Tonight the Streets Are Ours

—MyKingdom4AHorse

I love your writing! I’ve also always wondered that about Vitaminwater. You’re so funny.

—Delicate485

Are you and Bianca ever going to get together??? I’m dying out here! Leo sounds like a tool. Ugh I don’t know what she sees in him.

—MessyDressyBessy

Arden considered leaving a comment, too. She couldn’t say, “Are you and Bianca ever going to get together?” because she was reading this now nine months in the future, so she knew that, yes, they would, and then later still, they would break up. She could add her voice to the chorus saying “I love your writing” and “You’re so funny,” because she did, and he was, but she didn’t want to be just another unnamed voice crowing about how great he was. She wanted to be something special to him, in the way that he was becoming something special to her. So she said nothing.

She glanced up at the court. Roman was still sitting on the bench. He scanned the bleachers. She caught his eye and smiled, then remembered that he probably couldn’t identify her without his glasses. The plus side was that he wouldn’t notice if she kept staring at her phone rather than watching his game. So she read on, skimming, skimming—until she came to the next post with Bianca.



September 2

Mom had to go back to the city a day early for some meeting of some charity board that she’s on, so last night it was just us guys out in the Hamptons. You know what that means: BBQ! I don’t know why Dad is so into grilling out except that Mom never lets him do it, and I don’t know why Mom is so opposed to it except that she can tell it makes him happy. Thank you both for your extremely healthy relationship model, parents.

Also I think men like grilling more than women do because it appeals to some caveman part of our brains. The part of our brains that goes, “Fire! I like fire!” Do women not have this part of their brains? Is this some biological difference between the sexes? Are women’s brains like, “Fire! That’s that thing that burns down my dwelling shack!”?

I don’t know, guys. They don’t really teach biology at art school. Shh, don’t tell my dad.

I love when my father barbecues, though. It’s one of the only times when he seems like a human being instead of a machine. Okay, so he still wears a designer button-down shirt that some personal shopper picked out while he’s grilling, but he rolls up the sleeves and doesn’t freak out if he gets some grease on it. He was in a good mood this weekend, too, actually asking me some questions about my life instead of just ordering me around. Not that I told him anything, of course. The more you tell him, the more ammunition he has.

I get it bad, but you know sometimes I think my brother gets it worse. To some extent they’ve given up on me as a lost cause. I’m younger and I’m a daydreamer and a screwup, and I care more about fashion and poetry than a “real man” is supposed to, and I listen to music too loud. Whenever my father looks at me it’s like I’m some sort of vermin who’s crawled into his house that he can’t exterminate, but it’s not like he expects much from me.

They didn’t even want me, you know. They wanted a kid, but they were getting old and it wasn’t happening, so they finally decided to adopt. They’d had my brother for only a couple months before they found out they were pregnant with me. Maybe they even conceived me during some celebratory “We have a baby now!” sex.

Gross.

But they never let me forget it. That my brother, they chose. Me? A mistake.