Eleanor & Park

He laughed again. His face completely changed when he laughed. He didn’t have dimples, exactly, but the sides of his face folded in on themselves, and his eyes almost disappeared.

‘Just wait,’ he said. Park

That morning, in English, Park noticed that Eleanor’s hair came to a soft red point on the back of her neck. Eleanor

That afternoon, in history, Eleanor noticed that Park chewed on his pencil when he was thinking.

And that the girl sitting behind him – what’s her name, Kim, with the giant breasts and the orange Esprit bag – obviously had a crush on him. Park

That night, Park made a tape with the Joy Division song on it, over and over again.

He emptied all his handheld video games and Josh’s remote-control cars, and called his grandma to tell her that all he wanted for his birthday in November was double-A batteries.

CHAPTER 14 Eleanor

‘I know she doesn’t think I’m going to jump over that thing,’ DeNice said.

DeNice and the other girl, the big girl, Beebi, talked to Eleanor now in gym. (Because being as-saulted with maxi pads is a great way to win friends and influence people.) Today in class, their gym teacher, Mrs Burt, had shown them how to swing over a thousand-year-old gymnastics horse. She said that next time everybody had to try.

‘She has got another thing coming,’ DeNice said after class, in the locker room. ‘Do I look like Mary Lou Retton?’

Beebi giggled. ‘Better tell her you didn’t eat your Wheaties.’

Actually, Eleanor thought, DeNice did kind of look like a gymnast. With her little-girl bangs and braids. She looked way too young to be in high school, and her clothes just made it worse.

Puffed-sleeve shirts, overalls, matching ponytail balls … She wore her gymsuit baggy, like a romper.

Eleanor wasn’t scared of the horse, but she didn’t want to have to run down the mats with the whole class watching her. She didn’t want to run, period. It made her breasts feel like they were going to detach from her body.

‘I’m going to tell Mrs Burt that my mom doesn’t want me to do anything that might rup-ture my hymen,’ Eleanor said. ‘For religious reasons.’

‘For real?’ Beebi asked.

‘No,’ Eleanor said, giggling. ‘Well. Actually

…’

‘You’re nasty,’ DeNice said, hitching up her overalls.

Eleanor put her T-shirt on over her head then wriggled out of her gymsuit, using the shirt as cover.

‘Are you coming?’ DeNice asked.

‘Well, I’m probably not going to start skipping class now just because of gymnastics,’

Eleanor said, hopping to pull up her jeans.

‘No, are you coming to lunch?’

‘Oh,’ Eleanor said, looking up. They were waiting for her at the end of the lockers. ‘Yeah.’

‘Then hurry up, Miss Jackson.’

She sat with DeNice and Beebi at their usual table by the windows. During passing period, Eleanor saw Park walk by. Park

‘Why can’t you get your driver’s license by homecoming?’ Call asked.

Mr Stessman had them in small groups. They were supposed to be comparing Juliet to Ophelia.

‘Because I can’t bend time and space,’ Park said. Eleanor was sitting across the room by the windows. She was paired up with a guy named Eric, a basketball player. He was talking, and Eleanor was frowning at him.

‘If you had your car,’ Call said, ‘we could ask Kim.’

‘You can ask Kim,’ Park said.

Eric was one of those tall guys who always walked with his shoulders about a foot behind his hips. Constantly doing the limbo. Like he was afraid to hit his head on every door jamb.

‘She wants to go with a group,’ Call said.

‘Plus I think she likes you.’

‘What? I don’t want to go to homecoming with Kim. I don’t even like her. I mean, you know … You like her.’

‘I know. That’s why the plan works. We all go to homecoming together. She figures out you don’t like her, she’s miserable, and guess who’s standing right there, asking her to slow dance?’

‘I don’t want to make Kim miserable.’

‘It’s her or me, man.’

Eric said something else, and Eleanor frowned again. Then she looked over at Park –

and stopped frowning. Park smiled.

‘One minute,’ Mr Stessman said.

‘Crap,’ Call said. ‘What have we got …

Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader?’ Eleanor

‘So Psylocke is another girl telepath?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Park said.

Every morning when Eleanor got on the bus, she worried that Park wouldn’t take off his headphones. That he would stop talking to her as suddenly as he’d started … And if that happened – if she got on the bus one day and he didn’t look up

– she didn’t want him to see how devastated it would make her.

So far, it hadn’t happened.

So far, they hadn’t stopped talking. Like, literally. They talked every second they were sitting next to each other. And almost every conversation started with the words ‘what do you think

…’

What did Eleanor think about that U2 album?

She loved it.

What did Park think of Miami Vice? He thought it was boring.

‘Yes,’ they said when they agreed with each other. Back and forth – ‘Yes,’ ‘ Yes,’ ‘ Yes!’

‘I know.’

‘ Exactly.’

‘ Right? ’

They agreed about everything important and argued about everything else. And that was good, too, because whenever they argued, Eleanor could always crack Park up.

‘Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?’ she asked.

‘This one has purple hair.’

‘It’s all so sexist.’

Park’s eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.

‘The X-Men aren’t sexist,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They’re a metaphor for acceptance; they’ve sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but …’

‘There’s no but,’ he said, laughing.

‘ But,’ Eleanor insisted, ‘the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that’s their super-power, thinking. And Shadowcat’s power is even worse – she disappears.’

‘She becomes intangible,’ Park said. ‘That’s different.’

‘It’s still something you could do in the middle of a tea party,’ Eleanor said.

‘Not if you were holding hot tea. Plus, you’re forgetting Storm.’

‘I’m not forgetting Storm. She controls the weather with her head; it’s still just thinking.

Which is about all she could do in those boots.’

‘She has a cool Mohawk …’ Park said.

‘Irrelevant,’ Eleanor answered.

Park leaned his head back against the seat, smiling, and looked at the ceiling. ‘The X-Men aren’t sexist.’

‘Are you trying to think of an empowered X-woman?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How about Dazzler?

She’s a living disco ball. Or the White Queen?

She thinks really hard while wearing spotless white lingerie.’

‘What kind of power would you want?’ he asked, changing the subject. He turned his face toward her, laying his cheek against the top of the seat. Smiling.

‘I’d want to fly,’ Eleanor said, looking away from him. ‘I know it’s not very useful, but … it’s flying.’

‘ Yes,’ he said. Park

‘Damn, Park, are you going on a Ninja mission?’

‘Ninjas wear black, Steve.’

‘What?’

Park should have gone inside to change after taekwando, but his dad said he had to be back by 9:00, and that gave him less than an hour to show Eleanor.

Steve was outside working on his Camaro.

He didn’t have his license yet either, but he was getting ready.

‘Going to see your girlfriend?’ he called to Park.

‘What?’

‘Sneaking out to see your girlfriend? Bloody Mary?’

‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Park said, then swallowed.

‘Sneaking out Ninja-style,’ Steve said.

Park shook his head and broke into a run.