Текст книги "Eleanor & Park"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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CHAPTER 5 PARK

Mr Stessman was making them all memorize a poem, whatever poem they wanted. Well, whatever poem they picked.

‘You’re going to forget everything else I teach you,’ Mr Stessman said, petting his mustache. ‘Everything. Maybe you’ll remember that Beowulf fought a monster. Maybe you’ll remember that “To be or not to be” is Hamlet, not Macbeth …

‘But everything else? Forget about it.’

He was slowly walking up and down each aisle. Mr Stessman loved this kind of stuff –

theater in the round. He stopped next to Park’s desk and leaned in casually with his hand on the back of Park’s chair. Park stopped drawing and sat up straight. He couldn’t draw anyway.

‘So, you’re going to memorize a poem,’ Mr Stessman continued, pausing a moment to smile down at Park like Gene Wilder in the chocolate factory.

‘Brains love poetry. It’s sticky stuff. You’re going to memorize this poem, and five years from now, we’re going to see each other at the Village Inn, and you’ll say, “Mr Stessman, I still remember ‘The Road Not Taken!’ Listen …

‘ Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …’”’

He moved on to the next desk. Park relaxed.

‘Nobody gets to pick “The Road Not Taken,” by the way, I’m sick to death of it. And no shell Silverstein. He’s grand, but you’ve graduated.

We’re all adults here. Choose an adult poem …

‘Choose a romantic poem, that’s my advice.

You’ll get the most use out of it.’

He walked by the new girl’s desk, but she didn’t turn away from the window.

‘Of course, it’s up to you. You may choose

“A Dream Deferred” – Eleanor?’ She turned blankly. Mr Stessman leaned in. ‘You may choose it, Eleanor. It’s poignant and it’s truth.

But how often will you get to roll that one out?

‘No. Choose a poem that speaks to you.

Choose a poem that will help you speak to someone else.’

Park planned to choose a poem that rhymed, so it would be easier to memorize. He liked Mr Stessman, he really did – but he wished he’d dial it back a few notches. Whenever he worked the room like this, Park got embarrassed for him.

‘We meet tomorrow in the library,’ Mr Stessman said, back at his desk. ‘Tomorrow, we’re gathering rosebuds.’

The bell rang. On cue.

CHAPTER 6 ELEANOR

‘Watch it, raghead.’

Tina pushed roughly past Eleanor and climbed onto the bus.

She had everybody else in their gym class calling Eleanor Bozo, but Tina had already moved on to Raghead and Bloody Mary. ‘Cuz it looks like your whole head is on the rag,’ she’d explained today in the locker room.

It made sense that Tina was in Eleanor’s gym class – because gym was an extension of hell, and Tina was definitely a demon. A weird, miniature demon. Like a toy demon. Or a teacup. And she had a whole gang of lesser demons, all dressed in matching gymsuits.

Actually, everyone wore matching gymsuits.

At Eleanor’s old school, she’d thought it had sucked that they had to wear gym shorts. (Eleanor hated her legs even more than she hated the rest of her body.) But at North they had to wear gym suits. Polyester onesies. The bottom was red, and the top was red-and-white striped, and it all zipped up the front.

‘Red isn’t your color, Bozo,’ Tina had said the first time Eleanor suited up. The other girls all laughed, even the black girls, who hated Tina.

Laughing at Eleanor was Dr King’s mountain.

After Tina pushed past her, Eleanor took her time getting on the bus – but she still got to her seat before that stupid Asian kid. Which meant she’d have to get up to let him have his spot by the window. Which would be awkward. It was all awkward. Every time the bus hit a pothole, Eleanor practically fell in the guy’s lap.

Maybe somebody else on the bus would drop out or die or something and she’d be able move away from him.

At least he didn’t ever talk to her. Or look at her.

At least she didn’t think he did; Eleanor never looked at him.

Sometimes she looked at his shoes. He had cool shoes. And sometimes she looked to see what he was reading …

Always comic books.

Eleanor never brought anything to read on the bus. She didn’t want Tina, or anybody else, to catch her with her head down. PARK

It felt wrong to sit next to somebody every day and not talk to her. Even if she was weird. (Jesus, was she weird. Today she was dressed like a Christmas tree, with all this stuff pinned to her clothes, shapes cut out of fabric, ribbon …) The ride home couldn’t go fast enough. Park couldn’t wait to get away from her, away from everybody.

