Eleanor & Park (44 page)

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.

CHAPTER 56

Eleanor

Letters, postcards, packages that

rattled like loaded cassette tapes.

None of them opened, none of

them read.

‘Dear Park,’ she wrote on a

clean sheet of stationery. ‘Dear

Park,’ she tried to explain.

But the explanations fell apart

in her hands. Everything true was

too hard to write – he was too

much to lose. Everything she felt

for him was too hot to touch.

‘I’m sorry,’ she wrote, then

crossed it out.

‘It’s just …’ she tried again.

She threw the half-written

letters away. She threw the

unopened envelopes in the bottom

drawer.

‘Dear Park,’ she whispered,

her forehead hanging over the

dresser, ‘just stop.’

Park

His dad said Park needed a

summer job to pay for gas.

Neither of them mentioned

that Park never went anywhere.

Or that he’d started putting

eyeliner on with his thumb.

Blacking out his own eyes.

He

looked

just

wrecked

enough to get a job at Drastic

Plastic. The girl who hired him

had two rows of holes in each ear.

His mom stopped bringing in

the mail. He knew it was because

she hated telling him that nothing

had come for him. Park brought

in the mail himself now every

night when he got home from

work. Every night praying for

rain.

He had an endless supply and

an insatiable appetite for punk

music. ‘I can’t hear myself think

in here,’ his dad said, coming into

Park’s room for the third night in

a row to turn down the stereo.

Duh, Eleanor would have said.

Eleanor didn’t start school in the

fall. Not with Park anyway.

She didn’t celebrate the fact

that juniors don’t have to take

gym. She didn’t say, ‘Unholy

union, Batman,’ when Steve and

Tina eloped over Labor Day.

Park had written her a letter all

about it. He’d told her everything

that happened, and everything that

didn’t, every day since she’d left.

He kept writing her letters

months after he stopped sending

them. On New Year’s Day, he

wrote that he hoped she’d get

everything she ever wished for.

Then he tossed the letter into a

box under his bed.

CHAPTER 57

Park

He’d stopped trying to bring her

back.

She only came back when she

felt like it anyway, in dreams and

lies and broken-down déjà vu.

Like, Park would be driving to

work and he’d see a girl with red

hair standing on the street, and

he’d swear for half an airless

moment that it was her.

Or he’d wake up when it was

still dark, sure that she was

waiting for him outside. Sure that

she needed him.

But he couldn’t summon her.

Sometimes he couldn’t even

remember what she looked like,

even when he was looking at her

picture. (Maybe he’d looked at it

too much.)

He’d stopped trying to bring

her back.

So why did he keep coming

here? To this crappy little house

…

Eleanor wasn’t here, she was

never really here – and she’d been

gone too long. Almost a year now.

Park turned to walk away

from the house, but the little

brown truck whipped too fast into

the driveway, jumping the curb

and nearly clipping him. Park

stopped on the sidewalk and

waited. The driver’s side door

swung open.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe
this

is why I’m here.

Eleanor’s stepdad – Richie –

leaned slowly out of the cab. Park

recognized him from the one time

he’d seen him before, when Park

had brought Eleanor the second

issue

of
Watchmen
, and her

stepdad had answered the door …

The final issue of
Watchmen

came out a few months after

Eleanor left. He wondered if she’d

read it, and whether she thought

Ozymandias was a villain, and