Tonight the Streets Are Ours (7 page)

I stayed home from school almost all last week. My parents stayed home from work. It’s as if he died. For all I know, maybe he
is
dead.

Can’t say
that
to my parents.

I remember when I was eight years old, when I finally really understood where babies come from—or at least, where my brother really came from. I asked him, “But what if Mommy and Daddy
hadn’t
adopted you? What if your birth parents had kept you? Or what if somebody
else
adopted you instead? What if Mommy and Daddy got the call about some other little boy two weeks before they got the call about you, and then by the time you were available, they weren’t looking for you anymore?”

“That was never going to happen,” he answered with the confidence of a nine-year-old who’s got it all figured out. “I always belonged to our family, even before Mom and Dad knew it, even before you were born. We didn’t have to come together exactly the way we did. But one way or another, it was going to happen.”

I always liked this explanation because it meant that if he and I ever lost each other along the way, we would always find each other again. That’s how it seemed to me, as a stupid little kid.

I don’t know what else to say. Why is it that I can find a million words to write about a party, and I can’t think of a single word to explain how I feel right now?

Arden turned away from the computer and hugged her quilt around herself, chilled to the bone. Because this, Peter’s story—this was why you needed to love people while you could, while they were right there in front of you. Because if you waited, it might be too late.

And that, of course, made her think of her mother.

When Arden’s mom left

Arden’s mom did not leave
because
of the dress. But if the dress had never existed, maybe she would still be here now.

Arden had seen the dress in a photo of the movie star Paige Townsen, featured in an issue of
Us Weekly
a few months ago, which Arden had borrowed from her friend Naomi. Naomi was on stage crew and was a celebrity gossip junkie. Deep down, Naomi really did believe that stars—they’re just like us!

Although Arden didn’t think she was anything like a star, she wished that she were when she saw this dress. It was maroon, with cap sleeves and a belt at the waist that could create the illusion of a well-defined waist even though Arden did not exactly have one for real. The dress was classy and stately and seemed like it belonged in a movie from the 1940s, along with a veiled hat and elbow-length gloves. Arden clipped the image from Naomi’s magazine and taped it to her mirror.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have a dress like that?” Arden asked her mother one night as her mom quizzed her on the elements of the periodic table.

Her mother stood to inspect the picture more closely. “I don’t know where you could buy such a thing.”

“Oh, it’s by some designer and costs a trillion dollars,” Arden assured her. “You
can’t
buy such a thing.”

“I could sew it for you,” her mother offered.

“Really?” Arden blinked. Her mother had needlepointed wall decorations and done quilting. She’d sewn dresses for Tabitha when Arden was little. But Arden didn’t know that her mom could make human-size dresses, too.

“I bet I could figure it out. And then you could wear it to the Winter Wonderland dance!” Her mother smiled in the way she did whenever she solved a problem—even though this time, Arden hadn’t even known that a problem existed.

“
If
Chris and I are still together then,” Arden cautioned. It was hard to imagine Chris breaking up with her—they’d been a couple since last April, so another few weeks together seemed like it should be a given. But it didn’t totally feel that way.

Her mother gave her a knowing look. “That boy is wild about you. Trust me, honey, you don’t have anything to worry about. Don’t be silly.” Arden’s parents were themselves high school sweethearts, so to her mother, being silly was imagining that a teenaged romance might even end.

And so Arden’s mother set to work on sewing the dress. She mostly worked on it while Arden was at school, so Arden didn’t have much awareness about how it came together. She just knew that one day there was red fabric and then one day there was a dressmaker’s dummy and one day she was getting measured and then, a few days before the dance, the dress suddenly existed and she was trying it on.

“Well?” her mother said as Arden modeled it in the living room. “What do you think?”

“I think, can I have my screen time yet?” Roman asked from his perch on the arm of the couch.

“Soon. Say something nice about how your sister looks first.”

“You look red,” Roman said.

“Roman,” their mother said in a warning tone.

“Your dress, I mean,” he said. “Your dress looks red.”

“Dennis!” their mother called toward their dad’s closed study door. “Do you want to come out and see your beautiful daughter?”