‘Dude, where’s your dobak?’

He was trying to eat dinner alone in his room, but his little brother wouldn’t let him. Josh stood in the doorway, already dressed for taekwando and inhaling a chicken leg.

‘Dad’s going to be here, like now,’ Josh said through the drumstick, ‘and he’s gonna shit if you’re not ready.’

Their mom came up behind Josh and thumped him on the head. ‘Don’t cuss, dirty mouth.’ She had to reach up to do it. Josh was his father’s son; he was already at least seven inches taller than their mom – and three inches taller than Park.

Which sucked.

Park pushed Josh out the door and slammed it. So far, Park’s strategy for maintaining his status as older brother despite their growing size differential was to pretend he could still kick Josh’s ass.

He could still beat him at taekwando – but only because Josh got impatient with any sport where his size wasn’t an obvious advantage. The high school football coach had already started coming to Josh’s Peewee games.

Park changed into his dobak, wondering if he was going to have to start wearing Josh’s hand-me-downs pretty soon. Maybe he could take a Sharpie to all Josh’s Husker football T-shirts and make them say Husker Dü. Or maybe it wouldn’t even be an issue – Park might never get any taller than five foot four. He might never grow out of the clothes he had now.

He put on his Chuck Taylors and took his dinner into the kitchen, eating over the counter.

His mom was trying to get gravy out of Josh’s white jacket with a washcloth.

‘Mindy?’

That’s how Park’s dad came home every night, like the dad in a sit-com. (‘ Lucy? ’) And his mom would call out from wherever she was, ‘In here!’

Except she said it, ‘In hee-ya!’ Because she was apparently never going to stop sounding like she just got here yesterday from Korea.

Sometimes Park thought she kept the accent on purpose, because his dad liked it. But his mom tried so hard to fit in in every other way … If she could sound like she grew up right around the corner, she would.

His dad barreled into the kitchen and scooped his mom into his arms. They did this every night, too. Full-on make-out sessions, no matter who was around. It was like watching Paul Bunyan make out with one of those It’s a Small World dolls.

Park grabbed his brother’s sleeve. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ They could wait in the Impala. Their dad would be out in a minute, as soon as he’d changed into his giant dobak. ELEANOR

She still couldn’t get used to eating dinner so early.

When did this all start? In the old house, they’d all eaten together, even Richie. Eleanor wasn’t complaining about not having to eat with Richie … But now it was like their mom wanted them all out of the way before he came home.

She even made him a totally different dinner.

The kids would get grilled cheese, and Richie would get steak. Eleanor wasn’t complaining about the grilled cheese either – it was a nice break from bean soup, and beans and rice, and huevos y frijoles …

After dinner, Eleanor usually disappeared in-to her room to read, but the little kids always went outside. What were they going to do when it got cold – and when it started getting dark early?

Would they all hide in the bedroom? It was crazy. Diary of Anne Frank crazy.

Eleanor climbed up onto her bunk bed and got out her stationery box. That dumb gray cat was sleeping in her bed again. She pushed him off.

She opened the grapefruit box and flipped through her stationery. She kept meaning to write letters to her friends from her old school. She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to anybody when she left. Her mom had shown up out of the blue and pulled Eleanor out of class, all ‘Get your things, you’re coming home.’

Her mom had been so happy.

And Eleanor had been so happy.

They went straight to North to get Eleanor re-gistered, then stopped at Burger King on the way to the new house. Her mom kept squeezing Eleanor’s hand … Eleanor had pretended not to notice the bruises on her mom’s wrist.

The bedroom door opened, and her little sister walked in, carrying the cat.

‘Mom wants you to leave the door open,’

Maisie said, ‘for the breeze.’ Every window in the house was open, but there didn’t seem to be any breeze. With the door open, Eleanor could just see Richie sitting on the couch. She scooted down the bed until she couldn’t.

‘What are you doing?’ Maisie asked.

‘Writing a letter.’

‘To who?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Can I come up?’

‘No.’ For the moment, all Eleanor could think about was keeping her box safe. She didn’t want Maisie to see the colored pencils and clean paper.

