But Steve hardly mentioned it.
‘Hey, Park, what the fuck, man, are you wearing makeup?’
‘Yeah,’ Park said, holding onto his backpack.
Everyone
around
Steve
tittered, waiting to see what would happen next.
‘You kind of look like Ozzy, man,’ Steve said. ‘You look ready to bite the head off a fucking bat.’
Everybody
laughed.
Steve
bared his teeth at Tina and growled, and then it was over.
When Eleanor got on the bus, she was in a good mood. ‘You’re here! I thought maybe you were sick when you weren’t at my corner.’ He looked up at her. She looked surprised, then sat down quietly and looked at her hands.
‘Do I look like one of the Solid Gold dancers?’ he asked finally, when he couldn’t take any more quiet.
‘No,’
she
said,
sidelong
glancing, ‘you look …’
‘Unsettling?’ he asked.
She laughed and nodded.
‘Unsettling, how?’ he asked her.
She kissed him with tongue. On the bus.
CHAPTER 36
Park
Park told Eleanor not to come over after school. He figured he was grounded. He washed his face as soon as he got home and sent himself to his room.
His mom came in to check on him.
‘Am I grounded?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Did you have a good day at school?’
Meaning, did anyone try to flush his face down the toilet?
‘It was fine,’ he said.
A couple of kids had called Park names in the halls, but it didn’t hurt like he thought it might. Lots of other people said he looked cool.
His mom sat on his bed. She looked like she’d had a long day.
You could see her lipliner.
She stared at a jumble of Star Wars action figures piled up on the shelf over his bed. He hadn’t touched them for years.
‘Park,’ she said, ‘do you …
want to look like girl? Is that what this about? Eleanor dress like boy.
You look like girl?’
‘No …’ Park said. ‘I just like it. I like the way it feels.’
‘Like girl?’
‘ No,’ he said. ‘Like myself.’
‘Your dad …’
‘I don’t want to talk about him.’
His mother sat for another minute, then left.
Park stayed in his room until Josh came to get him for dinner.
His dad didn’t look up when Park sat down.
‘Where’s Eleanor?’ his dad asked.
‘I thought I was grounded.’
‘You’re not grounded,’ his dad said, concentrating on his meat loaf.
Park looked around the table.
Only Josh would look back at him. ‘Are you going to talk to me about this morning?’ Park asked.
His dad took another bite, chewed
it
carefully,
then
swallowed. ‘No, Park, at the moment I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to say to you.’
CHAPTER 37
Eleanor
Park was right. They were never alone.
She thought about sneaking out again, but the risk was incomprehensible, and it was so effing cold out she’d probably lose an ear to frostbite. Which her mom would definitely notice.
She’d already noticed the mascara. (Even though it was brown and said ‘Subtle, Natural Look’ right on the package.) ‘Tina gave it to me,’ Eleanor said. ‘Her mom’s an Avon lady.’
If she just changed Park’s name to ‘Tina’ every time she lied, it only felt like one big lie instead of a million small ones.
It was kind of funny to think about hanging out at Tina’s house every day, doing each other’s nails, trying on lip gloss …
It would be awful if her mom actually met Tina somewhere, but that didn’t seem likely – her mom never talked to anybody in the neighborhood. If you weren’t born in the Flats (if your family didn’t go back ten generations, if your parents didn’t have the same great-great-grandparents), you
were an outsider.
Park always said that was why people left him alone, even though he was weird and Asian. Because his family had owned their land back when the neighborhood was still cornfields.
Park.
Eleanor
blushed
whenever she thought about him.
She’d probably always done that, but now it was worse. Because he was cute and cool before, but lately he seemed so much more of both.
Even
DeNice
and
Beebi
thought so.
‘He looks like a rock star,’
DeNice said.
‘He looks like El DeBarge,’
Beebi agreed.
He
looked
like
himself,
Eleanor thought, but bolder. Like Park with the volume turned way up.
Park They were never alone.
They tried to make the walk from the bus to Park’s house last forever, and sometimes, they’d hang out on his front steps a while … until his mom opened the door and told them to come in from the cold.
Maybe it would be better this summer. They could go outside.
Maybe they could take walks.
Maybe he’d get his driver’s license after all …
No. His dad hadn’t even spoken to him since the day they fought.
‘What’s up with your dad?’
Eleanor asked him. She was standing one step below him on his front stoop.
‘He’s mad at me.’
‘For what?’