Eleanor & Park (8 page)

hit the sidewalk. That’s what

seemed weird now, Park thought;

they walked the same way every

day, her locker was just down the

hall from his – how had they

managed to go their separate ways

every morning?

Park stopped for a minute

when they got to her locker. He

didn’t step close to her, but he

stopped. She stopped, too.

‘Well,’ he said, looking down

the hall, ‘now you’ve heard the

Smiths.’

And she …

Eleanor laughed.

Eleanor

She should have just taken the

tape.

She didn’t need to be telling

everybody what she had and

didn’t have. She didn’t need to be

telling weird Asian kids anything.

Weird Asian kid.

She was pretty sure he was

Asian. It was hard to tell. He had

green eyes. And skin the color of

sunshine through honey.

Maybe he was Filipino. Was

that in Asia? Probably. Asia’s out-

of-control huge.

Eleanor had only known one

Asian person in her life – Paul,

who was in her math class at her

old school. Paul was Chinese. His

parents had moved to Omaha to

get away from the Chinese

government. (Which seemed like

an extreme choice. Like they’d

looked at the globe and said,

‘Yup. That’s as far away as

possible.’)

Paul was the one who’d taught

Eleanor to say ‘Asian’ and not

‘oriental.’ ‘Oriental’s for food,’

he’d said.

‘Whatever,

LaChoy

Boy,’

she’d said back.

Eleanor couldn’t figure out

what an Asian person was doing

in the Flats anyway. Everybody

else here was seriously white.

Like, white by choice. Eleanor had

never even heard the n-word said

out loud until she moved here, but

the kids on her bus used it like it

was the only way to indicate that

somebody was black. Like there

was no other word or phrase that

would work.

Eleanor stayed away from the

n-word even in her head. It was

bad enough that, thanks to

Richie’s influence, she went

around mentally calling everyone

she met a ‘motherfucker.’ (Irony.)

There were three or four other

Asian kids at their school.

Cousins. One of them had written

an essay about being a refugee

from Laos.

And then there was Ol’ Green

Eyes.

Who she was apparently going

to tell her whole life story to.

Maybe on the way home, she’d

tell him that she didn’t have a

phone or a washing machine or a

toothbrush.

That last thing, she was

thinking

about

telling

her

counselor. Mrs Dunne had sat

Eleanor down on her first day of

school and given a little speech

about how Eleanor could tell her

anything
. All through the speech,

she kept squeezing the fattest part

of Eleanor’s arm.

If Eleanor told Mrs Dunne

everything – about Richie, her

mom,
everything
– Eleanor didn’t

know what would happen.

But if she told Mrs Dunne

about the toothbrush … maybe

Mrs Dunne would just get her one.

And then Eleanor could stop

sneaking into the bathroom after

lunch to rub her teeth with salt.

(She’d seen that in a Western

once. It probably didn’t even

work.)

The bell rang. 10:12.

Just two more periods until

English. She wondered if he’d talk

to her in class. Maybe that’s what

they did now.

She could still hear that voice

in her head – not his – the

singer’s. From the Smiths. You

could hear his accent, even when

he was singing. He sounded like

he was crying out.

‘I am the sun …

And the air …’

Eleanor didn’t notice at first how

un-horrible everyone was being in

gym. (Her head was still on the

bus.) They were playing volleyball

today, and once Tina said, ‘Your

serve, bitch,’ but that was it, and

that was practically jocular, all-

things-Tina considered.

When Eleanor got to the locker

room, she realized why Tina had

been so low-key; she was just

waiting. Tina and her friends –

and the black girls, too, everybody

wanted a piece of this – were

standing at the end of Eleanor’s

row, waiting for her to walk to her

locker.

It was covered with Kotex

pads. A whole box, it looked like.

At first Eleanor thought the

pads were actually bloody, but

when she got closer she could see

that it was just red magic marker.

Somebody had written ‘Raghead’

and ‘Big Red’ on a few of the

pads, but they were the expensive

kind, so the ink was already

starting to absorb.

If Eleanor’s clothes weren’t in

that locker, if she was wearing

anything other than this gymsuit,

she would have just walked away.

Instead she walked past the

girls, with her chin as high as she

could manage, and methodically

peeled the pads off her locker.

There were even some inside,

stuck to her clothes.

Eleanor cried a little bit, she

couldn’t help it, but she kept her

back to everybody so there

wouldn’t be a show. It was all

over in a few minutes anyway

because nobody wanted to be late

to lunch. Most of the girls still had

to change and redo their hair.

After everyone else walked

away, two black girls stayed. They

walked over to Eleanor and started

pulling pads off the wall. ‘Ain’t no

thing,’ one of the girls whispered,

crumpling a pad into a ball. Her

name was DeNice, and she looked

too young to be in the tenth grade.

She was small, and she wore her

hair in two braided pigtails.