Plus, part of her still wanted to punish Maisie for sitting in Richie’s lap.

That never would have happened before.

Before Richie kicked Eleanor out, all the kids were allied against him. Maybe Eleanor had hated him the most, and the most openly – but they were all on her side, Ben and Maisie, even Mouse. Mouse used to steal Richie’s cigarettes and hide them. And Mouse was the one they’d send to knock on their mom’s door when they heard bedsprings …

When it was worse than bedsprings, when it was shouting or crying, they’d huddle together, all five of them, on Eleanor’s bed. (They’d all had their own beds in the old house.)

Maisie sat at Eleanor’s right hand then. When Mouse cried, when Ben’s face went blank and dreamy, Maisie and Eleanor would lock eyes.

‘I hate him,’ Eleanor would say.

‘I hate him so much I wish he was dead,’

Maisie would answer.

‘I hope he falls off a ladder at work.’

‘I hope he gets hit by a truck.’

‘A garbage truck.’

‘Yeah,’ Maisie would say, gritting her teeth,

‘and all the garbage will fall on his dead body.’

‘And then a bus will run him over.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I hope I’m on it.’

Maisie put the cat back on Eleanor’s bed. ‘It likes to sleep up there,’ she said.

‘Do you call him Dad, too?’ Eleanor asked.

‘He is our dad now,’ Maisie said.

Eleanor woke up in the middle of the night. Richie had fallen asleep in the living room with the TV on. She didn’t breathe on the way to the bathroom and was too scared to flush the toilet. When she got back to her room, she closed the door.

Fuck the breeze.

CHAPTER 7 PARK

‘I’m going to ask Kim out,’ Call said.

‘Don’t ask Kim out,’ Park said.

‘Why not?’ They were sitting in the library, and they were supposed to be looking for poems.

Call had already picked out something short about a girl named Julia and the ‘liquefaction of her clothes.’ (‘Crass,’ Park said. ‘It can’t be crass,’

Call argued. ‘It’s three-hundred years old.’)

‘Because she’s Kim,’ Park said. ‘You can’t ask her out. Look at her.’

Kim was sitting at the next table over with two other preppy girls.

‘Look at her,’ Call said, ‘she’s a Betty.’

‘Jesus,’ Park said. ‘You sound so stupid.’

‘What? That’s a thing. A Betty is a thing.’

‘But you got it from Thrasher or something, right?’

‘That’s how people learn new words, Park’ –

Call tapped a book of poetry – ‘reading.’

‘You’re trying too hard.’

‘She’s a Betty,’ Call said, nodding at Kim and getting a Slim Jim out of his backpack.

Park looked at Kim again. She had bobbed blond hair and hard, curled bangs, and she was the only kid in school with a Swatch. Kim was one of those people who never wrinkled … She wouldn’t make eye contact with Cal. She’d be afraid he’d leave a stain.

‘This is my year,’ Call said. ‘I’m getting a girlfriend.’

‘But probably not Kim.’

‘Why not Kim? You think I need to aim lower?’

Park looked up at him. Call wasn’t a bad-looking guy. He had kind of a tall Barney Rubble thing going on … He already had pieces of Slim Jim caught in his front teeth.

‘Aim elsewhere,’ Park said.

‘Screw that,’ Call said, ‘I’m starting at the top.

And I’m getting you a girl, too.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Park said.

‘Double-dating,’ Call said.

‘No.’

‘In the Impala.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up.’ Park’s dad had decided to be a fascist about Park’s driver’s license; he’d announced last night that Park had to learn to drive a stick first. Park opened another book of poetry. It was all about war. He closed it.

‘Now there’s a girl who might want a piece of you,’ Call said. ‘Looks like somebody’s got jungle fever.’

‘That isn’t even the right kind of racist,’ Park said, looking up. Call was nodding toward the far corner of the library. The new girl was sitting there, staring right at them.

‘She’s kind of big,’ Call said, ‘but the Impala is a spacious automobile.’

‘She’s not looking at me. She’s just staring, she does that. Watch.’ Park waved at the girl, but she didn’t blink.

He’d only made eye contact with her once since her first day on the bus. It was last week, in history, and she’d practically gouged out his eyes with hers.

