Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

  CHAPTER 39

  Eleanor

  Thursday night after dinner, Park’s grandma came over to have her hair set, and his mom disappeared into the garage. His dad was messing with the plumbing under the sink, replacing the garbage disposal. Park was trying to tell Eleanor about a tape he’d bought. Elvis Costello. He couldn’t shut up about it.

  ‘There are a couple songs you might like, ballady stuff. But the rest is really fast.’

  ‘Like punk?’ She wrinkled her nose. She could stand a few Dead Milkmen songs, but other than that, she hated Park’s punk music. ‘I feel like they’re yelling at me,’ she’d say when he tried to put punk on her mix tapes. ‘Stop yelling at me, Glenn Danzig!’

  ‘That’s Henry Rollins.’

  ‘They all sound the same when they’re yelling at me.’

  Lately, Park was really into New Wave music. Or post-punk or something. He went through bands like Eleanor went through books.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘Elvis Costello is more musical. Gentler. I’ll dub you a copy.’

  ‘Or you could just play it for me. Now.’

  Park tilted his head. ‘That would involve going into my room.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, not quite casually.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked. ‘Months of no, and now, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’re always saying that your mom doesn’t care …’

  ‘My mom doesn’t care.’

  ‘So?’

  Park stood up jerkily, grinning, and pulled her up. He stopped at the kitchen. ‘We’re going to listen to music in my room.’

  ‘Fine,’ his dad said from under the sink. ‘Just don’t get anybody pregnant.’

  That should have been embarrassing, but Park’s dad had a way of cutting past embarrassing. Eleanor wished he wasn’t ignoring them all the time.

  Park’s mom probably let him have girls in his room because you could practically see into his room from the living room, and you had to walk by to get to the bathroom.

  But, to Eleanor, it still felt incredibly private.

  She couldn’t get over the fact that Park spent most of his time in this room horizontal. (It was only a ninety-degree difference, but imagining him that way blew all her fuses.) Also, he changed his clothes in here.

  There was no place to sit but on his bed, which Eleanor wouldn’t consider. So they sat between his bed and his stereo, where there was just enough room to sit with their legs bent.

  As soon as they sat down, Park started fast-forwarding through the Elvis Costello tape. He had stacks and stacks of tapes, and Eleanor pulled a few out to look at them.

  ‘Ah …’ Park said, pained.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those’re alphabetized.’

  ‘It’s okay. I know the alphabet.’

  ‘Right.’ He looked embarrassed. ‘Sorry. Whenever Cal comes over, he always messes them up. Okay, this is the song I wanted you to hear. Listen.’

  ‘Cal comes over?’

  ‘Yeah, sometimes.’ Park turned up the volume. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘Because now I just come over …’

  ‘Which is okay with me because I like you a lot more.’

  ‘But don’t you miss your other friends?’ she asked.

  ‘You’re not listening,’ he said.

  ‘Neither are you.’

  He paused the tape, like he didn’t want to waste this song as background music. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about whether I miss Cal? I eat lunch with him almost every day.’

  ‘And he doesn’t mind that you spend the rest of your time with me now? None of your friends mind?’

  Park ran his hand through his hair. ‘I still see them all at school … I don’t know, I don’t really miss them, I’ve never really missed anybody but you.’

  ‘But you don’t miss me now,’ she said. ‘We’re together all the time.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I miss you constantly.’

  Even though Park washed his face as soon as he got home, the black around his eyes didn’t come off completely. It made everything he did lately seem more dramatic.

  ‘That’s crazy,’ she said.

  Park started laughing. ‘I know …’

  She wanted to tell him about Maisie and Ben and their days being numbered, etc., but he wouldn’t understand, and what did she expect him to do?

  Park pushed play.

  ‘What’s this song called?’ she asked.

  “‘Alison.”’

  Park

  Park played Elvis Costello for her – and Joe Jackson, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.

  She teased him because it was all so pretty and melodic, and ‘in the same phylum as Hall & Oates,’ and he threatened to evict her from his room.

