Eleanor and Park

For Eleanor, “Wednesday nights are the worst” because Park is preoccupied with taekwondo practice and it has grown too cold to play outside (233). This forces Eleanor and her siblings to stay cooped up in their room in order to avoid Richie. Eleanor’s siblings tell her that they know she is dating Park and that Richie will make her leave if he finds out. Eleanor makes a deal with Maisie that she can use Eleanor’s makeup and read her comics if she does not tell their mom about Park.

Meanwhile, Park’s dad is still ignoring Park. It gets to the point that he feels like his father only loves him because he is obligated to by their blood relation. Park feels that wearing makeup to school has angered his father in a very final kind of way. The chapter ends with Eleanor wondering what to do: she knows her siblings will soon spill the beans to their mom about her relationship to Park.

Eleanor goes to Park’s house and they finally decide to hang out alone in Park’s room. Eleanor asks him why he never hangs out with his old friends, and Park just says that he does not care about not seeing them anymore; Eleanor is the only person that he ever misses. Eleanor is tempted to tell Park that her siblings know about their relationship, but she cannot bring herself to do so. They kiss and Eleanor decides to go home for the night.

Eleanor arrives back at her own house to find Maisie with perfume and makeup smeared all over her. She quickly cleans her sister up so that they do not get in trouble, but the only thing she can think about is how great it felt when Park touched her body earlier while they were kissing.

Park is getting increasingly agitated by the mean messages that keep appearing on Eleanor’s notebook, and he presses her to find out who is responsible for them. Eleanor is hesitant to implicate Tina because she knows that Tina and Park have a history together. It’s “no complicated romantic history” (242), he tries to explain. After gym class one day, Eleanor realizes she cannot find her clothes. She searches and searches and eventually finds them flushed into the mouth of a nearby toilet.

The gym teacher offers to walk Eleanor to the counselor’s office, but Eleanor simply leaves the school to avoid the embarrassment of being seen in her tight gym clothes. She throws her wet clothes in the trash, but then decides that she probably should see the counselor. She is eventually driven home by the counselor and she tells her mom about what had happened at school. Her mom consoles her, and the chapter ends with Eleanor deciding not to visit Park that evening.

This short chapter begins with Park being pestered by his mom with countless questions about Eleanor. Park’s little brother Josh chime in that he has a girlfriend too, but he is chided by his father, who tells him that he is too young to have a girlfriend and that he will be grounded from his Nintendo for having one. Park begins to think that his father is the only person he encountered who had a problem with him wearing makeup. Park lies down in bed and falls asleep to the thought of Eleanor in her gym suit. 

Park’s family leaves for a boating show while he is allowed to stay home in order to hang out with Eleanor. While waiting for her to arrive, Park stays busy by cleaning the house. He dozes off on the couch but wakes to the sound of Eleanor ringing the doorbell. Park opens the door and immediately pulls Eleanor into his arms and kisses her. He pulls back and asks if everything is alright, but she does not immediately respond.

Instead of replying, she softly touches Park’s arm and they step inside, lie on the couch and start caressing each other. Eleanor thinks that Park’s skin is wonderfully soft and she cannot get enough of being close to him. As the afternoon progresses, Park knows that they had better stop in case his family comes home. Park’s parents arrive soon afterwards and Park walks Eleanor home.

Park hugs Eleanor before they go their separate ways and the two decide to try to be alone together sometime soon. Eleanor walks into the house to find Richie awake in the living room. He asks her about where she’s been all day, to which she responds that she has hanging out at Tina’s, as usual. Richie says that “Tina’s house must be fucking Disneyland, huh” (264). The chapter closes with Richie asking her what she spent her Christmas money on; Eleanor tells him that she used it to buy the necklace she is wearing, which was in fact a present from Park.

Park and Josh are sent over to their grandparents’ house to eat dinner as their parents are having a particularly bad fight. Josh thinks that he is the reason they are fighting, but Park claims he really has no idea why they are fighting. In his mind, he determines that their current bickering has nothing to do with Eleanor, which relieves him. After school, Park is surprised to see his mom at the bus stop. She tells him that she is going to take him to take his driving test and he hops in her car.

