Page 29 of The Intruder

I’m not sure I agree, but then again, I don’t know Anton’s dad.

Now that he’s cleaned up and gotten his shirt on, I figure he’s going to leave. But instead, his eyes dart around my living room, taking everything in. My face burns, imagining him telling everyone at school tomorrow how disgusting my house is—the smell, the stained mattresses, the teetering piles of garbage. When he opens his mouth, I’m sure he’s going to say something along those lines or make a hasty retreat. But then he blurts out, “Is that your couch?”

He’s referring to the two mattresses. I’m seriously dying. “Um, kind of.”

“Wow,” he says like he means it. “That’s really cool.”

Okay…

He plops down on the mattress on the floor like it’s totally normal that our couch is made out of moldy old mattresses. Then he shoves over a stack of papers to make more room and raises his eyebrows at me, like he thinks I should sit down. So I do.

“Hey…” His gaze settles on the ashtray on our coffee table.

The ashtray is one of the grossest things in the room, and that’s saying a lot. It is filled with at least fifty cigarette butts of varying length. My mom never seems to smoke the entire cigarette, and then she puts them in the ashtray to save them, but then she never ends up smoking them and they just stay there forever.

“These yours?”

“My mom’s.”

He picks up one of the larger butts from the ashtray. Then he whips a lighter out of his pocket. “I was out of smokes.”

I watch with a combination of horror and fascination as Anton lights up my mother’s old cigarette. He holds it out to me, offering me a drag, but I shake my head. The thought of smoking a cigarette makes me physically ill.

“So,” Anton says, wincing when the skin of his split lip opens more, “what are we going to do for that project?”

My jaw drops. “I thought you said you didn’t want to help me.”

“I was just messing around.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“You know what your problem is, Ella?” He blows out a ring of smoke. “You can’t take a joke.”

I stare at him.

“Fine. I was being an asshole.” He tugs at the old white undershirt, which is a couple of sizes too big. “I’m offering to help now though, aren’t I?”

I imagine attempting to divvy up the work for the project while surrounded by my mother’s papers and all the other junk in this living room. The thought makes me sick. Even though he’s not being a jerk about it at the moment, I want Anton out of here.

“Not here,” I say. “Let’s work at your house.”

“My house isn’t much better. My little brother is super annoying.”

“Not here,” I say more firmly.

He looks like he’s going to argue again, but then he finally seems to get it. “Okay, my house.”

Anton opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, but then he gets cut off by the sound of a key turning in the front door. My mother isn’t supposed to be home for another hour, but somehow, here she is.

And now I am in really, really big trouble.

22

Ella?”

My mother’s voice floats in from the front door. I exchange looks with Anton, who seems to understand my panic. He mouths the words, “Back door?”

I quickly point in the direction of the back.