What can the reader likely guess about how and why Tina treats Eleanor so cruelly:
A popular, mean girl at school. Tina makes it her personal mission throughout the school year to berate and humiliate Eleanor at every turn, sticking menstrual pads to her locker and dumping her clothes in the locker room toilets. Park’s mother, Mindy, cuts Tina’s hair regularly.
It’s suggested that Tina—who dated Park briefly in junior high—still harbors feelings for Park and lashes out at Eleanor out of jealousy and resentment. Tina is redeemed at the end of the novel, however, when she offers the frightened Eleanor a safe haven from Richie’s wrath.