Eleanor & Park: Chapters 14–21

And if that happened—if she got on the bus one day and he didn't look up—she didn't want him to see how devastated it would make her.

"It's all so sexist."

"The X-Men aren't sexist," he said, shaking his head. "They're a metaphor for acceptance; they've sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them."

"But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that's their super-­power, thinking. And Shadowcat's power is even worse—she disappears."

"But," Eleanor insisted, "the girls are all so stereotypically girly and passive. Half of them just think really hard. Like that's their super­ power, thinking. And Shadowcat's power is even worse—she disap­pears."

"She becomes intangible," Park said. "That's different."

"Are you trying to think of an empowered X-Woman?" Eleanor asked.

He didn't know whom he’d expected to come to the door. Somebody more exotic. Somebody more like her.

Her face lit up; she was so pale, so luminous under the streetlight, that wasn't just an expression.

Now she couldn't think about Park—
About the way he looked in the dark, dressed in white, like a su­perhero.
About the way he smelled, like sweat and bar soap.
About the way he smiled when he liked something, with his lips just turned up at the corners . . .
Without feeling Richie leer.

Then he slid the silk and his fingers into her open palm. And Eleanor disintegrated.

She tried to remember what kind of animals paralyzed their prey before they ate them.

Park couldn't imagine what his face had looked like when he touched Elea­nor. Like somebody taking the first drink in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Over-the-top bliss.

"That's a very limited mutation," she said. "What do they call you?"

"Your hands. They just look . . ." He took her hand in both of his. "I don't know . . . vulnerable."

He always wore black, practically head to toe. Black punk rock T-shirts over black, thermal long-sleeved shirts.

Listen to the engine, depress the clutch, shift, gas, release, steer, check your mirrors, signal your turn, look twice for motorcycles.

His dad was radiating frustration.

"He can drive a manual transmission."

It happened so fast, she didn't have time to die of ecstasy or embarrassment.

Her dad had a voice like someone on TV, somebody who would try to sell you record compilations.

"Good God, Eleanor, stop. You're blinding me. Is that why you keep that smile locked away, because it's too powerful for mortal man?"

They were playing basketball, and Eleanor caught the ball, colliding with one of Tina's friends, a jumpy, wiry girl named Annette.

They said everything quietly, even though everyone else on the bus roared, even though you'd have to shout into a megaphone to be heard over all the cursing and idiocy.

Park wished it was only righteous anger that he felt.

There were moments— not just today, moments every day since they'd met—when Eleanor made him self-conscious, when he saw people talking and he was sure they were talking about them. Raucous moments on the bus when he was sure that everyone was laughing at them.

"It's like we have fifty chaperones."

Now Eleanor fixated on all the small luxuries strewn and tucked around the house.

His mom looked over at Park, but not for long; Tina's hair was at a critical stage.

Eleanor had an answer for everything—but she still managed to evade most of Park's questions.

"Why?" she asked, with something just gentler than disdain.

"Because I'm thinking about you," he said, exasperated.

"And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end."

"You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal."

Eleanor and the little kids climbed into the back of the truck and huddled against the cab, making faces at the baby, who got to sit in­side.

His grandma had only four Sunday dinners in her repertoire—chicken-fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, pot roast, and corned beef—but they were all good.

Josh looked like a big German or Polish kid whose eyes kind of crinkled when he smiled.

She was good. She was honorable. She was honest. She would defi­nitely help an old lady across the street.

Also, his mom didn't get sarcasm.

Eleanor hadn't known there were houses like that in this crappy neighborhood—houses with wall-to-wall carpeting and little baskets of potpourri everywhere.