Richie shouted again – ‘ my house’– and Eleanor and the cat both jumped. Something crunched beneath her.
She reached under her leg and pulled out a badly crumpled comic book. An X-Men annual. Damn it, Ben. She tried to smooth the comic out on her lap, but it was covered in some goop. The blanket felt wet, too, it was lotion or something … No, liquid makeup. With little bits of broken glass. Eleanor carefully picked a shard out of the cat’s tail and set it aside, then wiped her wet fingers on his fur. A length of oily-brown cassette tape was wrapped around his leg. Eleanor pulled it free. She looked down the bed and blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dark …
Torn comic book pages.
Powder.
Little
pools
of
green
eyeshadow …
Miles of cassette tape.
Her headphones were snapped in half and hanging from the edge of the bunk. Her grapefruit box was at the end of the bed, and Eleanor knew before she reached for it that it would be light as air.
Empty. The lid was ripped almost in half, and someone had written on it in bold black marker – with one of Eleanor’s markers.
do you think you can make a fool of me? this is my house do you think you can hore around my neighborhood
right under my nose and i’m not going to find out is that what you think? i know what you are and its over’
Eleanor stared at the lid and struggled to make the letters into words – but she couldn’t get past the familiar spill of lowercase letters.
Somewhere in the house her mother was crying like she was never going to stop.
CHAPTER 47
Eleanor
Eleanor considered her options.
1.
CHAPTER 48
Eleanor
do i make you wet?
She pulled back the soiled blanket and set the cat on the clean sheet
underneath.
Then
she
climbed from the top bunk to the bottom. Her bookbag was sitting by the door. Eleanor unzipped it without getting off the bed and took Park’s photo out of the side pocket. Then she was out the window and on the porch and running down the street faster than she’d ever run in gym class.
She didn’t slow down until she was on the next block, and then only because she didn’t know where to go. She was almost to Park’s house – she couldn’t go to Park’s house.
pop that cherry ‘Hey, Red.’
Eleanor ignored the girl’s voice. She looked back at the street. What if somebody had heard her leave the house? What if Richie came after her? She stepped off the sidewalk into someone’s yard. Behind a tree.
‘Hey. Eleanor.’
Eleanor looked around. She was standing in front of Steve’s house. The garage door was mostly closed, propped open with a baseball bat. Eleanor could see someone moving inside, and Tina was walking down the driveway, holding a beer.
‘ Hey,’ Tina hissed. She looked as disgusted with Eleanor as ever.
Eleanor thought about running again, but her legs felt weak.
‘Your stepdad’s been looking for you,’ Tina said. ‘He’s been driving around the neighborhood all goddamn night.’
‘What did you tell him?’
Eleanor said. Did Tina do this? Is that how he knew?
‘I asked him if his dick was bigger than his truck,’ Tina said. ‘I didn’t tell him anything.’
‘Did you tell him about Park?’
Tina narrowed her eyes. Then shook her head. ‘But somebody’s going to.’
suck me off Eleanor looked back at the street. She had to hide. She had to get away from him.
‘What’s wrong with you anyway?’ Tina asked.
‘Nothing.’ A pair of headlights stopped at the end of the block.
Eleanor put her arms over her head.
‘Come on,’ Tina said, in a voice Eleanor had never heard before – concerned. ‘You just need to stay out of his way until he cools off.’
Eleanor followed Tina up the driveway, crouching to get into the hazy, dark garage.
‘Is that Big Red?’ Steve was sitting on a couch. Mikey was there, too, on the floor, with one of the girls from the bus. There was hessian music, Black Sabbath, coming from a car up on blocks in the middle of the garage.
‘Sit down,’ Tina said, pointing to the other end of the couch.
‘You’re in trouble, Big Red,’
Steve said. ‘Your daddy’s looking for you.’ Steve was grinning from ear to ear. His mouth was bigger than a lion’s.
‘It’s her stepdad,’ Tina said.
‘ Stepdad,’
Steve
shouted,
throwing a beer can across the garage. ‘Your fucking step dad?
Do you want me to kill him for you? I’m gonna kill Tina’s anyway. I could get them both in the same day. Buy one, get one …’ He giggled. ‘Buy one, get one … free.’
Tina opened a beer and shoved it into Eleanor’s lap.
Eleanor took it, just to have something to hold. ‘Drink up,’
Tina said.
Eleanor took a sip obediently.
It tasted sharp and yellow.
‘We should play quarters,’
Steve slurred. ‘Hey, Red, do you have any quarters?’ Eleanor shook her head.
Tina perched next to him on the arm of the couch and lit a cigarette. ‘We had quarters,’ she said. ‘We spent them on beer, remember?’
‘Those
weren’t