Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Peter stopped to think about it. “Uh, I have no idea! That’s just what it’s called. There are probably a dozen people who live here now. They throw parties every few weeks to cover their rent. Every time somebody new moves in, they add their own work, so there are layers upon layers of art in this place.”


“Also layers upon layers of dirt,” Hanson called back. He was on his way up the flight of stairs in the back of the basement.

Arden tried to look at everything so she could commit every last bit of it to memory. This would probably be the only time she would ever go to an art fraternity with her best friend and the writer she was obsessed with and Sharpie marks all over their bodies. Already she felt nostalgic for tonight. Already she could imagine herself months from now, wishing that she had made more of this one night while she was still in it.

“Do you know anyone who lives here?” she asked Peter as they climbed the dark stairs, the roar of sound from the floor above them getting louder and louder.

“Yes. One of the girls is friends with my brother.”

They opened the door to the next floor, and the dull roar burst into a cacophony. Jigsaw Manor was packed with partygoers in outrageous costumes, feathers and sparkles flying everywhere. At the front of the room, a ten-piece band was banging out something atonal and unrecognizable; each member seemed only dimly aware of that fact that a whole bunch of other instrumentalists were playing at the same time. A chandelier made mostly of duct tape and flashlights swayed dangerously overhead.

“Oh my God,” Arden and Lindsey breathed at the same moment.

Trotsky looked around and blew out a long breath. “There’s, like, nobody here tonight,” he concluded.

“Do you want to explore?” Peter asked the girls.

“Of course!”

They ran all over the place. Jigsaw Manor seemed ever-expanding because they kept discovering new rooms, and Arden could not figure out how they all fit together. One room was barely the size of a twin bed, and a couple was making out in there. That room was pretty boring. But in the next space over, a girl was Hula-Hooping with a half dozen different hoops twirling around her body, each one flashing a rainbow display of light. A massive rope net hung suspended from the ceiling, and a dozen more partygoers lay atop it, their bodies swinging overhead. Behind a bookcase that turned out to be a door, Arden found a chest of drawers, each of which played a different rhythm when it was opened, so they could create a dozen different pieces of music just by opening and closing drawers.

On a balcony outside one of the rooms, they found an enormous cage housing a human-size rabbit that seemed to be made entirely out of moss, a mannequin head hanging from a noose, and three actual human beings, a girl and two guys. The girl said to Lindsey, “I dig your aura.”

“Really?” said Lindsey. “What does that mean?” And the next thing Arden knew, Lindsey was all cozied up inside the cage with them, listening to a description of the colors that were supposedly emanating from her chakras or something.

“I’m going to keep exploring,” Arden told her. “Text if you need me, okay?”

Lindsey shot Arden an exasperated look. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “God, Mom,” she added, which made the three people in the human-size cage giggle.

Arden paused on the threshold, but then Peter grabbed her hand and pulled her away. They saw more rooms. One where everyone was dancing wildly, except for Trotsky and Hanson, who were hanging on the sidelines, snidely remarking on how boring and passé dancing was. Another with bins of soapy water and oversize bubble wands for them to play with. Eventually they wound up in front of a ladder propped against a wall in the back of the Hula-Hooping room. “Up,” Peter said, pointing.

Arden craned her head back. “What’s up there?”

“You’ll never know if you don’t climb, will you?”

She put her hands on the rungs, then turned back and said, “You’re going to be able to see up my dress, though.”

“I won’t look,” Peter promised, holding up a hand solemnly. “Scout’s honor.”

“I don’t know many kids in the Scouts,” Arden said. “We’re more a 4-H sort of town.”