…’

‘But, Mom …’ Eleanor whispered.

‘In bed,’ her mom said, helping Eleanor up the ladder to her bunk. Then her mom leaned in close, her mouth touching Eleanor’s ear. ‘It was Richie,’ she whispered. ‘There were kids playing basketball in the park, being loud … He was just trying to scare them. But he doesn’t have a license, and there are other things in the house – he could have been arrested. No more tonight. Not a breath.’

She knelt down with the boys for a minute, petting and hushing, then floated out of the room.

Eleanor could swear she heard five hearts racing. Every one of them was stifling a sob. Crying inside out. She climbed out of her bed and in-to Maisie’s.

‘It’s okay,’ she whispered to the room. ‘It’s okay now.’

CHAPTER 25

Park

Eleanor seemed off that morning. She didn’t say anything while they waited for the bus. When they got on, she dropped onto their seat and leaned against the wall.

Park pulled on her sleeve, and she not-even-half smiled.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

She glanced up at him. ‘Now,’ she said.

He didn’t believe her. He pulled on her sleeve again.

She fell against him and hid her face in his shoulder.

Park laid his face in her hair and closed his eyes.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

‘Almost,’ she said.

She pulled away when the bus stopped. She never let him hold her hand once they were off the bus. She wouldn’t touch him in the hallways.

‘People will look at us,’ she always said.

He couldn’t believe that still mattered to her.

Girls who don’t want to be looked at don’t tie curtain tassels in their hair. They don’t wear men’s golf shoes with the spikes still attached.

So today he stood by her locker and only thought about touching her. He wanted to tell her his news – but she seemed so far away, he wasn’t sure she’d hear him.

Eleanor

Where would she go this time?

Back to the Hickmans’?

‘Hey, remember that time when my mom asked if I could stay with you guys for a few days, and then she didn’t come back for a year? I really appreciate the fact that you didn’t turn me into Child Protective Services. That was very Christian of you. Do you still have that foldout couch?’

Fuck.

Before Richie moved in, Eleanor only knew that word from books and bathroom walls. Fucking woman. Fucking kids. Fuck you, you little bitch – who the f**k touched my stereo?

Eleanor hadn’t seen it coming the last time.

When Richie kicked her out.

She couldn’t have seen it coming because she never thought it could happen. She never thought he’d try – and she never, ever thought her mom would go along with it. (Richie must have recognized before Eleanor did that her mother’s allegiances had shifted.)

It was embarrassing to think about the day that it happened – embarrassing, on top of everything else – because it really was Eleanor’s fault. She really was asking for it.

She was in her room, typing song lyrics on an old manual typewriter that her mom had brought home from the Goodwill. It needed new ribbon (Eleanor had a box full of cartridges that didn’t fit), but it still worked. She loved everything about that typewriter, the way the keys felt, the sticky, crunchy noise they made. She even liked the way it smelled, like metal and shoe polish.

She was bored that day, the day it happened.

It was too hot to do anything but lie around or read or watch TV. Richie was in the living room.

He hadn’t gotten out of bed until 2:00 or 3:00, and everybody could tell he was in a bad mood.

Her mom was walking around the house in nervous circles, offering Richie lemonade and sandwiches and aspirin. Eleanor hated it when her mom acted like that. Relentlessly submissive.

It was humiliating to be in the same room.

So Eleanor was upstairs typing song lyrics.

‘Scarborough Fair.’

She heard Richie complaining.

‘What the f**k is that noise?’ And, ‘Fuck, Sabrina, can’t you shut her up?’

Her mom tiptoed up the stairs and ducked her head into Eleanor’s room. ‘Richie isn’t feeling well,’ she said. ‘Can you put that away?’ She looked pale and nervous. Eleanor hated that look.

She waited for her mother to get back downstairs. Then, without really thinking about why, Eleanor deliberately pressed a key.

A

Crunch-lap.

Her fingertips trembled over the keyboard.

RE

Crch-crch-lap-tap.

Nothing happened. No one stirred. The house was hot and stiff and as quiet as a library in hell.

Eleanor closed her eyes and jerked her chin into the air.

YOU GOING TO SCRABOROUGH FAIR

PARSLEY

SAAGE

ROSEMAYRY

AND

THYME

Richie came up the stairs so fast, in Eleanor’s head he was flying. In Eleanor’s head, he burst open the door by hurling a ball of fire at it.

He was on her before she could brace herself, tearing the typewriter from her hands and throwing it into the wall so hard it broke through the plaster and hung for a moment in the lath.

Eleanor was too shocked to make out what he was shouting at her. FAT and FUCK and BITCH.

He’d never come this close to her before. Her fear of him crushed her back. She didn’t want him to see it in her eyes, so she pressed her face into her hands in her pillow.

FAT and FUCK and BITCH. And I WARNED YOU, SABRINA.

‘I hate you,’ Eleanor whispered into the pillow. She could hear things slamming. She could hear her mother in the doorway, talking softly, like she was trying to put a baby back to sleep.

FAT and FUCK and BITCH and BEGGING

FOR IT, JUST FUCKING BEGGING FOR IT.

‘I hate you,’ Eleanor said louder. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

FUCK THIS.

‘I hate you.’

FUCK ALL OF YOU.

‘Fuck you.’

STUPID BITCHES.

‘Fuck you, f**k you, f**k you.’

WHAT DID SHE JUST SAY?

In Eleanor’s head, the house shook.

Her mother was pulling on her then, trying to pull her out of bed. Eleanor tried to come with her, but she was too scared to stand up. She wanted to flatten herself to the floor and crawl away. She wanted to pretend that the room was full of smoke.

Richie was roaring. Her mother pulled Eleanor to the top of the stairs, then pushed her down.

He was right behind them.

