He didn’t ride the bus anymore. He didn’t have to. His mom gave him the Impala when his dad bought her a new Taurus …
He didn’t ride the bus anymore because he’d have the whole seat to himself.
Not that the Impala wasn’t just as ruined with memories. Some mornings, if Park got to school early, he sat in the parking lot with his head on the steering wheel and let whatever was left of Eleanor wash over him until he ran out of air. Not that school was any better.
She wasn’t at her locker. Or in class. Mr Stessman said it was pointless to read Macbeth out loud without Eleanor. ‘Fie, my Lord, fie,’ he lamented. She didn’t stay for dinner. She didn’t lean against him when he watched
TV.
Park spent most nights lying on his bed because it was the only place
she’d never been.
He lay on his bed and never turned on the stereo.
Eleanor
She didn’t ride the bus anymore. She rode to school with her uncle. He made her go, even though there were only four weeks left, and everybody was already studying for finals.
There weren’t any Asian kids at her new school. There weren’t even any black kids.
When her uncle went down to Omaha, he said she didn’t have to go. He was gone three days, and when he came back, he brought the black trash bag from her bedroom closet. Eleanor already had new clothes. And a new bookcase and a boombox. And a six-pack of blank cassette tapes.
Park
Eleanor didn’t call that first night.
She hadn’t said that she would, now that he thought about it. She hadn’t said that she’d write either, but Park thought that went unsaid. He’d thought that was a given.
After Eleanor got out of the truck, Park had waited in front of her uncle’s house.
He was supposed to drive away as soon as the door opened, as soon as it was clear that somebody was home. But he couldn’t just leave her like that.
He watched the woman who came to the door give Eleanor a big hug, and then he watched the door close behind them. And then he waited, just in case Eleanor changed her mind. Just in case she decided after all that he should come in.
The door stayed closed. Park remembered his promise and drove away.
The sooner I get home, he thought, the sooner I’ll hear from her again.
He sent Eleanor a postcard from the first truck stop. ‘Welcome to Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes.’
When he got home, his mom ran to the door to hug him. ‘All right?’ his dad asked.
‘Yeah,’ Park said. ‘How was the truck?’ ‘Fine.’
His dad went outside to make sure.
‘You,’ his mom said, ‘I was so worried about you.’ ‘I’m fine, Mom, just tired.’
‘How’s Eleanor?’ she asked. ‘She okay?’ ‘I think so, has she called?’
‘No. Nobody called.’
As soon as his mom would let go of him, Park went to his room and wrote Eleanor a letter.
Eleanor
When Aunt Susan opened the door, Eleanor was already crying.
‘Eleanor,’ Aunt Susan kept saying. ‘Oh my goodness, Eleanor. What are you doing here?’
Eleanor tried to tell her that everything was okay. Which wasn’t true – she wouldn’t be there if everything was okay. But nobody was dead. ‘Nobody’s dead,’ she said.
‘Oh my God. Geoffrey!’ Aunt Susan called. ‘Wait here, sweetheart.
Geoff …’
Left alone, Eleanor realized that she shouldn’t have told Park to leave right away.
She wasn’t ready for him to leave.
She opened the front door and ran out to the street. Park was already gone – she looked both ways for him.
When she turned around, her aunt and uncle were standing on the front porch watching her.
Phone calls. Peppermint tea. Her aunt and uncle talking in the kitchen long after she went to bed.
‘Sabrina …’ ‘Five of them.’
‘We’ve got to get them out of there, Geoffrey …’ ‘What if she isn’t telling the truth?’
Eleanor took Park’s photo out of her back pocket and smoothed it out on the bedspread. It didn’t look like him. October was already a lifetime away. And this afternoon was another lifetime. The world was spinning so fast, she didn’t know where she stood anymore.
Her aunt had lent her some pajamas – they wore about the same size – but Eleanor put Park’s shirt back on as soon as she got out of the shower.
It smelled like him. Like his house, like potpourri. Like soap, like boy, like happiness.
She fell forward onto the bed, holding the hole in her stomach. No one would ever believe her.
She wrote her mom a letter.
She said everything she’d wanted to say in the last six months. She said she was sorry.
She begged her to think of Ben and Mouse – and Maisie. She threatened to call the police.
Her Aunt Susan gave her a stamp. ‘They’re in the junk drawer, Eleanor, take as many as you need.’
Park
When he got sick of his bedroom, when there was nothing left in his life that smelled like vanilla – Park walked by Eleanor’s house.
Sometimes the truck was there, sometimes it wasn’t, sometimes the Rottweiler was asleep on the porch. But the broken toys were gone, and there were never any strawberry-blond kids playing in the yard.
Josh said that Eleanor’s little brother had stopped coming to school. ‘Everybody says they’re gone. The whole family.’
‘That great news,’ their mother said. ‘Maybe that pretty mom wake up to bad situation, you know? Good for Eleanor.’
Park just nodded.
He wondered if his letters even got to wherever she was now.
Eleanor
There was a red rotary phone in the spare bedroom. Her bedroom. Whenever it rang, Eleanor felt like picking it up and saying, ‘What is it, Commissioner Gordon?’
Sometimes, when she was alone in the house, she took the phone over to her bed and listened to the dial tone.
She practiced Park’s number, her finger sliding across the dial. Sometimes, after the dial tone stopped, she pretended he was whispering in her ear.
‘Have you ever had a boyfriend?’ Dani asked. Dani was in theater camp, too. They ate lunch together, sitting on the stage with their legs dangling in the orchestra pit.
‘No,’ Eleanor said.
Park wasn’t a boyfriend, he was a champion.
And they weren’t going to break up. Or get bored. Or drift apart. (They weren’t going to become another stupid high school romance.)
They were just going to stop.
Eleanor had decided back in his dad’s truck. She’d decided in Albert Lea, Minnesota. If they weren’t going to get married – if it wasn’t forever – it was only a matter of time.
They were just going to stop.
Park was never going to love her more than he did on the day they said goodbye.
And she couldn’t bear to think of him loving her less.
Park
When he got sick of himself, Park went to her old house. Sometimes the truck was there. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes, Park stood at the end of the sidewalk and hated everything the house stood for
