Author's note - the story posted here is from my own imagination in an attempt to satisfy my own conclusion to Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park. I do not claim these characters as my own. I have tried to capture the essence of Rainbow's writing, but no two people think or write the same... your comments and reviews are welcome...

Chapter 1

Eleanor

I was so afraid to open those letters. The parcels with my name and my uncle's address scribbled on the front. The ones that rattled in my hands. The ones that must have cost him so much to send... and then they just stopped.

I should have written back. I should have called. I should've done something! But then it was too late and I was even more afraid than before. Afraid that he'd given up, lost hope, found someone else... stopped missing me... stopped loving me...

How could he still?

I tried to forget that stupid Asian boy. But even though he was nowhere near, he was always in my head and in my dreams. When I woke up from those dreams I could feel him in my stomach and in my heart. I would reach into my bedside cabinet, the bottom drawer, inside the grapefruit box that held those tapes that I couldn't bring myself to listen to. The comics I couldn't read. The beautiful necklace I couldn't wear... and I'd look at the photograph... the faded and worn photograph of that perfect stupid Asian boy with skin like sunshine, that I didn't just like.

Mom and the kids moved here shortly after I wrote to her. Richie had found the letter and flipped, smashed the house up and caught Ben in the crossfire... his shoulder was dislocated after 'falling' down the stairs to the basement. Finally that shook mom loose and after Richie drank himself unconscious she rang Uncle Geoff once she got the kids to the hospital. He arranged to pick them up once Ben got the all clear... I'm sure there was more to it than that. I mean, Richie wouldn't give up that easily, there were whispered discussions I wasn't told about but I was glad to leave it behind... it was crazy there for a couple months and I'm sure my aunt and uncle were super relieved once we got our own place, even though they never complained. Mom got herself a job in a local diner and Aunt Susan loved to look after Little Richie, since her and my uncle couldn't have any more kids... and mom swore off men... seriously, even now!

I made a couple friends at school. I don't take the bus as it's close enough to walk, and maybe that's just as well. I couldn't sit there and not think of Park... Park... I promised to go to prom with him... that's how it happened.

It was on impulse and it wasn't planned or thought out... I just did it.

My friend Shelly had a date for the prom and she asked me to go with her and Tonya to the local shopping precinct to 'prom shop'! I didn't want to go to prom, I'd feel sooooo guilty spending all that money on a dress, not that I had the money to spend, and all I could think was that I couldn't go with Park... Shelly picked me up at 11, her mom said she could use the Prius as long as she replaced the gas, so we pulled into the gas station and I popped in to get everyone sodas for the road. That's when I saw the postcard... it was almost the same as the one I kept in my box, just sitting there on the shelf taunting me... so I bought it. Tonya laughed and asked me who the hell I was writing to on a postcard from this dump! And I told her it was a friend from where we lived for a while... I didn't tell her who, or what he meant to me. She didn't ask, they knew not to ask too many questions about my past. But Shelly had a stamp in the glove box, so I wrote it out and posted it before I could even think, automatically writing his name and address the way I had with all those letters I wrote but was too afraid to send, sitting in a box under my bed.

I didn't know what to write, and Shelly and Tonya were watching, so I panicked and wrote just three little words...

'I MISS YOU'