If you don’t want people to look at you, Park had thought at the time, don’t wear fishing lures in your hair. Her jewelry box must look like a junk drawer. Not that everything she wore was stupid …

She had a pair of Vans he liked, with strawberries on them. And she had a green sharkskin blazer that Park would wear himself if he thought he could get away with it.

Did she think she was getting away with it?

Park braced himself every morning before she got on the bus, but you couldn’t brace yourself enough for the sight of her.

‘Do you know her?’ Call asked.

‘No,’ Park said quickly. ‘She’s on my bus.

She’s weird.’

‘Jungle fever is a thing,’ Call said.

‘For black people. If you like black people.

And it’s not a compliment, I don’t think.’

‘Your people come from the jungle,’ Call said, pointing at Park. ‘ Apocalypse Now, anyone?’

‘You should ask Kim out,’ Park said. ‘That’s a really good idea.’ ELEANOR

Eleanor wasn’t going to fight over an e.e. cum-mings book like it was the last Cabbage Patch Kid. She found an empty table in the African American literature section.

That was another fucked-up thing about this school – effed-up, she corrected herself.

Most of the kids here were black, but most of the kids in her honors classes were white. They got bussed in from west Omaha. And the white kids from the Flats, dishonor students, got bussed in from the other direction.

Eleanor wished she had more honors classes.

She wished there was honors gym …

Like they’d ever let her into honors gym.

Eleanor would get put in remedial gym first.

With all the other fat girls who couldn’t do sit-ups.

Anyway. Honor students – black, white or Asia Minor – tended to be nicer. Maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they were scared of getting in trouble. Or maybe they were just as mean on the inside, but they’d been trained to be polite – to give up their seats for old people and girls.

Eleanor had honors English, history and geography, but she spent the rest of her day in Crazytown. Seriously, Blackboard Jungle. She should probably try harder in her smart classes so that she wouldn’t get kicked out of them.

She started copying a poem called ‘Caged Bird’ into her notebook … Sweet. It rhymed.

CHAPTER 8 PARK

She was reading his comics.

At first Park thought he was imagining it. He kept getting this feeling that she was looking at him, but whenever he looked over at her, her face was down.

He finally realized that she was staring at his lap. Not in a gross way. She was looking at his comics – he could see her eyes moving.

Park didn’t know that anyone with red hair could have brown eyes. (He didn’t know that anyone could have hair that red. Or skin that white.) The new girl’s eyes were darker than his mom’s, really dark, almost like holes in her face.

That made it sound bad, but it wasn’t. It might even be the best thing about her. It kind of reminded Park of the way artists draw Jean Grey sometimes when she’s using her telepathy, with her eyes all blacked out and alien.

Today the girl was wearing a giant men’s shirt with seashells all over it. The collar must have been really big, like disco-big, because she’d cut it, and it was fraying. She had a man’s necktie wrapped around her ponytail like a big polyester ribbon. She looked ridiculous.

And she was looking at his comics.

Park felt like he should say something to her.

He always felt like he should say something to her, even if it was just ‘hello’ or ‘excuse me.’ But he’d gone too long without saying anything since the first time he’d cursed at her, and now it was all just irrevocably weird. For an hour a day.

Thirty minutes on the way to school, thirty minutes back.

Park didn’t say anything. He just held his comics open wider and turned the pages more slowly. ELEANOR

Her mom looked tired when Eleanor got home.

Like more tired than usual. Hard and crumbling at the edges.

When the little kids stormed in after school, her mom lost her temper over something stupid –

Ben and Mouse fighting over a toy – and she pushed them all out the back door, Eleanor included.

Eleanor was so startled to be outside that she stood on the back stoop for a second, staring down at Richie’s Rottweiler. He’d named the dog Tonya after his ex-wife. She was supposed to be a real man-eater, Tonya – Tonya the dog – but Eleanor had never seen her more than half awake.

Eleanor tried knocking on the door. ‘Mom!

Let me back in. I haven’t even taken a bath yet.’

She usually took her bath right after school, before Richie got home. It took a lot of the stress out of not having a bathroom door, especially since somebody’d torn down the sheet.

Her mom ignored her.

The little kids were already out on the playground. The new house was right next door to an elementary school – the school where Ben and Mouse and Maisie went – and the playground was just beyond their backyard.

