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It was nice to have theherself to him every now and then

Park rolled onto his stoht he was over caring what people thought about hi Eleanor proved that

But he kept finding new pockets of shallow inside hi neays to betray her

CHAPTER 31

Eleanor

There was just one more day of school left before Christo She told her ot to the bus stop Friday ize But Eleanor didn’t show up Which…

‘What now?’ he said in the direction of her house Were they supposed to break up over this?

Was she going to go three weeks without talking to him?

He kneasn’t Eleanor’s fault that she didn’t have a phone, and that her house was the Fortress of Solitude, but … Jesus It made it so easy for her to cut herself off whenever she felt like it

‘I’ started barking in the yard next to hi

The bus turned the corner and heaved to a stop Park could see Tina in the back atching hiain

Eleanor

With Richie at work all day, she didn’t have to stay in her roo on’t leave its kennel

She ran out of batteries She ran out of things to read …

She lay in bed so ot up Sunday afternoon to eat dinner (Her ry) Eleanor sat on the living roo?’ he asked He was holding a bean burrito and it was dripping onto his T-shirt and the floor

‘I’m not,’ she said

Mouse held the burrito over his head and tried to catch the leak with his mouth ‘Yeh oo are’

Maisie looked up at Eleanor, then back at the TV

‘Is it because you hate Dad?’ Mouse asked

‘Yes,’ Eleanor said

‘ Eleanor,’ herout of the kitchen

‘No,’ Eleanor said to Mouse, shaking her head ‘I told you, I’’ She went back to her roo her face in the pillow

Nobody followed her to see rong

Maybe her ht to ask questions for all eternity when she dumped Eleanor at somebody’s house for a year

Or maybe just she didn’t care

Eleanor rolled onto her back and picked up her dead Walkht, turning the reels with her fingertip and looking at Park’s handwriting on the label

‘Never ht she’d written those awful things on her books herself

And he’d taken Tina’s side against hers

Tina’s

She closed her eyes again and remembered the first time that he kissed her … How she’d let her neck bend back, how she’d opened her mouth How she’d believed him when he said she was special

Park

A week into break, his dad asked Park if he and Eleanor had broken up

‘Sort of,’ Park said

‘That’s too bad,’ his dad said

‘It is?’

‘Well, itlike a four-year-old lost at Ket her back?’ his dad asked

‘I can’t even get her to talk to me’

‘It’s too bad you can’t talk to your irl is to look sharp in a uniform’

Eleanor

A week into break, Eleanor’s mom woke her up before sunrise ‘Do you want to walk to the store with me?’

‘No,’ Eleanor said

‘Come on, I could use the extra hands’

Her s

Eleanor had to take extra steps just to keep up

‘It’s cold,’ she said

‘I told you to wear a hat’ Her mom had told her to wear socks, too, but they looked ridiculous with Eleanor’s Vans

It was a forty-rocery store, her ht them each a day-old cream horn and a cup of twenty-five-cent coffee Eleanor dumped Coffee-Mate and Sweet’N Low in hers, and followed herthe first person to go through all the smashed cereal boxes and dented cans …

Afterward, they walked to the Goodwill, and Eleanor found a stack of old Analogcouch in the furniture section

When it was tio, hercap and pulled it over her head

‘Great,’ Eleanor said, ‘now I have lice’

She felt better on the way home (Which was probably the point of this whole field trip) It was still cold, but the sun was shining, and herabout clouds and circuses

Eleanor al

About Park and Tina and the bus and the fight, about the place between his grandparents’

house and the RV

She felt it all right at the back of her throat, like a boue Keeping it ininto her palms Eleanor shook her head and sed

Park

Park rode his bike by her house over and over one day until her stepdad’s truck was gone and one of the other kids came outside to play in the snow

It was the older boy, Park couldn’t remember his name The kid scuttled up the steps nervously when Park stopped in front of the house