Page 49 of The Intruder

BEFORE

ELLA

My mother has to come get me at school.

That’s what happens when your boyfriend beats another kid half to death.

Not that Anton was my boyfriend—I keep trying to tell everyone that—but Meredith’s account of the situation is what everybody is listening to.

I pushed Brittany, then my boyfriend lost his mind and started beating the living daylights out of her.

I don’t know what happened to Anton. I keep asking, and nobody will tell me. The police took him away.

My mom spends forever in the principal’s office, talking to Mr. Garber. I wait in one of those plastic chairs outside the office where I spent many hours during my middle school career. This is the worst though. All that other stuff was small potatoes compared to what they are accusing me of now.

When my mom comes out of the principal’s office, she looks really flustered. She grabs me by the arm and hauls me to my feet. “Let’s go, Ella.”

“What happened?” I ask.

Her nails dig into my skin. “I said let’s go.”

She’s obviously not going to tell me anything else while we are here, so I follow her out to her car—the used Buick that is easily the most beat-up car in the whole parking lot. As I climb inside, I can’t help but think of Dr. Carter’s Prius.

“Am I going to jail?” I ask my mother as she starts the engine.

“No.” She shoots me a disgusted look. “You’re suspended for a week. It doesn’t sound like anyone is pressing charges—yet.”

So it could still happen.

“You know,” my mother says, “that poor girl is going to need extensive facial surgery. Your boyfriend broke half the bones in her face.”

It seems like a million years ago that I was telling Anton that I wanted to do something to Brittany that would cause permanent damage. He was the one who told me to forget about her, that she wasn’t important. Why did he let her get to him? Why?

Of course, the answer is obvious. It’s because she pushed me. Because she knocked me down. Because she said terrible things about me.

I try to swallow my tears as I think about what must be happening to Anton right now. His hands were bleeding when they took him away in handcuffs.

We drive the rest of the way to our house in silence. I’m glad, because I know that if I say anything else, I’ll start crying. And I have vowed never to cry again in front of my mother. But then after she parks the car and we’re walking to the front door, she breaks the quiet.

“I can’t believe you had a boyfriend,” she grunts as she digs around in her bulging purse for the keys. Her purse is as big of a disaster as our house, so it always takes her forever to find them. “Worse, it was that hooligan Peterson kid. What the hell is wrong with you, Ella?”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” I mumble.

“Well, he’s not anymore.” She finds her keys and unlocks the door, pushing her way inside.

“He’s definitely getting locked up in juvie for this.

As he should be.” A bunch of bottles topple to the floor as the door swings open, and I’m hit with a powerful whiff of rotting fruit. “Kids like that—they’re trouble.”

“Anton’s nice,” I say. “He’s a good guy.”

“He’s nice?” My mom looks up at me in surprise. “You saw what he did to that poor girl, didn’t you?”

“She provoked him.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ella.” She drops her purse on the floor of the hallway on top of a stack of paper, which is the official place for it. “Anton Peterson is not nice. If he was acting nice to you, it was only because he wanted to get in your pants. He’s a bad apple, just like you.”

I don’t know what she’s talking about. Anton wasn’t a “bad apple,” and he definitely wasn’t trying to get in my pants. We never even kissed.

But if Brittany hadn’t walked in on us…

Everything could have been different.

“All men are awful anyway,” my mother goes on, sniffing haughtily as she turns to face me in the hallway. “Better to stay away from them completely—that’s my advice. They act like they want to be with you forever, but as soon as they get what they want, they take off.”

Her lips twist into a bitter sneer, and I think of that guy she’s been dressing up for the last few weeks.

I guess he got what he wanted and now he stopped calling.

I know what that means—a lot more shopping, a lot more collecting junk.

Probably another fish tank that she’ll want to store on my bed so that I have to sleep on the floor.

“It’s not my fault nobody wants you,” I say. “It doesn’t mean all boys are awful.”

That was the wrong thing to say. My mother’s eyes flash, and her hands ball into fists. “Excuse me?”

I’m making her furious, but I don’t even care anymore.

I want to make her furious. I want to have a huge fight with her so I can feel something besides this awful raw sensation in my chest. “You drove off my dad,” I point out, feeling more confident as I think it all over.

“You drove off Chip. And now this new guy. It’s your fault we’re all alone. ”

“You got some nerve.” My mom takes a step toward me, but I won’t back off this time. “It’s all your fault. No man wants a woman with a little brat. That’s why I have to hide you in the closet, to keep you from wrecking everything.”

“You’re blaming me?” I shoot back. “You can’t be serious! Who would want to live here? Like this—with you? I sure don’t.”

“You ungrateful little bitch!” she shouts at me. “You better apologize for that right now.”

“I’m not going to apologize!” I shout. “It’s true! The only reason we’re alone is because of you!”

If I had crossed the line before, now I have stomped all over it. And I’m glad, because she deserves it. This is all her fault. Everything bad in my life is because of her.

My mother’s pretty features fill with rage, and I take a step back, realizing how close we are to the hall closet.

But she is too quick for me. She grabs me by the arm—hard—and even though I am fighting her as much as I can, she manages to throw me into the open closet, hard enough that my shoulder bashes into the wall.

I barely feel it, I’m so angry. I bounce back, ready to fight.

She slams the door closed, and a second later, the key turns in the lock. “You can stay in there until you apologize for what you said.”

“I’m never going to apologize! Never!”

“Fine.” My mother’s voice is seething. “Then you can just stay in there all night.”

With those words, my mother’s footsteps disappear down the hallway. She’s leaving me here without any dinner. Maybe to spend the night. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I stand in the middle of the tiny space, reminding myself not to panic.

My fingers brush against the silver chain around my neck that Anton gave me, which I’ve been wearing every day.

I gently tug it out of my shirt. Hanging from the chain is the small paperclip I’ve been keeping with me at all times.

This isn’t the first time my mother has locked me in the hall closet.

But it will be the last.