Tonight the Streets Are Ours

HOPE YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD NIGHT. CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TO MEET THE REST OF MY CAST! EVERYONE IS SO NICE.

Even though Chris didn’t come right out and reference their fight, she knew that this was him trying to smooth over things between them with his customary pluck. Like if he could just get her to text back Sounds great! then all their problems would be solved.

Instead she stuck her phone back in her bag and leaned across the table to ask Peter, “Did you tell your parents about your breakup?” because she was curious to know more about them, too; she was curious to know about every last character on Tonight the Streets Are Ours.

“Yeah. They hadn’t really wanted me to be dating Bianca in the first place, so it’s not like they care that it’s over.”

“Why didn’t they want you to date her?” Lindsey asked.

“Let’s see.” Peter tossed back a long swig of Diet Coke, and Arden watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “Oh, I know: because they don’t want me to get the things that I want in life.”

Arden was a little surprised that Peter would reveal this so openly and honestly to two girls he’d never met before. If their roles were reversed, she wouldn’t lay it all out there, about her sad workaholic dad, her neurotic kid brother, her mom who got sick of them all. Not when she knew from Tonight the Streets Are Ours that Bianca had a perfect family with parents who were still together and loved each other and their daughter as much as they ever had.

But Peter must have realized that he had already told Arden all his secrets. In his year of writing Tonight the Streets Are Ours, he’d laid out everything—maybe not for Arden, but she was the one who’d gotten it. It would be silly to try to keep something from her now.

And isn’t that such a freeing thing, to talk to somebody who already feels like your journal?

Perhaps Lindsey, too, felt that Peter’s openness gave them permission to know everything, because the next thing she said was, “So what happened to your brother?”

Arden kicked her under the table because, rude, Lindsey.

“I don’t know,” Peter said, his voice soft. He stirred the ice in his glass around and around.

“I have a brother, too,” Arden offered, “and I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him. I’d do anything to protect him. So I can imagine how hard it must be.”

Peter nodded, but it seemed like he was trapped inside his own memories, not listening.

“But what happened?” Lindsey pressed on, her blue eyes bright with curiosity, as if she were Nancy Drew in the Case of the Missing Sibling.

“When he disappeared? Well. He’d just started his second year at Cornell.”

“Wow,” Lindsey said. “Your brother must be smart.”

Arden nodded. She knew Cornell was an Ivy League college in upstate New York, but she couldn’t name anyone who’d ever gone there. Even though Allegany was one of the better schools in Maryland, it was not turning out yearly droves of Ivy League–quality students.

But, of course, Peter’s family lived in New York City. They were rich. Their children went to private schools and had an au pair. They probably took them to museums and the opera on weekends, sent them to summer enrichment camps, paid for SAT tutors. If Arden had all of that going for her, there would be no reason she couldn’t go to an Ivy League college, too—no reason other than her record of suspension and drug possession, of course.

“He is smart,” Peter agreed with Lindsey. “And stupid.” Peter stared off at the jukebox in the corner, like he was trying to decide how much to say.

You can tell me anything, Arden willed. I’m here for you.

“He—” Peter began.

His phone rang.

“Hey, man,” he answered it. “Yeah … Yeah … I know, I don’t, either … Sure, yeah, sounds cool. Jigsaw Manor?… Okay, you got it. Later.”

He clicked off his phone and gave Arden and Lindsey a broad grin, all traces of his missing brother gone from his face. Like it had never even happened. “Hey,” he said. “Do you girls want to go to a party?”