Page 38 of The Intruder

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I hate those football jocks, and I thought it would be funny to mess with him.” Then he adds, “Devin didn’t think so.”

I don’t get it. Why would you mess up somebody’s backpack like that when they didn’t even do anything to you? Especially when that kid is a lot bigger than you are. Sometimes it seems like Anton can’t stop himself from doing bad things. When I do bad things, it’s always on purpose. If I mess with somebody, it’s only because they deserve it.

When we get to Anton’s apartment, it’s completely empty and quiet. There’s no sign of his mother or his brother. I follow him to his room, and I notice the closet is open. At the bottom of the closet is a bunch of free weights. That’s when I look over at Anton’s arms and realize for the first time that even though he’s skinny and on the short side like I am, he’s got decent muscles, especially compared to most kids our age.

“Do you work out?” I ask him.

“Trying to.” He picks up one of the twenty-pound weights and lifts it over his head. “One of these days, when my dad comes at me or my brother, I’m going to be ready for him.”

I bet he will. I get the feeling that Anton is not the kind of kid to be underestimated.

He lets me have his desk again, and I spread out my materials while he digs around in his own backpack. He finally pulls out one crumpled page of notes about igneous rocks and passes it over to me. He wrinkles his forehead while I look it over.

I can barely read it. His handwriting is really bad. So is his spelling. Pretty much every other word is misspelled. If I didn’t know he did it, I would say this was written by a third or fourth grader. I glance over at him.

“It’s bad, I know.” Anton drops down against his bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I suck at school.”

When I look at the notes he wrote, it makes me wonder if there’s more to it than just “sucking at school.” A bunch of letters are written backward, which is super weird. I mean, even if you are bad at school, you should know which way the letter R is written.

But he tried. I wonder how long it took him to come up with this page of notes. Probably forever.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Let me copy it over.”

We go through it together, and I tell him the parts that I think we can use and also the parts we need more information about. He listens the whole time and even agrees to go with me to the school library tomorrow. Unlike me, he is still allowed to check out books.

“You’re good at explaining things, Ella,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say, and I feel happy because I enjoy helping Anton. Especially since he seems to care about doing a good job on this project more than I thought he would.

“You’re really smart,” he says, and I realize it’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me, even though I get plenty of A’s in school. “Not like me.”

“You’re smart too.”

“Nah.” He avoids my eyes. “I’m really not.”

“Everyone’s brain works differently. Just because the teachers don’t explain stuff to you in a way you understand it, that doesn’t mean you’re not smart.”

He doesn’t say anything, but a smile twitches at his lips. I like making Anton smile even more than I like teaching him.

We’ve been working for about an hour when there’s a knock on the door. My heart speeds up, terrified that it’s Anton’s dad, but then a child’s hopeful voice says on the other side, “Anton?”

Anton rolls his eyes. “I’m studying. We can play later.”

Except Anton’s brother doesn’t listen. A second later, the door swings open, and the little boy I saw last time I was here bursts into the room, full of energy. He beams at the sight of his big brother and immediately scrambles onto the bed next to him.

Anton grits his teeth. “I told you, get out, squirt.”

Brad’s eyes rake over me, and he giggles. “Anton, is this your girlfriend?”

Anton’s whole face turns bright red. Between his face and his hair, he looks like a Christmas tree. “Okay, that does it…”

He grabs his brother around the waist and hauls him off the bed, mussing his hair as he goes. At first, I’m not sure what he is doing, but then he throws the younger boy into the closet. He slams the door shut and then uses a key that was in a pen holder on his desk to lock it.

“There,” he says to the closed door. “Let’s see you bother us now.”

Anton just locked his brother in the closet.

I jump out of my chair, panic rising in my chest. I imagine the poor kid hunched in the dark, grasping for a pull string to turn on the bulb, finding only air. A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead.