Eleanor and Park

Park doesn’t ride the bus anymore. He drives his mother’s Impala—even though it is “ruined with memories” of Eleanor. Park misses Eleanor all day, every day, and can’t even listen to music in her absence.

Eleanor doesn’t ride the bus anymore, either—her uncle drives her to school. Even though there are only four weeks left in the term, Eleanor goes each day. Her uncle drives down to Omaha to retrieve Eleanor’s things from her old house, even though he and her aunt have already bought her new clothes, a bookcase, a boom box, and plenty of blank cassette tapes.

The narrative switches to Park’s point of view. After Eleanor got out of the car when they arrived at her uncle’s house, Park waited for her on the street, even though he wasn’t supposed to. He watched Eleanor’s aunt and uncle welcome her warmly into the house, and only then did he drive away. He sent Eleanor a postcard from the first rest stop he visited on the way back to Nebraska, and another as soon as he got home—but Eleanor didn’t call him that first night, and hasn’t called or written since.

The narrative switches to Eleanor’s point of view. She reveals that after her aunt and uncle welcomed her inside that first day, she ran back out to the porch to get one last look at Park—but he was already gone. Eleanor wrote her mother a letter that first night urging her to get out of Richie’s house, but she didn’t write anything to Park.

Park writes Eleanor letters all the time, but never receives any back. Soon, he gets word that Eleanor’s whole family has picked up and moved away, although Richie is still living in the house. Meanwhile, in St. Paul, Eleanor thinks frequently about calling Park—but when her new friend at school Dani asks her if she’s ever had a boyfriend or shared a kiss with anyone, Eleanor says she hasn’t. She can’t bear to think of Park slowly loving her less, so has decided to “just stop” things between them. Back in Omaha, Park sometimes goes by Eleanor’s old house just to stand there, hating everything it stands for.