  When his mom came to check on them, they were sitting with a hundred cassette tapes between them, and as soon as she walked away, Park leaned over and kissed Eleanor. It seemed like the best time not to get caught.

  She was a little too far away, so he put his hand on her back and pulled her toward him. He tried to do it like it was something he did all the time, as if touching her someplace new wasn’t like discovering the Northwest Passage.

  Eleanor came closer. She put her hands on the floor between them and leaned into him, which was so encouraging that he put his other hand on her waist. And then it was too much to be almost-but-not-really holding her. Park rocked forward onto his knees and pulled her tighter.

  Half a dozen cassette tapes cracked under their weight. Eleanor fell back, and Park fell forward.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Oh, God … look, what we did to Meat is Murder.’

  Park sat back and looked at the tapes. He wanted to sweep them out of the way. ‘It’s mostly just the cases, I think,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He started picking up the broken plastic.

  ‘The Smiths and the Smithereens …’ she said. ‘We even broke them in alphabetical order.’

  He tried to smile at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘I think it’s almost eight, anyway.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, I’ll walk you.’

  She stood up and Park followed her. They walked outside and down the walk, and when they got to his grandparents’ driveway, Eleanor didn’t stop.

  Eleanor

  Maisie smelled like an Avon lady, and she was made up like the whore of Babylon. They were definitely going to get caught. Talk about a house of effing cards. Jee. Zus.

  And Eleanor couldn’t even think strategy, because all she could think about was Park’s hands on her waist and her back and her stomach – which all must feel like nothing he’d ever encountered. Everyone in Park’s family was skinny enough to be in a Special K commercial. Even his grandma.

  Eleanor could only be in that scene where the actress pinches an inch, then looks at the camera like the world is going to end.

  Actually, she’d have to lose weight to be in that scene. You could pinch an inch – or two, or three – all over Eleanor’s body. You could probably pinch an inch on her forehead.

  Holding hands was fine. Her hands weren’t a complete embarrassment. And kissing seemed safe because fat lips are okay – and because Park usually closed his eyes.

  But there was no safe place on Eleanor’s torso. There was no place from her neck to her knees where she had any discernible infrastructure.

  As soon as Park touched her waist, she’d sucked in her stomach and pitched forward. Which led to all the collateral damage … which made her feel like Godzilla. (But even Godzilla wasn’t fat. He was just ginormous.)

  The maddening part was, Eleanor wanted Park to touch her again. She wanted him to touch her constantly. Even if it led to Park deciding that she was way too much like a walrus to remain his girlfriend … That’s how good it felt. She was like one of those dogs who’ve tasted human blood and can’t stop biting. A walrus who’s tasted human blood.

  CHAPTER 40

  Eleanor

  Park wanted
Eleanor to start checking her books now, especially after gym class.

  ‘Because if it is Tina,’ he said – you could tell that he still didn’t believe that it was, ‘you need to tell somebody.’

  ‘Tell who?’ They were sitting in his room, leaning against his bed, trying to pretend that Park didn’t have his arm around her for the first time since she crushed his cassette tapes. Just barely, not quite around her.

  ‘You could tell Mrs Dunne,’ he said. ‘She likes you.’

  ‘Okay, so I tell Mrs Dunne, and I show her whatever awful thing Tina has misspelled on my books – and then Mrs Dunne asks, “How do you know that Tina wrote that?” She’ll be just as skeptical as you were, but without the complicated romantic history …’

  ‘There’s no complicated romantic history,’ Park said.

  ‘Did you kiss her?’ Eleanor hadn’t meant to ask that. Out loud. It was almost like she’d asked it so many times in her head that it leaked out.

  ‘Mrs Dunne? No. But we’ve hugged a lot.’

  ‘You know what I mean … Did you kiss her?’

  She was sure that he’d kissed her. She was sure that they’d done other stuff, too. Tina was so little, Park could probably wrap his arms all the way around her and shake his own hands at her waist.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said.

