He looked so cute this morning.
Instead of his usual scary black band T-shirt, he was wearing a green shirt that said ‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish.’
He walked with her to the counselors’ office, and told her that if anybody stole her clothes today, she was to find him, immediately.
Nobody did.
Beebi and DeNice had already heard about what happened from somebody in another class – which meant that the whole school knew. They said they were never going to let Eleanor walk alone to lunch again, Macho Nachos be damned.
‘Those skanks need to know you have friends,’ DeNice said.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Beebi agreed.
Park
His mom was waiting in the Impala Monday afternoon when Park and Eleanor got off the bus.
She rolled down the window.
‘Hi, Eleanor, sorry, but Park has errand to run. We see you tomorrow, okay?’
Sure,’
Eleanor
said.
She
looked at him, and he reached out to squeeze her hand as she walked away.
He got into the car. ‘Come on, come on,’ his mom said, ‘why you do everything so slow? Here.’ She handed him a brochure. State of Nebraska Driver’s Manual .
‘Practice test at end,’ she said, ‘now buckle up.’
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘To get your driving license, dummy.’
‘Does Dad know?’
His mom sat on a pillow when she drove and hung forward on the steering wheel. ‘He knows, but you don’t have to talk to him about it, okay? This is our business right now, you and me.
Now, look at test. Not hard. I pass on first try.’
Park flipped to the back of the
book and looked at the practice
exam. He’d studied the whole
manual when he turned fifteen and got his learner’s permit.
‘Is Dad going to be mad at me?’ he asked.
‘Whose business is this right now?’
‘Ours,’ he said.
‘You and me,’ she said.
Park passed the test on his first try. He even parallel parked the Impala, which was like parallel parking a Star Destroyer. His mom wiped his eyelids with a Kleenex before he had his picture taken.
She let him drive home. ‘So, if we don’t tell Dad,’ Park asked, ‘does that mean I can’t ever drive?’ He wanted to drive Eleanor somewhere. Anywhere.
‘I work on it,’ his mom said.
‘Meantime, you have your license if you need it. For emergency.’
That seemed like a pretty weak excuse to get his license. Park had gone sixteen years without a driving emergency.
The next morning on the bus, Eleanor asked him what his big secret errand was, and he handed her his license.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Look at you, look at this!’
She didn’t want to give it back.
‘I don’t have any pictures of you,’ she said.
‘I’ll get you another one,’ he said.
‘You will? Really?’
‘You can have one of my school pictures. My mom has tons.’
‘You have to write something on the back,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like, “Hey, Eleanor, KIT, LYLAS, stay sweet, Park.”’
‘But I don’t L-Y like an S,’ he said. ‘And you’re not sweet.’
‘I’m
sweet,’
she
said,
affronted,
holding
back
his
license.
‘No … you’re other good things,’ he said, snatching it from her, ‘but not sweet.’
‘Is this where you tell me that I’m a scoundrel, and I say that I think you like me because I’m a scoundrel? Because we’ve already covered this, I’m the Han Solo.’
‘I’m going to write, “For Eleanor, I love you. Park.”’
‘God, don’t write that, my mom might find it.’
Eleanor Park gave her a school picture. It was from October, but he already looked so different now. Older. In the end, Eleanor hadn’t let him write anything on the back because she didn’t want him to ruin it.
They hung out in his bedroom after dinner (Tater Tot casserole) and managed to sneak kisses while they looked through all of Park’s old school pictures. Seeing him as a little kid just made her want to kiss him more. (Gross, but whatever. As long as she didn’t want to kiss actual little kids, she wasn’t going to worry about it.) When Park asked her for a picture, she was relieved that she didn’t have any to give him.
‘We’ll take one,’ he said.
‘Um … okay.’
‘Okay, cool, I’ll get my mom’s camera.’
‘Now?’
‘Why not now?’
She didn’t have an answer.
His mom was thrilled to take her picture. This called for Makeover, Part II – which Park cut short, thank God, saying, ‘Mom, I want a photo that actually looks like Eleanor.’
His mom insisted on taking one of them together, too, which Park didn’t mind at all. He put his arm around her.
‘Shouldn’t we wait?’ Eleanor asked.
‘For
a
holiday
or
something more memorable?’
‘I want to remember tonight,’
Park said.
He
was
such
a
dork