by Leila Sales
Now she set out the brownies on the dresser and changed into her dress. She studied herself in the mirror. The dress was made of slightly iridescent fabric that clung to her body, with thin shoulder straps and a cut-out diamond shape over her shoulder blades. She was pretty sure this was sexy, though it was hard to say. Kirsten had reassured her that guys were into it when girls revealed unexpected sections of skin, so Arden supposed she just had to trust her.
Her phone buzzed. Chris.
I GOT THE PART!
Arden’s heart leaped. IN THE COAL MINING MOVIE?? she texted back.
YES!!!!
She responded with a series of exclamation points of her own. For all his auditions, this was the first movie Chris had ever been cast in. His first step out of the Allegany High theater and into the real world of professional acting.
What could be better than celebrating an anniversary with your boyfriend? Celebrating your anniversary with your boyfriend who was going to be a famous actor, that’s what.
U R AMAZING! she wrote. SO PROUD OF U. NOW WE HAVE 2 THINGS TO CELEBRATE TONITE! CAN’T WAIT 4 U TO GET HERE.
A minute later her phone rang. She answered it immediately. “This is awesome!” she squealed into it, hopping up and down. “Chris, I can’t wait to see you on the big screen!”
“Me, too!” he enthused. “But the lame part is that I’m not going to be able to come tonight.”
“What?” Arden stopped hopping. She sat down on the bed. “You’re not going to be able to come … where?”
“To wherever our anniversary surprise is,” he explained.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re doing an all-cast meet and greet this evening, and I have to be there by six.”
“But that’s such short notice.”
“It’s not my choice. They’re on a tight schedule and they’re going to start shooting next week. That’s just how indie films work.” He said this last sentence in a bit of a pompous tone, like he was an expert on how indie films work, like he hadn’t just been cast in his first film all of five minutes ago.
“Why don’t you just tell them that you can’t go?” Arden asked, clutching the phone. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror next to the closet. She thought she might look pale, but with all that makeup, she couldn’t even tell.
“Babe, I’m the youngest cast member. I’m the only one still in high school. I don’t want to seem like I have all these special needs and restrictions.”
“But it’s our anniversary,” Arden whispered, feeling so stupid, so girly, for caring.
“I know!” He groaned. “Trust me, I never, ever would have planned it like this. But it’s not something I get any say over. Do you want to just tell me what the surprise was going to be, or do you want to try to do it next weekend instead? Or maybe I could come after I’ve done all the movie stuff tonight? I could probably get to you around midnight—would that be too late?”
Arden looked around the hotel room. She looked at the brownies, neatly arranged in the best tin she could find in the pantry. She looked down at her dress, at her freshly shaved legs, at her pedicured toenails. “I want you to come now,” she said. “Please.”
“Babe.” Chris’s voice grew slightly exasperated. “I told you. I can’t. I was looking forward to this, too, I promise. But we can celebrate a little belatedly, and it will be just as special. This is my dream come true, remember?”
“Your dream is having a bit part in a low-budget movie about coal mining?” Arden asked. She knew this was a mean thing to say. But she felt mean.
“Getting a part in a movie, period,” Chris retorted, sounding stung. “You know that. I’ve worked toward this for my entire life. Can you please just be a little supportive?”
“Can I be a little supportive?” Arden stood up, her knees locked, her left hand curled in a tight fist. “Can I be a little supportive? Are you kidding me? All I do, Chris, is be supportive. That’s what I do. Do you feel like I don’t honor my blank check to you enough? Do you really want to say that to my face?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “What blank check?”
“I just wanted us to do this one thing together!”
“Babe, we do like every thing together. And we will celebrate our anniversary together, too—just not right now. I’m sorry, I swear. Can you please not be so dramatic?”
She was silent. Because that was the first thing she’d promised him: no drama.
“In a few months, we’re going to look back on this together and laugh,” Chris promised. “We’ll go to the movie premiere and this whole thing will be just a distant memory.”
Arden swallowed hard. “Just go,” she said. “I hope you have the best night of your life.”
“Babe—”
“If you’re not going to come here right now, then I want to get off the phone with you,” she said. “Please.”
There was silence. “Okay,” he said at last. “Bye. I love you.”
“Bye,” she said.
They hung up, and she threw her phone onto the bed, hard. She threw herself down after it.
If she’d told Chris all of it, all the hard work that had to go into creating a seemingly magical night, would he have come after all? Or would it just have made her seem pathetic, to work so hard and to care so much?
Tonight was supposed to be it, the ultimate proof of their love for each other, their ability to be happy together. Because if they couldn’t even get it together on their anniversary, when they had brownies and sexy dresses and hotel rooms and months of preparation on their side, then what hope did they have? How good could their relationship be, really, if this was as good as it got?
She stretched out her arm and dragged her phone back across the bedspread toward her. She opened up Tonight the Streets Are Ours. She wanted to forget herself. She wanted to disappear into somebody else’s life.
But what she read there made her realize that today, Peter’s life wasn’t any better than hers. His latest entry had been posted less than an hour ago, and this is what it said:
April 24
Bianca broke up with me on Wednesday.
