Текст книги "Eleanor & Park"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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CHAPTER 13 Eleanor

She remembered her books today, and she was wearing fresh clothes. She’d had to wash her jeans out in the bathtub last night, so they were still kind of damp … But altogether, Eleanor felt a thousand times better than she had yesterday.

Even her hair was halfway cooperating. She’d clumped it up into a bun and wrapped it with a rubber band. It was going to hurt like crazy trying to tear the rubber band out, but at least it was staying for now.

Best of all, she had Park’s songs in her head –

and in her chest, somehow.

There was something about the music on that tape. It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and her stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something nervous. It made Eleanor feel like everything, like the world, wasn’t what she’d thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing.

When she got on the bus that morning, she immediately lifted her head to find Park. He was looking up too, like he was waiting for her. She couldn’t help it, she grinned. Just for a second.

As soon as she sat down, Eleanor slunk low in the seat, so the back-of-the-bus ruffians wouldn’t be able to see from the top of her head how happy she felt.

She could feel Park sitting next to her, even though he was at least six inches away.

She handed him yesterday’s comics, then tugged nervously at the green ribbon wound round her wrist. She couldn’t think of what to say. She started to worry that maybe she wouldn’t say anything, that she wouldn’t even thank him …

Park’s hands were perfectly still in his lap.

And perfectly perfect. Honey-colored with clean, pink fingernails. Everything about him was strong and slender. Every time he moved he had a reason.

They were almost to school when he broke the silence.

‘Did you listen?’

She nodded, letting her eyes climb as high as his shoulders.

‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my God. It was …

just, like …’ – she spread out all her fingers – ‘so awesome.’

‘Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell.’

She looked up at his face, even though she knew how that was going to feel, like someone was hooking her insides out through her chest.

‘No. It was awesome. I didn’t want to stop listening. That one song – is it “Love Will Tear Us Apart”?’

‘Yeah, Joy Division.’

‘Oh my God, that’s the best beginning to a song ever.’

He imitated the guitar and the drums.

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to listen to those three seconds over and over.’

‘You could have.’ His eyes were smiling, his mouth only sort of.

‘I didn’t want to waste the batteries,’ she said.

He shook his head, like she was dumb.

‘Plus,’ she said, ‘I love the rest of it just as much, like the high part, the melody, the dahhh, dah-de-dah-dah, de-dahh, de dahhh.’

He nodded.

‘And his voice at the end,’ she said, ‘when he goes just a little bit too high … And then the very end, where it sounds like the drums are fighting it, like they don’t want the song to be over …’

Park made drum noises with his mouth: ‘ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch.’

‘I just want to break that song into pieces,’

she said, ‘and love them all to death.’

That made him laugh.

‘What about the Smiths?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know who was who,’ she said.

‘I’ll write it down for you.’

‘I liked it all.’

‘Good,’ he said.

‘I loved it.’

He smiled, but turned away to look out the window. She looked down.

They were pulling into the parking lot. Eleanor didn’t want this new talking thing – like, really talking, back and forth and smiling at each other

– to stop.

‘And …’ she said quickly, ‘I love the X-Men.

But I hate Cyclops.’

He whipped his head back.

‘You can’t hate Cyclops. He’s team captain.’

‘He’s boring. He’s worse than Batman.’

‘What? You hate Batman?’

‘God. So boring. I can’t even make myself read it. Whenever you bring Batman, I catch myself listening to Steve, or staring out the window, wishing I was in hypersleep.’ The bus came to a stop.

‘Huh,’ Park said, standing up. He said it really judgmentally.

‘What?’

‘Now I know what you’re thinking when you stare out the window.’

‘No, you don’t,’ she said. ‘I mix it up.’

Everybody else was pushing down the aisle past them. Eleanor stood up, too.

‘I’m bringing you The Dark Knight Returns,’

he said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Only the least boring Batman story ever.’

‘The least boring Batman story ever, huh?

Does Batman raise both eyebrows?’

He laughed again. His face completely changed when he laughed. He didn’t have dimples, exactly, but the sides of his face folded in on themselves, and his eyes almost disappeared.

‘Just wait,’ he said. Park

That morning, in English, Park noticed that Eleanor’s hair came to a soft red point on the back of her neck. Eleanor

That afternoon, in history, Eleanor noticed that Park chewed on his pencil when he was thinking.

