Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Ellzey and the rest of the guys stampeded downstairs. Their faces registered shock when they saw the four girls and the one yellow balloon still tied to Arden’s wrist. Ellzey clearly had not planned to see any girls tonight. He’d replaced his contacts with wire-frame glasses. He was wearing socks but no shoes, baggy gym shorts, and a shapeless sweater. Arden had dreamed of this, seeing Ellzey in his natural habitat. But maybe these weren’t the exact circumstances she had imagined.

“Did you really think you could get away with inviting girls over for a late-night rendezvous?” demanded Mrs. Ellzey, hands on hips. “You thought I wouldn’t notice?”

Ellzey’s friends turned pale. They furiously shook their heads. “We didn’t invite anybody,” Ellzey said.

“We have no idea what they are doing here,” added Douglas, narrowing his eyes at Naomi.

“Then what possibly brought four girls over here in the middle of the night?” Mrs. Ellzey countered.

Arden thought about Kirsten’s question before they’d left the house. What’s the point? This seemed, suddenly, like a relevant inquiry.

“Mom!” Ellzey cried. “We didn’t ask them to come here to, like, hook up with us or whatever gross thing it is that you’re thinking!” His voice cracked and he looked mortified.

“Can I just say something?” Lindsey asked. “I’m gay. So I’m definitely not here to hook up with your son.”

Mrs. Ellzey looked pained. “You girls need to go home,” she said. “And as for you, Bart…”

Arden and her friends fled. They didn’t say anything for the first four blocks on their walk back to Kirsten’s. Then, finally, Lindsey spoke.

“Well, it’s a good thing we didn’t leave the balloon at Alex’s.”

And they collapsed into giggles.

On Monday, Douglas broke up with Naomi. He said he thought they were “looking for different things.” Up until he approached her at Matt Washington’s party, a full year later, Ellzey acted like he didn’t really know who Arden was. But since that was how he’d always behaved, that felt disappointing but not dramatic. The most positive outcome was that in the year since then, Lindsey and Arden had been able to say to each other, pretty much any time they needed a laugh, “I’m Mrs. Ellzey,” and it never failed to cheer them up. And that alone made the whole thing worthwhile.





The parakeets vs. the wolverines

The weekend after she and Chris went shopping for sixteen hats at the Grass Is Always Greener, Arden woke up to a pounding on her door. She rolled over, blinking the gunk out of her eyes. “What?” she croaked out.

Roman flung open the door and stood there fully dressed in a basketball jersey, mesh shorts, and sneakers. “Can you drive me to my game?” he asked.

Arden sat up, slowly coming to terms with the fact that she was, yet again, awake. Why didn’t any of the boys in her life know how to sleep late? “You have a game today?” she asked. Mouser, who had been restlessly catnapping on the foot of her bed, bolted for the door, as though she, too, wanted no part in this.

“Yeah, duh,” Roman said. “In like twenty minutes.”

This was the first Arden had heard of it. “Can’t Dad take you?”

“He was supposed to.” Roman looked down at the floor and scuffed his shoe. “Uh, he left a note. He already went into the office. So…”