Park passes the driving test and as he is getting his picture taken for his license, his mother cries. The next day on the bus, Park eagerly shows Eleanor his brand new license and Eleanor loves it because she has never held a picture of Park before. He guarantees her that he will soon provide her with a school picture of him for her to keep.

Soon afterwards, Eleanor comes over to hang out and Park gives Eleanor the picture that he promised her. They spend the evening kissing and looking through old yearbooks. Park’s mom asks to take a picture of the two of them together and they agree and pose for her picture. Eleanor arrives home and takes a bath while her mother guards the door. Her mom says she bumped into a friend today whose daughter is pregnant and she tells Eleanor that she is wise to be steering clear of boys. That night, Eleanor cannot find anywhere to hide her picture of Park so she merely sticks it in her book bag “[a]fter she’d looked at it again and again” (271). 

This chapter is amongst the shortest in the book. It is taekwondo night for Park so Eleanor hangs around her room doing nothing but thinking about Park. Later, she hangs out with her brothers and sisters in the living room, as Richie will be home later than he usually is. Eleanor and Maisie try to teach their younger sister Mouse how to play a hand-clapping game, but Mouse is unable to get the hang of it. 

It is only Park, his mother, and Eleanor at home for the evening, so Park’s mom gives them some money and the car keys and tells them to go out, “Eat dinner. See a movie or something” (273). As the walk down the street, Park realizes that he does not know what direction he should begin heading in. Instead of dinner and a movie, Eleanor tells Park that she wants to go to Inspiration Point, but Park eventually decides to take her downtown to his favorite record store.

After browsing through the record store, Park takes Eleanor to get pizza, ice cream, and comics. The entire time they are out together the young couple holds hands and they eventually end up in the Central Park of Omaha, which they find to be beautiful. Park mentions prom and Eleanor agrees that she will go with him, though privately she doubts whether she can manage to go without telling her mom.

The couple begins to talk about Park’s appearance, which Eleanor claims is very handsome. Park, on the other hand, argues that no one finds Asians attractive and bemoans the fact that there are not any bombshell Asian Hollywood actors or actresses. Park explains that people mainly identify him as Korean but Eleanor states that she identifies him as cute.

They return to the car and begin kissing. Their kissing gets so intense they accidently bump the car’s horn. Eleanor slips into the back seat and Park quickly follows her. The chapter closes with Eleanor taking her clothes off and muttering the name of “Bruce Lee,” as an example of a famous and attractive Asian person.

Eleanor arrives home after her date out with Park and sees Richie’s car is there. As she walks to the door, she thinks about going to “second base” with Park. It was farther than she wanted to go but she felt like she might not have another opportunity to be alone with Park. When Eleanor opens the door, she immediately hears her mom and Richie fighting.

Eleanor enters her room to find all of her belongings destroyed and scattered about. She walks over to the box that contained all of her possessions and sees that a message had been written on top of it by Richie: “I know what you are and it’s over” (291). Eleanor is horrified to realize that this is the same handwriting as the lewd messages on her notebook. The chapter closes with Eleanor listening to her mom crying harder than she had ever heard her cry before.

This is the shortest chapter of the book. Eleanor sits down to make a mental list of her options, but she quickly realizes that she does not have any.

Eleanor is consumed by the memories of all the terrible messages Richie has written on her notebook throughout the year. She quickly grabs her photo of Park from her book bag and sneaks out of her window. She runs down the street until she hears Tina calling her name from in front of Steve’s house. Eleanor walks over and Tina explains that Richie has been driving around looking for Eleanor for hours. Eleanor asks Tina if she mentioned Park to Richie, but Tina said she had not. Tina offers her a beer, but Eleanor says she has to leave and warn Park.

Meanwhile, Park is lying in bed, struggling to sleep because he cannot stop thinking about Eleanor. His rest is interrupted when a drunken Steve taps on his window. Surprisingly, he is accompanied by Eleanor and Tina. Park jumps out of his window and accompanies the group back to Steve’s garage. Park is confused as to what is happening, but after Tina explains what has been going on, Park says that he and Eleanor have to go.

Park tries to get Eleanor to explain why Richie is looking for her, but her responses do not make any sense to him. Park theorizes that Richie is just trying to intimidate Eleanor, but she is adamant that Richie has gone off the deep end, so to speak. She explains that “You don’t know, you don’t see how … how he looks at me” (297).