Page 10 of The Intruder

BEFORE

ELLA

Smella! Hey, Smella!”

As I walk past Anton Peterson in the cafeteria, I get to hear the super clever nickname he has devised for me. Smella. You know, because my name is Ella? Really, he should get a job working for a comedy show. His talents are wasted here.

At least now I’ve got a bag of lunch instead of air.

“Hey, Smella.” Anton stands up from where he’s sitting at a long table with some of his loser friends. He blocks my path to the empty table I was angling for. “What’s your rush?”

I shrug, refusing to look away. Anton is a jerk, but he doesn’t scare me.

“We were just wondering…” He glances over at his friends, who are snickering. “Do you ever shower?”

The possibility that Anton might be right—I really do smell and it’s not just a clever wordplay—flits through my head.

I shower every single night, honestly. But the problem is our washer in the basement went on the fritz almost a year ago, and my mom won’t tell anyone that it’s broken because she doesn’t want them to come into our house to repair it.

She keeps saying she’s going to fix it herself, but I don’t know how because she’s not good with tools.

For a while, she just kept buying new clothing, but that’s not, like, a permanent solution.

There’s a laundromat, but it’s not that close. Maybe a two-mile walk. Still, a few times, I stuffed a bunch of clothing into a sack and sat in the laundromat for two hours until my stuff was clean. I would walk over there more often, but I don’t have money for the machines.

So because of all that, the jeans and long-sleeved shirt that I’m wearing have already been worn without being washed. Four times. I did do my best to air them out, but airing things out in my house is not that easy.

Anyway, I don’t dignify Anton’s question with an answer. Although as I stare up at him, I have to resist the urge to sniff myself.

“You should try washing yourself sometime, Smella,” he says. His eyes drop to the logo on my shirt. “It won’t take you too long, since you don’t have any tits to wash.”

I nod my head down at the fly of his jeans. “I bet it doesn’t take you very long then either.”

I said the right thing, because Anton’s friends bust out laughing, and his face turns all pink.

It seems like the perfect moment to make my exit, so I push past him to that empty table.

Anton keeps staring in my direction, and for a moment, I’m sure he’s going to follow me and keep tormenting me, but then he just drops back into his seat.

I pissed him off good, but I don’t care.

I’ve been eating alone for as long as I can remember. Well, when I was younger, I used to have friends, like maybe in second or third grade, but not anymore. Other kids don’t like me. And anyway, it’s better if I don’t have friends, because if I did, they might want to come to my house.

My lunch today is a turkey sandwich. Putting it together wasn’t as easy as you would think.

We’ve got a lot of bread—in fact, an entire counter in the kitchen is brimming with loaves—but they are all pretty stale.

I’d like to throw some of them away, but my mom would lose it.

She says we aren’t rich enough to be throwing food away.

The rule in our house is that unless food is making dangerous gas that causes the plastic to puff out, it’s still A-OK to eat.

The bread is stale and the turkey tastes a little funny too, but none of them were puffy, so I guess I’m eating it.

Brittany Carter and her friends are at the next table over. I didn’t even notice them over there. Brittany is eating a school lunch, which is hot dogs and beans today. The hot dogs smell really good. I wish there were a way I could have that instead of this yucky turkey sandwich.

Brittany leans in and whispers something to one of her friends. The friend does a quarter turn with her head, looking back at me, then quickly turns back to Brittany. Then the two of them start giggling hysterically.

I wonder if they’re laughing at me. Maybe they’re calling me Smella.

Well, whatever. As long as they’re not saying it to my face.

So I don’t feel like as much of a loser staring into space, I pull out the essay I got back in English class.

I got a D on it, which isn’t surprising considering I wrote it while lying on my bed, which is half covered in crap.

It’s definitely not a masterpiece—more like a disasterpiece.

Not that I would have gotten an A if I had my desk, but maybe a more respectable C.

Mrs. Hecker told me she would give me extra points if I corrected the problems with my essay, and I’d do it, except what are the problems with it?

She didn’t say. If I knew what was wrong with it, wouldn’t I have done it correctly the first time?

So now I’m sitting here, ignoring the giggles behind me, trying to figure out what is wrong with my work and fix it somehow.

I put down my essay on the table and look over at Brittany again.

I happened to notice that she got an A-plus on her essay.

Not just an A, but an A-plus. That’s just showing off, seriously.

Then again, her dad is some kind of professor at the local university, and I bet even if he doesn’t help her, she’s probably inherited his genius intelligence.

I might not know who my dad is, but I’m fairly sure he’s not a genius.

Sometimes I fantasize about my father. My mom won’t tell me anything about who he was, but I definitely have one.

I got an A-minus in life sciences last year, so I know for a fact that every person in the world has to have a mother and a father in order to, like, exist. So that means no matter what my mother says, I have a father.

I imagine he has reddish-brown hair like I do. And he has a nice job, like working in a bank. Maybe he’s the guy who gives you money when you make a withdrawal without using the machine. I also imagine him having a mustache, although I’m not sure why.

He probably doesn’t even know I exist. My mother never told him she was pregnant, and he doesn’t even know he’s got a daughter.

I imagine finding him one day and telling him who I am and watching a smile spread across his face.

Then he would ask me if I wanted to live with him, and I would say yes—definitely yes.

If only I knew who my father was. My life could be completely different.