Tonight the Streets Are Ours

“How was the rest of Matt Washington’s party?” Chris asked, turning onto the main road.

Arden shrugged. She didn’t want to admit that it had been a total bust, because Chris would probably say, “I told you so,” and, “I don’t know why you even went in the first place when you could have come with me.” So Arden just said, “Lindsey finally asked out Denise Alpert.”

“Whoa. How’d that go?”

“Well, she didn’t say yes. Beth and Jennie also offered some choice opinions on the matter.”

Chris snorted. “I’m not surprised. What did Lindsey think was going to happen?”

Arden couldn’t answer that question, because that was the thing about Lindsey: she didn’t think. She wasn’t doing some statistical analysis of the likelihood of Denise saying yes or no. She was just guided by hope.

“Dumb move,” Chris said, with a smug knowingness that made Arden want to strangle him. Chris had never come out and said it, but it was clear that he didn’t like Lindsey very much, probably because she was constantly making “dumb moves” like asking out straight girls or oversleeping or forgetting about math tests—all of which Chris found to be illogical behavior.

In return, Lindsey did not like Chris very much, because she thought he ate up too much of Arden’s time and attention. Last summer, Lindsey had said accusingly, “You’re turning into one of those girls who’s always, ‘Blah blah my boyfriend says blah blah, oh I can’t come because my boyfriend wants to blah blah, oh that’s cool that you’re into blah blah because my boyfriend is, too.’”

“I am not turning into one of those girls,” Arden had defended herself. But, just in case, she tried to mention Chris to Lindsey as little as possible. And she tried not to mention Lindsey to Chris, either. And when one said something negative about the other, she simply tried not to engage. Now, for example, she pulled out her cell phone as if an important text had come in.

The first thing she saw on her phone was Peter’s website. Tonight the Streets Are Ours. She’d been reading it in bed last night until almost three a.m., after she had finally heard her father leave his study and go to bed.




She’d made it through all the posts of the first two and a half months, which felt like an accomplishment. But now that late-night reading seemed like a poor decision, since Chris was a big believer in the early bird getting the worm and she’d had to wake up a full hour before he picked her up in order to get ready. She hadn’t always been a daily makeup-wearing kind of girl. It was something she’d started doing a few months ago, to make Chris think she looked prettier than she actually was. He didn’t seem to have much of a response to it, but she kept doing it anyway, just in case. Even if the presence of makeup on her face didn’t make him think she was gorgeous, she didn’t want the absence of makeup to make him think she was a troll.

Now, instinctively, she picked up reading where she’d left off seven hours before.



June 21

Today a customer came into the bookstore looking for a title called The Soft and the Furry. I spent about half an hour helping her scour the shelves in the pet care section before I was like, “Wait. Do you mean The Sound and the Fury? One of the most famous American novels of all time?”

She shrugged. “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

Of course we had, like, ten copies of it in stock. She read the back cover. And then she didn’t buy it.



June 22

This evening I rang up a customer who was buying a book called What to Expect When You’re Divorcing.

“Oh,” I said. “Are you getting a divorce?”

“No,” she said, really quickly.

“It’s okay if you are,” I said, then added, just so she wouldn’t feel like she was the only one, “I mean, I’m divorced.”

She rolled her eyes, like she didn’t believe me.

“See?” I held up my left hand. “No ring.”