In class, at her desk. On the bus, waiting for him. Reading alone in the cafeteria.

Whenever he saw Eleanor, he couldn’t think about pulling away. He couldn’t think about anything at all.

Except touching her.

Except doing whatever he could or had to, to make her happy.

‘What do you mean you’re not coming tonight?’

Call said.

They were in study hall, and Call was eating a Snack Pack butterscotch pudding. Park tried to keep his voice down. ‘Something came up.’

‘Something?’ Call said, slamming his spoon into his pudding. ‘Like you being completely lame – is that what came up? Because that comes up a lot lately.’

‘No. Something. Like, a girl something.’

Call leaned in. ‘You’ve got a girl something?’

Park felt himself blush. ‘Sort of. Yeah. I can’t really talk about it.’

‘But we had a plan,’ Call said.

‘You had a plan,’ Park said, ‘and it was terrible.’

‘Worst friend in the world,’ Call said. Eleanor

She was so nervous, she couldn’t even touch her lunch. She gave DeNice her creamed turkey and Beebi her fruit cocktail.

Park made her practice his phone number all the way home.

And then he wrote it on her book anyway. He hid it in song titles.

‘Forever Young.’

‘That’s a four,’ he said. ‘Will you remember?’

‘I won’t have to,’ she said, ‘I already know your number by heart.’

‘And this is just a five,’ he said, ‘because I can’t think of any five songs, and this one’ –

‘Summer of ’69’ – ‘With this one, remember the six, but forget the nine.’

‘I hate that song.’

‘God, I know … Hey, I can’t think of any two songs.’

“‘Two of Us,”’ she said.

‘Two of us?’

‘It’s a Beatles song.’

‘Oh … that’s why I don’t know it.’ He wrote it down.

‘I know your number by heart,’ she said.

‘I’m just afraid you’re going to forget it,’ he said quietly. He pushed her hair out of her eyes with his pen.

‘I’m not going to forget it,’ she said. Ever.

She’d probably scream out Park’s number on her deathbed. Or have it tattooed over her heart when he finally got sick of her. ‘I’m good with numbers.’

‘If you don’t call me Friday night,’ he said,

‘because you can’t remember my number …’

‘How about this, I’ll give you my dad’s number, and if I haven’t called you by nine, you can call me.’

‘That’s

an

excellent

idea,’

he

said,

‘seriously.’

‘But you can’t call it any other time.’

‘I feel like …’ He started laughing and looked away.

‘What?’ she asked. She elbowed him.

‘I feel like we have a date,’ he said. ‘Is that stupid?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Even though we’re together every day …’

‘We’re never really together,’ she said.

‘It’s like we have fifty chaperones.’

‘Hostile chaperones,’ Eleanor whispered.

‘Yeah,’ Park said.

He put his pen in his pocket, then took her hand and held it to his chest for a minute.

It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.

‘A date,’ he said.

‘Practically.’

CHAPTER 19 Eleanor

When she woke up that morning, she felt like it was her birthday – like she used to feel on her birthday, back when there was a shot in hell of ice cream.

Maybe her dad would have ice cream … If he did, he’d probably throw it away before Eleanor got there. He was always dropping hints about her weight. Well, he used to, anyway. Maybe when he stopped caring about her altogether, he’d stopped caring about that, too.

Eleanor put on an old striped men’s shirt and had her mom tie one of her ties – like knot it, for real – around her neck.

Her mom actually kissed Eleanor goodbye at the door and told her to have fun, and to call the neighbors if things got weird with her dad.

Right, Eleanor thought, I’ll be sure to call you if Dad’s fiancée calls me a bitch and then makes me use a bathroom without a door. Oh wait …

She was a little nervous. It had been a year, at least, since she’d seen her dad, and a while before that. He hadn’t called at all when she lived with the Hickmans. Maybe he didn’t know she was there. She never told him.

When Richie first started coming around, Ben used to get really angry and say he was going to move in with their dad – which was an empty effing promise, and everyone knew it. Even Mouse, who was just a toddler.

Their dad couldn’t stand having them even for a few days. He used to pick them up from their mom’s house, then drop them off at his mom’s house while he went off and did whatever it was that he did on the weekend. (Presumably, lots and lots of marijuana.)

Park cracked up when he saw Eleanor’s tie.

That was even better than making him smile.

‘I didn’t know we were getting dressed up,’

he said when she sat down next to him.

‘I’m expecting you to take me someplace nice,’ she said softly.

‘I will …’ he said. He took the tie in both hands and straightened it. ‘Someday.’

He was a lot more likely to say stuff like that on the way to school than he was on the way home. Sometimes she wondered if he was fully awake.

He turned practically sideways in his seat.

‘So you’re leaving right after school?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’ll call me as soon as you get there

…’

‘No, I’ll call you as soon as the kid settles down. I really do have to babysit.’

‘I’m going to ask you a lot of personal questions,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I have a list.’

‘I’m not afraid of your list.’

‘It’s extremely long,’ he said, ‘and extremely personal.’

‘I hope you’re not expecting answers …’

He sat back in the seat and looked over at her.

‘I wish you’d go away,’ he whispered, ‘so that we could finally talk.’

Eleanor stood on the front steps after school.

She’d hoped to catch Park before he got on the bus, but she must have missed him.

She wasn’t sure what kind of car to watch for; her dad was always buying classic cars, then selling them when money got tight.

She was starting to worry that he wasn’t coming at all – he could’ve gone to the wrong high school or changed his mind – when he honked for her.

He pulled up in an old Karmann Ghia convertible. It looked like the car James Dean died in. Her dad’s arm was hanging over the door, holding a cigarette. ‘Eleanor!’ he shouted.

She walked to the car and got in. There weren’t any seat belts.

‘Is that all you brought?’ he asked, looking at her school bag.

‘It’s just one night.’ She shrugged.

‘All right,’ he said, backing out of the parking space too fast. She’d forgotten what a crappy driver he was. He did everything too fast and one-handed.

Eleanor braced herself on the dashboard. It was cold out, and once they were driving, it got colder. ‘Can we put the top up?’ she shouted.

‘Haven’t fixed it yet,’ her dad said, and laughed.

He still lived in the same duplex he’d lived in since her parents split up. It was solid and brick, and about a ten-minute drive from Eleanor’s school.

When they got inside, he took a better look at her.

‘Is that what all the cool kids are wearing these days?’ he asked. She looked down at her giant white shirt, her fatpaisley tie and her half-dead purple corduroys.

‘Yup,’ she said flatly. ‘This is pretty much our uniform.’

Her dad’s girlfriend – fiancée – Donna, didn’t get off work until five, and after that she had to pick her kid up from daycare. In the meantime, Eleanor and her dad sat on the couch and watched ESPN.

He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and sipped Scotch out of a short glass. Every once in a while the phone would ring, and he’d have a long, laughy conversation with somebody about a car or a deal or a bet. You’d think that every single person who called was his best friend in the whole world. Her dad had baby blond hair and a round, boyish face. When he smiled, which was constantly, his whole face lit up like a bill-board. If Eleanor paid too much attention, she hated him.