‘So you just want people to think you like the Smiths?’ He couldn’t help but sound disdainful.
‘Yeah,’ she said, looking around the bus. ‘I’m trying to impress the locals.’
He didn’t know if she could help but sound like a smartass, but she sure wasn’t trying. The air soured between them. Park shifted against the wall. She looked across the aisle to stare out the window.
When he got to English, he tried to catch her eye, but she looked away. He felt like she was trying so hard to ignore him that she wouldn’t even participate in class.
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Mr Stessman kept trying to draw her out –
she was his new favorite target whenever things got sleepy in class. Today they were supposed to be discussing Romeo and Juliet, but nobody wanted to talk.
‘You don’t seem troubled by their deaths, Miss Douglas.’
‘I’m sorry?’ she said. She narrowed her eyes at him.
‘It doesn’t strike you as sad?’ Mr Stessman asked. ‘Two young lovers lay dead. Never was a story of more woe. Doesn’t that get to you?’
‘I guess not,’ she said.
‘Are you so cold? So cool?’ He was standing over her desk, pretending to plead with her.
‘No …’ she said. ‘I just don’t think it’s a tragedy.’
‘It’s the tragedy,’ Mr Stessman said.
She rolled her eyes. She was wearing two or three necklaces, old fake pearls, like Park’s grandmother wore to church, and she twisted them while she talked.
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‘But he’s so obviously making fun of them,’
she said.
‘Who is?’
‘Shakespeare.’
‘Do tell …’
She rolled her eyes again. She knew Mr Stessman’s game by now.
‘Romeo and Juliet are just two rich kids who’ve always gotten every little thing they wanted. And now, they think they want each other.’
‘They’re in love …’ Mr Stessman said, clutching his heart.
‘They don’t even know each other,’ she said.
‘It was love at first sight.’
‘It was “Oh my God, he’s so cute” at first sight. If Shakespeare wanted you to believe they were in love, he wouldn’t tell you in almost the very first scene that Romeo was hung up on Ros-aline … It’s Shakespeare making fun of love,’
she said.
‘Then why has it survived?’
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‘I don’t know, because Shakespeare is a really good writer?’
‘No!’ Mr Stessman said. ‘Someone else, someone with a heart. Mr Sheridan, what beats in your chest? Tell us, why has Romeo and Juliet survived four hundred years?’
Park hated talking in class. Eleanor frowned at him, then looked away. He felt himself blush.
‘Because …’ he said quietly, looking at his desk, ‘because people want to remember what it’s like to be young? And in love?’
Mr Stessman leaned back against the black-board and rubbed his beard.
‘Is that right?’ Park asked.
‘Oh, it’s definitely right,’ Mr Stessman said.
‘I don’t know if that’s why Romeo and Juliet has become the most beloved play of all time. But, yes, Mr Sheridan. Truer words never spoken.’
She didn’t acknowledge Park in history class, but she never did.
When he got on the bus that afternoon, she was already there. She got up to let him have his 81/593
place by the window, and then she surprised him by talking. Quietly. Almost under her breath. But talking.
‘It’s more like a wish list,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘They’re songs I’d like to hear. Or bands I’d like to hear. Stuff that looks interesting.’
‘If you’ve never heard the Smiths, how do you even know about them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said defensively. ‘My friends, my old friends … magazines. I don’t know. Around.’
‘Why don’t you just listen to them?’
She looked at him like he was officially an idiot. ‘It’s not like they play the Smiths on Sweet 98.’
And then, when Park didn’t say anything, she rolled her inky brown eyes into the back of her head. ‘ God,’ she said.
They didn’t talk anymore all the way home.
That night, while he did his homework, Park made a tape with all of his favorite Smiths songs, 82/593
plus a few songs by Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division.
He put the tape and five more X-Men comics into his backpack before he went to bed.
CHAPTER 11
Eleanor
‘Why are you so quiet?’ Eleanor’s mother asked.
Eleanor was taking a bath, and her mom was making fifteen-bean soup. ‘That leaves three beans for each us,’ Ben had cracked to Eleanor earlier.
‘I’m not quiet. I’m taking a bath.’
‘Usually you sing in the bathtub.’
‘I do not,’ Eleanor said.
‘You
do.
Usually
you
sing
“Rocky
Raccoon.”’
‘ God. Well, thanks for telling me, I won’t anymore. God.’
Eleanor got dressed quickly and tried to squeeze past her mother. Her mom grabbed her by the wrists. ‘I like to hear you sing,’ she said.
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She reached for a bottle on the counter behind Eleanor and rubbed a drop of vanilla behind each of the girl’s ears. Eleanor raised her shoulders like it tickled.
‘Why do you always do that? I smell like a Strawberry Shortcake doll.’
‘I do it,’ her mom said, ‘because it’s cheaper than perfume, but it smells just as good.’ Then she rubbed some vanilla behind her own ears and laughed.
Eleanor laughed with her, and stood there for a few seconds smiling. Her mom was wearing soft old jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was pulled back in a smooth ponytail. She looked almost like she used to. There was a picture of her
– at one of Maisie’s birthday parties, scooping ice cream cones – with a ponytail just like that.
‘Are you okay?’ her mom asked.
‘Yeah …’ Eleanor said, ‘yeah, I’m just tired.
I’m going to do my homework and go to bed.’
Her mom seemed to know that something was off, but she didn’t push. She used to make 85/593
Eleanor tell her everything. ‘What’s going on up there?’ she’d say, knocking on the top of Eleanor’s head. ‘Are you making yourself crazy?’ Her mom hadn’t said anything like that since Eleanor had moved home. She seemed to realize that she’d lost her right to knock.
Eleanor climbed up onto her bunk and pushed the cat to the end. She didn’t have anything to read. Nothing new, anyway. Was he done bringing her comics? Why had he even started? She ran her fingers over the embarrassing song titles
– ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘How Soon Is Now?’ – on her math book. She wanted to scribble them out, but he’d probably notice and lord it over her.
Eleanor really was tired, that wasn’t a lie.