And that the girl sitting behind him – what’s her name, Kim, with the giant breasts and the orange Esprit bag – obviously had a crush on him. Park

That night, Park made a tape with the Joy Division song on it, over and over again.

He emptied all his handheld video games and Josh’s remote-control cars, and called his grandma to tell her that all he wanted for his birthday in November was double-A batteries.

CHAPTER 14 Eleanor

‘I know she doesn’t think I’m going to jump over that thing,’ DeNice said.

DeNice and the other girl, the big girl, Beebi, talked to Eleanor now in gym. (Because being as-saulted with maxi pads is a great way to win friends and influence people.) Today in class, their gym teacher, Mrs Burt, had shown them how to swing over a thousand-year-old gymnastics horse. She said that next time everybody had to try.

‘She has got another thing coming,’ DeNice said after class, in the locker room. ‘Do I look like Mary Lou Retton?’

Beebi giggled. ‘Better tell her you didn’t eat your Wheaties.’

Actually, Eleanor thought, DeNice did kind of look like a gymnast. With her little-girl bangs and braids. She looked way too young to be in high school, and her clothes just made it worse.

Puffed-sleeve shirts, overalls, matching ponytail balls … She wore her gymsuit baggy, like a romper.

Eleanor wasn’t scared of the horse, but she didn’t want to have to run down the mats with the whole class watching her. She didn’t want to run, period. It made her breasts feel like they were going to detach from her body.

‘I’m going to tell Mrs Burt that my mom doesn’t want me to do anything that might rup-ture my hymen,’ Eleanor said. ‘For religious reasons.’

‘For real?’ Beebi asked.

‘No,’ Eleanor said, giggling. ‘Well. Actually

…’

‘You’re nasty,’ DeNice said, hitching up her overalls.

Eleanor put her T-shirt on over her head then wriggled out of her gymsuit, using the shirt as cover.

‘Are you coming?’ DeNice asked.

‘Well, I’m probably not going to start skipping class now just because of gymnastics,’

Eleanor said, hopping to pull up her jeans.

‘No, are you coming to lunch?’

‘Oh,’ Eleanor said, looking up. They were waiting for her at the end of the lockers. ‘Yeah.’

‘Then hurry up, Miss Jackson.’

She sat with DeNice and Beebi at their usual table by the windows. During passing period, Eleanor saw Park walk by. Park

‘Why can’t you get your driver’s license by homecoming?’ Call asked.

Mr Stessman had them in small groups. They were supposed to be comparing Juliet to Ophelia.

‘Because I can’t bend time and space,’ Park said. Eleanor was sitting across the room by the windows. She was paired up with a guy named Eric, a basketball player. He was talking, and Eleanor was frowning at him.

‘If you had your car,’ Call said, ‘we could ask Kim.’

‘You can ask Kim,’ Park said.

Eric was one of those tall guys who always walked with his shoulders about a foot behind his hips. Constantly doing the limbo. Like he was afraid to hit his head on every door jamb.

‘She wants to go with a group,’ Call said.

‘Plus I think she likes you.’

‘What? I don’t want to go to homecoming with Kim. I don’t even like her. I mean, you know … You like her.’

‘I know. That’s why the plan works. We all go to homecoming together. She figures out you don’t like her, she’s miserable, and guess who’s standing right there, asking her to slow dance?’

‘I don’t want to make Kim miserable.’

‘It’s her or me, man.’

Eric said something else, and Eleanor frowned again. Then she looked over at Park –

and stopped frowning. Park smiled.

‘One minute,’ Mr Stessman said.

‘Crap,’ Call said. ‘What have we got …

Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader?’ Eleanor

‘So Psylocke is another girl telepath?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Park said.

Every morning when Eleanor got on the bus, she worried that Park wouldn’t take off his headphones. That he would stop talking to her as suddenly as he’d started … And if that happened – if she got on the bus one day and he didn’t look up

– she didn’t want him to see how devastated it would make her.

So far, it hadn’t happened.

So far, they hadn’t stopped talking. Like, literally. They talked every second they were sitting next to each other. And almost every conversation started with the words ‘what do you think

…’

What did Eleanor think about that U2 album?

She loved it.

