Like they’d ever let her into honors gym. Eleanor would get put in remedial gym first. With all the other fat girls who couldn’t do sit-ups.
Anyway. Honor students – black, white or Asia Minor – tended to be nicer. Maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they were scared of getting in trouble. Or maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they’d been trained to be polite – to give up their seats for old people and girls.
Eleanor had honors English, history and geography, but she spent the rest of her day in Crazytown. Seriously, Blackboard Jungle. She should probably try harder in her smart classes so that she wouldn’t get kicked out of them.
She started copying a poem called ‘Caged Bird’ into her notebook … Sweet. It rhymed.
CHAPTER 8
Park
She was reading his comics.
At first Park thought he was imagining it. He kept getting this feeling that she was looking at him, but whenever he looked over at her, her face was down.
He finally realized that she was staring at his lap. Not in a gross way. She was looking at his comics – he could see her eyes moving.
Park didn’t know that anyone with red hair could have brown eyes. (He didn’t know that anyone could have hair that red. Or skin that white.) The new girl’s eyes were darker than his mom’s, really dark, almost like holes in her face.
That made it sound bad, but it wasn’t. It might even be the best thing about her. It kind of reminded Park of the way artists draw Jean Grey sometimes when she’s using her telepathy, with her eyes all blacked out and alien.
Today the girl was wearing a giant men’s shirt with seashells all over it. The collar must have been really big, like disco-big, because she’d cut it, and it was fraying.
She had a man’s necktie wrapped around her ponytail like a big polyester ribbon. She looked ridiculous.
And she was looking at his comics.
Park felt like he should say something to her. He always felt like he should say something to her, even if it was just ‘hello’ or ‘excuse me.’ But he’d gone too long without saying anything since the first time he’d cursed at her, and now it was all just irrevocably weird. For an hour a day. Thirty minutes on the way to school, thirty minutes back.
Park didn’t say anything. He just held his comics open wider and turned the pages more slowly.
Eleanor Her mom looked tired when Eleanor got home. Like more tired than usual. Hard and crumbling at the edges.
When the little kids stormed in after school, her mom lost her temper over something stupid – Ben and Mouse fighting over a toy – and she pushed them all out the back door, Eleanor included.
Eleanor was so startled to be outside that she stood on the back stoop for a second, staring down at Richie’s Rottweiler. He’d named the dog Tonya after his ex-wife.
She was supposed to be a real man-eater, Tonya – Tonya the dog – but Eleanor had never seen her more than half awake.
Eleanor tried knocking on the door. ‘Mom! Let me back in. I haven’t even taken a bath yet.’
She usually took her bath right after school, before Richie got home. It took a lot of the stress out of not having a bathroom door, especially since somebody’d torn down the sheet.
Her mom ignored her.
The little kids were already out on the playground. The new house was right next door to an elementary school – the school where Ben and Mouse and Maisie went – and the playground was just beyond their backyard.
Eleanor didn’t know what else to do, so she walked out to where she could see Ben, by the swing set, and sat on one of the swings.
It was finally jacket weather.
Eleanor wished she had a jacket.
‘What are you supposed to do when it gets too cold to play outside?’ she asked Ben. He was taking Matchbox cars out of his pockets and lining them up in the dirt. ‘Last year,’ he said, ‘Dad made us go to bed at 7:30.’
‘God. You too? Why do you guys call him that?’ She tried not to sound angry.
Ben
shrugged.
‘I
guess
because he’s married to Mom.’
‘Yeah, but’ – Eleanor ran her hands up and down the swing chains, then smelled them – ‘we never used to call him that. Do you feel like he’s your dad?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said flatly.
‘What’s that supposed to feel like?’
She didn’t answer him, so he went back to setting up his cars.
He
needed
a
haircut,
his
strawberry-blond hair was curling almost to his collar. He was wearing
an
old
T-shirt
of
Eleanor’s and a pair of corduroy pants that their mom had cut off into shorts. He was almost too old for all this, for cars and parks – eleven. The other boys his age played basketball all night or hung out in groups at the edge of the playground. Eleanor hoped that Ben was a late bloomer. There was no room in that house to be a teenager.
‘He likes it when we call him Dad,’ Ben said, still lining up the cars.