Park’s parents almost never fought, and when they did, it was always about him or Josh.
His parents had been arguing in their bedroom for more than an hour, and when it was time to leave for Sunday dinner, their mom came out and told the boys to go ahead without them. ‘Tell Grandma I have headache.’
‘What did you do?’ Josh asked Park as they cut through the front lawn. ‘Nothing,’ Park said. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. It’s you. When I went to the bathroom, I heard mom say your name.’
But Park hadn’t done anything. Not since the eyeliner – which he knew wasn’t dead, but it seemed in remission. Maybe his parents knew somehow about yesterday …
Even if they did, Park hadn’t done anything with Eleanor that he’d ever been explicitly told not to do. His mom never talked to him about that kind of thing. And his dad hadn’t said anything more than ‘Don’t get anybody pregnant’ since he told Park about sex in the fifth grade. (He’d told Josh at the same time, which was insulting.)
Anyway, they hadn’t gone that far. He hadn’t touched her anywhere that you couldn’t show on television. Even though he’d wanted to.
He wished now that he had. It might be months before they were alone again.
Eleanor
She went to Mrs Dunne’s office Monday morning before class, and Mrs Dunne gave her a brand new combination lock. It was hot pink.
‘We talked to some of the girls in your class,’ Mrs Dunne said, ‘but they all played dumb. We’re still going to get to the bottom of this, I promise.’
There is no bottom, Eleanor thought. There’s just Tina.
‘It’s okay,’ she told Mrs Dunne. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Tina had watched Eleanor get on the bus that morning with her tongue on her top lip, like she was waiting for Eleanor to spaz out – or like she was trying to see whether Eleanor was wearing any toilet clothes. But Park was right there, practically pulling Eleanor into his lap – so it was easy to ignore Tina and everybody else. 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 sometimes.
Eleanor must have been acting too happy when she got home because her mom followed her to the back of the house like she could smell it on her. (Happiness smelled like Park’s house. Like Skin So Soft and all four food groups.)
‘Are you going to take a bath?’ her mom asked. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’ll watch the door for you.’
Eleanor turned on the hot water and climbed into the empty bath tub. It was so cold by the back door that the bath water started cooling off before the tub was even full. Eleanor took baths in such a hurry she was usually done by then.
‘I ran into Eileen Benson at the store today,’ her mom said. ‘Do you remember her from church?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Eleanor said. Her family hadn’t gone to church in three years.
‘She had a daughter your age – Tracy.’ ‘Maybe …’
‘Well, she’s pregnant,’ her mom said. ‘And Eileen’s a wreck. Tracy got involved with a boy in their neighborhood, a black boy. Eileen’s husband is having a fit.’
‘I don’t remember them,’ Eleanor said. The tub was almost full enough to rinse her hair.
‘Well, it just made me think about how lucky I am,’ her mom said. ‘That you didn’t get involved with a black guy?’
‘No,’ her mom said. ‘I’m talking about you. How lucky I am that you’re so smart about boys.’
‘I’m not smart about boys,’ Eleanor said. She rinsed her hair quickly, then stood up, covering herself with a towel while she got dressed.
‘You’ve stayed away from them. That’s smart.’
Eleanor pulled out the drain and carefully picked up her dirty clothes. Park’s photo was in her back pocket, and she didn’t want it to get wet. Her mom was standing by the stove, watching her.
‘Smarter than I ever was,’ her mom said. ‘And braver. I haven’t been on my own since the eighth grade.’
Eleanor hugged her dirty jeans to her chest. ‘You act like there are two kinds of girls,’ she said. ‘The smart ones and the ones that boys like.’
‘That’s not far from the truth,’ her mom said, trying to put her hand on Eleanor’s shoulder. Eleanor took a step back. ‘You’ll see,’ her mom said. ‘Wait until you’re older.’
They both heard Richie’s truck pull into the driveway.
Eleanor pushed past her mother and rushed to her bedroom. Ben and Mouse slipped in just behind her.
Eleanor couldn’t think of a place safe enough for Park’s photo, so she zipped it into the pocket of her school bag. After she’d looked at it again and again and again.
