Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Arden imagined a Lindsey without the track team. She imagined how Mr. and Mrs. Matson would have reacted. She imagined Lindsey trying to apply to college or to jobs, trying to do anything with her life, with her terrible grades and a record of drug possession. Maybe this was Lindsey’s real problem: a failure of the imagination.

Arden recalled her mother’s old theory that some people are flowers and some people are gardeners. Lindsey was the worst kind of flower: one who didn’t even realize she needed a gardener to help her survive.

“You don’t always have to jump to my rescue, Arden. I can handle things on my own.” Lindsey gestured around the room. “I was handling this just great, until you showed up and started screaming at me.”

“Oh, really?” Arden said.

“Yes, really!”

“So you don’t even need me? When you were the first kid at our school to come out, you would have handled that without me? When your dad almost died, you didn’t need me then, either? Do you honestly think you don’t need my friends, my invitations to parties, rides in my car—you’d do just fine without any of that?”

Lindsey lifted her chin. “I didn’t even need your stupid Disney vacation.”

That struck Arden like a physical punch.

“You know what I think?” Lindsey went on, her eyes bright. “I think you need me to be the screwup. Because then you get to swoop in and save the day. ‘La, la, la, I’m Arden! I’m important! Lindsey’s going to absolutely fall to pieces without me!’”

“And you think I like that?” Arden asked, outraged.

“Oh, please. I know you do.”

“You think I come to your rescue, when you’re crying, or you’re about to fail a class, or you’re grounded, because it’s fun. For me.”

“I didn’t say fun—”

“Lindsey, if that is how you feel, then I am done rescuing you.”

Lindsey was silent, wary. She knotted her fingers in her lap and squinted up at Arden.

“I’m not going to force my unwanted support on you any longer,” Arden said. “You can hang out here with your shiny new friends, and using all your awesome powers of self-reliance, you can find your own way home.”

“Home … to Maryland?” Lindsey asked.

Arden hesitated. This did seem unrealistic. How, exactly, was Lindsey going to travel three hundred miles without her? On what bus? With what money?

“I mean, if you need my help…” Arden backtracked.

Lindsey scowled and shook her head

“Okay, then.” Arden gave her a mirthless smile. “You’re on your own. Just how you wanted it.”

“What’s her problem?” threw in Jamie, as Arden turned away.

Arden flinched. Of course a stranger thought this was all her fault. She didn’t know anything about Arden or Lindsey or their years of friendship or how much had gone into this one moment. Arden didn’t care what this girl thought of her. But she looked at Peter. Because if he thought she was in the wrong, she didn’t think she’d have it in her to leave Lindsey now. Not if it meant losing his trust.

But Peter locked eyes with her, and he nodded. And that gave Arden the courage to say to Lindsey, “I’m over this. Good luck finding your way out of here.”

She and Peter walked away.

“Arden, wait!” she thought she heard Lindsey call after her.

But Arden didn’t wait. And Lindsey didn’t try to stop her.

She kept walking right back out the way they’d come in, two and a half hours earlier. Past the atonal ten-piece band, down the stairs lit only by a thousand glow-in-the-dark stickers, through the enchanted forest basement, all the way through Jigsaw Manor until she had made it outside and into the fresh spring air, where she was, at last, free.





And that brings us up to the present day

Sucking air into her lungs, Arden keeps walking from Jigsaw Manor, step after step after step, like her legs have forgotten how to stand still.

“Where are you going?” Peter asks. He’s almost jogging to keep up with her.

“Away.”

She reaches the Heart of Gold and unlocks it, slamming herself into the driver’s seat. Peter climbs into the passenger seat—Lindsey’s seat—without a word.

She turns the key in the ignition. And … nothing happens.