Free Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell Page A

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 .
    CHAPTER 16
    Eleanor
    Saturdays were the worst.
    On Sundays, Eleanor could
    think all day about how close it
    was to Monday. But Saturdays
    were ten years long.
    She’d already finished her
    homework. Some creep had
    written ‘do i make you wet?’ on
    her geography book, so she spent
    a really long time covering it up
    with a black ink pen. She tried to
    turn it into some kind of flower.
    She watched cartoons with the
    little kids until golf came on, then
    played double solitaire with Maisie
    until they were both bored stupid.
    Later, she’d listen to music.
    She’d saved the last two batteries
    Park had given her so that she
    could listen to her tape player
    today when she missed him most.
    She had five tapes from him now
    – which meant, if her batteries
    lasted, she had four hundred and
    fifty minutes to spend with Park in
    her head, holding his hand.
    Maybe it was stupid, but that’s
    what she did with him, even in her
    fantasies – even where anything
    was possible. As far as Eleanor
    was concerned, that just showed
    how wonderful it was to hold
    Park’s hand.
    (Besides they didn’t just hold
    hands. Park touched her hands
    like they were something rare and
    precious, like her fingers were
    intimately connected to the rest of
    her body. Which, of course, they
    were. It was hard to explain. He
    made her feel like more than the
    sum of her parts.)
    The only bad thing about their
    new bus routine was that it had
    seriously cut back on their
    conversations. She could hardly
    look at Park when he was
    touching her. And Park seemed to
    have a hard time finishing his
    sentences. (Which meant he liked
    her. Ha .)
    Yesterday, on the way home
    from school, their bus had to take
    a fifteen-minute detour because of
    a busted sewer pipe. Steve had
    started cussing about how he
    needed to get to his new job at the
    gas station. And Park had said,
    ‘Wow.’
    ‘What?’ Eleanor sat by the wall
    now, because it made her feel
    safer, less exposed. She could
    almost pretend that they had the
    bus to themselves.
    ‘I can actually burst sewers
    with my mind,’ Park said.
    ‘That’s
    a
    very
    limited
    mutation,’ she said. ‘What do they
    call you?’
    ‘They call me … um …’ And
    then he’d started laughing and
    pulled at one of her curls. (That
    was a new, awesome development
    – the hair touching. Sometimes
    he’d come up behind her after
    school, and tug at her ponytail or
    tap the top of her bun.)
    ‘I … don’t know what they
    call me,’ he said.
    ‘Maybe the Public Works,’ she
    said, laying her hand on top of
    his, finger to finger. Her fingertips
    came to his last knuckle. It might
    be the only part of her that was
    smaller than him.
    ‘You’re like a little girl,’ he
    said.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Your hands. They just look
    …’ He took her hand in both of
    his. ‘I don’t know … vulnerable.’
    ‘Pipemaster,’ she whispered.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s your superhero name.
    No, wait – the Piper. Like, “Time
    to pay the Piper!”’
    He laughed and pulled at
    another curl.
    That was the most talking
    they’d done in two weeks. She’d
    started to write him a letter – she’d
    started it a