Page 39 of The Intruder

BEFORE

ELLA

I can’t sleep.

I keep tossing and turning, but I can’t get comfortable in my bed.

I mean, my bed isn’t super comfortable in general, but for some reason, it feels worse tonight.

Also, my room still has that smell of rotting pumpkins.

I got rid of as many things as I could that had been tainted by pumpkin goo, but the smell is still there.

Sometimes I don’t even notice it, but right now, I do. It’ll probably never go away entirely.

Finally, I sit up in bed. I wonder what the Carter household is doing right now. Well, Brittany is probably asleep in her room. But maybe John and Vanessa are awake. Maybe they’re lying in bed together, watching a TV show before they drift off.

If John is my father, does that make Vanessa my stepmother?

I don’t entirely know. She would probably be mad at my mother, since he was obviously having an affair, but none of that is my fault.

I saw Brittany’s mother once, at a bake sale, and she had a very motherly look.

She smiled a lot and had a blond bob and was kind of chubby, and she looked like she gave good hugs. Maybe she would be kind to me.

One thing is very clear now though. I’m never going to fall asleep if I keep thinking about this.

I climb out of bed and pull on a pair of relatively clean jeans and a hoodie.

Once I’m dressed, I reach into the top drawer of the small dresser next to my bed, which is mostly filled with pens and pencils.

In fact, the whole dresser is mostly pens and pencils.

Whenever my mother finds a sale on stuff to write with, she buys it and stuffs it in this dresser.

She’s always so excited about it—she keeps saying she’ll never have to spend money on pens ever again, except every few weeks, she brings home more of them.

But I’m not looking for a pen or pencil. I’m looking for something stuffed all the way in the back of the drawer. Something my mom doesn’t know about and she’ll never find, because she never bothers to wade through all the crap.

It’s an X-Acto knife with a retractable blade.

I stole it from my arts and crafts class last year. The weird thing is that the teacher didn’t even notice it was gone. Or maybe she noticed, but she was scared she’d get in trouble if she reported it missing. Anyway, by the next morning, the knife was safely tucked away in my room.

And now I stuff it into the pocket of my hoodie.

I creep out into the hallway. It looks like my mother is either asleep or has gone into her bedroom.

As quietly as I can, I move past her room and over to the stairs.

The stairs are kind of scary to walk down in the dark with all the crap on them, but I hold on to the banister, and I make it down okay.

I follow one of the little clear trails to the front door, where I put on my sneakers.

I’m not planning on going anywhere in particular. I just need to take a walk to clear my head and get some fresh air. It’s perfectly safe. We live in a good neighborhood. And just in case something happens, I’ve got the knife to protect me.

It’s a little chilly, and I’m glad for the light jacket I took with me. I meant to just walk around the block, but once I get to the end of the block, I don’t turn to follow the circle. I find myself going somewhere very specific.

I still remember Brittany’s address from the class list. It’s not even that far.

I’m not sure why I’m going there. I can hear Anton’s voice in my head, telling me I’m being stupid and I should forget about that family. But how can I when they’re my family? The family I was never allowed to be part of.

It takes me only fifteen minutes to walk to Brittany’s house.

It’s two stories—white with a blue trim—and a lot bigger than my house or the apartment where Anton lives.

It’s not a mansion or anything, but it’s nice.

There’s even a white picket fence surrounding the property, although it doesn’t lock or anything.

I can easily just go down the walkway and up to the front door.

I’m not sure what exactly I’m doing as I sneak around the side of the Carters’ house. I mean, it’s the middle of the night. It’s not like I can knock on the door and they’re going to invite me in for cookies. That is definitely not going to happen.

I guess I just sort of want to see inside. I want to see what my life would’ve been like if I were John Carter’s legitimate daughter instead of the result of some affair nobody is allowed to know about. I want to see what could have been mine. What should have been mine.

Maybe they left the back door open.

As I creep around the side of the house, a little voice in the back of my head, possibly belonging to Anton, is telling me not to do this. This is a bad idea. A really bad idea. I should turn back.

But then I wrap my fingers around the X-Acto knife in my pocket and keep walking.