Page 37 of The Intruder

Mom raises her eyebrows, which look like they have been penciled in. “Ella, the refrigerator is full of food.”

I wish I could order a pizza. Just the thought of that crispy crust and gooey cheese makes my mouth water. But I don’t dare even ask.

My mother marches over to the pantry and pulls out a box of protein bars. “Why don’t you take this with you in the closet while I’m gone?”

I take a step back, wondering if I could possibly make a run for it. What if I did leave the house? What would she do? Would she call the police to bring me back? I doubt it, because she doesn’t want the police coming into her house.

But if I did leave the house, where would I go? I don’t have any friends whose houses I could hide out at. And also, it’s raining.

“Come on, Ella,” she says impatiently. “I don’t have forever. Let’s go.”

I don’t want to spend the evening in the closet. Yes, I did manage to throw away those peaches that were rotting, but the closet still smells terrible. And it’s dark and scary, and there’s nowhere to sit that’s comfortable.

“Ella,” she growls. “Come on.”

“Mom, I swear I won’t throw anything out.” I take another step back. “Please let me stay in my room. Please.”

She shakes the box of protein bars in her hand. “You can either sit in the closet with this food, or you can sit there without it. It’s your choice.”

My stomach rumbles painfully. The idea of sitting in the closet all night without even getting any dinner is too awful for words.

My father wouldn’t do it. If he were here, he would tell her that it’s not right to lock a child in a closet. And then he would order a pizza for dinner.

“Ella.” She shakes the box at me again. “Come on. Now.”

So I follow her. In less than five years, I’ll be eighteen years old, and she won’t be able to put me in the closet ever again. Or maybe before that, I’ll find my father, and he will put a stop to all this.

28

Today I meet Anton again after school to work on our project. I find him leaning against the building, his bag slung on his shoulder, but he’s not smoking like he was last time.

“Out of cigarettes?” I ask him, hoping he won’t ask me to steal some of my mother’s.

His brown eyes meet mine. His black eye has faded in the last few days, but you can still see it. Devin has been out all week, and people are saying he fell off his bike and got a concussion. “I quit, actually.”

“Really?”

He runs a hand through his green hair. “They were always making me cough, and they stunk up my clothing.”

Except when he says it, he’s looking down at my arms. Where he saw the cigarette burns.

“Was it hard to quit?” I ask him. My mom tried to quit once, and she was going out of her mind with cravings and snapping at me even more than usual. As much as I hate the cigarettes, it was even worse when she was off them.

“Kind of.” His grin is lopsided. “I’m trying not to think about it. In fact…” He fishes into the pocket of his baggy jeans and comes up with a lighter the same color as his hair. “Can you take this for me? I just need it away from me.”

I take the lighter and stuff it into my own pocket. My mom has a bunch of lighters, but she usually keeps them in her purse. You never know when something like this will come in handy.

We walk back to Anton’s apartment together. This time, we play a game where we try to skip over the entire distance between two cracks on the street. Anton is several inches taller than me, so he’s much better at it than I am. But it’s not really a competition. It’s just something we’re doing for fun during the walk.

“By the way,” I say when we’re a few blocks away from his apartment building, “I never asked you what you did to piss Devin off so bad.”

“Oh.” He brightens as if pleased by the question. “I grabbed his backpack during gym and emptied it all over the floor.”

“That’s it?”

“He had some history project in his bag that got pretty messed up. Especially when I stepped on it. Also, when he got angry, I told him his mother was butt ugly.”

That’s enough to make me bust out laughing. “Why would you do all that to him?”