Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

‘because people want to remember what it’s like to be young? And in love?’

Eleanor didn’t want this new talking thing – like, really talking, back and forth and smiling at each other – to stop.

He emptied all his handheld video games and Josh’s remote-control cars, and called his grandma to tell her that all he wanted for his birthday in November was double-A batteries.

Every morning when Eleanor got on the bus, she worried that Park wouldn’t take off his headphones. That he would stop talking to her as suddenly as he’d started …

Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

Or maybe, he thought now, he just didn’t recognize all those other girls. The way a computer drive will spit out a disk if it doesn’t recognize the formatting. When he touched Eleanor’s hand, he recognized her. He knew.

(Besides they didn’t just hold hands. Park touched her hands like they were something rare and precious, like her fingers were intimately connected to the rest of her body. Which, of course, they were. It was hard to explain. He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.)

‘Back to missing you,’ he said, letting it go.

Whenever he saw Eleanor, he couldn’t think about pulling away. He couldn’t think about anything at all. Except touching her. Except doing whatever he could or had to, to make her happy.

He put his pen in his pocket, then took her hand and held it to his chest for a minute. It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.

‘I didn’t know we were getting dressed up,’

‘I’m expecting you to take me someplace nice,’

‘sometimes I think I live for you.’

‘I want everyone to meet you. You’re my favorite person of all time.’

He rolled his eyes. Which made him think of Eleanor. Which almost made him feel like telling them about her, just so he’d have a reason to say her name.

For the first time in weeks, Park didn’t have that anxious feeling in his stomach on the way home from school, like he had to soak up enough of Eleanor to keep him until the next day.

‘No. Come on. It’s not worth it.’ ‘You are,’ he said fiercely, looking at her. ‘You’re worth it.’

But Park’s face was like art. And not weird, ugly art either. Park had the sort of face you painted because you didn’t want history to forget it.

If she showed him how much she needed him, he’d run away.

It was at least twice as nice as seeing him somewhere she expected him to be.

‘I always look stupid?’ ‘That’s not what I meant …’ ‘It’s what you said,’ she muttered. He wanted to ask her not to be mad right now. Like, anytime but now. She could be mad at him for no reason all day tomorrow, if she wanted to. ‘You really know how to make a girl feel special,’ Eleanor said.

As soon as he said it, she broke into a smile. And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him. Something always did.

She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

He got why Eleanor tried so hard to look different. Sort of. It was because she was different – because she wasn’t afraid to be. (Or maybe she was just more afraid of being like everyone else.)

‘Nothing before you counts,’ he said. ‘And I can’t even imagine an after.’

It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.

I’ll cross the sky for you.’

‘Because I looked weird.’ ‘And you thought you could wash it off?’

He wished that they could go through life like this. That he could physically put himself between Eleanor and the world.

His mom insisted on taking one of them together, too, which Park didn’t mind at all. He put his arm around her. ‘Shouldn’t we wait?’ Eleanor asked. ‘For a holiday or something more memorable?’ ‘I want to remember tonight,’ Park said.

‘But we’re okay, right?’

‘We’re perfect,’

She held his beautiful face and kissed him like it was the end of the world.

There’s only one of him, she thought, and he’s right here. He knows I’ll like a song before I’ve heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punchline. There’s a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors for me. There’s only one of him.

What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away?

This kiss had to last Park forever.

I need to believe that it isn’t our last chance … Eleanor? Can you hear me? I need you to believe it, too.’

‘No matter what happens,’

‘I love you.’

‘But if I leave soon

‘I leave soon.’

If you can’t save your own life, is it even worth saving?