There was a pause, and then he shouted back, “I’m in the middle of something right now, sweetie. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Arden rolled her eyes. “Out in a minute” was dad-code for “I’ve already forgotten that you asked me to do something.” Only about two weeks remained before the Super Bowl, which meant her father was chest-deep in fantasy football. Ostensibly he was working on some important legal case right now, but it was equally likely that he just wasn’t coming out of his study until he’d read every post about every game on every NFL news site that he frequented.

“What do
you
think of the dress, Arden?” her mother asked.

Honestly? Arden thought it looked slightly off in some way. It just didn’t look on her like it did on the actress taped to her mirror. The cap sleeves seemed too long, the neckline too high and bunchy, the waist too low, the fabric too matte. Or maybe this just wasn’t the dress for her—maybe when she saw it in that magazine and pictured it on her own body, she was picturing herself as somebody else entirely.

“I love it,” her mother went on. “I can’t believe it—this is the first dress I’ve made in years, and somehow it turned out just right. You look stunning, honey. So grown-up.”

“I love it, too,” said Arden.

Two days later, she was at the mall with her two closest theater friends, Kirsten and Naomi. Arden had of course invited Lindsey, who had declined; Lindsey was not a mall person. Kirsten was riffling through clothing racks at an alarming rate when she stopped and declared, “This is it, guys! This is going to be my Winter Wonderland dress!”

Arden and Naomi crowded in to inspect it. It was gauzy, pink, strapless, sheer at the top, barely ass-covering at the bottom. The sort of dress an extra in the nightclub scene of a music video might wear.

“Ughhh, it’s so amazing, I want one, too,” Naomi said immediately.

“Do it!” said Kirsten. “I’ll get the pink one and you can get the silver one and Arden can get the gold one and we’ll match.”

Naomi squealed.

Arden considered saying that she already had a dress. That her mom had made. But the thing was, she didn’t actually want to wear that dress. And now that she’d seen what her friends were going to be wearing, she
really
didn’t want to wear that dress, to be the one frumpy, old-fashioned girl in a skirt past her knees.

So she spent some of her hard-earned tutoring money to buy the gold dress. She figured she would wear the one her mother made to some other event. Like the theater club’s annual masquerade ball. Or a church service. Until then, she hung it in her closet.

The next day was Saturday, and the dance. All the theater kids were getting ready at Kirsten’s house, which was always where they had big gatherings, because Kirsten’s place was huge, and her dad and stepmom didn’t really care what their kids’ friends got up to so long as nobody set their house on fire. Arden packed her stuff to take over there: makeup, curling iron, gold dress, high heels. She grabbed her car keys and headed downstairs.

“I’m leaving,” she said as she stopped by the kitchen.

Her mother and brother both ignored her. They were locked in battle across the kitchen table from each other. “You
love
macaroni,” her mother was saying, staring him down.

Arden’s eyes flicked to the tray of homemade macaroni and cheese sitting at Roman’s place. It smelled amazing. If she hadn’t known that Kirsten was ordering in pizza, she would have just eaten Roman’s dinner herself.

“Not anymore,” Roman said.

“Since when?” asked their mother.

He shrugged his skinny shoulders impatiently. “I don’t
know
. Since sometime.”

“You liked macaroni last week.”

“Well, I don’t anymore. Can I go watch my movie now?”

“No,” their mother said. “You have to eat dinner before you can watch.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Arden jumped in, cuffing him on the shoulder, “Mom says so.” In the years since Roman’s toddler-aged tantrums, he had stopped crying so often, but he had never gotten less finicky.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll eat.” He stood up, crossed to the cabinet, and pulled out a bag of Goldfish crackers. He stuck a handful in his mouth. “Okay?” he mumbled, his teeth gummy with orange gobs.

“Not okay,” Arden said. “That’s disgusting.”

“Not okay,” said their mom. “That’s not
dinner
. Sit down, Roman Huntley, and
eat your macaroni and cheese
.”

“But I don’t want it!” he cried. “You said I don’t have to eat anything I don’t want to eat! Are you going to force-feed me macaroni? What is this,
prison
?”

