Eleanor & Park Read Online Free PDF Page B

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
    disconnected. 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.
    CHAPTER 9
    Park
    He was going to tell her that she
    did a good job on her poem.
    That
    would
    be
    a
    giant
    understatement anyway. She was
    the only person in class who’d
    read her poem like it wasn’t an
    assignment. She recited it like it
    was a living thing. Like something
    she was letting out. You couldn’t
    look away from her as long as she
    was talking. (Even more than
    Park’s usual not being able to look
    away from her.) When she was
    done, a lot of people clapped and
    Mr Stessman hugged her. Which
    was totally against the Code of
    Conduct.
    ‘Hey. Nice job. In English.’
    That’s what Park was going to
    say.
    Or maybe, ‘I’m in your
    English class. That poem you read
    was cool.’
    Or, ‘You’re in Mr Stessman’s
    class, right? Yeah, I thought so.’
    Park picked up his comics
    after taekwando Wednesday night,
    but he waited until Thursday
    morning to read them.
    Eleanor
    That stupid Asian kid totally knew
    that she was reading his comics.
    He even looked up at Eleanor
    sometimes before he turned the
    page, like he was that polite .
    He definitely wasn’t one of
    them, the bus demons. He didn’t
    talk to anyone on the bus.
    (Especially not her.) But he was in
    with them somehow because,
    when Eleanor was sitting next to
    him, they all left her alone. Even
    Tina. It made Eleanor wish she
    could sit next to him all day long.
    This morning, when she got
    on the bus, it kind of felt like he
    was waiting for her. He was
    holding a comic called Watchmen ,
    and it looked so ugly that Eleanor
    decided
    not
    to
    bother
    eavesdropping. Or eavesreading.
    Whatever.
    (She liked it best when he read
    X-Men , even though she didn’t get
    everything that was going on
    th e r e ; X-Men was worse than
    General Hospital . It took Eleanor
    a couple weeks to figure out that
    Scott Summers and Cyclops were
    the same guy, and she still wasn’t
    sure what was up with Phoenix.)
    But
    Eleanor
    didn’t
    have
    anything