‘Hey, Park, what the fuck, man, are you wearing makeup?’
‘Yeah,’ Park said, holding onto his backpack.
Everyone around Steve tittered, waiting to see what would happen next.
‘You kind of look like Ozzy, man,’ Steve said. ‘You look ready to bite the head off a f**king bat.’
Everybody laughed. Steve bared his teeth at Tina and growled, and then it was over.
When Eleanor got on the bus, she was in a good mood. ‘You’re here! I thought maybe you were sick when you weren’t at my corner.’ He looked up at her. She looked surprised, then sat down quietly and looked at her hands.
‘Do I look like one of the Solid Gold dancers?’ he asked finally, when he couldn’t take any more quiet.
‘No,’ she said, sidelong glancing, ‘you look
…’
‘Unsettling?’ he asked.
She laughed and nodded.
‘Unsettling, how?’ he asked her.
She kissed him with tongue. On the bus.
CHAPTER 36
Park
Park told Eleanor not to come over after school.
He figured he was grounded. He washed his face as soon as he got home and sent himself to his room.
His mom came in to check on him.
‘Am I grounded?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Did you have a good day at school?’
Meaning, did anyone try to flush his face down the toilet?
‘It was fine,’ he said.
A couple of kids had called Park names in the halls, but it didn’t hurt like he thought it might.
Lots of other people said he looked cool.
His mom sat on his bed. She looked like she’d had a long day. You could see her lipliner.
She stared at a jumble of Star Wars action figures piled up on the shelf over his bed. He hadn’t touched them for years.
‘Park,’ she said, ‘do you … want to look like girl? Is that what this about? Eleanor dress like boy. You look like girl?’
‘No …’ Park said. ‘I just like it. I like the way it feels.’
‘Like girl?’
‘ No,’ he said. ‘Like myself.’
‘Your dad …’
‘I don’t want to talk about him.’
His mother sat for another minute, then left.
Park stayed in his room until Josh came to get him for dinner. His dad didn’t look up when Park sat down.
‘Where’s Eleanor?’ his dad asked.
‘I thought I was grounded.’
‘You’re not grounded,’ his dad said, concentrating on his meat loaf.
Park looked around the table. Only Josh would look back at him. ‘Are you going to talk to me about this morning?’ Park asked.
His dad took another bite, chewed it carefully, then swallowed. ‘No, Park, at the moment I can’t think of a single thing I’d like to say to you.’
CHAPTER 37
Eleanor
Park was right. They were never alone.
She thought about sneaking out again, but the risk was incomprehensible, and it was so effing cold out she’d probably lose an ear to frostbite.
Which her mom would definitely notice.
She’d already noticed the mascara. (Even though it was brown and said ‘Subtle, Natural Look’ right on the package.)
‘Tina gave it to me,’ Eleanor said. ‘Her mom’s an Avon lady.’
If she just changed Park’s name to ‘Tina’
every time she lied, it only felt like one big lie instead of a million small ones.
It was kind of funny to think about hanging out at Tina’s house every day, doing each other’s nails, trying on lip gloss …
It would be awful if her mom actually met Tina somewhere, but that didn’t seem likely – her mom never talked to anybody in the neighborhood. If you weren’t born in the Flats (if your family didn’t go back ten generations, if your parents didn’t have the same great-great-grandparents), you were an outsider.
Park always said that was why people left him alone, even though he was weird and Asian.
Because his family had owned their land back when the neighborhood was still cornfields.
Park. Eleanor blushed whenever she thought about him. She’d probably always done that, but now it was worse. Because he was cute and cool before, but lately he seemed so much more of both.
Even DeNice and Beebi thought so.
‘He looks like a rock star,’ DeNice said.
‘He looks like Ell DeBarge,’ Beebi agreed.
He looked like himself, Eleanor thought, but bolder. Like Park with the volume turned way up.
Park
They were never alone.
They tried to make the walk from the bus to Park’s house last forever, and sometimes, they’d hang out on his front steps a while … until his mom opened the door and told them to come in from the cold.
Maybe it would be better this summer. They could go outside. Maybe they could take walks.
Maybe he’d get his driver’s license after all …
No. His dad hadn’t even spoken to him since the day they fought.
‘What’s up with your dad?’ Eleanor asked him. She was standing one step below him on his front stoop.
‘He’s mad at me.’
‘For what?’
‘For not being like him.’
Eleanor looked dubious. ‘Has he been mad at you for the last sixteen years?’
‘Basically.’
‘But it always seemed like you got along …’
she said.
‘No,’ Park said, ‘never. I mean, we were kind of getting along for a while, because I finally got in a fight, and because he thought my mom was being too hard on you.’
‘I knew she didn’t like me!’ Eleanor poked Park’s arm.
‘Well, now she likes you,’ he said, ‘so now my dad is back to not liking me.’
‘Your dad loves you,’ she said. It seemed to really matter to her.
Park shook his head. ‘Only because he has to.
He’s disappointed in me.’
Eleanor laid her hand on his chest, and his mom opened the door.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘Too cold.’
Eleanor
‘Your hair looks nice, Eleanor,’ Park’s mom said.
‘Thank you.’
Eleanor wasn’t diffusing, but she was using the conditioner Park’s mom had given her. And she’d actually found a satin pillowcase in the stack of towels and stuff in her bedroom closet, which was practically a sign from God that He wanted Eleanor to take better care of her hair.
Park’s mom really did seem to like her better now. Eleanor hadn’t consented to another full-on makeover, but Park’s mom was always trying new eyeshadows on her or messing with her hair while she sat at the kitchen table with Park.
‘I should have had girl,’ his mom said.
I should have had a family like this, Eleanor thought. And it only sometimes made her feel like a traitor to think so.
CHAPTER 38
Eleanor
Wednesday nights were the worst.
Park had taekwando, so Eleanor went straight home after school, took a bath, then tried to hide in her room all night, reading.
It was way too cold to play outside, so the little kids were crawling up the walls. When Richie came home, there was no place for anybody to hide.
Ben was so afraid that Richie would send him to the basement early that he was sitting in the bedroom closet, playing with his cars.
When Richie turned on Mike Hammer their mom shooed Maisie into the bedroom, too, even though Richie said she could stay.
Maisie paced the room, bored and irritable.
She walked over to the bunk bed.
‘Can I come up?’
‘No.’
‘Please …’
Their beds were junior-sized, smaller than a twin, just barely big enough for Eleanor. And Maisie wasn’t one of those stringy, weightless nine-year-olds …
‘Fine,’ Eleanor groaned.
She scooted over carefully, like she was on thin ice, and pushed her grapefruit box behind her into the corner.
Maisie climbed up and sat on Eleanor’s pillow. ‘What’re you reading?’
‘ Watership Down.’