Page 50 of The Intruder

I wait until I’m pretty sure she is asleep.

I have to be careful. The second my mother realizes I can get out of the closet even though she locked the door, she will probably reinforce it. Maybe put some sort of chain lock at the top to make sure there’s no way I can get out. So really, this is my only chance. I’ve got to make it count.

I sit in the closet for about four hours, until after midnight.

It still stinks of rotting fruit, even though I managed to throw out the moldy peaches when my mother wasn’t around.

To take my mind off the stink, I hum to myself, and I also take my time shaping the paper clip exactly the way Anton showed me.

It has to be perfectly straight with that little hook at the end. That’s the key.

Eventually, I get to my feet and press myself against the door. I put my lips close to the wood surface. “Mom?” I call out. “Mom!”

No answer.

She’s asleep. Her shift started early this morning, and she’s usually asleep by midnight on early days. I’m safe.

Now I’ve got to get out of here.

This lock is slightly different from the one in Anton’s closet.

I practiced it a bunch more times, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to open this one.

A sweat breaks out on the back of my neck when I realize there’s a chance I might not be able to open the door and I might actually have to spend the entire night here.

I wish Anton were here. He would help me. He’d be able to get this door open.

You got this, Ella. You’re the most badass girl I know.

For a second, my eyes blur over with tears. I don’t got this. I can’t do it. Anton believed in me, but he was wrong. He was wrong to believe in either of us.

How did everything go so wrong so quickly? It’s not fair. It’s not fair that people like Brittany Carter get everything and people like me get nothing.

Of course, Brittany has her own problems now.

Just when I’m about to throw the paper clip down in disgust, I hear a click. Oh my God. The lock is open. I did it.

I told you that you could do it!

I stumble out of the closet, my heart pounding. I’m almost expecting my mother to be standing in front of the closet, waiting to throw me back in there. Except this time, she’d do something so that I can never get out.

But she’s not here. The house is dark and silent. She must be asleep.

That means I have to be very quiet.

I creep over to the stairwell. As always, the stairs are crowded with papers, but there is still that path to get up and down.

I climb to the top step, glancing at my mother’s bedroom to make sure the lights are out.

And then I carefully tip over the giant stack of papers on the top step, controlling it with my hands so it doesn’t make much noise when it falls.

I repeat the process on every subsequent step until every single one is almost obscured with my mother’s papers.

By the end, the stairs are a waterfall of old paperwork.

The next thing I do is creep into the living room.

The mattress couch also has a bunch of papers and clothing thrown on it, and I kick all that off so that I can get at the top mattress.

Thankfully, it’s a twin mattress and well worn, so I’m able to lift it without much of a problem.

I mean, I have to grunt a bit, but I’m able to carry it over to the stairwell.

It fits perfectly on the steps, tilted just a little.

If the steps were hard to get down before, it’s much harder now.

Finally, I take the second mattress and lean it against the bottom of the steps, closing them off completely.

I step back, examining my handiwork. At this point, the steps would be pretty hard to get down, but not impossible if somebody were motivated enough. No, more work needs to be done here.

I spend the next twenty minutes stacking as much clothing and boxes of mac and cheese and power bars as I can in front of the mattresses, blocking the bottom of the stairwell off completely.

The pile is almost as large as I am, coming up to my shoulders.

If I wanted, I could make it twice my height—there’s that much trash in just the living room.

But I don’t want to be doing this all night.

Now there is only one more piece of the puzzle.

Aside from the paper clip, there is one other item I have been carrying around in my pocket at all times: the lighter Anton gave me when he decided to quit smoking. I reach into my pocket now to fish it out. The lighter is green, like his hair.

I crouch down by one of the many stacks of paper. I pick up the sheet at the top of the pile, examining the contents. Ironically, it’s an email from the middle school guidance counselor, and it’s about me.

Ella is exhibiting significant emotional issues, and once again, we strongly urge you to sign her up for counseling. As you have not yet gotten her a therapist, we are again including a list of counselors that will work with you to see her within your budget…

I almost laugh. Of course, my mother wouldn’t want me to get counseling. Because then I might tell someone about the way we live. Then she’d have to acknowledge what she’s done to me.

It’s tempting to set this email on fire and toss it into the pile. But I worry about how that will look. I have to be smarter about this. My father might not be a professor of sociology, but I’m not stupid.

Instead, I pick up one of my mother’s cigarettes from the ashtray full of cigarette butts. I place it in my mouth to light it. For a second, my mouth fills with that awful stench, but then it’s lit, and I can take it out.

I throw the lit cigarette onto the stack of papers. And I wait.

It takes a few seconds for the entire thing to ignite. But once the first paper catches fire, the entire stack goes up very quickly. The whole first floor of my house is filled with paper. It will burn fast.

I drop Anton’s lighter on our coffee table. I hate to leave something behind that he gave me because I have so little to remember him by, but I don’t have a choice. I don’t want the police to find a lighter in my pocket.

A second stack of papers goes up in flames. Soon, the whole house will be on fire. And I realize that there is not one thing in here that I want to save. Not even one.

So I walk out the door.

As I stand outside the house watching the fire crackling in the window, spreading throughout the first floor of our house, the full magnitude of what I have done finally hits me. I have sentenced my own mother to burn to death.

And my father is next.