Park went to bed early. His mom kept bothering him about Eleanor. ‘Where’s Eleanor tonight?’ ‘She running late?’ ‘You get in fight?’
Every time she said Eleanor’s name, Park felt his face go hot.
‘I can tell that something wrong,’ his mom said at dinner. ‘Did you get in fight? Did you break up again?’
‘No,’ Park said. ‘I think maybe she went home sick. She wasn’t on the bus.’
‘I have a girlfriend now,’ Josh said, ‘can she start coming over?’ ‘No girlfriend,’ their mom said, ‘too young.’
‘I’m almost thirteen!’
‘Sure,’ their dad said, ‘your girlfriend can come over. If you’re willing to give up your Nintendo.’
‘What?’ Josh was stricken. ‘Why?’
‘Because I said so,’ his dad said. ‘Is it a deal?’
‘No! No way,’ Josh said. ‘Does Park have to give up Nintendo?’ ‘Yep. Is that okay with you, Park?’
‘Fine.’
‘I’m like Billy Jack,’ their dad said, ‘a warrior and a wise-man.’
It wasn’t much of a conversation, but it was the most his dad had said to Park in weeks. Maybe his dad had been bracing for the entire neighborhood to swarm the house with torches and pitchforks as soon as they saw Park with eyeliner …
But almost nobody cared. Not even his grandparents. (His grandma said he looked like Rudolph Valentino, and he heard his grandpa tell his dad, ‘You should have seen what kids looked like while you were in Korea.’)
‘I’m going to bed,’ Park said, standing up from the table. ‘I don’t feel well either.’
‘So if Park doesn’t get to play Nintendo anymore,’ Josh asked, ‘can I put it in my room?’
‘Park can play Nintendo whenever he wants,’ their dad said. ‘God,’ Josh said, ‘everything you guys do is unfair.’
Park turned off his light and crawled onto his bed. He lay on his back because he didn’t trust his front. Or his hands, actually. Or his brain.
After he saw Eleanor today, it hadn’t occurred to him, not for at least an hour, to wonder why she was walking down the hall in her gymsuit. And it took him another hour to realize he should have said something to her. He could have said, ‘Hey’ or ‘What’s going on?’ or ‘Are you OK?’ Instead he’d stared at her like he’d never seen her before.
He felt like he’d never seen her before.
It’s not like he hadn’t thought about it (a lot) – Eleanor under her clothes. But he could never fill in any of the details. The only women he could actually picture naked were the women in the magazines his dad every once in a while remembered to hide under his bed.
Magazines like that made Eleanor freak. Just mention Hugh Hefner, and she’d be off for half an hour on prostitution and slavery and the Fall of Rome. Park hadn’t told her about his dad’s twenty-year-old Playboys, but he hadn’t touched them since he met her.
He could fill in some of the details now. He could picture Eleanor. He couldn’t stop picturing her. Why hadn’t he ever noticed how tight those gymsuits were? And how short …
And why hadn’t he expected her to be so grown up? To have so much negative space?
He closed his eyes and saw her again. A stack of freckled heart shapes, a perfectly made Dairy Queen ice cream cone. Like Betty Boop drawn with a heavy hand.
Hey, he thought. What’s going on? Are you okay?
She must not be. She hadn’t been on the bus on the way home. She hadn’t come over after school. And tomorrow was Saturday. What if he didn’t see her all weekend?
How could he even look at her now? He wouldn’t be able to. Not without stripping her down to her gymsuit. Without thinking about that long white zipper.
Jesus.