Eleanor didn’t know what else to do, so she walked out to where she could see Ben, by the swing set, and sat on one of the swings. It was finally jacket weather. Eleanor wished she had a jacket.

‘What are you supposed to do when it gets too cold to play outside?’ she asked Ben. He was taking Matchbox cars out of his pockets and lining them up in the dirt. ‘Last year,’ he said, ‘Dad made us go to bed at 7:30.’

‘God. You too? Why do you guys call him that?’ She tried not to sound angry.

Ben shrugged. ‘I guess because he’s married to Mom.’

‘Yeah, but’ – Eleanor ran her hands up and down the swing chains, then smelled them – ‘we never used to call him that. Do you feel like he’s your dad?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ben said flatly. ‘What’s that supposed to feel like?’

She didn’t answer him, so he went back to setting up his cars. He needed a haircut, his strawberry-blond hair was curling almost to his collar. He was wearing an old T-shirt of Eleanor’s and a pair of corduroy pants that their mom had cut off into shorts. He was almost too old for all this, for cars and parks – eleven. The other boys his age played basketball all night or hung out in groups at the edge of the playground.

Eleanor hoped that Ben was a late bloomer.

There was no room in that house to be a teenager.

‘He likes it when we call him Dad,’ Ben said, still lining up the cars.

Eleanor looked out at the playground. Mouse was playing with a bunch of kids who had a soc-cer ball. Maisie must have taken the baby somewhere with her friends …

It used to be Eleanor who was stuck with the baby all the time. She wouldn’t even mind watching him now, it would give her something to do – but Maisie didn’t want Eleanor’s help.

‘What was it like?’ Ben asked.

‘What was what like?’

‘Living with those people.’

The sun was a few inches above the horizon, and Eleanor looked hard at it.

‘Okay,’ she said. Terrible. Lonely. Better than here.

‘Were there other kids?’

‘Yeah. Really little kids. Three of them.’

‘Did you have your own room?’

‘Sort of.’ Technically, she hadn’t had to share the Hickmans’ living room with anyone else.

‘Were they nice?’ he asked.

‘Yeah … yeah. They were nice. Not as nice as you.’

The Hickmans had started out nice. But then they got tired.

Eleanor was only supposed to stay with them for a few days, maybe a week. Just until Richie cooled down and let her come home.

‘It’ll be like a slumber party,’ Mrs Hickman said to Eleanor the first night she made up the couch. Mrs Hickman – Tammy – knew Eleanor’s mom from high school. There was a photo over the TV of the Hickmans’ wedding. Eleanor’s mom was the maid of honor – in a dark green dress, with a white flower in her hair.

At first, her mom would call Eleanor at the Hickmans’ almost every day after school. After a few months, the calls stopped. It turned out that Richie hadn’t paid the phone bill, and it got dis-connected. But Eleanor didn’t know that for a while.

‘We should call the state,’ Mr Hickman kept telling his wife. They thought Eleanor couldn’t hear them, but their bedroom was right over the living room. ‘This can’t go on, Tammy.’

‘Andy, it’s not her fault.’

‘I’m not saying it’s her fault, I’m just saying we didn’t sign on for this.’

‘She’s no trouble.’

‘She’s not ours.’

Eleanor tried to be even less trouble. She practiced being in a room without leaving any clues that she’d been there. She never turned on the TV or asked to use the phone. She never asked for seconds at dinner. She never asked Tammy and Mr Hickman for anything – and they’d never had a teenager, so it didn’t occur to them that there might be anything she might need. She was glad that they didn’t know her birthday.

‘We thought you were gone,’ Ben said, pushing a car into the dirt. He looked like somebody who didn’t want to cry.

‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Eleanor said, kicking her swing into action.

She looked around again for Maisie and found her sitting over where the older boys were playing basketball. Eleanor recognized most of the boys from the bus. That stupid Asian kid was there, jumping higher than she would have guessed he could. He was wearing long black shorts and a T-shirt that said ‘Madness.’

‘I’m out of here,’ Eleanor told Ben, stepping off the swing and pushing down the top of his head. ‘But not gone or anything. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.’

She walked back into the house and rushed through the kitchen before her mom could say anything. Richie was in the living room. Eleanor walked between him and the TV, eyes straight ahead. She wished she had a jacket.