Park didn’t mind the word adorable.
Eleanor
They’d parked on the far side of the Market, and the lot was mostly empty by the time they got back. Eleanor felt tense and reckless again.
Maybe it was something about this car …
The Impala might not look pervy on the outside, not like a fully carpeted custom van or something – but the inside was a different story.
The front seat was almost as big as Eleanor’s bed, and the back seat was an Erica Jong novel just waiting to happen.
Park opened the door for her, then ran around the car to get in. ‘It’s not as late as I thought,’ he said, looking at the clock on the dash. 8:30.
‘Yeah …’ she said. She put her hand down on the seat between them. She tried to do it casually, but it came off pretty obvious.
Park laid his hand on top of hers.
It was just that kind of night. Every time she looked at him, he was looking back at her. Every time she thought about kissing him, he was already closing his eyes.
Read my mind now, she thought.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Okay.’ Park took his hand away and put the key in the ignition. Eleanor reached up and caught his sleeve before he could turn it.
He dropped the keys and, all in one motion, he turned and scooped her into his arms. Seriously, scooped. He was always stronger than she expected him to be.
If you were watching them now (and you totally could because the windows weren’t fogged over yet) you’d think that Eleanor and Park did this kind of thing all the time. Not just the once before.
This time was already different.
They weren’t moving forward in orderly steps, like a game of Mother May I? They weren’t even kissing each other square on the mouth.
(Lining things up neatly would take too long.) Eleanor climbed up his shirt, climbing on top of him. And Park kept pulling her to him, even when she couldn’t come any closer.
She was wedged between Park and the steering wheel, and when he pushed his hand up her shirt, she leaned against the horn. They both jumped, and Park accidentally bit her tongue.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ she said, glad that he didn’t pull his hand away. Her tongue didn’t seem to be bleeding. ‘You?’
‘Yeah …’ He was breathing heavy, and it was wonderful. I did this to him, she told herself.
‘Do you think …’ he said.
‘What?’ He probably thought they should stop. No, she thought, no, I don’t think. Don’t think, Park.
‘Do you think we should … don’t think I’m a creep, okay? Do you think we should get in the back seat?’
She pushed off of him and slid over the back seat. God, it was huge, it was glorious.
Not even a second later, Park landed on top of her.
Park
She felt so good underneath, even better than he’d expected. (And he’d expected her to feel like heaven, plus nirvana, plus that scene in Willy Wonka where Charlie starts to fly.) Park was breathing so hard, he couldn’t get any air.
It seemed impossible that this could feel as good to Eleanor as it did to him – but she was making these faces … She looked like a girl in a Prince video. If Eleanor was feeling anything like what he was feeling, how were they ever supposed to stop?
He pulled her shirt up over her head.
‘Bruce Lee,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ That didn’t seem right. Park’s hands froze.
‘Super-hot Asian guy. Bruce Lee.’
‘Oh …’ He laughed, he couldn’t help it.
‘Okay. I’ll give you Bruce Lee …’
She arched her back and he closed his eyes.
He’d never get enough of her.
CHAPTER 46
Eleanor
Richie’s truck was in the driveway, but the whole house was dark, thank God. Eleanor was sure that something would give her away. Her hair. Her shirt. Her mouth. She felt radioactive.
She and Park had been sitting in the alley for a while, in the front seat, just holding hands and feeling whiplashed. At least, that’s how Eleanor felt. It wasn’t that she and Park had gone too far, necessarily – but they’d gone a whole lot farther than she’d been prepared for. She’d never expected to have a love scene straight out of a Judy Blume book.
Park must be feeling strange, too. He sat through two Bon Jovi songs without even touching the radio. Eleanor had left a mark on his shoulder, but you couldn’t see it anymore.
This was her mom’s fault.
If Eleanor were allowed to have normal rela-tionships with boys, she wouldn’t have felt like she had to hit a home run the very first time she ended up in the back seat of a car – she wouldn’t have felt like it might be her only time at bat.
(And she wouldn’t be making these stupid baseball metaphors.)
It hadn’t been a home run, anyway. They’d stopped at second base. (At least, she thought it was second base. She’d heard conflicting defini-tions for the bases.) Still …
It was wonderful.
So wonderful that she wasn’t sure how they’d survive never doing it again.
‘I should go in,’ she said to Park, after they’d been sitting in the car a half-hour or more. ‘I’m usually home by now.’
He nodded but didn’t look up or let go of her hand.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’re … okay, right?’
He looked up then. His hair had flattened out, and it fell in his eyes. He looked concerned.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Oh. Yeah. I’m just …’
She waited.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, like he was embarrassed.
‘I … just really don’t want to say goodbye to you, Eleanor. Ever.’
He opened his eyes and looked straight into her. Maybe this was third base.
She swallowed. ‘You don’t have to say goodbye to me ever,’ she said. ‘Just tonight.’
Park smiled. Then he raised an eyebrow.
Eleanor wished she could do that.
‘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 annual.
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 running down the street faster than she’d ever run in gym class.
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 running again, but her legs felt weak.
‘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 grinning from ear to ear. His mouth was bigger than a lion’s.
‘It’s her stepdad,’ Tina said.
‘ Stepdad,’ Steve shouted, throwing a beer can across the garage. ‘Your f**king step dad? Do you want me to kill him for you? I’m gonna kill Tina’s anyway. I could get them both in the same day. Buy one, get one …’ He giggled. ‘Buy one, get one … free.’
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 gonna 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 unpinned her bra –
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