Like he was afraid to hit his head on every door jamb.
‘She wants to go with a group,’ Cal said. ‘Plus I think she likes you.’
‘What? I don’t want to go to homecoming with Kim. I don’t even like her. I mean, you know … You like her.’
‘I know. That’s why the plan works. We all go to homecoming together. She figures out you don’t like her, she’s miserable, and guess who’s standing right there, asking her to slow dance?’
‘I don’t want to make Kim miserable.’
‘It’s her or me, man.’
Eric said something else, and Eleanor frowned again. Then she looked over at Park – and stopped frowning. Park smiled.
‘One minute,’ Mr Stessman said.
‘Crap,’ Cal said. ‘What have we got … Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader?’
Eleanor ‘So Psylocke is another girl telepath?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Park said.
Every morning when Eleanor got on the bus, she worried that Park wouldn’t take off his headphones. That he would stop talking to her as suddenly as he’d started … And if that happened – if she got on the bus one day and he didn’t look up – she didn’t want him to see how devastated it would make her.
So far, it hadn’t happened.
So far, they hadn’t stopped talking. Like, literally. They talked every second they were sitting next to each other. And almost every conversation started with the words ‘what do you think …’
What did Eleanor think about that U2 album? She loved it.
What did Park think of Miami Vice? He thought it was boring.
‘Yes,’ they said when they agreed with each other. Back and forth – ‘Yes,’ ‘ Yes,’ ‘ Yes!’
‘I know.’
‘ Exactly.’
‘ Right? ’
They agreed about everything important
and
argued
about
everything else. And that was good, too, because whenever they argued, Eleanor could always crack Park up.
‘Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?’ she asked.
‘This one has purple hair.’
‘It’s all so sexist.’
Park’s eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.
‘The X-Men aren’t sexist,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They’re a metaphor for acceptance; they’ve sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but …’
‘There’s no but,’ he said, laughing.
‘ But,’ Eleanor insisted, ‘the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that’s their s u p e r p o w e r , thinking.
And
Shadowcat’s power is even worse – she disappears.’
‘She becomes intangible,’ Park said. ‘That’s different.’
‘It’s still something you could do in the middle of a tea party,’
Eleanor said.
‘Not if you were holding hot tea. Plus, you’re forgetting Storm.’
‘I’m not forgetting Storm. She controls the weather with her head; it’s still just thinking. Which is about all she could do in those boots.’
‘She has a cool Mohawk …’
Park said.
‘Irrelevant,’ Eleanor answered.
Park leaned his head back against the seat, smiling, and looked at the ceiling. ‘The X-Men aren’t sexist.’
‘Are you trying to think of an empowered X-woman?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How about Dazzler? She’s a living disco ball. Or the White Queen? She thinks really hard while wearing spotless white lingerie.’
‘What kind of power would you want?’ he asked, changing the subject. He turned his face toward her, laying his cheek against the top of the seat. Smiling.
‘I’d want to fly,’ Eleanor said, looking away from him. ‘I know it’s not very useful, but … it’s flying.’
‘ Yes,’ he said.
Park
‘Damn, Park, are you going on a Ninja mission?’
‘Ninjas wear black, Steve.’
‘What?’
Park should have gone inside to change after taekwando, but his dad said he had to be back by 9:00, and that gave him less than an hour to show Eleanor.
Steve was outside working on his Camaro. He didn’t have his license yet either, but he was getting ready.
‘Going to see your girlfriend?’
he called to Park.
‘What?’
‘Sneaking out to see your girlfriend? Bloody Mary?’
‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Park said, then swallowed.
‘Sneaking out Ninja-style,’
Steve said.
Park shook his head and broke into a run. Well, she wasn’t, he thought
to
himself,
cutting
through the alley.
He didn’t know where Eleanor lived, exactly. He knew where she got on the bus, and he knew that she lived next to the school …
It must be this one, he thought.
He stopped at a small white house.
There were a few broken toys in the yard, and a giant Rottweiler was asleep on the porch.
Park walked toward the house slowly. The dog lifted its head and watched him for a second, then settled back to sleep. It didn’t move, even when Park climbed the steps and knocked on the door.