He opened his eyes.
He sat up, stood up, started pacing around his small room. He went to stand by the window – the one that faced her house, even though it was a block away and she wasn’t home – holding the base of the car phone against his stomach.
She’d asked him to explain something
he
couldn’t
even
explain to himself.
‘I don’t like you,’ he said. ‘I need you.’
He waited for her to cut him down. To say ‘Ha’ or ‘God’ or ‘You sound like a Bread song.’
But she was quiet.
He crawled back onto the bed, not caring whether she heard it swish. ‘You can ask me why I need you,’ he whispered. He didn’t even have to whisper. On the phone, in the dark, he just had to move his lips and breathe. ‘But I don’t know. I just know that I do …
‘I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being …
‘But I think it’s got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft … and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake.’
He waited for her to say something. She didn’t.
Someone knocked softly on his door.
‘Just a second,’ he whispered into the phone. ‘Yeah?’ he said.
His mom opened his door, just enough to push her head through.
‘Not too late,’ she said.
‘Not too late,’ he said. She smiled and shut the door.
‘I’m back,’ he said. ‘Are you there?’
‘I’m here,’ Eleanor said.
‘Say something.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say something, so that I don’t feel so stupid.’
‘Don’t feel stupid, Park,’ she said.
‘Nice.’
They were both quiet.
‘Ask me why I like you,’ she finally said.
He felt himself smile. He felt like something warm had spilled in his chest.
‘Eleanor,’ he said, just because he liked saying it, ‘why do you like me?’
‘I don’t like you.’
He waited. And waited …
Then he started to laugh.
‘You’re kind of mean,’ he said.
‘Don’t
laugh.
It
just
encourages me.’
He could hear that she was smiling, too. He could picture her.
Smiling.
‘I don’t like you, Park,’ she said again. ‘I …’ She stopped. ‘I can’t do this.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s embarrassing.’
‘So far, just for me.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll say too much,’
she said.
‘You can’t.’
‘I’m afraid I’ll tell you the truth.’
‘Eleanor …’
‘Park.’
‘You don’t like me …’ he said, leading her, pressing the base of the phone into his lowest rib.
‘I don’t like you, Park,’ she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. ‘I …’ – her voice
nearly
disappeared
–
‘sometimes I think I live for you.’
He closed his eyes and arched his head back into his pillow.
‘I don’t think I even breathe when we’re not together,’ she whispered. ‘Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it’s been like sixty hours since I’ve taken a breath. That’s probably why I’m so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we’re apart is think about you, and all I do when we’re together is panic.
Because every second feels so important. And because I’m so out of control, I can’t help myself. I’m not even mine anymore, I’m yours, and what if you decide that you don’t want me? How could you want me like I want you?’
He was quiet. He wanted everything she’d just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with ‘I want you’ in his ears.
‘God,’ she said. ‘I told you I shouldn’t talk. I didn’t even answer your question.’
Eleanor She hadn’t even said anything nice about him. She hadn’t told him that he was prettier than any girl, and that his skin was like sunshine with a suntan.
And that’s exactly why she hadn’t said it. Because all her feelings for him – hot and beautiful in her heart – turned to gobbledygook in her mouth.
She flipped the tape and pressed play, and waited for Robert Smith to start singing before she climbed up onto her dad’s brown leather couch.
‘Why can’t I see you?’ Park asked. His voice sounded raw and pure. Like something just hatched.
‘Because my stepfather is crazy.’
‘Does he have to know?’
‘My mom will tell him.’
‘Does she have to know?’
‘Eleanor ran her fingers along the edge of the glass coffee table.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know what I mean. I just know that I need to see you.
Like this.’
‘I’m not even allowed to talk to boys.’
‘Until when?’
‘I don’t know, never. This is one of those things that doesn’t make sense. My mom doesn’t want to do anything that could possibly irritate my stepfather.
And my stepfather gets off on being mean. Especially to me. He hates me.’