Eleanor
- Eleanor wakes up feeling like it's her birthday. She briefly thinks about her dad (and how he stopped caring about her at a certain point) and gets dressed in a men's shirt and tie.
- She's a little nervous, because she hasn't seen her dad in over a year; she's not even sure he knew she went to live with the Hickmans.
- Eleanor's dad wasn't a big fan of Eleanor and her siblings, and he "couldn't stand having them even for a few days" (19.8). He would offload them at his mom's house when they visited him, and go off to do something Eleanor assumed was "lots and lots of marijuana" (19.8).
- After school, Eleanor waits for her dad, not even sure what kind of car he's driving these days. He picks her up in a convertible, smoking a cigarette, and drives off really fast: "She'd forgotten what a crappy driver he was. He did everything too fast and one-handed" (19.30).
- While they wait for Donna, Eleanor's dad's fiancée, Eleanor and her dad watch ESPN while her dad chain-smokes cigarettes, sips Scotch, and talks on the phone. "If Eleanor paid too much attention, she hated him" (19.38). Can't say we blame her.
- Eleanor notices how her dad's duplex has changed since she's been there—he has a lot more "small luxuries" (19.41), like nice toilet paper, cereal, and plenty of groceries. Given Eleanor's descriptions, we think maybe she hasn't had groceries like that in a long time: "She couldn't wait for her dad to leave so that she could start eating everything" (19.42).
- She wishes she'd brought a bag so she could sneak home cans of food for her siblings and feel like Santa Claus.
- Eleanor sits with the crates of vinyl albums while her dad talks on the phone, asks her dad for a blank tape, and starts making a mix for Park. She remembers all the time she spent studying the album covers as a child, and then she starts looking for Beatles albums: "Sometimes it seemed like she would never be able to give Park anything like what he'd given her. […] She couldn't repay him. […] How can you thank someone for the Cure? Or the X-men? […] And then she realized Park didn't know about the Beatles." (19.58-60)
Park
- We find out that Park's mom went to beauty school and converted their garage into a salon. Also, her name is really Min-Dae, but now she goes by Mindy. Her business is popular, and "Everyone in the neighborhood who could afford a hair stylist came to Park's mom" (19.67).
- Mindy is doing Tina's hair for homecoming, and when Park sees them, Tina asks her if she's met Park's girlfriend, and describes Eleanor. Of course, Mindy has no idea Park has a girlfriend, if that's what Eleanor is. Park is absolutely furious; "She's not my girlfriend. I don't have a girlfriend" (19.82), he says.
- Park waits for Eleanor to call. Instead, his grandma calls after dinner, and his parents don't have call waiting yet. (Can you imagine such torture?) Park's anxiety starts to climb—his grandmother lives next door, for crying out loud—and he tells his dad he's waiting for a call.
- His little brother, Josh, asks if it's his girlfriend calling, and announces, "Park's dating Big Red" (19.99). Park explodes and threatens Josh with death if Josh ever calls her that name again.
- Finally Park's mom gets off the phone and it rings again immediately. He takes the phone into his room, sitting down carefully since "He didn't want her to know he had a twin-sized waterbed and a phone shaped like a Ferrari" (19.126).
- They decide to talk about "things [they] can't say on the bus" (19.140). Eleanor's first thing? "I hate those people" (19.142).
- Park reveals he's half Korean, and that his dad served in Korea and brought his mom back from Korea when he came home. Also, that they're still very much in love.
- Eleanor tells him he's different, but not because he's half Korean. She can't explain it in any other way than "you're so… cool" (19.163).
Eleanor
- Park thinks Eleanor is cool, and he isn't. These two, seriously.
- Park also tells Eleanor that "you seem like yourself, no matter what's happening around you" (19.174), as well as a few other things.
- Finally—finally—Eleanor and Park are talking.
Park
- Eleanor evades "most of Park's questions. She wouldn't talk about her family or her house. She wouldn't talk about anything that happened before she moved to the neighborhood or anything that happened after she got off the bus" (19.181-182).
- They take a brief phone break so Eleanor can put her stepbrother to bed.
Eleanor
- Eleanor tells Park she misses him: "I wish you were here. Or that I was there. I wish that there was some chance of talking like this after tonight, or seeing each other. Like, really seeing each other. Of being alone, together" (19.225). She realizes she's crying.
- Eleanor tells Park they can't see each other "because my stepdad would kill me." When Park asks why he cares, she says, "He doesn't care. He just wants to kill me" (19.243-245).
- Park keeps asking why, and Eleanor tells him that not everything has an answer or makes sense.
- Things start to get tense between them—Park thinks she's angry at him, but Eleanor's just upset. He tells her she can ask him questions, so she asks, "Why do you even like me?" (19.268)
Park
- "I don't like you. I need you" (19.272), Park says. And he doesn't know why he needs Eleanor—he just does.
- Eleanor doesn't say anything—she doesn't know what to say. Finally she says, "Ask me why I like you" (19.291), and when he does, she says, "I don't like you" (19.293), but then can't finish. She says she's afraid she'll say too much.
- At last, she says: "I don't like you, Park […] I think I live for you" (19.308). And then she confesses that she's his, and she's not sure what she'd do if he decided he didn't want her like she wants him.
Eleanor
- Eleanor thinks she's doing a terrible job talking to Park: "all her feelings for him—hot and beautiful in her heart—turned to gobbledygook in her mouth" (19.314).
- They talk again about Eleanor's stepfather, and why she can't see Park. Eleanor says that her stepfather is "the kind of bad that tries to kill anything good. If he knew about you, he'd do whatever he could to take you away from me" (19.330); she tells Park about being kicked out of her house for a year.
- Park suggests they meet at his house, and Eleanor doesn't quite say no.
- When Eleanor's dad comes home, she's angry with herself, saying "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go" (19.352).
- She tells Park she likes him because he's kind, and smarter than she is, and he looks "like a protagonist […] like the person who wins in the end" (19.358). Let's hope so. We're rooting for both of them.
- Just before she gets off the phone, Park tells Eleanor he loves her.