Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Chris sighed and took back the script to study it further.

Sixth period on Thursdays was when Arden and Chris had theater class, which they signed up for because they could take it together, and because it was an easy A. Since they both were heavily involved in theater after school, Mr. Lansdowne already adored them. So while he made the other fifteen students in the class play games where they mirrored one another’s body movements or pretended to be animals, he let Arden and Chris do whatever they wanted. Today, this meant that Chris was brushing up on his backwoods accent, while Arden was ostensibly working on a history paper while actually finishing up her read-through of every single entry from last autumn on Tonight the Streets Are Ours. And here’s what she had learned:

The rest of September had been confusing. After Peter and Bianca got together that night in the Hamptons, they saw each other seemingly constantly—for about two weeks. Leo was off at college, out of the picture, so they had almost unlimited access to each other. Peter’s senior year started at the same time, so there were some posts about readjusting to school, deciding whether or not to stay on at the bookstore (yes, but only on Saturdays), and bemoaning how little writing he’d gotten done over the whole summer and how hard it was going to be to find time now that he had homework again.

But mostly he wrote about Bianca, just short bits and pieces, as he seemed to be too busy spending time with her to spend much time describing what they were doing. Still, these brief posts about Bianca (This morning I brought her coffee on my way to school, just to see her smile) resulted in dozens of reader comments.

But then there were eight days of silence.

And then that post about his brother running away.

And then that post about Bianca breaking up with him.

Both came completely without warning, and Arden’s heart ached for him. When September began, Peter was the guy who had it all. He even had the girl of his dreams, at last. But less than a month later, it all came crashing down.

The illogic and injustice of life killed Arden. You have to walk through this world knowing that at any moment, your brother might vanish, your mother might leave. No warning. How can you live staring that reality in the face? It didn’t seem right, that somebody else’s carelessness or selfishness could have such a huge impact on your life. Could destroy you. It didn’t seem fair that your happiness was constantly at the mercy of everybody else.

Arden found herself hating Bianca, a surprisingly intense feeling for a girl she did not know—indeed, a girl she’d admired with just as much intensity since she’d first read about her. Bianca, so beautiful. Bianca, the angel. Bianca, who was going to run the United Nations and travel the world someday. It all sounded so good.

But Bianca couldn’t even be there for Peter in the moment that he needed her. When Peter’s brother went missing, and Peter was in a tailspin, all Bianca did was break up with him. And tell him Don’t worry, you’ll meet someone else.

For the first time since she’d started reading about Peter’s world, Arden felt superior to Bianca. Sure, maybe she was plain and dependable in comparison. Maybe she was a small-town girl who had to look up where “the Hamptons” were and bought most of her clothes from chain stores and thought a thrilling night out was a school semiformal. But that didn’t matter, because she would have been there for Peter when he’d needed her. When the going got tough, Arden could tough it out.

She just wished she could tell him that.