He’d roll the thought over in his head until the next time he saw her.
In class, at her desk. On the bus, waiting for him. Reading alone in the cafeteria.
Whenever he saw Eleanor, he couldn’t think about pulling away.
He couldn’t think about anything at all.
Except touching her.
Except doing whatever he could or had to, to make her happy.
‘What do you mean you’re not coming tonight?’ Cal said.
They were in study hall, and Cal was eating a Snack Pack butterscotch pudding. Park tried to keep his voice down. ‘Something came up.’
‘Something?’
Cal
said,
slamming his spoon into his pudding.
‘Like
you
being
completely lame – is that what came up? Because that comes up a lot lately.’
‘No . Something. Like, a girl something.’
Cal leaned in. ‘You’ve got a girl something?’
Park felt himself blush. ‘Sort of. Yeah. I can’t really talk about it.’
‘But we had a plan,’ Cal said.
‘You had a plan,’ Park said, ‘and it was terrible.’
‘Worst friend in the world,’
Cal said.
Eleanor She was so nervous, she couldn’t even touch her lunch. She gave DeNice her creamed turkey and Beebi her fruit cocktail.
Park made her practice his phone number all the way home.
And then he wrote it on her book anyway. He hid it in song titles.
‘Forever Young.’
‘That’s a four,’ he said. ‘Will you remember?’
‘I won’t have to,’ she said, ‘I already know your number by heart.’
‘And this is just a five,’ he said, ‘because I can’t think of any five songs, and this one’ – ‘Summer of ’69’ – ‘With this one, remember the six, but forget the nine.’
‘I hate that song.’
‘God, I know … Hey, I can’t think of any two songs.’
“‘Two of Us,”’ she said.
‘Two of us?’
‘It’s a Beatles song.’
‘Oh … that’s why I don’t know it.’ He wrote it down.
‘I know your number by heart,’ she said.
‘I’m just afraid you’re going to forget it,’ he said quietly. He pushed her hair out of her eyes with his pen.
‘I’m not going to forget it,’ she said. Ever. She’d probably scream out Park’s number on her deathbed. Or have it tattooed over her heart when he finally got sick of her. ‘I’m good with numbers.’
‘If you don’t call me Friday night,’ he said, ‘because you can’t remember my number …’
‘How about this, I’ll give you my dad’s number, and if I haven’t called you by nine, you can call me.’
‘That’s an excellent idea,’ he said, ‘seriously.’
‘But you can’t call it any other time.’
‘I feel like …’ He started laughing and looked away.
‘What?’
she
asked.
She
elbowed him.
‘I feel like we have a date,’ he said. ‘Is that stupid?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Even though we’re together every day …’
‘We’re never really together,’
she said.
‘It’s like we have fifty chaperones.’
‘Hostile chaperones,’ Eleanor whispered.
‘Yeah,’ Park said.
He put his pen in his pocket, then took her hand and held it to his chest for a minute.
It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.
‘A date,’ he said.
‘Practically.’
CHAPTER 19
Eleanor
When she woke up that morning, she felt like it was her birthday – like she used to feel on her birthday, back when there was a shot in hell of ice cream.
Maybe her dad would have ice cream … If he did, he’d probably throw it away before Eleanor got there. He was always dropping hints about her weight. Well, he used to, anyway. Maybe when he stopped
caring
about
her
altogether, he’d stopped caring about that, too.
Eleanor put on an old striped men’s shirt and had her mom tie one of her ties – like knot it, for real – around her neck.
Her mom actually kissed Eleanor goodbye at the door and told her to have fun, and to call the neighbors if things got weird with her dad.
Right, Eleanor thought, I’ll be sure to call you if Dad’s fiancée calls me a bitch and then makes me use a bathroom without a door. Oh wait …
She was a little nervous. It had been a year, at least, since she’d seen her dad, and a while before that. He hadn’t called at all when she lived with the Hickmans.
Maybe he didn’t know she was there. She never told him.
When Richie first started coming around, Ben used to get really angry and say he was going to move in with their dad – which was an empty effing promise, and everyone knew it. Even Mouse, who was just a toddler.
Their dad couldn’t stand having them even for a few days.
He used to pick them up from their mom’s house, then drop them off at his mom’s house while he went off and did whatever it was that he did on the weekend.
(Presumably, lots and lots of marijuana.) Park cracked up when he saw Eleanor’s tie. That was even better than making him smile.