Page 33 of The Intruder

I forget all about the ticking clock. I forget all about the pumpkin stinking up the whole hallway. I forget all of that.

Because I know who my father is. I know his name now.

John Carter.

Not only that, but he must know that I exist. You can’t just put somebody on a birth certificate without their permission, right? I don’t think so anyway. He must know that he has a daughter, and he has chosen not to be involved in my life.

John Carter.

Carter…

My head is spinning, and I know I don’t have time, but a thought hits me. And I know I won’t be able to do anything else until I figure out the truth.

I shove my birth certificate back in the folder and then stuff it in the back of the closet.

I tighten the drawstrings on the garbage bag filled with rotten pumpkin and drag it to my room, even though it kills me to bring it into my own space.

If I leave it behind in my mother’s room, she will never get rid of it. I have to take it with me.

Once I am safe back in my room, I sit on my bed and grab my binder out of my backpack.

I rifle through the folders until I come up with the class list from eighth grade.

It’s a list of all the students in the class as well as their parents’ names, phone numbers, and home addresses.

Under my own name, my mother is listed as well as our phone number, but no address because she didn’t want anyone to know where we live. But I’m not looking for my own name.

There’s another name close to mine on the class list. Brittany Carter. She’s the one I’m looking for.

My heart is pounding as I run my shaking finger across the spreadsheet to where the names of Brittany’s parents are printed. And it’s just as I remembered:

Vanessa and John Carter.

John Carter is Brittany’s father.

And apparently, he is also mine.

It makes a horrible sort of sense. After all, Brittany and I might not look alike, but we have the same bright blue eyes that I definitely did not inherit from my mother.

And I remember in fourth grade, Brittany had this huge blowout birthday party at her house, and she invited the whole class except me.

At the time, I took it personally, but it makes sense that her parents wouldn’t want her to invite me if I was her father’s illegitimate child.

“Ella?”

Uh-oh, my mother is home. I slam my binder shut, my heart pounding.

I want to confront my mother about what I have discovered, but at the same time, if I admit I’ve been going through her papers, she will be furious.

I don’t even want to think about what she will do.

Better to keep my mouth shut and do my own investigation.

“Ella!”

My mother’s voice is louder this time, coming from the stairs.

And now she sounds angry for some reason.

Quickly, I review in my head how I left her room.

I was in such a hurry, and all I could think about was that I needed to bring the garbage bag with me.

But did I leave something incriminating behind?

I consider hiding the garbage bag, but before I have a chance to do anything, my mother bursts into my room. Her eyes are flashing, and the lipstick she’s wearing is slightly smeared.

“Ella,” she growls. “Were you in my bedroom?”

I nod my head wordlessly, too scared to even deny it. “Just for a second…”

I don’t know how she does it, but her eyes instantly zero in on the bag. My heart sinks. She’s not really going to take that back and want to keep it in her room, is she?

“What is that?” she demands to know.

“It’s…it’s rotten, Mom…”

She crosses my room, wading through the clothing and stacks of paper that she told me she would be storing here, because I have “so much space.” She grabs the garbage bag while I hold my breath, partially because I’m scared and can’t seem to make myself move, partially because I know how bad it smells.

“Did you get this from my room?” she snaps at me as she shakes it.

I hug my knees to my chest. “It’s just garbage, Mom.”

Mom opens the drawstring on the garbage bag. She must’ve gotten used to the smell, but even she flinches when she opens it up. Still, she doesn’t react with disgust. She just seems angry.

“You had no right to go into my room and take this,” she snarls.

“I…I’m sorry.”

Her lips curl down, although because of her smudged lipstick, it almost still looks like she’s smiling. I chew on my lower lip, waiting to see if she’ll let me throw it out.

Please, please let me throw it out. Please. I don’t want that in my house anymore.

Then she does something unthinkable:

She overturns the garbage bag and dumps the contents all over my floor.

It goes everywhere. It splashes. There’s sludge on my clothing, the stacks of papers… It’s seeping into the floorboards. It takes every ounce of my self-restraint not to throw up again. It helps that my stomach is empty.

“You want it so bad?” she says. “Well, you can keep it.”

She storms out of my room, slamming the door behind her.

Now my room has that same sickening smell that has already permeated the hallway.

It was bad enough before that I couldn’t focus, and now I don’t know how I will ever get rid of it, even if I manage to throw it all out.

I’m just going to have to live with this terrible smell, in this rotten house.

Brittany Carter doesn’t have a decaying pumpkin in her room.

Her dad is a professor at the university, and I’m sure she has a beautiful room with no fish tanks or mold or stacks of old bills.

She has a loving mother and father who give her everything she could ever want.

Oh, and she’s beautiful like a Disney princess.

It’s not fair. John Carter is my father too. It’s not right that she gets everything and I have to live like this, just because her father happens to be married to her mother.

And I intend to do something about it.