Tonight the Streets Are Ours (6 page)

Arden thought about her mother’s words on the phone earlier that day.
I’m sure you want an explanation for why I left.
She wondered if this explanation had been offered to her father, too. She wondered if he’d listened to it. She couldn’t imagine that her mother had left because her father wasn’t ambitious or hardworking enough. She thought that’s what he was doing to win her mom back not even because he thought it would work, but just because it was the only thing he knew how to do.

Roman had fallen asleep on the couch, Mouser catnapping on his feet, the overhead lights still on, the paused video game on the TV awaiting his next command. Arden watched him for a moment, the rise and fall of his little chest. In moments like this (when he was unconscious, basically), Arden’s love for her brother overwhelmed her, almost like a physical pain. His feet were resting against the pillow with
The Little Prince
quotation on it, and, without thinking about it, Arden pulled it out from under him and threw it in the trash.

That pillow was bullshit. Her mother did not know the first thing about being responsible for her rose.

Arden carried Roman up to his room and laid him down on his bed, something that he never
ever
would have let her do if he were awake, but as it was, he just drooled a little on her shoulder.

Arden felt a pang of guilt for going to Matt Washington’s house; she should have known Roman never would have gotten his act together to put
himself
to bed. There was no way he had brushed his teeth tonight before passing out. She wasn’t going to wake him up to make him do it now, and if her family continued on like this, Roman was probably going to contract gum disease before he made it out of middle school.

Arden left Roman’s door open because, even though he was eleven, he still freaked out if he woke up and the door was closed and the room was too dark. Then she went to her own room and curled up on her bed. She’d left a pile of rejected Matt Washington party outfits on top of her comforter, and now she kicked them to the floor. She’d eventually settled on her tightest, most revealing top and jeans, but all that had really accomplished was making her unnecessarily cold when she stood out on the patio with Ellzey.

She narrowed her eyes across the room at her Arden Doll, who lived in a glass case on the wall. Since her mother had seen the way Arden treated Tabitha, she’d built this case for the Arden Doll to protect her. “You’re going to want to show your doll to your children and your grandchildren,” Arden’s mother had said. “You’re not going to want her to be filthy and falling apart.”

Arden’s mother was correct, but on this particular night, Arden didn’t feel like being watched over by some pristine doll.

Arden is recklessly loyal.

It was a description she’d thought about a million times since it had been handed down by the Just Like Me Dolls Company. In school earlier this year, she had learned about a pivotal historical event called “the blank check.” This was in 1914, and the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had just been assassinated in Serbia. Obviously the Austro-Hungarian government was furious at the Serbs because, hello, they had murdered the emperor-to-be.

Then Germany showed up on the scene. The German emperor wrote a letter promising Austria-Hungary his nation’s faithful support in whatever Austria-Hungary decided to do to punish Serbia. That promise of blind support, no matter what—that’s what historians called “the blank check.”

When Arden read this in her history textbook, she felt breathless. She thought it was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard, this hundred-year-old political letter from the German chancellor to the Austro-Hungarian ambassador. Because in that moment, she realized that was exactly what she had done for Lindsey, for Chris, for Roman—she had written them each a blank check, a silent promise to stand by them through good times and bad, whether she agreed with their actions or not, to give them whatever help they needed, even though none of them could know yet what help that might be.

The first blank check, by the way? The original one, the letter that Germany wrote to Austria-Hungary? They honored that to a T. This decision ultimately led to World War I, which completely decimated the German economy and populace. Maybe not the smartest move the German government ever made. Maybe if they’d known what it would someday come to, they wouldn’t have signed the blank check in the first place. But that’s the thing: when you swear to take somebody’s side no matter what, sometimes you have to go to war for them.

Now, Arden pulled her quilt around her and got up and walked to her desk, where she wouldn’t be under such direct scrutiny from her Arden Doll. She pulled up an Internet window and, still thinking about her reckless loyalty, she typed in her question for the universe. It was a really straightforward question, and Arden thought she was a pretty smart girl, so it seemed absurd that she couldn’t just figure out the answer.

Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?

She didn’t expect the Internet to have a particularly wise answer to her question. At best there might be a humorous video clip on the subject. Like anyone else, Arden sometimes went to the Internet for answers—like how to get a chocolate stain out of white pants, or how many countries there are in Latin America—but usually she went to the Internet to reassure herself that there was a whole world of people out there, living their lives just as she was living hers. Sometimes they had experiences like her own, and sometimes they had experiences that seemed completely bizarre, but either way, their mere existence made Arden feel less alone. No matter what time of day or night you go online, there are always countless other people there, too, announcing the recipes they’re cooking and the sights they’re seeing and the songs they’re recording. She’d discussed this with Lindsey before, and it made Lindsey frantic that all these things were going on and she couldn’t keep up with them all. But Arden found it comforting.

The first result that came up when she typed in that question was from a website called Tonight the Streets Are Ours. It used that exact phrase:
why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?
And that was weird, kind of insane, actually, that some random website had expressed this idea in the very same way as Arden, like someone else had seen inside her brain. So she clicked on the link.

The page was written like somebody’s journal. It was dated October, five months ago. She could tell this post was letting her in midstory, but she didn’t know when the story began, so she just started reading.

October 10

I called Bianca three times before she finally texted to ask what I wanted. “I want my stuff back,” I replied. Come on, Bianca. Cut me a break.

She insisted on meeting at the bookstore because she didn’t want me to come over to her house, and she refused to come over to mine. The bookstore, where it all began. What cruel bookends. She got there five minutes after I finished my shift.

“I can’t believe you’re already back at work,” she said.

“Life goes on,” I told her. “It has to.”

“
Yours
does, maybe.”

“What did you think was going to happen if we met at your house?” I asked. “Did you think I was going to throw you down on your bed and start ravishing you?”

“No,” she said. “But I thought you would have wanted to.”

“I still want to,” I said. “And we’re not anywhere close to a bed. We’re at a bookstore.”

“Ha,” she said, handing me a tote bag of my stuff. There wasn’t a lot in there. I never left much at Bianca’s house, for obvious reasons. I knew that already, but I wanted it back anyway. Because I wanted a reason to see her. So sue me. The bag contained just a T-shirt, two books, and an opened bag of Cheetos.

“Really?” I said, looking up. “Some half-eaten snack food, Bianca? You couldn’t have just thrown that away?”

She shrugged. “You said you wanted your stuff.”

Why can’t you love me as much as I love you?
I wanted to ask in that moment. I thought about the events of these past few weeks, and I just felt so defeated and indignant. The world has cracked open over my head, like a smelly egg.
Why doesn’t anybody love me as much as I love them?

“You’ll find another girl,” Bianca said as we stood across from each other. At a bookstore. Like strangers. “You’re Peter. Girls love you.”

As if all of my feelings for her come down to the fact that she’s a girl and I’m a guy. Substitute in any other guy and any other girl, they’ll fit those empty spaces just as well.

“I don’t want another girl,” I said. “I want you.”

I didn’t get her, though. I got my Cheetos. Then I threw them away.

Who were these people, Peter and Bianca? Arden wondered. They could be any age, living anywhere in the English-speaking, book-shopping world. Peter could be a fifty-year-old physical therapist in Akron, Ohio, with a fondness for Cheetos. But she felt like he probably wasn’t.

She read on to the next post.

October 12

Why do I lose everyone who matters? First my brother. Now Bianca. I don’t really know which of those losses hurts worse: my brother, because he has always been a part of my life, or Bianca, because I
chose
her into my life, and I thought she chose me, too—but I thought wrong. I will walk down every street and avenue knowing that she might be walking right in front of me, but she will never again be mine.