“I’m not force-feeding you anything!” Their mother threw her hands up. “I worked hard on that macaroni, Roman. I made a special trip to the grocery store just to get the sort of shells you like. I made the bread crumbs from scratch. All of that, just for you, Roman. Arden isn’t even joining us for dinner tonight, and I made poached salmon for us grown-ups. The macaroni exists for you. So please, at least
try
it.”

Arden stole a bite off his plate. “It’s delicious, Mom. You’ve outdone yourself.”

Roman crossed his arms. “You can’t psychology me into eating it.”

“Dennis!” their mother called.

“One second!” their father shouted back.

“Not ‘one second’—
right now
.”

Arden was impressed. Her mother sounded firm. Even her father must have heard something unusual in her tone, because he emerged from his study to ask, “What’s going on?”

“Your son won’t eat his dinner,” Arden’s mother explained, pointing to the offending meal.

“Roman, eat your dinner,” their dad said immediately. “It’s dinnertime.”

“
You’re
not eating dinner,” Roman retorted.

“I’m finishing up a big project. But once I’m done, I’m going to eat some of this tasty food that your mother cooked for us.”

“No, you’re not,” Roman said. “You’re going to eat poached salmon. I’m the only one who has to eat this macaroni. And I don’t
like
macaroni.”

“Oh.” Their father scratched his head. “I didn’t know you didn’t like macaroni.”

“None of us did,” contributed Arden.

“Do you want to just eat the salmon, too?” their father offered.

And even though Roman had a strict anti-seafood policy, he said, “Yeah!”

“Well, then.” Their father grinned and tousled his son’s hair. “Problem solved.”

“Problem
not
solved,” their mother snapped. “Dennis, please. Back me up here.”

“I’m leaving,” Arden tried again.

“If you’re leaving, then where’s your dress?” Roman asked.

All attention in the room shifted to Arden. She felt the blood rush to her cheeks and mentally cursed her little brother. Roman was the only sixth-grade boy she’d ever met who would notice whether his big sister was bringing the correct outfit to a high school dance.

“Where
is
your dress?” Arden’s mom asked softly.

A moment too late, it occurred to Arden to lie. To say that she’d forgotten it, and hold on a sec, she was just going to run back upstairs and grab it.

“I…” Arden began. But her guilt was written all over her face. She started over. “Kirsten and Naomi wanted us all to wear matching dresses, so…”

“You know what?” her mother said, standing up shakily. “Forget it.”

“Forget what?” asked their father.

“All of it. Everything. I can’t do this anymore. I’ve had it. It’s clear that none of you need me anyway, so I’m sure you’ll be just fine.”

“What?” Arden asked.

Her mother didn’t answer. She just grabbed her purse and walked out the front door.

The three remaining Huntleys stared at one another in stunned silence for a moment. At last, Roman said, “Nice going, Arden. You made her mad.”

“
You
made her mad,” Arden retorted. “You couldn’t have just eaten the mac and cheese?”

“I can’t think with your bickering!” their dad shouted.

They immediately shut up. Their father was much scarier than their mother when he yelled.

“She’s just gone for a walk,” their dad told them, pressing his fingers against his temples as if he were holding his head together. “She’s just gone to get some fresh air.”

“Okay,” Arden said. “I am leaving, though.” She checked her phone. Chris had already texted to say that he’d arrived at Kirsten’s. She kissed Roman’s head and kissed her dad’s cheek. “I’m sorry Mom’s mad,” she said.

Her dad nodded. “It’ll be okay, Arden.”

So she drove to Kirsten’s, where she met up with the rest of her friends and all the girls changed into their dresses and a couple of the guys put on suits but mostly the boys just hung out and ate as much pizza as they could before Kirsten told them to “leave some for the rest of us.” Then they caravanned over to the dance, five kids in Arden’s car and five in Chris’s.

Once they were there, Chris and Arden danced in the center of the room, and with the music too loud for words and his arms around her, things between them felt better than they had in weeks, like a Rubik’s Cube that had just been shifted into place. Though they were surrounded by people on all sides, it was one of those rare moments when Arden somehow felt like they were all alone, just the two of them.