Eleanor fell against the banister and practically ran to the front door on all fours. She got outside and kept running to the end of the sidewalk. Ben was sitting on the porch, playing with his Hot Wheels. He stopped and watched Eleanor run by.

Eleanor wondered if she should keep running, but where would she go? Even when she was a little girl, she never fantasized about running away. She could never imagine herself past the edge of the yard. Where would she go? Who would take her?

When the front door opened again, Eleanor took a few steps into the street.

It was just her mom. She took Eleanor’s arm and started walking quickly toward the neighbor’s house.

If Eleanor would have known then what was about to happen, she would have run back to tell Ben goodbye. She would have looked for Maisie and Mouse and kissed them each hard on the cheek. Maybe she would have asked to go back inside to see the baby.

And if Richie had been inside waiting for her, maybe she would have dropped to her knees and begged him to let her stay. Maybe she would have said anything he wanted her to.

If he wanted that now – if he wanted her to beg for forgiveness, for mercy, if that was the price she had to pay to stay – she’d do it.

She hoped he couldn’t see that.

She hoped none of them could see what was left of her.

Park

She ignored Mr Stessman in English class.

In history, she stared out the window.

On the way home, she wasn’t irritable; she wasn’t anything at all.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

She nodded her head against him.

When she got off the bus at her stop, Park still hadn’t told her. So he jumped up and followed her, even though he knew she wouldn’t want him to.

‘Park …’ she said, looking nervously down the street to her house.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but I wanted to tell you …

I’m not grounded anymore.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head.

‘That’s great,’ she said.

‘Yeah …’

She looked back at her house.

‘It means you can come over again,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘I mean, if you want to.’ This wasn’t going like he thought it would. Even when Eleanor was looking at him, she wasn’t looking at him.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Eleanor? Is everything okay?’

She nodded.

‘Do you still …’ He hung onto the backpack straps across his chest. ‘I mean, do you still want to? Do you still miss me?’

She nodded. She looked like she was going to cry. Park hoped she wouldn’t cry at his house again … If she ever came back. It felt like she was slipping away.

‘I’m just really tired,’ she said.

CHAPTER 26

Eleanor

Did she miss him?

She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet.

If she showed him how much she needed him, he’d run away.

CHAPTER 27

Eleanor

Eleanor felt better the next morning. Mornings usually got the best of her.

This morning, she woke up with that stupid cat curled up against her like it couldn’t tell that she’d never liked him or cats in general.

And then her mom gave her a fried egg sandwich that Richie hadn’t wanted, and pinned an old, chipped glass flower to Eleanor’s jacket.

‘I found it at the thrift shop,’ her mom said.

‘Maisie wanted it, but I saved it for you.’ She smudged vanilla behind Eleanor’s ears.

‘I might go to Tina’s house after school,’

Eleanor said.

‘Okay, have fun.’

Eleanor hoped that Park would be waiting for her at the bus stop, but she wouldn’t blame him if he wasn’t.

He was. He was standing there in the half-light, wearing a gray trench coat and black high-tops, and watching for her.

She ran past the last few houses to get to him.

‘Good morning,’ she said, shoving him with both hands.

He laughed and stepped back. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m your girlfriend,’ she said. ‘Ask anybody.’

‘No … my girlfriend is sad and quiet and keeps me up all night worrying about her.’

‘Bummer. Sounds like you need a different girlfriend.’

He smiled and shook his head.

It was cold and half dark, and Eleanor could see Park’s breath. She resisted the urge to try to swallow it.

‘I told my mom that I was going to a friend’s house after school …’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

Park was the only person she knew who wore his backpack actually on his shoulders, not slung over one side – and he was always holding onto the straps, like he’d just jumped out of a plane or something. It was extremely cute. Especially when he was being shy and letting his head hang forward.

She pulled the front of his bangs. ‘Yeah.’

‘Cool,’ he said, smiling, all shiny cheeks and full lips.

Don’t bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It’s disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ she said.

He hung onto his straps and shrugged.

‘Yesterday happens.’

God, it was like he wanted her to eat his face clean off.

Park

He almost told her all the things his mom had said about her.

It seemed like it was wrong to keep secrets from Eleanor.

But it seemed like it would be more wrong to share that kind of secret. It would just make Eleanor even more nervous. She might even refuse to come over …

And she was so happy today. She was a different person. She kept squeezing his hand. She even bit his shoulder when they were getting off the bus.

Plus, if he told her, at the very least she was going to want to go home and change. She was wearing an orange argyle sweater today, way too big, with her silky green tie and baggy painter’s jeans.

Park didn’t know if Eleanor even had any girl’s clothes – and he didn’t care. He kind of liked that she didn’t. Maybe that was another g*y thing about him, but he didn’t think so, because Eleanor wouldn’t look like a guy even if you cut off her hair and gave her a mustache. All the men’s clothes she wore just called attention to how much of a girl she was.

He wasn’t going to tell her about his mom.

And he wasn’t going to tell her to smile. But if she bit him again, he was going to lose something.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, when she was still smiling in English class.

‘Ask anybody,’ she said.

Eleanor

In Spanish class today, they were supposed to write a letter in Spanish to a friend. Señora Bouzon put on an episode of Qué Pasa, USA?

while they worked on it.

Eleanor tried to write a letter to Park. She didn’t get very far.

Estimado Señor Sheridan,

Mi gusta comer su cara.

Besos,

Leonor

For the rest of the day, whenever Eleanor felt nervous or scared, she told herself to be happy instead. (It didn’t really make her feel better, but it kept her from feeling worse …) She told herself that Park’s family must be decent people because they’d raised a person like Park. Never mind that this principle didn’t hold true in her own family. It wasn’t like she had to face his family alone. Park would be there. That was the whole point. Was there any place so horrible that she wouldn’t go there to be with Park?