He called his mom during lunch to tell her that Eleanor was coming over. His counselor let him use her phone. (Mrs Dunne loved the opportunity to be good in a crisis, so all Park had to do was imply that it was an emergency.)
‘I just wanted to tell you that Eleanor is coming over after school,’ he told his mom. ‘Dad said it was all right.’
‘Fine,’ his mother said, not even pretending that she was okay with it. ‘Is she staying for dinner?’
‘I don’t know,’ Park said. ‘Probably not.’ His mother sighed.
‘You have to be nice to her, you know.’
‘I’m nice to everybody,’ his mom said. ‘You know that.’
He could tell Eleanor was nervous on the bus. She was quiet, and she kept running her bottom lip through her teeth, making it go white, so that you could see that her lips had freckles, too.
Park tried to get her to talk about Watchmen; they’d just read the fourth chapter. ‘What do you think of the pirate story?’ he asked.
‘What pirate story?’
‘You know, there’s that character who’s always reading a comic book about pirates, the story within the story, the pirate story.’
‘I always skip that part,’ she said. ‘You skip it?’
‘It’s boring. Blah, blah, blah – pirates! – blah, blah, blah.’
‘Nothing Alan Moore writes can be blah-blah-blahed,’ Park said solemnly.
Eleanor shrugged and bit her lip.
‘I’m beginning to think you shouldn’t have started reading comics with a book that completely deconstructs the last fifty years of the genre,’ he
said.
‘All I’m hearing is blah, blah, blah, genre.’
The bus stopped near Eleanor’s house. She looked at him. ‘We may as well get off at my stop,’ Park said, ‘right?’ Eleanor shrugged again.
They got off at his stop, along with Steve and Tina and most of the people who sat at the back of the bus. All the back-of-the-bus kids hung out in Steve’s garage when he wasn’t at work, even in winter.
Park and Eleanor trailed behind them.
‘I’m sorry I look so stupid today,’ she said.
‘You look like you always do,’ he said. Her bag was hanging at the end of her arm. He tried to take it, but she pulled away.
‘I always look stupid?’ ‘That’s not what I meant …’
‘It’s what you said,’ she muttered.
He wanted to ask her not to be mad right now. Like, anytime but now.
She could be mad at him for no reason all day tomorrow, if she wanted to. ‘You really know how to make a girl feel special,’ Eleanor said.
‘I’ve never pretended to know anything about girls,’ he answered. ‘That’s not what I heard,’ she said. ‘I heard you were allowed to have
girl-zzz in your room …’
‘They were there,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t learn anything.’
They both stopped on his porch. He took her bag from her and tried not to look nervous. Eleanor was looking down the walk, like she might bolt.
‘I meant that you don’t look any different than you usually look,’ he said softly, just in case his mom was standing on the other side of the door. ‘And you always look nice.’
‘I never look nice,’ she said. Like he was an idiot.
‘I like the way you look,’ he said. It came out more like an argument than a compliment.
‘That doesn’t mean it’s nice.’ She was whispering, too. ‘Fine then, you look like a hobo.’
‘A hobo?’ Her eyes lit.
‘Yeah, a gypsy hobo,’ he said. ‘You look like you just joined the cast of
Godspell.’
‘I don’t even know what that is.’ ‘It’s terrible.’
She stepped closer to him. ‘I look like a hobo?’ ‘Worse,’ he said. ‘Like a sad hobo clown.’ ‘And you like it?’
‘I love it.’
As soon as he said it, she broke into a smile. And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him.
Something always did.
Eleanor
It was probably a good thing that Park’s mom opened the door when she did because Eleanor was thinking about kissing him, and no way was that a good idea – Eleanor didn’t know the first thing about kissing.
Of course, she’d watched a million kisses on TV (thank you, Fonzie), but TV never showed you the mechanics of it. If Eleanor tried to kiss Park, it would be like a real-life version of some little girl making her Barbie kiss Ken. Just smashing their faces together.
Besides, if Park’s mom had opened the door right in the middle of a big, awkward kiss, she’d hate Eleanor even more.
Park’s mom did hate her, you could tell. Or maybe she just hated the idea of Eleanor, of a girl seducing her firstborn son right in her own living room.
Eleanor followed Park in and sat down. She tried to look extra polite. When his mom offered them a snack, Eleanor said, ‘That would be great, thank you.’ His mom was looking at Eleanor like she was something somebody had spilled on the baby-blue couch. She brought out cookies, then left them alone.
Park seemed so happy. Eleanor tried to concentrate on how nice it was to be with him – but it was taking too much of her concentration, just keeping herself together.
It was the little things about Park’s house that really freaked her out. Like all the glass grapes hanging from everything. And the curtains that matched the sofa that matched the little doily-napkins under the lamps.
You’d think that nobody interesting could grow up in a house as nice and boring as this one – but Park was the smartest, funniest guy she’d ever met, and this was his home planet.
Eleanor wanted to feel superior to Park’s mom and her Avon-lady house. But, instead, she kept thinking about how nice it must be to live in a house like this one. With your own room. And your own parents. And six different kinds of cookies in the cupboard.
Park
Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
Eleanor sitting next to him on the couch made Park feel like someone had opened a window in the middle of the room. Like someone had replaced all the air in the room with brand new, improved air (now with twice the freshness).