Eleanor shook her head, but

didn’t say anything.

‘Those girls are trifling,’

DeNice

said.

‘They’re

so

insignificant, God can hardly see

them.’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ the other girl

agreed. Eleanor was pretty sure

her name was Beebi. Beebi was

what Eleanor’s mom would call ‘a

big girl.’ Much bigger than

Eleanor. Beebi’s gymsuit was even

a different color than everybody

else’s, like they’d had to special

order it for her. Which made

Eleanor feel bad about feeling so

bad about her own body … And

which also made her wonder why

she was the official fat girl in the

class.

They threw the pads in the

trash and pushed them under

some wet paper towels so that

nobody would find them.

If DeNice and Beebi hadn’t

been standing there, Eleanor might

have kept some of the pads, the

ones that didn’t have any writing

on them because, God, what a

waste.

She was late to lunch, then late

to English. And if she didn’t know

already that she liked that stupid

effing Asian kid, she knew it now.

Because even after everything

that had happened in the last

forty-five

minutes

–

and

everything that had happened in

the last twenty-four hours – all

Eleanor could think about was

seeing Park.

Park

When they got back on the bus,

she took his Walkman without

arguing. And without making him

put it on for her. At the stop

before hers, she handed it back.

‘You can borrow it,’ he said

quietly. ‘Listen to the rest of the

tape.’

‘I don’t want to break it,’ she

said.

‘You’re not going to break it.’

‘I don’t want to use up the

batteries.’

‘I don’t care about the

batteries.’

She looked up at him then, in

the eye, maybe for the first time

ever. Her hair looked even crazier

than it had this morning – more

frizzy than curly, like she was

working on a big red afro. But her

eyes were dead serious, cold

sober. Any cliché you’ve ever

heard used to describe Clint

Eastwood, those were Eleanor’s

eyes.

‘Really,’ she said. ‘You don’t

care.’

‘They’re just batteries,’ he

said.

She emptied the batteries and

the tape from Park’s Walkman,

handed it back to him, then got off

the bus without looking back.

God, she was weird.

Eleanor

The batteries started to die at 1:00

a.m., but Eleanor kept listening for

another hour until the voices

slowed to a stop.

CHAPTER 13

Eleanor

She remembered her books today,

and she was wearing fresh clothes.

She’d had to wash her jeans out in

the bathtub last night, so they were

still kind of damp … But

altogether, Eleanor felt a thousand

times

better

than

she

had

yesterday. Even her hair was

halfway

cooperating.

She’d

clumped it up into a bun and

wrapped it with a rubber band. It

was going to hurt like crazy trying

to tear the rubber band out, but at

least it was staying for now.

Best of all, she had Park’s

songs in her head – and in her

chest, somehow.

There was something about

the music on that tape. It felt

different. Like, it set her lungs and

her stomach on edge. There was

something exciting about it, and

something

nervous.

It

made

Eleanor feel like everything, like

t h e
world
, wasn’t what she’d

thought it was. And that was a

good thing. That was the greatest

thing.

When she got on the bus that

morning, she immediately lifted

her head to find Park. He was

looking up too, like he was

waiting for her. She couldn’t help

it, she grinned. Just for a second.

As soon as she sat down,

Eleanor slunk low in the seat, so

the

back-of-the-bus

ruffians

wouldn’t be able to see from the

top of her head how happy she

felt.

She could feel Park sitting next

to her, even though he was at least

six inches away.

She handed him yesterday’s

comics, then tugged nervously at

the green ribbon wound round her

wrist. She couldn’t think of what

to say. She started to worry that

maybe she wouldn’t say anything,

that she wouldn’t even thank him

…

Park’s hands were perfectly

still in his lap. And perfectly

perfect. Honey-colored with clean,

pink fingernails. Everything about

him was strong and slender. Every

time he moved he had a reason.

They were almost to school

when he broke the silence.

‘Did you listen?’

She nodded, letting her eyes

climb as high as his shoulders.

‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my

God. It was … just, like …’ – she

spread out all her fingers – ‘so

awesome.’

‘Are you being sarcastic? I

can’t tell.’

She looked up at his face,

even though she knew how that

was going to feel, like someone

was hooking her insides out

through her chest.

‘No. It was awesome. I didn’t

want to stop listening. That one

song – is it “Love Will Tear Us

Apart”?’

‘Yeah, Joy Division.’

‘Oh my God, that’s the best

beginning to a song ever.’

He imitated the guitar and the

drums.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I

just wanted to listen to those three

seconds over and over.’

‘You could have.’ His eyes

were smiling, his mouth only sort

of.

‘I didn’t want to waste the

batteries,’ she said.

He shook his head, like she

was dumb.

‘Plus,’ she said, ‘I love the rest

of it just as much, like the high

part, the melody, the dahhh, dah-