What did Park think of Miami Vice? He thought it was boring.

‘Yes,’ they said when they agreed with each other. Back and forth – ‘Yes,’ ‘ Yes,’ ‘ Yes!’

‘I know.’

‘ Exactly.’

‘ Right? ’

They agreed about everything important and argued about everything else. And that was good, too, because whenever they argued, Eleanor could always crack Park up.

‘Why do the X-Men need another girl telepath?’ she asked.

‘This one has purple hair.’

‘It’s all so sexist.’

Park’s eyes got wide. Well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.

‘The X-Men aren’t sexist,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They’re a metaphor for acceptance; they’ve sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘but …’

‘There’s no but,’ he said, laughing.

‘ But,’ Eleanor insisted, ‘the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that’s their super-power, thinking. And Shadowcat’s power is even worse – she disappears.’

‘She becomes intangible,’ Park said. ‘That’s different.’

‘It’s still something you could do in the middle of a tea party,’ Eleanor said.

‘Not if you were holding hot tea. Plus, you’re forgetting Storm.’

‘I’m not forgetting Storm. She controls the weather with her head; it’s still just thinking.

Which is about all she could do in those boots.’

‘She has a cool Mohawk …’ Park said.

‘Irrelevant,’ Eleanor answered.

Park leaned his head back against the seat, smiling, and looked at the ceiling. ‘The X-Men aren’t sexist.’

‘Are you trying to think of an empowered X-woman?’ Eleanor asked. ‘How about Dazzler?

She’s a living disco ball. Or the White Queen?

She thinks really hard while wearing spotless white lingerie.’

‘What kind of power would you want?’ he asked, changing the subject. He turned his face toward her, laying his cheek against the top of the seat. Smiling.

‘I’d want to fly,’ Eleanor said, looking away from him. ‘I know it’s not very useful, but … it’s flying.’

‘ Yes,’ he said. Park

‘Damn, Park, are you going on a Ninja mission?’

‘Ninjas wear black, Steve.’

‘What?’

Park should have gone inside to change after taekwando, but his dad said he had to be back by 9:00, and that gave him less than an hour to show Eleanor.

Steve was outside working on his Camaro.

He didn’t have his license yet either, but he was getting ready.

‘Going to see your girlfriend?’ he called to Park.

‘What?’

‘Sneaking out to see your girlfriend? Bloody Mary?’

‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ Park said, then swallowed.

‘Sneaking out Ninja-style,’ Steve said.

Park shook his head and broke into a run.

Well, she wasn’t, he thought to himself, cutting through the alley.

He didn’t know where Eleanor lived, exactly.

He knew where she got on the bus, and he knew that she lived next to the school …

It must be this one, he thought. He stopped at a small white house. There were a few broken toys in the yard, and a giant Rottweiler was asleep on the porch.

Park walked toward the house slowly. The dog lifted its head and watched him for a second, then settled back to sleep. It didn’t move, even when Park climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

The guy who answered looked too young to be Eleanor’s dad. Park was pretty sure he’d seen this guy around the neighborhood. He didn’t know who he’d expected to come to the door.

Somebody more exotic. Somebody more like her.

The guy didn’t even say anything. Just stood at the door and waited.

‘Is Eleanor home?’ Park asked.

‘Who wants to know?’ He had a nose like a knife, and he looked straight down it at Park.

‘We go to school together,’ Park said.

The guy looked at Park for another second, then closed the door. Park wasn’t sure what to do. He waited for a few minutes, then right as he was thinking about leaving, Eleanor opened the door just enough to slide through.

Her eyes were round with alarm. In the dark like this, it didn’t even look like she had irises.

As soon as he saw her, he knew it had been a mistake to come here – he felt like he should have known that sooner. He’d been so caught up in showing her …

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

‘I …’

‘… came to challenge me in hand-to-hand combat?’

Park reached into the front of his dobak and pulled out the second issue of Watchmen. Her face lit up; she was so pale, so luminous under the street light, that wasn’t just an expression.

‘Have you read it?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I thought we could …

together.’

Eleanor glanced back at the house, then stepped quickly off the steps. He followed her down the steps, across the gravel driveway, to the back stoop of the elementary school. There was a big safety light over the door. Eleanor sat on the top step, and Park sat next to her.