Eleanor made him feel like something was happening. Even when they were just sitting on the couch.
She wouldn’t let him hold her hand, not in his house, and she wouldn’t stay for dinner. But she agreed to come back tomorrow – if his parents said it was okay, which they did.
His mom was being perfectly nice so far. She wasn’t turning on the charm, like she did for her clients and the neighbors, but she wasn’t being rude either. And if she wanted to hide in the kitchen every time Eleanor came over, Park thought, that was her prerogative.
Eleanor came over again on Thursday afternoon and Friday. And on Saturday, while they were playing Nintendo with Josh, his dad asked her to stay for dinner.
Park couldn’t believe it when she said yes. His dad put the leaf into the dining room table, and Eleanor sat right next to Park. She was nervous, he could tell. She barely touched her sloppy joe, and after a while her smile started to go all grimacey around the edges.
After dinner, they all watched Back to the Future on HBO, and his mom made popcorn. Eleanor sat with Park on the floor, leaning against the couch, and when he surreptitiously took her hand, she didn’t pull away. He rubbed the inside of her palm because he knew she liked it. It made her eyelids dip like she was going to fall asleep.
When the movie was over, Park’s dad insisted that Park walk Eleanor home.
‘Thanks for having me, Mr Sheridan,’ she said. ‘And thank you for dinner, Mrs Sheridan. It was delicious, I had a great time.’ She didn’t even sound like she was being sarcastic.
When they got to the door, she called back, ‘Good night!’
Park closed the door behind them. You could almost see all the nervous niceness draining out of Eleanor. He wanted to hug her, to help wring it out. ‘You can’t walk me home,’ she said with her usual edge, ‘you know
that, right?’
‘I know. But I can walk you partway.’ ‘I don’t know …’
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘it’s dark. No one will see us.’
‘Okay,’ she said, but she put her hands in her pockets. They both walked slowly.
‘Your family is really great,’ she said after a minute. ‘Really.’
He took her arm. ‘Hey, I want to show you something.’ He pulled her into the next driveway, between a pine tree and an RV.
‘Park, this is trespassing.’
‘It’s not. My grandparents live here.’ ‘What do you want to show me?’
‘Nothing, really, I just want to be alone with you for a minute.’
He pulled her to the back of the driveway, where they were almost completely hidden by a line of trees and the RV and the garage.
‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘That was so lame.’
‘I know,’ he said, turning to her. ‘Next time, I’ll just say, “Eleanor, follow me down this dark alley, I want to kiss you.”’
She didn’t roll her eyes. She took a breath, then closed her mouth. He was learning how to catch her off guard.
She pushed her hands deeper in her pockets, so he put his hands on her elbows instead. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’ll just say, “Eleanor, duck behind these bushes with me, I’m going to lose my mind if I don’t kiss you.”’
She didn’t move, so he thought it was probably okay to touch her face.
Her skin was as soft as it looked, white and smooth as freckled porcelain. ‘I’ll just say, “Eleanor, follow me down this rabbit hole …”’
He laid his thumb on her lips to see if she’d pull away. She didn’t. He leaned closer. He wanted to close his eyes, but he didn’t trust her not to leave him standing there.
When his lips were almost touching hers, she shook her head. Her nose rubbed against his.
‘I’ve never done this before,’ she said. ‘S’okay,’ he said.
‘It’s not, it’s going to be terrible.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s not.’
She shook her head a little more. Just a little. ‘You’re going to regret this,’ she said.
That made him laugh, so he had to wait a second before he kissed her.
It wasn’t terrible. Eleanor’s lips were soft and warm, and he could feel her pulse in her cheek. It was good that she was so nervous – because it forced him not to be. It steadied him to feel her trembling.
He pulled away before he wanted to. He hadn’t done this enough to know how to breathe.
When he pulled away, her eyes were mostly closed. His grandparents had a light on, on their front porch, and Eleanor’s face caught every bit of it. She looked like she should be married to the man in the moon.
Her face dropped after a second, and he let his hand fall to her shoulder. ‘Okay?’ he whispered.
She nodded. He pulled her closer and kissed the top her head. He tried to find her ear under all that hair.
‘Come here,’ he said, ‘I want to show you something.’ She laughed. He lifted her chin.
The second time was even less terrible.
Eleanor
They walked together from his grandparents’ driveway to the alley, then Park waited there in the shadows and watched Eleanor walk home alone.
She told herself not to look back.
Richie was home, and everybody except her mom was watching TV. It wasn’t that late; Eleanor tried to act like there was nothing strange about her coming home in the dark.
‘Where have you been?’ Richie said. ‘At a friend’s house.’
‘What friend?’
‘I told you, honey,’ her mom said, stepping into the room, drying a pan. ‘Eleanor has a girlfriend in the neighborhood. Lisa.’
‘Tina,’ Eleanor said.
‘Girlfriend, huh?’ Richie said. ‘Giving up on men already?’ He thought that was pretty funny.
Eleanor went into the bedroom and closed the door. She didn’t turn on the light. She climbed into bed in her street clothes, opened the curtains and wiped the condensation off the window. She couldn’t see the alley or anything moving outside.
The window fogged over again. Eleanor closed her eyes and laid her forehead against the glass.
