She walked out of the kitchen, just as Park’s mom was coming in from garage. His mom looked at Park with a face he was beginning to recognize. What do you see in this weird white girl?
Park That night, Park lay in bed thinking about Eleanor thinking about him, writing his name on her book.
She’d
probably
already
scribbled that out, too.
He tried to think about why he’d defended Tina.
Why did it matter to him whether Tina was good or bad?
Eleanor was right, he and Tina weren’t friends. They weren’t anything like friends. They hadn’t even been friends in the sixth grade.
Tina had asked Park to go with her, and Park had said yes – because everybody knew that Tina was the most popular girl in class.
Going with Tina was such powerful social currency, Park was still spending it.
Being Tina’s first boyfriend kept Park out of the lowest neighborhood caste. Even though they all thought Park was weird and yellow, even though he had never fit in … They couldn’t call him a freak or a chink or a fag because – well first, because his dad was a giant and a veteran and from the neighborhood. But second, because what would that say about Tina?
And Tina had never turned on Park or pretended he didn’t happen. In fact … Well. There were times when he thought she wanted something to happen between them again.
Like, a few times, she’d come over to Park’s house on the wrong day for her hair appointment – and ended up in Park’s room, trying to find something for them to talk about.
On homecoming night, when she came over to have her hair put up, she’d stopped in Park’s room to ask what he thought of her strapless blue dress. She’d had him untangle her necklace from the hair at the back of her neck.
Park
always
let
these
opportunities pass like he didn’t see them.
Steve would kill him if he hooked up with Tina.
Plus, Park didn’t want to hook up with Tina. They didn’t have anything in common – like, nothing – and it wasn’t the kind of nothing that can be exotic and exciting. It was just boring.
He didn’t even think Tina really liked him, deep down. It was more like she didn’t want him to get over her. And not-so-deep down, Park didn’t want Tina to get over him.
It was nice to have the most popular girl in the neighborhood offering herself to him every now and then.
Park rolled onto his stomach and pushed his face into his pillow. He’d thought he was over caring what people thought about him. He’d thought that loving Eleanor proved that.
But he kept finding new pockets of shallow inside himself.
He kept finding new ways to betray her.
CHAPTER 31
Eleanor
There was just one more day of school left before Christmas vacation. Eleanor didn’t go. She told her mother she was sick.
Park When he got to the bus stop Friday morning, Park was ready to apologize. But Eleanor didn’t show up. Which made him feel a lot less like apologizing …
‘What now?’ he said in the direction of her house. Were they supposed to break up over this?
Was she going to go three weeks without talking to him?
He knew it wasn’t Eleanor’s fault that she didn’t have a phone, and that her house was the Fortress of Solitude, but … Jesus.
It made it so easy for her to cut herself off whenever she felt like it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at her house, too loudly. A dog started barking in the yard next to him.
‘Sorry,’ Park muttered to the dog.
The bus turned the corner and heaved to a stop. Park could see Tina
in
the
back
window,
watching him.
I’m sorry, he thought, not looking back again.
Eleanor With Richie at work all day, she didn’t have to stay in her room, but she did anyway. Like a dog who won’t leave its kennel.
She ran out of batteries. She ran out of things to read …
She lay in bed so much, she actually felt dizzy when she got up Sunday afternoon to eat dinner.
(Her mom said Eleanor had to come out of her crypt if she was hungry.) Eleanor sat on the living room floor next to Mouse.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. He was holding a bean burrito and it was dripping onto his T-shirt and the floor.
‘I’m not,’ she said.
Mouse held the burrito over his head and tried to catch the leak with his mouth. ‘Yeh oo are.’
Maisie looked up at Eleanor, then back at the TV.
‘Is it because you hate Dad?’
Mouse asked.
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said.
‘ Eleanor,’ her mother said, walking out of the kitchen.
‘No,’ Eleanor said to Mouse, shaking her head. ‘I told you, I’m not crying.’ She went back to her room and climbed into bed, rubbing her face in the pillow.
Nobody followed her to see what was wrong.
Maybe her mom realized that she’d pretty much forfeited the right to ask questions for all eternity when she dumped Eleanor at somebody’s house for a year.
Or maybe just she didn’t care.
Eleanor rolled onto her back and picked up her dead Walkman.
She took out the tape and held it up to the light, turning the reels with her fingertip and looking at Park’s handwriting on the label.
‘Never mind the Sex Pistols …