‘Nobody rents a tux for homecoming.’
‘So who’s going to look like the classiest guy there? Besides, what do you know – you’re not even going – to the dance, that is. The football game, however? Different story.’
‘I don’t even like football,’ Park said, looking back at the door.
‘Could you stop being the worst friend in the world for, like, five minutes?’
Park looked up at the clock. ‘Yes.’
‘Please,’ Call said, ‘do me this one favor.
There’s a whole group of cool people going, and if you go, Kim will sit with us. You’re a Kim magnet.’
‘Don’t you see what a problem that is?’
‘No. It’s like I’ve found the perfect bait for my Kim trap.’
‘Stop saying her name like that.’
‘Why? She’s not here yet, is she?’
Park glanced over his shoulder. ‘Can’t you just like a girl who likes you back?’
‘None of them like me back,’ Call said. ‘I may as well like the one I really want. Come on, please. Come to the game on Friday – for me.’
‘I don’t know …’ Park said.
‘Wow, what’s up with her. She looks like she just killed somebody for fun.’
Park whipped his head around. Eleanor. Smiling at him.
She had the kind of smile you see in tooth-paste commercials, where you can see practically all of somebody’s teeth. She should smile like that all the time, Park thought; it made her face cross over from weird to beautiful. He wanted to make her smile like that constantly.
Mr Stessman pretended to fall against the chalkboard when he walked in. ‘Good God, Eleanor, stop. You’re blinding me. Is that why you keep that smile locked away, because it’s too powerful for mortal man?’
She looked down self-consciously and flattened her smile into a smirk.
‘Psst,’ Call said. Kim was sitting down between them. Call locked his fingers together like he was begging. Park sighed and nodded his head.
Eleanor
She waited for the phone call from her dad to go sour on her. (Conversations with her dad were like whiplash; they didn’t always hurt right away.)
But it didn’t. Nothing could bring Eleanor down. Nothing could drive Park’s words from her head.
He missed her …
Who knows what he missed. Her fatness. Her weirdness. The fact that she couldn’t talk to him like a regular person. Whatever. Whatever perversion caused him to like her was his problem.
But he did like her, she was sure of it.
At least for now.
For today.
He liked her. He missed her.
She was so distracted in gym class, she actually forgot not to try. They were playing basketball, and Eleanor caught the ball, colliding with one of Tina’s friends, a jumpy, wiry girl named Annette. ‘Are you trying to start something?’ Annette demanded, pushing forward – pushing the ball into Eleanor’s chest. ‘Are you? Come on, then, let’s go. Come on.’ Eleanor took a few steps back, out of bounds, and waited for Mrs Burt to blow the whistle.
Annette stayed mad for the rest of the game, but Eleanor didn’t let it get to her.
That feeling she used to have when she was sitting next to Park on the bus – that feeling that she was on base, that she was safe for the moment – she could summon it now. Like a force field. Like she was the Invisible Girl.
That would make Park Mr Fantastic.
CHAPTER 18
Eleanor
Her mom wasn’t going to let her babysit.
‘He has four children,’ her mother said. She was rolling out dough for tortillas. ‘Did he forget that?
Eleanor had stupidly told her mother about her dad’s phone call in front of her brothers and sister – they’d all gotten really excited. And then Eleanor had to tell them that they weren’t invited, that it was just babysitting, anyway, and that Dad wasn’t even going to be there.
Mouse had started to cry, and Maisie got mad and stormed out. Ben asked Eleanor if she’d call Dad back to see if he could come along to help.
‘Tell him I babysit all the time,’ Ben said.
‘Your father is a piece of work,’ her mother said. ‘Every time, he breaks your hearts. And every time, he expects me to pick up the pieces.’
Pick up, sweep aside – same difference in her mom’s world. Eleanor didn’t argue.
‘Please let me go,’ she said.
‘Why do you want to go?’ her mom asked.
‘Why do you even care about him? He’s never cared about you.’
God. Even if it were true, it still hurt to hear it that way.
‘I don’t care,’ Eleanor said. ‘I just need to get out of here. I haven’t been anywhere but school in two months. Plus, he said he’d pay me.’
‘If he has extra money sitting around, maybe he should pay his child support.’
‘Mom … it’s ten dollars. Please.’
Her mother sighed. ‘Fine. I’ll talk to Richie.’
‘No. Don’t talk to Richie. He’ll just say no.
And, anyway, he can’t tell me that I can’t see my father.’
‘Richie is the head of this household,’ her mom said. ‘Richie is the one who puts food on our table.’
What food? Eleanor wanted to ask. And, for that matter, what table? They ate on the couch or on the floor or sitting on the back steps holding paper plates. Besides, Richie would say no just for the pleasure of saying it. It would make him feel like the King of Spain. Which was probably why her mom wanted to give him the chance.
‘Mom.’ Eleanor put her face in her hand and leaned against the refrigerator. ‘ Please.’
‘Oh, fine,’ her mother said bitterly. ‘Fine. But if he gives you any money, you can split it with your brothers and sister. That’s the least you can do.’
They could have it all. All Eleanor wanted was the chance to talk to Park on the phone. To be able to talk to him without every inbred hells-pawn in the Flats listening.
The next morning on the bus, while Park ran his finger along the inside of her bracelet, Eleanor asked him for his phone number.
He started laughing.
‘Why is that funny?’ she asked.
‘Because,’ he said quietly. They said everything quietly, even though everyone else on the bus roared, even though you’d have to shout into a megaphone to be heard over all the cursing and idiocy. ‘I feel like you’re hitting on me,’ he said.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask for your number,’ she said. ‘You’ve never asked for mine.’
He looked up at her through his bangs.
‘I figured you weren’t allowed to talk on the phone … after that time with your stepdad.’
‘I probably wouldn’t be, if I had a phone.’
She usually tried not to tell Park things like that.
Like, all the things she didn’t have. She waited for him to react, but he didn’t. He just ran his thumb along the veins in her wrist.
‘Then why do you want my number?’
God, she thought, never mind. ‘You don’t have to give it to me.’