Eleanor & Park

‘Tonight …’ he said, ‘but not ever?’

She rolled her eyes. She was talking like him now. Like an idiot. She hoped it was too dark in the alley for him to see her blush.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She opened the door to the Impala; it weighed as much as a horse. Then she stopped and looked back at him. ‘But we’re okay, right?’

‘We’re perfect,’ he said, leaning forward quickly and kissing her cheek. ‘I’ll wait for you to get in.’

As soon as Eleanor slipped in the house, she could hear them fighting.

Richie was yelling about something, and her mom was crying. Eleanor moved toward her bedroom as quietly as she could.

All the little kids were on the floor, even Maisie. They were sleeping through the chaos. I wonder how often I sleep through it. Eleanor thought. She managed to swing onto her bed without stepping on anybody, but she landed on the cat. He squawked, and she pulled him up and onto her lap. ‘Shhh,’ she breathed, scratching his neck.

Richie shouted again – ‘ my house’– and Eleanor and the cat both jumped. Something crunched beneath her.

She reached under her leg and pulled out a badly crumpled comic book. An X-Men a

Damn it, Ben. She tried to smooth the comic out on her lap, but it was covered in some goop. The blanket felt wet, too, it was lotion or something

… No, liquid makeup. With little bits of broken glass. Eleanor carefully picked a shard out of the cat’s tail and set it aside, then wiped her wet fingers on his fur. A length of oily-brown cassette tape was wrapped around his leg. Eleanor pulled it free. She looked down the bed and blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dark …

Torn comic book pages.

Powder.

Little pools of green eyeshadow …

Miles of cassette tape.

Her headphones were snapped in half and hanging from the edge of the bunk. Her grapefruit box was at the end of the bed, and Eleanor knew before she reached for it that it would be light as air. Empty. The lid was ripped almost in half, and someone had written on it in bold black marker – with one of Eleanor’s markers.

do you think you can make a fool of me?

this is my house do you think you can hore around my neighborhood right under my nose and i’m not going to find out is that what you think? i know what you are and its over’

Eleanor stared at the lid and struggled to make the letters into words – but she couldn’t get past the familiar spill of lowercase letters.

Somewhere in the house her mother was crying like she was never going to stop.

CHAPTER 47 Eleanor

Eleanor considered her options.

CHAPTER 48 Eleanor

do i make you wet?

She pulled back the soiled blanket and set the cat on the clean sheet underneath. Then she climbed from the top bunk to the bottom. Her bookbag was sitting by the door. Eleanor un-zipped it without getting off the bed and took Park’s photo out of the side pocket. Then she was out the window and on the porch and ru

She didn’t slow down until she was on the next block, and then only because she didn’t know where to go. She was almost to Park’s house – she couldn’t go to Park’s house.

pop that cherry

‘Hey, Red.’

Eleanor ignored the girl’s voice. She looked back at the street. What if somebody had heard her leave the house? What if Richie came after her? She stepped off the sidewalk into someone’s yard. Behind a tree.

‘Hey. Eleanor.’

Eleanor looked around. She was standing in front of Steve’s house. The garage door was mostly closed, propped open with a baseball bat.

Eleanor could see someone moving inside, and Tina was walking down the driveway, holding a beer.

‘ Hey,’ Tina hissed. She looked as disgusted with Eleanor as ever. Eleanor thought about ru

‘Your stepdad’s been looking for you,’ Tina said. ‘He’s been driving around the neighborhood all goddamn night.’

‘What did you tell him?’ Eleanor said. Did Tina do this? Is that how he knew?

‘I asked him if his dick was bigger than his truck,’ Tina said. ‘I didn’t tell him anything.’

‘Did you tell him about Park?’

Tina narrowed her eyes. Then shook her head. ‘But somebody’s going to.’

suck me off

Eleanor looked back at the street. She had to hide. She had to get away from him.

‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’ Tina asked.

‘Nothing.’ A pair of headlights stopped at the end of the block. Eleanor put her arms over her head.

‘Come on,’ Tina said, in a voice Eleanor had never heard before – concerned. ‘You just need to stay out of his way until he cools off.’

Eleanor followed Tina up the driveway, crouching to get into the hazy, dark garage.

‘Is that Big Red?’ Steve was sitting on a couch. Mikey was there, too, on the floor, with one of the girls from the bus. There was hessian music, Black Sabbath, coming from a car up on blocks in the middle of the garage.

‘Sit down,’ Tina said, pointing to the other end of the couch.

‘You’re in trouble, Big Red,’ Steve said.

‘Your daddy’s looking for you.’ Steve was gri

‘It’s her stepdad,’ Tina said.

‘ Stepdad,’ Steve shouted, throwing a beer can across the garage. ‘Your fucking step dad? Do you want me to kill him for you? I’m go

Tina opened a beer and shoved it into Eleanor’s lap. Eleanor took it, just to have something to hold. ‘Drink up,’ Tina said.

Eleanor took a sip obediently. It tasted sharp and yellow.

‘We should play quarters,’ Steve slurred.

‘Hey, Red, do you have any quarters?’ Eleanor shook her head.

Tina perched next to him on the arm of the couch and lit a cigarette. ‘We had quarters,’ she said. ‘We spent them on beer, remember?’

‘Those weren’t quarters,’ Steve said. ‘That was a ten.’

Tina closed her eyes and blew smoke at the ceiling.

Eleanor closed her eyes, too. She tried to think about what she should do next, but nothing came to her. The music on the car radio switched from Sabbath to ACDC to Zeppelin. Steve sang along; his voice was surprisingly light. ‘Hangman, hangman, turn your head a while …’

Eleanor listened to Steve sing song after song over the wet hammer of her heartbeat. The beer can went warm in her hand.

i know your a slut you smell like cum She stood up. ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

‘God,’ Tina said, ‘relax. He won’t find you here. He’s probably already at the Rail drinking it off.’

‘No,’ Eleanor said. ‘He’s going to kill me.’

It was true, she realized, even if it wasn’t.

Tina’s face was hard. ‘So, where you go

‘Away … I have to tell Park.’ Park

Park couldn’t sleep.

That night, before they’d climbed back into the front seat of the Impala, he’d taken off all of Eleanor’s layers and even unpi

then laid her down on the blue upholstery. She’d looked like a vision there, a mermaid. Cool white in the darkness, the freckles gathered on her shoulders and cheeks like cream rising to the top.

The sight of her. She still glowed on the inside of his eyelids.

It was going to be constant torture now that he knew what she was like under her clothes –

and there wasn’t a next time in their near future.

Tonight was another fluke, a lucky break, a gift.

…

‘ Park,’ someone said.

Park sat up in bed and looked around dumbly.

‘ Park.’ There was a knock at the window, and he scrambled over to it, pulling back the curtain.

It was Steve. Right behind the glass, gri