  ‘Because you did,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does matter. Was it your first kiss?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t count. It was like a practice pitch.’

  ‘What are the other reasons?’

  ‘It was Tina, I was twelve, I didn’t even like girls yet …’

  ‘But you’ll always remember it,’ she said. ‘It was your first kiss.’

  ‘I’ll remember that it didn’t matter,’ Park said.

  Eleanor wanted to let this go – the most trustworthy voices in her head were shouting, ‘Let it go!’

  ‘But …’ she said, ‘how could you kiss her?’

  ‘I was twelve.’

  ‘But she’s awful.’

  ‘She was twelve, too.’

  ‘But … how could you kiss her and then kiss me?’

  ‘I didn’t even know you existed.’ Park’s arm suddenly made contact, full contact, with Eleanor’s waist. He pressed into her side, and she sat up, instinctively, trying to spread herself thinner.

  ‘There aren’t even roads between Tina and me …’ she said. ‘How could you like us both? Did you have a life-changing head injury in junior high?’

  Park put his other arm around her. ‘Please. Listen to me. It was nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters,’ Eleanor whispered. Now that his arms were around her, there was almost no space between them. ‘Because you were the first person I ever kissed. And that matters.’

  He set his forehead against hers. She didn’t know what to do with her eyes or her hands.

  ‘Nothing before you counts,’ he said. ‘And I can’t even imagine an after.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t talk about after.’

  ‘I just meant that … I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too … That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I’m trying to say is, you’re it. This is it for me.’

  ‘Don’t.’ She didn’t want him to talk like this. She’d meant to push him, but not this far.

  ‘Eleanor …’

  ‘I don’t want to think about an after.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying, maybe there won’t be one.’

  ‘Of course there will.’ She put her hands on his chest, so that she could push him away if she had to. ‘I mean … God, of course there will. It’s not like we’re going to get married, Park.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Stop.’ She tried to roll her eyes, but it hurt.

  ‘I’m not proposing,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying … I love you. And I can’t imagine stopping …’

  She shook her head. ‘But you’re twelve.’

  ‘I’m sixteen …’ he said. ‘Bono was fifteen when he met his wife, and Robert Smith was fourteen …’

  ‘Romeo, sweet Romeo …’

  ‘It’s not like that, Eleanor, and you know it.’ Park’s arms were tight around her. All the playfulness in his voice was gone. ‘There’s no reason to think we’re going to stop loving each other,’ he said. ‘And there’s every reason to think that we won’t.’

  I never said I loved you, Eleanor thought.

  And even after he kissed her, she kept her hands on his chest.

  So. Anyway. Park wanted her to start checking her book covers. Especially after gym class. So now Eleanor waited until almost everybody else had changed and left the locker room, and then she carefully examined her books for anything suspicious.

  It was all very clinical.

  DeNice and Beebi usually waited with her. It meant that they were late for lunch sometimes, but it also meant that they could all change in relative privacy, which they should have thought of months ago.

  There didn’t seem to be anything pervy written on Eleanor’s books today. In fact, Tina had ignored her all through class. Even Tina’s sidekicks (even thuggy Annette) seemed bored with Eleanor.

  ‘I think they’ve run out of ways to make fun of my hair,’ Eleanor said to DeNice while she looked over her algebra book.

  ‘They could call you “Ronald McDonald,”’ DeNice said. ‘Have they called you that?’

  ‘Or “Wendy,”’ Beebi said, lowering her voice and wolfing, ‘Where’s the beef?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Eleanor said, looking around the locker room. ‘Little pitchers.’

  ‘They’re all gone,’ DeNice said. ‘Everybody’s gone. They’re all in the cafeteria, eating my Macho Nachos. Hurry up, girl.’

  ‘You go ahead,’ Eleanor said. ‘Get us a place in line. I still have to change.’

  ‘All right,’ DeNice said, ‘but stop looking at those books. You said it yourself, there’s nothing there. Come on, Beebi.’