I hate that this is how life has to be. The progressive loss of everyone who matters to you. That’s all there is to it, you know: if you live long enough, your reward is that you get to watch everyone you love die or leave you behind.

Oh, but I am being ridiculous. I know. I know. Death and a broken heart are not the same.

Now Arden didn’t just want to know what happened with Bianca, why they broke up. She wanted to know what had happened to Peter’s brother, too. She wanted to know everything. She never had been able to manage a calm, reserved interest in other people.

Maybe she needed to start at the beginning. That would make this whole story become clear, if it unfolded in chronological order.

Peter’s very first post was from nearly a full year ago, but it said nothing about Bianca or a brother, or love or loss at all.

March 21

Hi, my name is Peter, and this is Tonight the Streets Are Ours. (What do you think? I needed a URL, and it turned out basically everything else was taken. Plus I’m really into that song, and I figured, hey, if it works for Richard Hawley, it’ll work for me, too. Tonight the streets
are
mine, you know.)

If you’re here, then congratulations! You have found my … um … website, I guess. (“Journal” doesn’t sound right because those are supposed to be private and this is only as private as the Internet can be, which is to say: not private at all. And I hate the word “blog.” For some reason it sounds like somebody’s aunt attempting to sound “hip” and “with-it” by using the modern Internet slang so favored among “kids these days.” So, “website” it is.)

I want to be a writer when I grow up. Actually, I want to be a writer
right now
, and also when I grow up. Today is my seventeenth birthday, so I have made a new year’s resolution. (Yeah, it’s not the new year for everybody, but it’s a new year for ME, so, good enough.) I’m going to post here every day, and that will be good writing practice, and also when it’s time for me to write my memoirs, I will already have these collected notes on my teen years. You’re welcome, Future Peter.

My dad says that I don’t want to pursue a career as a writer because writers are—what did he say? Something like “congenitally miserable alcoholics.” If he’s right, then I guess I’ll fit right in! Haha, kidding.

Also, my dad is a congenitally miserable alcoholic, too, and he doesn’t even produce any writing or whatever to show for it. You can be a congenitally miserable alcoholic even if all you do is manage hedge funds, apparently. Seems like a waste. If you’re going to have the tortured soul of an artist, then you might as well create some art while you’re at it.

Arden smiled a little at Peter’s description of his father. It was nice to know that her mother wasn’t the only screwed-up parent around. And now that she knew Peter was just a year older than she was, she felt even more intrigued by him and his miserable dad and the girl who broke his heart and the mysteriously disappeared brother.

She wanted to read whatever came next, but more than that, she wanted to know where Peter’s brother went. So she skipped forward a few months. At last she found an explanation, in a post dated just a couple weeks before Bianca and Peter’s breakup.

September 24

I know I haven’t written here for a while, and I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for a lot of things, in fact.

I don’t really know where to start. That’s the problem with updating a website every day: once you miss a week, you’ll be behind forever.

So, basically, my brother ran away. He’s been gone for a week now, and he’s left no trace. He’d only been at college for a month, and from all we heard from him, he seemed to be fitting in well, making friends, going to classes, learning stuff, I don’t know, whatever it is people do at college.

And then he took off.

None of his new college friends know where he went. None of his old high school friends have heard from him. The cops say they can’t be much help because he’s eighteen, he’s a legal adult, he can go where he wants. There’s no sign of him; it’s as if he never existed in the first place.

My dad is hiring a private investigator. He’s livid. He says, “I will spend every penny, if that’s what it takes to find that boy.” My mom keeps crying. It’s like they know it’s their fault. If they weren’t like this, maybe he wouldn’t have left.

Everyone’s asked me if he told me anything, if I have any ideas. Because we’re just a year apart, we’re supposed to be so close. We’re supposed to share things. From the time we were little kids, we shared toys, we shared clothes, we shared friends. But I’m as clueless as everyone else right now—how do you think that makes me feel?