Tonight the Streets Are Ours

Tonight the Streets Are Ours by Leila Sales




Dedicated to Kendra Levin, for everything we share



“Sometimes one can realize that a person is unworthy of love and love them anyway; one can form an unexplainable attachment that cannot be broken even when the object of one’s affection breaks the confidences with which you entrusted them. Sometimes the one you love is blind to your feelings and for all your conversation you cannot find the words to explain it.”

—from The Thief of Time, by John Boyne



“Yes, there’s love if you want it, don’t sound like no sonnet, my lord.”

—from “Sonnet,” by the Verve





Part One





Welcome

Like all stories, the one you are about to read is a love story.

If it wasn’t, what would be the point?





Everything falls apart

“You can find your own way home,” Arden says to Lindsey, her voice shaking with rage.

“Home … to Maryland?” Lindsey asks.

The three strangers sitting on mildewing couches beside Lindsey look on impassively. The mannequin’s head, which hangs from a noose in the center of the room, sways gently back and forth, like it’s making eye contact with Arden, then Lindsey, then back again.

Arden hesitates. “I mean, if you need my help…” she begins, but it’s too late. Lindsey shakes her head. No. “Okay, then,” Arden says. “You’re on your own. Just how you wanted it.”

“What’s her problem?” the girl with a ring pierced through the center of her nose asks Lindsey, sneering at Arden.

Arden has almost never heard anybody speak about her in that tone of voice. Her stomach twists, and she swallows hard, looking to the boy by her side for support. He nods, and that gives her the courage she needs.

“I’m over this,” Arden says to Lindsey. “Good luck finding your way out of here.”

She turns and walks away, her legs trembling with every step. She focuses directly in front of her, navigating through the press of bodies and random sculptures of fairies and trees.

“Arden, wait!” she hears Lindsey call behind her, and she turns. But that must have just been her imagination crying out, because Lindsey is still sitting on the couch, talking to the pierced-nose girl, as if everything is normal. As if she doesn’t even care that Arden is leaving her.

So Arden squares her shoulders. And she keeps walking away.





Let’s go back in time

Two months before that night, back when Arden and Lindsey were still inseparable, when the only septum piercing Arden had ever seen was on punk rockers on TV and the only mannequins she’d encountered had been modeling clothes in store windows, shortly before the end of the school day on a Friday in February, Arden was summoned to the principal’s office.

A runner showed up at her Spanish class and briefly consulted with Senor Stephanolpoulos, and Arden paid no attention because when the principal needed someone, it never had anything to do with her. Instead she took this break in the class to try to make sense of her notes, which were supposed to illuminate the future tense, but which in practice just said things like Irregular verbs … something and Add “i” or “e” to end of words FIRST PERSON ONLY (??).

Spanish was not Arden’s strong suit.

“Arden.” Senor Stephanolpoulos beckoned her. “You’re needed in Principal Vanderpool’s office.”

There were a few “Ooohs” from her classmates, but halfhearted ones; none of them seriously believed that Arden Huntley, of all people, would be in trouble serious enough that it would warrant a visit to the principal.