It took twice as long to read Watchmen as it did any other comic, and it took even longer tonight because it was so strange to be sitting together somewhere other than on the bus. To even see each other outside of school. Eleanor’s hair was wet and hanging in long, dark curls around her face.

When they got to the last page, all Park wanted to do was sit and talk about it. (All he really wanted to do was sit and talk to Eleanor.) But she was already standing up and looking back at her house.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Okay. I guess I do, too.’

She left him sitting on the elementary school steps. She was disappearing inside the house before he could think about saying goodbye. Eleanor

When she walked back into the house, the living room was dark, but the TV was on. Eleanor could see Richie sitting on the couch and her mom standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

It was just a few steps to her room …

‘Is that your boyfriend?’ Richie asked before she made it. He didn’t look up from the TV.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s just a boy from school.’

‘What did he want?’

‘To talk to me about an assignment.’

She waited in her bedroom doorway. Then, when Richie didn’t say anything more, she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her.

‘I know what you’re up to,’ he said, raising his voice, just as the door closed. ‘Nothing but a bitch in heat.’

Eleanor let his words hit her full on. Took them right on the chin.

She climbed into bed and clenched her eyes and jaw and fists – held everything clenched until she could breathe without screaming.

Until this moment, she’d kept Park in a place in her head that she thought Richie couldn’t get to. Completely separate from this house and everything that happened here. (It was a pretty awesome place. Like the only part of her head fit for praying.)

But now Richie was in there, just pissing all over everything. Making everything she felt feel as rank and rotten as him.

Now she couldn’t think about Park …

About the way he looked in the dark, dressed in white, like a superhero.

About the way he smelled, like sweat and bar soap.

About the way he smiled when he liked something, with his lips just turned up at the corners …

Without feeling Richie leer.

She kicked the cat out of the bed, just to be mean. He squawked, but jumped right back up.

‘Eleanor,’ Maisie whispered from the bottom bunk, ‘was that your boyfriend?’

Eleanor crushed her teeth together. ‘No,’ she whispered back viciously. ‘He’s just a boy.’

CHAPTER 15 Eleanor

Her mother stood in the bedroom the next morning while Eleanor got ready. ‘Here,’ she whispered, taking the hairbrush and drawing Eleanor’s hair into a ponytail without brushing out the curl.

‘Eleanor …’ she said.

‘I know why you’re in here,’ Eleanor said, pulling away. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Just listen.’

‘No. I know. He won’t come back, okay? I didn’t invite him, but I’ll tell him, and he won’t come back.’

‘Okay, well … good,’ her mom said, folding her arms, still whispering. ‘It’s just that you’re so young.’

‘No,’ Eleanor said, ‘that’s not what it is. But it doesn’t even matter. He won’t come back, okay? It isn’t even like that anyway.’

Her mom left the room. Richie was still in the house. Eleanor ran out the front door when she heard him turn on the bathroom sink.

It’s not even like that, she thought as she walked to the bus stop. And thinking it made her want to cry, because she knew it was true.

And wanting to cry just made her angry.

Because if she was going to cry about something, it was going to be the fact that her life was complete shit – not because some cool, cute guy didn’t like her like that.

Especially when just being Park’s friend was pretty much the best thing that had ever happened to her.

She must have looked ticked off when she got on the bus because Park didn’t say hi when she sat down.

Eleanor looked into the aisle.

After a few seconds, he reached over and pulled at the old silk scarf she’d tied around her wrist.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘For what?’ She even sounded angry. God, she was a jerk.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I feel like maybe I got you in trouble last night …’

He pulled on the scarf again, so she looked at him. She tried not to look mad – but she’d rather look mad than look like she’d spent all night thinking about how beautiful his lips are.

‘Was that your dad?’ he asked.

She jerked her head back. ‘ No. No, that was my … mother’s husband. He’s not really my anything. My problem, I guess.’

‘Did you get in trouble?’

‘Sort of.’ She really didn’t want to talk to Park about Richie. She’d just about scraped all the Richie off the Parkplace in her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.

Anyway, thanks for bringing Watchmen. I’m glad I got to read it.’

‘It was cool, huh?’

‘Oh, yeah. Kind of brutal. I mean that part with the Comedian …’

‘Yeah … sorry.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that. I mean … I think I need to reread it.’

