Eleanor & Park Chapter 31 Summary

Eleanor

Park wants to apologize the next day, but when Eleanor isn't there, he doesn't feel like it anymore. He's incredibly frustrated that it's "so easy for her to cut herself off whenever she felt like it" (31.4).
Instead he says "I'm sorry" in the general direction of Eleanor's house.

Home alone without Richie, Eleanor has the chance to leave her room, but she doesn't; out of batteries and reading material, she just stays in bed.
When she finally comes out, her little brother Mouse asks why she's crying. "Is it because you hate Dad?" he says. "Yes" (31.15-16), Eleanor responds, though she backtracks after her mother overhears, and goes back to her room.
Eleanor muses that no one goes to check on her, because "maybe her mom realized that she'd pretty much forfeited the right to ask questions for all eternity when she dumped Eleanor at somebody's house for a year. Or maybe she just didn't care" (31.20-21).
Eleanor still can't deal with the fact that Park took Tina's side, or that he thought she wrote those things on her notebook.

After a week of Christmas break, Park's dad asks him if he's broken up with Eleanor; though his dad is sympathetic, he doesn't know how to give him advice.
It seems like his dad wants him to get Eleanor back, because he sees how distraught Park is.

After that same week, Eleanor's mom wakes her up early to walk to the store; it's cold, and it takes them forty minutes to get there.
Eleanor's mom buys them coffee and day-old pastries at the store, and they go to the bargain bin; then they walk to the Goodwill, where Eleanor reads old sci-fi magazines.
She feels better on the walk home, and nearly confides in her mom: "She felt it all right at the back of her throat, like a bomb—or a tiger—sitting on the base of her tongue. Keeping it in made her eyes water" (31.49).

Park rides his bike past Eleanor's house until Richie leaves one morning, and when Ben comes outside to play, Park asks if Eleanor's home. Ben refuses to tell him, so Park leaves.