Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she's never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn't stick out more if she tried. Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park.
Quiet, careful and - in Eleanor's eyes - impossibly cool, Park's worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by. Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose. Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor and Park is funny, sad, shocking and true - an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.
PROLOGUE
He’d stopped trying to bring her back.
She only came back when she felt like it, in dreams and lies and broken-down déjà vu.
Like, he’d be driving to work, and he’d see a girl with red hair standing on the corner – and he’d swear, for half a choking moment, that it was her.
Then he’d see that the girl’s hair was more blond than red.
And that she was holding a cigarette … And wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt.
Eleanor hated the Sex Pistols.
Eleanor …
Standing behind him until he turned his head.
Lying next to him just before he woke up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough.
Eleanor ruining everything.
Eleanor, gone.
He’d stopped trying to bring her back.