Again.
For good, this time.
She said there’s no grand geste that can win her back again. She said I shouldn’t even try.
It’s hard to believe that Tuesday I was so happy when today I am so miserable. For a brief moment, it felt like maybe I actually could have everything I wanted, and today that all seems like a ridiculous illusion.
How dare she take this happiness away from me? I was going to spend this weekend celebrating. Now I’m spending it crying. And in the future, when I think back on this time when one of my dreams came true, I will always be forced to remember that it’s also the time when my other dream went up in flames.
It reminds me of the time when I was in sixth grade and we went to Paris and my mom’s purse got stolen. She was so upset. And she tried to explain that it wasn’t about the purse itself. “I can buy a new bag to carry my belongings,” she said. “I can cancel my credit cards and get new ones. I can replace my cell phone and my lipstick. That’s frustrating, and it takes time and money, but I have time and money. What makes me sad is that this was supposed to be our trip to Paris, and now I’ll never again be able to look at photos of us outside of Notre Dame without remembering that on that very same day, a thief stole my purse.”
This is how I feel about Bianca. A thief stole my happiness.
And now I have to go work at the bookstore for the next eight hours and pretend like my heart isn’t in pieces.
Arden let the phone again fall from her hands. She rolled onto her back and stared at the cream-colored ceiling.
Peter. He seemed to have so much going for him. He was rich. He was probably hot—all signs pointed that way. He went to cool parties, constantly. He was a really talented writer. Maybe he’d even get a book deal. He had fans across the Internet, people he didn’t even know.
And yet.
The people who were supposed to be closest to him, who were supposed to be on his side … where were they? His brother was out of the picture. His parents, from everything he said about them, were cold, bossy, and judgmental. His girlfriend broke up with him—twice. His art-school friends always seemed to be right there when it was time to party, but when he needed support, their names never came up.
What Peter needed was someone like Arden.
No.
He didn’t need someone like Arden. He needed Arden.
She sat up. Peter needed her—and why shouldn’t he have her?
She grabbed her phone and called Lindsey.
“How goes the big anniversary?” Lindsey asked when she picked up.
“Miserable. Want to go with me to New York?”
“New York City?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“You’re going to New York City, now. On your anniversary.” Lindsey paused, calculating. “I take it Chris isn’t with you?”
“Nope.”
“Are you okay?”
Arden shrugged, knowing that Lindsey couldn’t see her. “I need to get out of here.”
“How the hell are you getting there?”
“I’m driving the Heart of Gold, obviously. How else?” She had not even considered the question until Lindsey asked, but now it seemed like the only logical answer.
“Okay,” Lindsey said. “Yeah. I’m in. Can you come pick me up?”
“Wait, seriously?” If Lindsey hadn’t said yes, Arden might have concluded this whole plan was absurd, and not even a plan anyway, and New York was a six-hour drive away, and she’d never driven that far, and certainly not in the Heart of Gold, and she had no idea what she would even say to Peter, and maybe she should stay right here, like the good girl she was, have a sleepover at Lindsey’s, like she’d told her dad all along.
But Lindsey said, “Seriously. My track meet’s already over, so I’m just hanging out. You know I’ll take any excuse to get out of here.”
And Arden said, “Okay. Meet me down the block from your house in fifteen minutes.”
She grabbed her overnight bag and her brownies, she left the card key on the nightstand, and she walked out of the hotel room, letting the door slam shut behind her. And as she did so she felt her heart expanding in her chest—because finally, finally, something was happening.
Part Two
On the road
“Hi, is Peter in today?” Lindsey said into her phone. She paused. Arden tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Oh,” she said, “you don’t have a Peter there? That’s cool. Don’t worry about it.” She hung up.
Arden cursed under her breath.
About thirty miles out of town, once Arden had finally started to wrap her mind around what she was doing, she’d realized that she didn’t actually know what bookstore Peter worked at, just that it was somewhere in New York City accessible by subway. “No problem,” Lindsey had reassured her. “How many bookstores could there be?”
A lot, apparently. Arden hadn’t known. Cumberland had only one bookstore, which doubled as a cat adoption center and a tobacconist.
While Arden drove, she instructed Lindsey to pull up a list of NYC bookshops on her phone, and now Lindsey was systematically calling them all. But so far, none of them employed Peter.
“What if we never find him?” Arden asked, her eyes trained on the road. “What if the store where he works is unlisted or something?”
“Then we’ll hang out in New York City for the evening,” Lindsey said. “Get dinner in Little Italy. Take in a Broadway play. Go home with a good story.”
“I’m not driving six hours for a good story.”
The Heart of Gold shuddered a little, as it always did when Arden tried to edge the speed above fifty-eight miles an hour, as if it wanted to remind her that in this car, the trip was likely to take more than six hours. Arden glanced at the clock on her dashboard. It was now just past three. If all went well, they should reach Peter around eight forty-five. Nine at the latest.
Assuming, of course, they could figure out where he was.
Since stopping to pick up Lindsey on the way out of town, Arden had filled Lindsey in on the failed anniversary and the inconvenient start to her boyfriend’s film career.
