They threw the pads in the trash and pushed them under some wet paper towels so that nobody would find them.
If DeNice and Beebi hadn’t been standing there, Eleanor might have kept some of the pads, the ones that didn’t have any writing on them because, God, what a waste.
She was late to lunch, then late to English. And if she didn’t know already that she liked that stupid effing Asian kid, she knew it now.
Because even after everything that had happened in the last forty-five
minutes
–
and
everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours – all Eleanor could think about was seeing Park.
Park
When they got back on the bus, she took his Walkman without arguing. And without making him put it on for her. At the stop before hers, she handed it back.
‘You can borrow it,’ he said quietly. ‘Listen to the rest of the tape.’
‘I don’t want to break it,’ she said.
‘You’re not going to break it.’
‘I don’t want to use up the batteries.’
‘I don’t care about the batteries.’
She looked up at him then, in the eye, maybe for the first time ever. Her hair looked even crazier than it had this morning – more frizzy than curly, like she was working on a big red afro. But her eyes were dead serious, cold sober. Any cliché you’ve ever heard used to describe Clint Eastwood, those were Eleanor’s eyes.
‘Really,’ she said. ‘You don’t care.’
‘They’re just batteries,’ he said.
She emptied the batteries and the tape from Park’s Walkman, handed it back to him, then got off the bus without looking back.
God, she was weird.
Eleanor The batteries started to die at 1:00
a.m., but Eleanor kept listening for another hour until the voices slowed to a stop.
CHAPTER 13
Eleanor
She remembered her books today, and she was wearing fresh clothes.
She’d had to wash her jeans out in the bathtub last night, so they were still kind of damp … But altogether, Eleanor felt a thousand times
better
than
she
had
yesterday. Even her hair was halfway
cooperating.
She’d
clumped it up into a bun and wrapped it with a rubber band. It was going to hurt like crazy trying to tear the rubber band out, but at least it was staying for now.
Best of all, she had Park’s songs in her head – and in her chest, somehow.
There was something about the music on that tape. It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and her stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something
nervous.
It
made
Eleanor feel like everything, like t h e world, wasn’t what she’d thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing.
When she got on the bus that morning, she immediately lifted her head to find Park. He was looking up too, like he was waiting for her. She couldn’t help it, she grinned. Just for a second.
As soon as she sat down, Eleanor slunk low in the seat, so the
back-of-the-bus
ruffians
wouldn’t be able to see from the top of her head how happy she felt.
She could feel Park sitting next to her, even though he was at least six inches away.
She handed him yesterday’s comics, then tugged nervously at the green ribbon wound round her wrist. She couldn’t think of what to say. She started to worry that maybe she wouldn’t say anything, that she wouldn’t even thank him …
Park’s hands were perfectly still in his lap. And perfectly perfect. Honey-colored with clean, pink fingernails. Everything about him was strong and slender. Every time he moved he had a reason.
They were almost to school when he broke the silence.
‘Did you listen?’
She nodded, letting her eyes climb as high as his shoulders.
‘Did you like it?’ he asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my God. It was … just, like …’ – she spread out all her fingers – ‘so awesome.’
‘Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell.’
She looked up at his face, even though she knew how that was going to feel, like someone was hooking her insides out through her chest.
‘No. It was awesome. I didn’t want to stop listening. That one song – is it “Love Will Tear Us Apart”?’
‘Yeah, Joy Division.’
‘Oh my God, that’s the best beginning to a song ever.’
He imitated the guitar and the drums.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to listen to those three seconds over and over.’
‘You could have.’ His eyes were smiling, his mouth only sort of.
‘I didn’t want to waste the batteries,’ she said.
He shook his head, like she was dumb.
‘Plus,’ she said, ‘I love the rest of it just as much, like the high part, the melody, the dahhh, dah-de-dah-dah, de-dahh, de dahhh.’
He nodded.
‘And his voice at the end,’ she said, ‘when he goes just a little bit too high … And then the very end, where it sounds like the drums are fighting it, like they don’t want the song to be over …’
Park made drum noises with his mouth: ‘ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch.’
‘I just want to break that song into pieces,’ she said, ‘and love them all to death.’