Page 25 of The Intruder

She came here intentionally, looking for something or someone. And she’s not willing to tell me a thing.

But of course she won’t. This is a girl who has been burned—literally—by adults. She doesn’t trust me because I’m one of them. And I can’t even blame her. Kids are so vulnerable, and when the most important adult in your life betrays you, it’s hard to ever come back from that.

I have to figure out a way to get her to trust me.

“Listen,” I say, “I’m not going to tell anyone you are here or where you’re going if you don’t want me to.”

Eleanor lets out a loud snort.

“Okay, fine.” I tap my fingertips on the table as rain pounds against the window. “So when I was a kid, my dad and I had something called an infinity promise.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s looking at me with a degree of interest. “What’s that?”

“An infinity promise,” I say, “is a promise that you can never break. Ever. Under any circumstances.”

“Everyone breaks promises.”

“Maybe in your life. But I will tell you that in my entire thirty-five years of life, I have never once broken an infinity promise. Never.”

Eleanor looks skeptical. But at the same time, I can see in her face that she wants to believe it. She wants so badly to have one adult in her life that she can actually trust. Children crave that.

“What happens if you break an infinity promise?” she asks tentatively.

“Well, I’m not sure,” I say. “Because my father never broke one, and neither have I. But I assume you die instantly.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“From dysentery,” I add.

“What’s dysentery?”

“It means you get diarrhea until you die. Death from diarrhea. It’s pretty awful.”

To my amazement, Eleanor cracks a smile. I don’t know at what age poop jokes stop being funny, but she obviously has not reached it yet. More importantly, there are sparks of trust in her eyes.

“So,” she says, “you infinity promise you won’t tell anyone I’m here?”

“Well,” I say, “I won’t tell anyone without your permission. For the record, I think there are adults out there who could help you, and I’d like to discuss it with you more. But yes, I infinity promise that I won’t tell anyone you’re here if you don’t give me permission. On penalty of death from dysentery.” I pause. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she says.

I look down at that knife, still gripped in her hand. Maybe it’s my imagination, but she seems to loosen her grip just a little bit. Maybe she’s becoming more comfortable with me. And she should—I have never broken an infinity promise, and I don’t intend to start tonight. No matter what.

19

BEFORE

ELLA

I hate science class.

I get okay grades because I study (even though my desk is still occupied by the fish tank), but it’s my least favorite class out of everything. And earth science, which is what we’re taking right now, is especially bad because it’s so boring. We are learning about rocks. Seriously, rocks.

Mrs. Bush, whose name everyone in the class finds hilarious, is talking about some project we are supposed to work on involving rock classification. I’m only half listening, because it already sounds super boring. It involves comparing two kinds of rocks. I’m not even kidding.

Then she says that this is a group project. Because comparing rocks is obviously something you can’t do all by yourself. “I’m going to assign you partners to work on this together,” she tells us, and the class collectively groans.

Still, getting assigned partners is better than picking our partners. Whenever that happens, I always end up not getting one, and then the teacher has to assign me anyway, and it’s embarrassing. So I’m glad when she decides to assign partners alphabetically. She gets about a fifth of the way into the assignments when she gets to me.