Park
- Park figures out Eleanor's been reading his comics on the bus, looking at them from the next seat.
- Park also realizes he's never seen hair as red as Eleanor's, or eyes so dark they were "almost like holes in her face" (8.4), which "might even be the best thing about her" (8.5), because it reminds him of Jean Grey from the X-Men comics. Maybe he's paying more attention to Eleanor than he realizes?
- He still doesn't know what to say to Eleanor, because hello, awkward. Instead, he "held his comics open wider and turned the pages more slowly" (8.9).
Eleanor
- When Eleanor gets home, her mom looks unusually tired and is in a bad mood; she makes all the kids go outside, Eleanor included.
- Richie's Rottweiler is outside, named for his ex-wife Tonya. The dog's supposed to be vicious, but instead she's just sleepy.
- Eleanor wants to take a bath before Richie gets home, but her mom doesn't let her. Eleanor seems stressed about Richie and the bathing situation, because the bathroom doesn't have a door. Yikes.
- It's cold, but Eleanor doesn't have a jacket—she doesn't own one. Ben, the oldest of her younger siblings, comments that when it gets too cold to play outside, Richie makes all the kids go to bed incredibly early. Eleanor asks Ben why he calls Richie "Dad," and Ben says, "I guess because he's married to Mom" (8.21).
- Eleanor isn't sure what will happen when all the kids get older, because "there was no room in that house to be a teenager" (8.24).
- Ben asks Eleanor what it was like to live with the other family—the Hickmans, we discover. "Terrible. Lonely. Better than here," Eleanor thinks, but just answers, "Okay" (8.32).
- Turns out Eleanor was sent to stay with the Hickmans just for a few days, but a few days turned into a much longer stay. Her mom used to call her every day while she was there, but eventually the calls stopped. "It turned out that Richie hadn't paid the phone bill, and it got disconnected. But Eleanor didn't know that for a while" (8.42). Eleanor doesn't seem upset when she thinks about this, but we find it a pretty chilling, heartbreaking revelation.
- Eleanor remembers overhearing conversations between the Hickmans about calling the state to get her. She "tried to be even less trouble" and "practiced being in a room without leaving any clues that she'd been there" (8.48).
- Ben tells her that he and the rest of the siblings all thought Eleanor was gone for good.