Annette stayed mad for the rest of the game, but Eleanor didn’t let it get to her.
That feeling she used to have when she was sitting next to Park on the bus – that feeling that she was on base, that she was safe for the moment – she could summon it now. Like a force field. Like she was the Invisible Girl.
That would make Park Mr Fantastic.
CHAPTER 18
Eleanor
Her mom wasn’t going to let her babysit.
‘He
has four children,’ her mother said. She was rolling out dough for tortillas. ‘Did he forget that?
Eleanor had stupidly told her mother about her dad’s phone call in front of her brothers and sister – they’d all gotten really excited.
And then Eleanor had to tell them that they weren’t invited, that it was just babysitting, anyway, and that Dad wasn’t even going to be there.
Mouse had started to cry, and Maisie got mad and stormed out.
Ben asked Eleanor if she’d call Dad back to see if he could come along to help. ‘Tell him I babysit all the time,’ Ben said.
‘Your father is a piece of work,’ her mother said. ‘Every time, he breaks your hearts. And every time, he expects me to pick up the pieces.’
Pick up, sweep aside – same difference in her mom’s world.
Eleanor didn’t argue.
‘Please let me go,’ she said.
‘Why do you want to go?’ her mom asked. ‘Why do you even care about him? He’s never cared about you.’
God. Even if it were true, it still hurt to hear it that way.
‘I don’t care,’ Eleanor said. ‘I just need to get out of here. I haven’t been anywhere but school in two months. Plus, he said he’d pay me.’
‘If he has extra money sitting around, maybe he should pay his child support.’
‘Mom … it’s ten dollars.
Please.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Fine. I’ll talk to Richie.’
‘No. Don’t talk to Richie. He’ll just say no. And, anyway, he can’t tell me that I can’t see my father.’
‘Richie is the head of this household,’ her mom said. ‘Richie is the one who puts food on our table.’
What food? Eleanor wanted to ask. And, for that matter, what table? They ate on the couch or on the floor or sitting on the back steps
holding
paper
plates.
Besides, Richie would say no just for the pleasure of saying it. It would make him feel like the King of Spain. Which was probably why her mom wanted to give him the chance.
‘Mom.’ Eleanor put her face in her hand and leaned against the refrigerator. ‘ Please.’
‘ O h , fine,’ her mother said bitterly. ‘Fine. But if he gives you any money, you can split it with your brothers and sister. That’s the least you can do.’
They could have it all. All Eleanor wanted was the chance to talk to Park on the phone. To be able to talk to him without every inbred hellspawn in the Flats listening.
The next morning on the bus, while Park ran his finger along the inside of her bracelet, Eleanor asked him for his phone number.
He started laughing.
‘Why is that funny?’ she asked.
‘Because,’ he said quietly.
They said everything quietly, even though everyone else on the bus roared, even though you’d have to shout into a megaphone to be heard over all the cursing and idiocy. ‘I feel like you’re hitting on me,’ he said.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask for your number,’ she said. ‘You’ve never asked for mine.’
He looked up at her through his bangs.
‘I figured you weren’t allowed to talk on the phone … after that time with your stepdad.’
‘I probably wouldn’t be, if I had a phone.’ She usually tried not to tell Park things like that.
Like, all the things she didn’t have. She waited for him to react, but he didn’t. He just ran his thumb along the veins in her wrist.
‘Then why do you want my number?’
God, she thought, never mind.
‘You don’t have to give it to me.’
He rolled his eyes and got a pen out of his backpack, then reached over and took one of her books.
‘No,’ she whispered, ‘don’t. I don’t want my mom to see it.’
He frowned at her book. ‘I’d think you’d be more worried about her seeing this.’
Eleanor looked down. Crap.
Whoever wrote that gross thing on her geography book had written on her history book, too.
‘suck me off,’ it said, in ugly blue letters.
She grabbed Park’s pen and started scribbling it out.
‘Why would you write that?’
he asked. ‘Is that a song?’
‘I didn’t write it,’ she said. She could feel patches of red creep up her neck.
‘Then who did?’
She gave him the meanest look she was capable of. (It was hard to look at him with anything other than gooey eyes.) ‘I don’t know,’
she said.
‘Why
would anyone write that?’
‘I don’t know.’ She pulled her books against her chest and wrapped her arms around them.