Page 69 of The Intruder

I’m glad she never went through with doing any of these things to me. I still don’t understand why she decided to target me in the first place. What could I have done?

I turn to one of the pictures, and I happen to notice that the woman’s eyes are drawn as black circles. I flip through more of the drawings, and this time I notice that the woman’s eyes are drawn the same way in each of the pictures. And I also notice one other thing. In every drawing, Eleanor made a little dot just below the curve of the woman’s lips. Like a beauty mark.

Hmm. That’s strange. Why would she draw me that way?

The more I look at these drawings, the more I feel like I’ve made a terrible mistake. My stomach sinks. Now that Eleanor is gone and I’m no longer scared for my life, I become more and more certain:

The woman in these drawings is not me.

I have blue eyes, and although Eleanor clearly had access to blue ink, she did not draw them that way. There is no beauty mark under my lips. And now that I’m looking more carefully, the woman’s nose is drawn as a sharp line, different from mine. I allowed myself to panic, but there was no reason to. Eleanor never envisioned my torture and death. Her wrath was aimed at another woman. Someone who resembled me in scribble form.

That doesn’t mean I’m not worried about her. That doesn’t mean I’m not intensely concerned about the woman featured in these drawings. But that girl never wanted to hurt me. I scared myself over nothing.

Although it doesn’t explain the map leading to my home.

I flip through all the pages again under the beam of the flashlight. When I finally get to the end of the book, I discover a page I didn’t see the first time around. Possibly the most important page in the entire book. If she wanted the notebook back, it’s because of this page.

I stare at the contents of the paper, my head spinning. Oh my God. I finally understand.

This changes everything.

49

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.