Eleanor looked out at the playground. Mouse was playing with a bunch of kids who had a soccer ball. Maisie must have taken the baby somewhere with her friends …
It used to be Eleanor who was stuck with the baby all the time.
She wouldn’t even mind watching him now, it would give her something to do – but Maisie didn’t want Eleanor’s help.
‘What was it like?’ Ben asked.
‘What was what like?’
‘Living with those people.’
The sun was a few inches above the horizon, and Eleanor looked hard at it.
‘Okay,’ she said. Terrible.
Lonely. Better than here.
‘Were there other kids?’
‘Yeah. Really little kids. Three of them.’
‘Did you have your own room?’
‘Sort of.’ Technically, she hadn’t had to share the Hickmans’
living room with anyone else.
‘Were they nice?’ he asked.
‘Yeah … yeah. They were nice. Not as nice as you.’
The Hickmans had started out nice. But then they got tired.
Eleanor was only supposed to stay with them for a few days, maybe a week. Just until Richie cooled down and let her come home.
‘It’ll be like a slumber party,’
Mrs Hickman said to Eleanor the first night she made up the couch.
Mrs Hickman – Tammy – knew Eleanor’s mom from high school.
There was a photo over the TV of the Hickmans’ wedding. Eleanor’s mom was the maid of honor – in a dark green dress, with a white flower in her hair.
At first, her mom would call Eleanor at the Hickmans’ almost every day after school. After a few months, the calls stopped. It turned out that Richie hadn’t paid the phone bill, and it got disconnected. But Eleanor didn’t know that for a while.
‘We should call the state,’ Mr Hickman kept telling his wife.
They thought Eleanor couldn’t hear them, but their bedroom was right over the living room. ‘This can’t go on, Tammy.’
‘Andy, it’s not her fault.’
‘I’m not saying it’s her fault, I’m just saying we didn’t sign on for this.’
‘She’s no trouble.’
‘She’s not ours.’
Eleanor tried to be even less trouble. She practiced being in a room without leaving any clues that she’d been there. She never turned on the TV or asked to use the phone. She never asked for seconds at dinner. She never asked Tammy and Mr Hickman for anything – and they’d never had a teenager, so it didn’t occur to them that there might be anything she might need. She was glad that they didn’t know her birthday.
‘We thought you were gone,’
Ben said, pushing a car into the dirt. He looked like somebody who didn’t want to cry.
‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Eleanor said, kicking her swing into action.
She looked around again for Maisie and found her sitting over where the older boys were playing basketball. Eleanor recognized most of the boys from the bus.
That stupid Asian kid was there, jumping higher than she would have guessed he could. He was wearing long black shorts and a T-shirt that said ‘Madness.’
‘I’m out of here,’ Eleanor told Ben, stepping off the swing and pushing down the top of his head.
‘But not gone or anything. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.’
She walked back into the house and rushed through the kitchen before her mom could say anything. Richie was in the living room. Eleanor walked between him and the TV, eyes straight ahead. She wished she had a jacket.
CHAPTER 9
Park
He was going to tell her that she did a good job on her poem.
That
would
be
a
giant
understatement anyway. She was the only person in class who’d read her poem like it wasn’t an assignment. She recited it like it was a living thing. Like something she was letting out. You couldn’t look away from her as long as she was talking. (Even more than Park’s usual not being able to look away from her.) When she was done, a lot of people clapped and Mr Stessman hugged her. Which was totally against the Code of Conduct.
‘Hey. Nice job. In English.’
That’s what Park was going to say.
Or maybe, ‘I’m in your English class. That poem you read was cool.’
Or, ‘You’re in Mr Stessman’s class, right? Yeah, I thought so.’
Park picked up his comics after taekwando Wednesday night, but he waited until Thursday morning to read them.
Eleanor That stupid Asian kid totally knew that she was reading his comics.
He even looked up at Eleanor sometimes before he turned the page, like he was that polite.
He definitely wasn’t one of them, the bus demons. He didn’t talk to anyone on the bus.
(Especially not her.) But he was in with them somehow because, when Eleanor was sitting next to him, they all left her alone. Even Tina. It made Eleanor wish she could sit next to him all day long.
This morning, when she got on the bus, it kind of felt like he was waiting for her. He was holding a comic called Watchmen, and it looked so ugly that Eleanor decided
not
to
bother
eavesdropping. Or eavesreading.