“Are you kidding me?” Lindsey had demanded when Arden told her what Chris had done. “What a jerk! It’s like he doesn’t even care.”
It was one thing for Arden to think mean thoughts about her boyfriend, but another thing entirely for Lindsey to say them aloud. Lindsey didn’t get where Chris was coming from, and she didn’t love him like Arden did.
Or like Arden hoped she did.
“I’m sure he cares,” Arden defended him, even though she wasn’t actually sure that she was sure. “He just wants so badly to be a professional actor. And this is his chance. It’s complicated. I should be happy for him.”
“You don’t have to be happy for him if you don’t feel like it,” said Lindsey.
Arden shrugged.
“So is this it? Are you guys breaking up over this?”
“What?” Arden started, taking her eyes off the road for a moment to stare at Lindsey. “Of course not. It’s just a fight, Lindsey. People do way worse things than this all the time, and they stay together. I’m not going to break up with my boyfriend of one year just because we had a fight.”
Anyway, what she felt toward Chris … it wasn’t anger, not exactly. She was sad. And disappointed. In him, and in herself for somehow still managing to come in second place in his priorities, even when she was trying her hardest to be the girlfriend she desperately wanted to be.
She didn’t want to talk about Chris anymore, especially not with Lindsey, who was biased against him anyway. Arden changed the topic to explain Tonight the Streets Are Ours as best she could. Lindsey listened, enraptured, as Arden told her about Peter’s brother and his unexplained disappearance. About their parents, money-obsessed and status-conscious, who somehow refused to acknowledge the gifted artist living right under their own roof. About Bianca, beautiful and ambitious and perfect—who couldn’t handle it when Peter experienced real tragedy or real success of his own. And about Peter himself, talented and wise and heartbroken, over and over again. And now Lindsey was calling bookstores, trying to track him down.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Peter before?” Lindsey asked in a break between phone calls.
“I told you I was reading some guy’s blog.”
“But you didn’t tell me how interesting it was.”
Arden scrunched her eyebrows as she tried, and failed, to switch lanes. She didn’t have much experience with highway driving, and the other cars out here were much less accommodating than cars on the streets of Cumberland. Finally, she swerved her way back over to the slow lane and said to Lindsey, “I didn’t want you to think I was weird. You know, spending this much time following people we don’t even know.”
“Arden,” Lindsey said, “at this point, it is way too late in the game for me to think you’re weird. I know you’re weird.” Arden laughed, and Lindsey reflected for a moment. “Plus, it’s not really any different from following characters on a TV show, is it?”
Arden nodded thoughtfully.
“Typical Arden,” Lindsey said. “You can’t stand to see anyone suffer, even for a second, even when you don’t know the guy. It’s like that time you saved that bird’s life.”
“What bird?” Arden asked.
“You remember! We were kids. You found a baby bird in a pool of oil in the woods between our houses. It couldn’t get out. It must have fallen out of the nest or something. My dad wanted to wring its neck, to put it out of its pain. But you kept it in your room and nursed it back to health and set it free.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It was definitely you. It’s not like I was playing in our woods with somebody else who rescued a bird.”
“I mean, no, that never happen
ed at all. That was the plot of one of the Arden Doll books.”
Arden snuck a sideward glance to watch this realization slowly dawn on Lindsey. “Oh, yeah!” Lindsey said. “God, that’s so wild.”
Arden didn’t know what she’d do if she encountered a drowning bird. Probably she would try to rescue it. But maybe she would just walk away in horror.
“Well, whatever. You’re rescuing a brokenhearted boy today, which is basically the same as a broken bird.”
“Only if we find him,” Arden reminded her.
Lindsey got back on the phone. “Can I speak with Peter, please? He’s supposed to be working there this afternoon … Oh, sorry, I must have the wrong number. My bad.” After hanging up, she said to Arden, “Are you sure he never said the name of his bookstore?”
“Positive.” Arden had read every entry—and there were hundreds of them. Some she’d read more than once. She knew everything he’d ever put in there. “Anyway, I have no clue what I’m going to say to him if we do find him,” she went on. “‘Hey, I just drove a million miles to meet you’ sounds kind of stalkery.”
“Let’s role-play,” Lindsey suggested. “I’ll be Peter, and you can be you.”
“Sounds like a theater game,” Arden cautioned, making a face.
“Not really, because you’re pretending to be yourself.”
“Okay, fine.” Arden cleared her throat. “Hi, are you Peter?”
Lindsey put on a deep, fake-masculine voice. “Who’s asking?”
“Uh, my name is Arden. And I just wanted to … meet you, I guess.”
“Are you another one of those girls who heard Bianca and I broke up? And now you’re trying to make your move as soon as Bianca’s out of the picture? That’s very exploitative, Arden—is that what you said your name was? I’m still in mourning. I’m not looking to just move on to the next available girl.”
“You are a terrible role-player,” Arden said. “Do you know that?”
“I just want you to be prepared for the worst,” Lindsey said in her normal-pitched voice. “Actually, I just thought of an even worse scenario.”