain. His feet were resting against the pillow with The Little Prince quotation on it, and, without thinking about it, Arden pulled it out from under him and threw it in the trash.

That pillow was bullshit. Her mother did not know the first thing about being responsible for her rose.

Arden carried Roman up to his room and laid him down on his bed, something that he never ever would have let her do if he were awake, but as it was, he just drooled a little on her shoulder.

Arden felt a pang of guilt for going to Matt Washington’s house; she should have known Roman never would have gotten his act together to put himself to bed. There was no way he had brushed his teeth tonight before passing out. She wasn’t going to wake him up to make him do it now, and if her family continued on like this, Roman was probably going to contract gum disease before he made it out of middle school.

Arden left Roman’s door open because, even though he was eleven, he still freaked out if he woke up and the door was closed and the room was too dark. Then she went to her own room and curled up on her bed. She’d left a pile of rejected Matt Washington party outfits on top of her comforter, and now she kicked them to the floor. She’d eventually settled on her tightest, most revealing top and jeans, but all that had really accomplished was making her unnecessarily cold when she stood out on the patio with Ellzey.

She narrowed her eyes across the room at her Arden Doll, who lived in a glass case on the wall. Since her mother had seen the way Arden treated Tabitha, she’d built this case for the Arden Doll to protect her. “You’re going to want to show your doll to your children and your grandchildren,” Arden’s mother had said. “You’re not going to want her to be filthy and falling apart.”

Arden’s mother was correct, but on this particular night, Arden didn’t feel like being watched over by some pristine doll.