They broke apart when the bus stopped. A flood of reality rushed through Park, and he looked around nervously to see if anyone had been watching them. Then he looked nervously at Eleanor to see if she’d noticed him looking.
She was still staring at the floor, even as she picked up her books and stood in the aisle.
If
someone
had
been
watching, what would they have seen? Park couldn’t imagine what his face had looked like when he touched Eleanor. Like somebody taking the first drink in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Over-the-top bliss.
He stood behind her in the aisle. She was just about his height. Her hair was pulled up, and her neck was flushed and splotchy. He resisted the urge to lay his cheek against it.
He walked with her all the way to her locker, and leaned against the wall as she opened it. She didn’t say anything, just shifted some books onto the shelf and took down a few others.
As the buzz of touching her faded, he was starting to realize that Eleanor hadn’t actually done anything to touch him back. She hadn’t bent her fingers around his.
She hadn’t even looked at him.
She still hadn’t looked at him.
Jesus.
He knocked gently on her locker door.
‘Hey,’ he said.
She shut the door. ‘Hey, what?’
‘Okay?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘I’ll see you in English?’ he asked.
She nodded and walked away.
Jesus.
Eleanor All through first and second and third hour, Eleanor rubbed her palm.
Nothing happened.
How could it be possible that there were that many nerve endings all in one place?
And were they always there, or did they just flip on whenever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting?
Maybe this was why so many people said it felt better to drive a stick shift.
Park
Jesus. Was it possible to rape somebody’s hand?
Eleanor wouldn’t look at Park during English and history. He went to her locker after school, but she wasn’t there.
When he got on the bus, she was already sitting in their seat – but sitting in his spot, against the wall. He was too embarrassed to say anything. He sat down next to her and let his hands hang between his knees …
Which meant she really had to reach for his wrist, to pull his hand into hers. She wrapped her fingers around his and touched his palm with her thumb.
Her fingers were trembling.
Park shifted in his seat and turned his back to the aisle.
‘Okay?’ she whispered.
He nodded, taking a deep breath. They both stared down at their hands.
Jesus.
CHAPTER 16
Eleanor
Saturdays were the worst.
On Sundays, Eleanor could think all day about how close it was to Monday. But Saturdays were ten years long.
She’d already finished her homework. Some creep had written ‘do i make you wet?’ on her geography book, so she spent a really long time covering it up with a black ink pen. She tried to turn it into some kind of flower.
She watched cartoons with the little kids until golf came on, then played double solitaire with Maisie until they were both bored stupid.
Later, she’d listen to music.
She’d saved the last two batteries Park had given her so that she could listen to her tape player today when she missed him most.
She had five tapes from him now – which meant, if her batteries lasted, she had four hundred and fifty minutes to spend with Park in her head, holding his hand.
Maybe it was stupid, but that’s what she did with him, even in her fantasies – even where anything was possible. As far as Eleanor was concerned, that just showed how wonderful it was to hold Park’s hand.
(Besides they didn’t just hold hands. Park touched her hands like they were something rare and precious, like her fingers were intimately connected to the rest of her body. Which, of course, they were. It was hard to explain. He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.)
The only bad thing about their new bus routine was that it had seriously cut back on their conversations. She could hardly look at Park when he was touching her. And Park seemed to have a hard time finishing his sentences. (Which meant he liked her. Ha.) Yesterday, on the way home from school, their bus had to take a fifteen-minute detour because of a busted sewer pipe. Steve had started cussing about how he needed to get to his new job at the gas station. And Park had said, ‘Wow.’
‘What?’ Eleanor sat by the wall now, because it made her feel safer, less exposed. She could almost pretend that they had the bus to themselves.
‘I can actually burst sewers with my mind,’ Park said.
‘That’s
a
very
limited
mutation,’ she said. ‘What do they call you?’
‘They call me … um …’ And then he’d started laughing and pulled at one of her curls. (That was a new, awesome development – the hair touching. Sometimes he’d come up behind her after school, and tug at her ponytail or tap the top of her bun.)
‘I … don’t know what they call me,’ he said.