Park wanted Eleanor to start checking her books now, especially after gym class.
‘Because if it is Tina,’ he said – you could tell that he still didn’t believe that it was, ‘you need to tell somebody.’
‘Tell who?’ They were sitting in his room, leaning against his bed, trying to pretend that Park didn’t have his arm around her for the first time since she crushed his cassette tapes. Just barely, not quite around her.
‘You could tell Mrs Dunne,’ he said. ‘She likes you.’
‘Okay, so I tell Mrs Dunne, and I show her whatever awful thing Tina has misspelled on my books – and then Mrs Dunne asks, “How do you know that Tina wrote that?” She’ll be just as skeptical as you were, but without the complicated romantic history …’
‘There’s no complicated romantic history,’ Park said.
‘Did you kiss her?’ Eleanor hadn’t meant to ask that. Out loud. It was almost like she’d asked it so many times in her head that it leaked out.
‘Mrs Dunne? No. But we’ve hugged a lot.’ ‘You know what I mean … Did you kiss her?’
She was sure that he’d kissed her. She was sure that they’d done other stuff, too. Tina was so little, Park could probably wrap his arms all the way around her and shake his own hands at her waist.
‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said. ‘Because you did,’ Eleanor said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. Was it your first kiss?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t count. It was like a practice pitch.’
‘What are the other reasons?’
‘It was Tina, I was twelve, I didn’t even like girls yet …’
‘But you’ll always remember it,’ she said. ‘It was your first kiss.’
‘I’ll remember that it didn’t matter,’ Park said.
Eleanor wanted to let this go – the most trustworthy voices in her head were shouting, ‘Let it go!’
‘But …’ she said, ‘how could you kiss her?’ ‘I was twelve.’
‘But she’s awful.’ ‘She was twelve, too.’
‘But … how could you kiss her and then kiss me?’
‘I didn’t even know you existed.’ Park’s arm suddenly made contact, full contact, with Eleanor’s waist. He pressed into her side, and she sat up, instinctively, trying to spread herself thinner.
‘There aren’t even roads between Tina and me …’ she said. ‘How could you like us both? Did you have a life-changing head injury in junior high?’
Park put his other arm around her. ‘Please. Listen to me. It was nothing.
It doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters,’ Eleanor whispered. Now that his arms were around her, there was almost no space between them. ‘Because you were the first person I ever kissed. And that matters.’
He set his forehead against hers. She didn’t know what to do with her eyes or her hands.
‘Nothing before you counts,’ he said. ‘And I can’t even imagine an after.’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t.’ ‘What?’
‘Don’t talk about after.’
‘I just meant that … I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too … That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I’m trying to say is, you’re it. This is it for me.’
‘Don’t.’ She didn’t want him to talk like this. She’d meant to push him, but not this far.
‘Eleanor …’
‘I don’t want to think about an after.’
‘That’s what I’m saying, maybe there won’t be one.’
‘Of course there will.’ She put her hands on his chest, so that she could push him away if she had to. ‘I mean … God, of course there will. It’s not like we’re going to get married, Park.’
‘Not now.’
‘Stop.’ She tried to roll her eyes, but it hurt.
‘I’m not proposing,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying … I love you. And I can’t imagine stopping …’
She shook her head. ‘But you’re twelve.’
‘I’m sixteen …’ he said. ‘Bono was fifteen when he met his wife, and Robert Smith was fourteen …’
‘Romeo, sweet Romeo …’
‘It’s not like that, Eleanor, and you know it.’ Park’s arms were tight around her. All the playfulness in his voice was gone. ‘There’s no reason to think we’re going to stop loving each other,’ he said. ‘And there’s every reason to think that we won’t.’
I never said I loved you, Eleanor thought.
And even after he kissed her, she kept her hands on his chest.
So. Anyway. Park wanted her to start checking her book covers. Especially after gym class. So now Eleanor waited until almost everybody else had changed and left the locker room, and then she carefully examined her books for anything suspicious.
It was all very clinical.
DeNice and Beebi usually waited with her. It meant that they were late for lunch sometimes, but it also meant that they could all change in relative privacy, which they should have thought of months ago.
There didn’t seem to be anything pervy written on Eleanor’s books today. In fact, Tina had ignored her all through class. Even Tina’s sidekicks (even thuggy Annette) seemed bored with Eleanor.
‘I think they’ve run out of ways to make fun of my hair,’ Eleanor said to DeNice while she looked over her algebra book.
‘They could call you “Ronald McDonald,”’ DeNice said. ‘Have they called you that?’
‘Or “Wendy,”’ Beebi said, lowering her voice and wolfing, ‘Where’s the beef?’
‘Shut up,’ Eleanor said, looking around the locker room. ‘Little pitchers.’
‘They’re all gone,’ DeNice said. ‘Everybody’s gone. They’re all in the cafeteria, eating my Macho Nachos. Hurry up, girl.’
‘You go ahead,’ Eleanor said. ‘Get us a place in line. I still have to change.’
‘All right,’ DeNice said, ‘but stop looking at those books. You said it yourself, there’s nothing there. Come on, Beebi.’
Eleanor started packing up her books. She heard Beebi shout, ‘Where’s the beef?’ from the locker-room door. Dork. Eleanor opened up her locker.
It was empty. Huh.
She tried the one above it. Nothing. And nothing below. No …
Eleanor started over, opening all the lockers on the wall, then moving on to the next wall, trying not to panic. Maybe they’d just moved her clothes. Ha. Funny. Super-good joke, Tina.
‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Burt asked. ‘Looking for my clothes,’ Eleanor said.
‘You should use the same locker every time, so it’s easy to remember.’ ‘No, somebody … I mean, I think somebody took them.’
‘Those little bitches …’ Mrs Burt sighed. Like she couldn’t imagine a bigger hassle.
Mrs Burt started opening lockers at the other end of the room. Eleanor checked the trash and the showers. Then Mrs Burt called out from the bathroom. ‘Found them!’
Eleanor walked into the bathroom. The floor was wet, and Mrs Burt was standing in a stall. ‘I’ll get a bag,’ Mrs Burt said, pushing past Eleanor.
Eleanor looked down at the toilet. Even though she knew what she was going to see there, it still felt like a wet slap in the face. Her new jeans and her cowboy shirt were in a dark pile in the bowl, and her shoes were crammed under the lip. Somebody had flushed the toilet, and there was water still spilling over the edge. Eleanor watched it run.
‘Here,’ Mrs Burt said, handing Eleanor a yellow Food 4 Less bag. ‘Fish ’em out.’
‘I don’t want them,’ Eleanor said, backing away. She couldn’t wear them anymore anyway. Everybody would know those were her toilet clothes.
‘Well, you can’t leave them here,’ Mrs Burt said. ‘Fish them out.’ Eleanor stared at her clothes. ‘Come on,’ Mrs Burt said.
Eleanor reached into the toilet and felt tears slipping down her cheeks. Mrs Burt held the bag open. ‘You’ve got to stop letting them get to you, you know,’ she said. ‘You just encourage them.’
Yeah, thanks, Eleanor thought, wringing out her jeans over the toilet.
She wanted to wipe her eyes, but her hands were wet.
Mrs Burt handed her the bag. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll write you a pass.’
‘For where?’ Eleanor asked. ‘Your counselor’s office.’
Eleanor took a sharp breath. ‘I can’t walk down the hall like this.’ ‘What do you want from me, Eleanor?’ That was obviously a rhetorical
question; Mrs Burt wasn’t even looking at her. Eleanor followed her to the coach’s office and waited for the pass.
As soon as she got out to the hallway, the tears came on hard. She couldn’t walk through the school like this – in her gymsuit. In front of boys
… And everybody. In front of Tina. God, Tina was probably selling tickets outside the cafeteria. Eleanor couldn’t do it. Not like this.
It wasn’t just that her gymsuit was ugly. (Polyester. One-piece. Red- and-white stripes with an extra-long white zipper.)
It was also extremely tight.
The shorts just barely cleared her underwear, and the fabric was stretched so tight over her chest, the seams were starting to pop under her arms.
She was a tragedy in that gymsuit. A ten-car pileup.
People were already showing up for the next gym class. A few freshman girls looked at Eleanor, then started whispering. Her bag was dripping.
Before she could think it through, Eleanor turned the wrong way down the hall and headed for the door to the football field. She acted like she was supposed to be walking out of the building in the middle of the day, like she was on some kind of weeping/half-dressed/drippy-bag mission.
The door clicked locked behind her, and Eleanor crouched against it, letting herself fall apart. Just for a minute. God. God.
There was a trash can sitting right outside the door, and she got up and hurled the Food 4 Less bag into it. She wiped her eyes with her gymsuit. Okay, she told herself, taking a deep breath, get it together. Don’t let them get to you. Those were her new jeans in the trash. And her favorite shoes. Her Vans. She walked over to the trash and shook her head, reaching down for the bag. Fuck you, Tina. Fuck you to the moon.
She took another deep breath and started walking.
There were no classrooms at this end of the school, so at least no one was watching her. She stuck close to the building, and when she turned the corner, she walked under a row of windows. She thought about walking right home, but that might be worse. It’d definitely be longer.
If she could just get to the front door, the counselor’s offices were right inside. Mrs Dunne would help her. Mrs Dunne wouldn’t tell her not to cry.
The security guard at the front door acted like girls were wandering in and out in their gym clothes all day long. He glanced at Eleanor’s pass and waved her on.
Almost there, Eleanor thought. Don’t run, just a few more doors …
She really should have expected Park to walk through one of them.
Ever since the first day they’d met, Eleanor was always seeing him in unexpected places. It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.
Park walked out of a door on the opposite side of the hallway and stopped as soon as he saw her. She tried to look away, but she didn’t do it soon enough. Park’s face turned red. He stared at her. She pulled down her shorts and stumbled forward, running the last few steps to the counselors’ offices.
‘You don’t have to go back there,’ her mom said after Eleanor had told her the whole story. (Almost the whole story.)
Eleanor thought for a moment about what she’d do if she didn’t go back to school. Stay here all day? And then what?
‘It’s okay,’ she said. Mrs Dunne had driven Eleanor home herself, and she’d promised to bring a padlock for her gym locker.
Eleanor’s mom dumped the yellow plastic bag into the bathtub and started rinsing out the clothes, wrinkling her nose, even though they didn’t smell.
‘Girls are so mean …’ she said. ‘You’re lucky to have one friend you can trust.’
Eleanor must have looked confused.
‘Tina,’ her mom said. ‘You’re lucky to have Tina.’ Eleanor nodded.
She stayed home that night. Even though it was Friday, and Park’s family always watched movies and made popcorn in the air popper on
Fridays.
She couldn’t face him.
All she’d see was the look on his face in the hallway. She’d feel like she was still standing there in her gymsuit.