‘I read it again twice last night. You can take it tonight.’

‘Yeah? Thanks.’

He was still holding the end of her scarf, rubbing the silk idly between his thumb and fingers.

She watched his hand.

If he were to look up at her now, he’d know exactly how stupid she was. She could feel her face go soft and gummy. If Park were to look up at her now, he’d know everything.

He didn’t look up. He wound the scarf around his fingers until her hand was hanging in the space between them.

Then he slid the silk and his fingers into her open palm.

And Eleanor disintegrated. Park

Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

As soon as he touched her, he wondered how he’d gone this long without doing it. He rubbed his thumb through her palm and up her fingers, and was aware of her every breath.

Park had held hands with girls before. Girls at Skateland. A girl at the ninth-grade dance last year. (They’d kissed while they waited for her dad to pick them up.) He’d even held Tina’s hand, back when they ‘went’ together in the sixth grade.

And always, before, it had been fine. Not much different from holding Josh’s hand when they were little kids crossing the street. Or holding his grandma’s hand when she took him to church. Maybe a little sweatier, a little more awkward.

When he’d kissed that girl last year, with his mouth dry and his eyes mostly open, Park had wondered if maybe there was something wrong with him.

He’d even wondered – seriously, while he was kissing her, he’d wondered this – whether he might be gay. Except he didn’t feel like kissing any guys either. And if he thought about She-Hulk or Storm (instead of this girl, Dawn) the kissing got a lot better.

Maybe I’m not attracted to real girls, he’d thought at the time. Maybe I’m some sort of perverted cartoon-sexual.

Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn’t recognize all those other girls. The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn’t recognize the formatting.

When he touched Eleanor’s hand, he recognized her. He knew.

Eleanor

Disintegrated.

Like something had gone wrong beaming her onto the Starship Enterprise.

If you’ve ever wondered what that feels like, it’s a lot like melting – but more violent.

Even in a million different pieces, Eleanor could still feel Park holding her hand. Could still feel his thumb exploring her palm. She sat completely still because she didn’t have any other option. She tried to remember what kind of animals paralyzed their prey before they ate them …

Maybe Park had paralyzed her with his ninja magic, his Vulcan handhold, and now he was going to eat her.

That would be awesome. Park

They broke apart when the bus stopped. A flood of reality rushed through Park, and he looked around nervously to see if anyone had been watching them. Then he looked nervously at Eleanor to see if she’d noticed him looking.

She was still staring at the floor, even as she picked up her books and stood in the aisle.

If someone had been watching, what would they have seen? Park couldn’t imagine what his face had looked like when he touched Eleanor.

Like somebody taking the first drink in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Over-the-top bliss.

He stood behind her in the aisle. She was just about his height. Her hair was pulled up, and her neck was flushed and splotchy. He resisted the urge to lay his cheek against it.

He walked with her all the way to her locker, and leaned against the wall as she opened it. She didn’t say anything, just shifted some books onto the shelf and took down a few others.

As the buzz of touching her faded, he was starting to realize that Eleanor hadn’t actually done anything to touch him back. She hadn’t bent her fingers around his. She hadn’t even looked at him. She still hadn’t looked at him. Jesus.

He knocked gently on her locker door.

‘Hey,’ he said.

She shut the door. ‘Hey, what?’

‘Okay?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘I’ll see you in English?’ he asked.

She nodded and walked away.

Jesus. Eleanor

All through first and second and third hour, Eleanor rubbed her palm.

Nothing happened.

How could it be possible that there were that many nerve endings all in one place?

And were they always there, or did they just flip on whenever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting?

Maybe this was why so many people said it felt better to drive a stick shift. Park

Jesus. Was it possible to rape somebody’s hand?

Eleanor wouldn’t look at Park during English and history. He went to her locker after school, but she wasn’t there.

When he got on the bus, she was already sitting in their seat – but sitting in his spot, against the wall. He was too embarrassed to say anything. He sat down next to her and let his hands hang between his knees …

Which meant she really had to reach for his wrist, to pull his hand into hers. She wrapped her fingers around his and touched his palm with her thumb.

Her fingers were trembling.

Park shifted in his seat and turned his back to the aisle.

‘Okay?’ she whispered.

He nodded, taking a deep breath. They both stared down at their hands.

Jesus.