Eleanor & Park Read online

  Someone should.

  Park looked down at his steel-toe Docs. He’d just bought them at work. (On sale, with his employee discount.) He looked at Richie’s head, hanging from his neck like a leather bag.

  Park hated him more than he thought it was possible to hate someone. More than he’d ever thought it was possible to feel anything …

  Almost.

  He lifted his boot and kicked the ground in front of Richie’s face. Ice and mud and driveway slopped into the older man’s open mouth. Richie coughed violently and banked into the ground.

  Park waited for him to get up, but Richie just lay there spitting curses, and rubbing salt and gravel into his eyes.

  He wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t getting up.

  Park waited.

  And then he walked home.

  Eleanor

  Letters, postcards, yellow padded packages that rattled in her hands. None of them opened, none of them read.

  It was bad when the letters came every day. It was worse when they stopped.

  Sometimes she laid them out on the carpet like tarot cards, like Wonka bars, and wondered whether it was too late.

  CHAPTER 58

  Park

  Eleanor didn’t go to prom with him.

  Cat did.

  Cat from work. She was thin and dark, and her eyes were as blue and flat as breath mints. When Park held Cat’s hand, it was like holding hands with a mannequin, and it was such a relief that he kissed her. He fell asleep on prom night in his tuxedo pants and a Fugazi T-shirt.

  He woke up the next morning when something light fell on his shirt – he opened his eyes. His dad was standing over him.

  ‘Mail call,’ his dad said, almost gently. Park put his hand to his heart.

  Eleanor hadn’t written him a letter.

  It was a postcard. ‘Greetings from the Land of 10,000 Lakes,’ it said on the front. Park turned it over and recognized her scratchy handwriting. It filled his head with song lyrics.

  He sat up. He smiled. Something heavy and winged took off from his chest.

  Eleanor hadn’t written him a letter, it was a postcard.

  Just three words long.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank some of the people who made this book possible for me – and who made me possible for this book:

  First, to Colleen Eickelman, who insisted that I pass the eighth grade.

  And to the Bent and Huntley families, who kept me alive with kindness.

  To my brother Forest, who promises that he isn’t just saying things because I’m his sister.

  To Nicola Barr, Sara O’Keeffe and Natalie Braine for being so fierce and so certain, for making the Atlantic Ocean disappear and, most of all, for looking out for Eleanor.

  Thank you, while I’m at it, to everyone at Orion and St Martin’s Press.

  Especially to the lovely and insightful Sara Goodman, whom I trusted implicitly as soon as she sat down next to me on the bus.

  To my dear friend Christopher Schelling, the best-case scenario.

  And finally, I would like to thank Kai, Laddie and Rosey for their love and their patience. (You’re my all-time favorites.)

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rainbow Rowell is a newspaper columnist in Omaha, Nebraska, where she lives with her husband and two sons.

  Copyright

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Orion Books.

  This eBook first published in 2012 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Rainbow Rowell 2012

  The moral right of Rainbow Rowell to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 1633 2

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk