Eleanor & Park

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. Fu

‘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.

Eleanor 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.

She took another deep breath and started walking.

There were no classrooms at this end of the school, so at least no one was watching her. She stuck close to the building, and when she turned the corner, she walked under a row of windows.

She thought about walking right home, but that might be worse. It’d definitely be longer.

If she could just get to the front door, the counselor’s offices were right inside. Mrs Du

The security guard at the front door acted like girls were wandering in and out in their gym clothes all day long. He glanced at Eleanor’s pass and waved her on.

Almost there, Eleanor thought. Don’t run, just a few more doors …

She really should have expected Park to walk through one of them.

Ever since the first day they’d met, Eleanor was always seeing him in unexpected places. It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.

Park walked out of a door on the opposite side of the hallway and stopped as soon as he saw her. She tried to look away, but she didn’t do it soon enough. Park’s face turned red. He stared at her. She pulled down her shorts and stumbled forward, ru

‘You don’t have to go back there,’ her mom said after Eleanor had told her the whole story. (Almost the whole story.)

Eleanor thought for a moment about what she’d do if she didn’t go back to school. Stay here all day? And then what?

‘It’s okay,’ she said. Mrs Du

Eleanor’s mom dumped the yellow plastic bag into the bathtub and started rinsing out the clothes, wrinkling her nose, even though they didn’t smell.

‘Girls are so mean …’ she said. ‘You’re lucky to have one friend you can trust.’

Eleanor must have looked confused.

‘Tina,’ her mom said. ‘You’re lucky to have Tina.’

Eleanor nodded.

She stayed home that night. Even though it was Friday, and Park’s family always watched movies and made popcorn in the air popper on Fridays.

She couldn’t face him.

All she’d see was the look on his face in the hallway. She’d feel like she was still standing there in her gymsuit.

CHAPTER 41 Park

Park went to bed early. His mom kept bothering him about Eleanor. ‘Where’s Eleanor tonight?’

‘She ru

Every time she said Eleanor’s name, Park felt his face go hot.

‘I can tell that something wrong,’ his mom said at di

‘No,’ Park said. ‘I think maybe she went home sick. She wasn’t on the bus.’

‘I have a girlfriend now,’ Josh said, ‘can she start coming over?’

‘No girlfriend,’ their mom said, ‘too young.’

‘I’m almost thirteen!’

‘Sure,’ their dad said, ‘your girlfriend can come over. If you’re willing to give up your Nintendo.’

‘What?’ Josh was stricken. ‘Why?’

‘Because I said so,’ his dad said. ‘Is it a deal?’

‘No! No way,’ Josh said. ‘Does Park have to give up Nintendo?’

‘Yep. Is that okay with you, Park?’

‘Fine.’

‘I’m like Billy Jack,’ their dad said, ‘a warri-or and a wise-man.’

It wasn’t much of a conversation, but it was the most his dad had said to Park in weeks.