Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell Read Free Book Online Page B

out-
    of-control huge.
    Eleanor had only known one
    Asian person in her life – Paul,
    who was in her math class at her
    old school. Paul was Chinese. His
    parents had moved to Omaha to
    get away from the Chinese
    government. (Which seemed like
    an extreme choice. Like they’d
    looked at the globe and said,
    ‘Yup. That’s as far away as
    possible.’)
    Paul was the one who’d taught
    Eleanor to say ‘Asian’ and not
    ‘oriental.’ ‘Oriental’s for food,’
    he’d said.
    ‘Whatever,
    LaChoy
    Boy,’
    she’d said back.
    Eleanor couldn’t figure out
    what an Asian person was doing
    in the Flats anyway. Everybody
    else here was seriously white.
    Like, white by choice. Eleanor had
    never even heard the n-word said
    out loud until she moved here, but
    the kids on her bus used it like it
    was the only way to indicate that
    somebody was black. Like there
    was no other word or phrase that
    would work.
    Eleanor stayed away from the
    n-word even in her head. It was
    bad enough that, thanks to
    Richie’s influence, she went
    around mentally calling everyone
    she met a ‘motherfucker.’ (Irony.)
    There were three or four other
    Asian kids at their school.
    Cousins. One of them had written
    an essay about being a refugee
    from Laos.
    And then there was Ol’ Green
    Eyes.
    Who she was apparently going
    to tell her whole life story to.
    Maybe on the way home, she’d
    tell him that she didn’t have a
    phone or a washing machine or a
    toothbrush.
    That last thing, she was
    thinking
    about
    telling
    her
    counselor. Mrs Dunne had sat
    Eleanor down on her first day of
    school and given a little speech
    about how Eleanor could tell her
    anything . All through the speech,
    she kept squeezing the fattest part
    of Eleanor’s arm.
    If Eleanor told Mrs Dunne
    everything – about Richie, her
    mom, everything – Eleanor didn’t
    know what would happen.
    But if she told Mrs Dunne
    about the toothbrush … maybe
    Mrs Dunne would just get her one.
    And then Eleanor could stop
    sneaking into the bathroom after
    lunch to rub her teeth with salt.
    (She’d seen that in a Western
    once. It probably didn’t even
    work.)
    The bell rang. 10:12.
    Just two more periods until
    English. She wondered if he’d talk
    to her in class. Maybe that’s what
    they did now.
    She could still hear that voice
    in her head – not his – the
    singer’s. From the Smiths. You
    could hear his accent, even when
    he was singing. He sounded like
    he was crying out.
    ‘I am the sun …
    And the air …’
    Eleanor didn’t notice at first how
    un-horrible everyone was being in
    gym. (Her head was still on the
    bus.) They were playing volleyball
    today, and once Tina said, ‘Your
    serve, bitch,’ but that was it, and
    that was practically jocular, all-
    things-Tina considered.
    When Eleanor got to the locker
    room, she realized why Tina had
    been so low-key; she was just
    waiting. Tina and her friends –
    and the black girls, too, everybody
    wanted a piece of this – were
    standing at the end of Eleanor’s
    row, waiting for her to walk to her
    locker.
    It was covered with Kotex
    pads. A whole box, it looked like.
    At first Eleanor thought the
    pads were actually bloody, but
    when she got closer she could see
    that it was just red magic marker.
    Somebody had written ‘Raghead’
    and ‘Big Red’ on a few of the
    pads, but they were the expensive
    kind, so the ink was already
    starting to absorb.
    If Eleanor’s clothes weren’t in
    that locker, if she was wearing
    anything other than this gymsuit,
    she would have just walked away.
    Instead she walked past the
    girls, with her chin as high as she
    could manage, and methodically
    peeled the pads off her locker.
    There were even some inside,
    stuck to her clothes.
    Eleanor cried a little bit, she
    couldn’t help it, but she kept her
    back to everybody so there
    wouldn’t be a show. It was all
    over in a few minutes anyway
    because nobody wanted to be late
    to lunch. Most of the girls still had
    to