  Eleanor started packing up her books. She heard Beebi shout, ‘Where’s the beef?’ from the locker-room door. Dork. Eleanor opened up her locker.

  It was empty.

  Huh.

  She tried the one above it. Nothing. And nothing below. No …

  Eleanor started over, opening all the lockers on the wall, then moving on to the next wall, trying not to panic. Maybe they’d just moved her clothes. Ha. Funny. Super-good joke, Tina.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mrs Burt asked.

  ‘Looking for my clothes,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘You should use the same locker every time, so it’s easy to remember.’

  ‘No, somebody … I mean, I think somebody took them.’

  ‘Those little bitches …’ Mrs Burt sighed. Like she couldn’t imagine a bigger hassle.

  Mrs Burt started opening lockers at the other end of the room. Eleanor checked the trash and the showers. Then Mrs Burt called out from the bathroom. ‘Found them!’

  Eleanor walked into the bathroom. The floor was wet, and Mrs Burt was standing in a stall. ‘I’ll get a bag,’ Mrs Burt said, pushing past Eleanor.

  Eleanor looked down at the toilet. Even though she knew what she was going to see there, it still felt like a wet slap in the face. Her new jeans and her cowboy shirt were in a dark pile in the bowl, and her shoes were crammed under the lip. Somebody had flushed the toilet, and there was water still spilling over the edge. Eleanor watched it run.

  ‘Here,’ Mrs Burt said, handing Eleanor a yellow Food 4 Less bag. ‘Fish ’em out.’

  ‘I don’t want them,’ Eleanor said, backing away. She couldn’t wear them anymore anyway. Everybody would know those were her toilet clothes.

  ‘Well, you can’t leave them here,’ Mrs Burt said. ‘Fish them out.’ Eleanor stared at her clothes. ‘Come on,’ Mrs Burt said.

  Elean
or reached into the toilet and felt tears slipping down her cheeks. Mrs Burt held the bag open. ‘You’ve got to stop letting them get to you, you know,’ she said. ‘You just encourage them.’

  Yeah, thanks, Eleanor thought, wringing out her jeans over the toilet. She wanted to wipe her eyes, but her hands were wet.

  Mrs Burt handed her the bag. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll write you a pass.’

  ‘For where?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘Your counselor’s office.’

  Eleanor took a sharp breath. ‘I can’t walk down the hall like this.’

  ‘What do you want from me, Eleanor?’ That was obviously a rhetorical question; Mrs Burt wasn’t even looking at her. Eleanor followed her to the coach’s office and waited for the pass.

  As soon as she got out to the hallway, the tears came on hard. She couldn’t walk through the school like this – in her gymsuit. In front of boys … And everybody. In front of Tina. God, Tina was probably selling tickets outside the cafeteria. Eleanor couldn’t do it. Not like this.

  It wasn’t just that her gymsuit was ugly. (Polyester. One-piece. Red-and-white stripes with an extra-long white zipper.)

  It was also extremely tight.

  The shorts just barely cleared her underwear, and the fabric was stretched so tight over her chest, the seams were starting to pop under her arms.

  She was a tragedy in that gymsuit. A ten-car pileup.

  People were already showing up for the next gym class. A few freshman girls looked at Eleanor, then started whispering. Her bag was dripping.

  Before she could think it through, Eleanor turned the wrong way down the hall and headed for the door to the football field. She acted like she was supposed to be walking out of the building in the middle of the day, like she was on some kind of weeping/half-dressed/drippy-bag mission.

  The door clicked locked behind her, and Eleanor crouched against it, letting herself fall apart. Just for a minute. God. God.

  There was a trash can sitting right outside the door, and she got up and hurled the Food 4 Less bag into it. She wiped her eyes with her gymsuit. Okay, she told herself, taking a deep breath, get it together. Don’t let them get to you. Those were her new jeans in the trash. And her favorite shoes. Her Vans. She walked over to the trash and shook her head, reaching down for the bag. Fuck you, Tina. Fuck you to the moon.