The dream was Beth. The dream was always Beth.

We were under the crab apple tree at school. Our tree.

I mean, dozens of kids sat there but it was our tree. And she had her sketchbook and I had her.

That was all I needed. Ever.

In the dream, her hair was loose, which was how I knew it was a dream. I’d never seen her hair loose, she always had it pulled back in really tight buns or ponytails.

“What are you looking at?” she asked and then she smiled, revealing the way her two front teeth leaned just slightly against each other. Not crooked, but not straight either.

“You,” I said.

“Well, stop. You’re supposed to be looking over there.” She pointed with her bitten pencil to the lunch tables on the far side of the quad.

“I want to look at you.”

Beth had freckles scattered like stars across her creamy skin, caught even on her lips and eyelids. She didn’t like them, I knew. Her red hair and her many freckles. They made her feel different in a way that was uncomfortable. But I wanted to put my lips against every one of them and whisper thank you, thank you for being here.

“You said I could draw you, remember? And I can’t draw you like this.”

“I think I lied.” I felt the smile spreading across my own mouth and I still wasn’t used to it. Smiling felt weird. I was sixteen and I don’t think I’d ever in my life smiled as much as I did with Beth.

I leaned in to kiss her, but she put her free hand against my chest, burning through my shirt.

“Did you hear that?” she asked, looking over my shoulder. Her smile was gone and I wanted to tease that smile back. The sun was suddenly gone too and we weren’t under the crab apple tree, we were in the art room and I shook my head, fighting with everything in me to stay in the dream.

“Tommy. Wake up. You heard that.”

I did. I heard that. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to stay in this art room forever.

“Tommy,” she whispered. “Please.”

I opened my eyes, the dream shattered, my skin trying to hold onto the sensation of her hair against my palm. The taste of orange Skittles on my tongue. My brain to the sound of her voice. But it was gone.

I lifted my head from the thin pillow that smelled like someone else’s sweat, and listened.

The house was the same eerie quiet it always was.

But that sound… Something woke me up. Pulled me away from the magnet of Beth.

I glanced over my shoulder to see the lamp on over the desk. Simon was sitting there—of course—all his books open in front of him but he was turned, looking at the door.

“Did you hear something?” I asked.

Simon’s glasses caught the lamplight and I couldn’t see his eyes, so I couldn’t see what he was thinking. Not that I ever knew what that guy was thinking. He could cut open his head and show me his brain and I’d still be fucking clueless about that guy.

“You,” he muttered. “Having a wet dream.”

“Fuck off.” But I put my hand under the covers, checked to make sure. Hard dick. No come. Phew. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but my stomach had been full for the first time in months. It wasn’t sleep as much as a food coma.

“You heard something in the hallway.”

“No,” he said and turned back to his books.

“Did someone knock? One of the girls?”

“It…wasn’t a knock.”

“Was it Beth?”

“Jesus,” he muttered. “What is it with Beth?”

Everything was the answer. It was everything with Beth.

“You’re going to get all of us in trouble,” he said.

I felt like shit that he was right.

They let me have dinner, as much as I wanted. Which was ominous as fuck. And then—after dinner—we’d been split up all night.

Also ominous as fuck.

But the worst thing was The Pastor… The Pastor had that look in his eye.

The look that made me cold in my skin. The look that made me want to find safe places for everyone to hide. That look made me want to be a million feet tall, and wide and strong enough to stop him from hurting anyone.

But he would come after me. He liked coming after me the most.

I made sure of that.

“She might be having another nightmare.” I put enough scorn in my voice to make sure Simon understood he was being an asshole.

She had nightmares. Every night. She and Rosa shared the room next to ours and we could hear her screaming sometimes, crying others. Rosa always knocked on the walls—three short fast knocks—letting us know she was okay, that nothing bad was happening. Well, nothing worse. Because being here was pretty bad.

Beth said she didn’t remember what was so awful in her dreams, but mostly I think she didn’t want to talk about it.

None of us wanted to talk about the shit that came to us at night.

I lay there listening, trying not to feel all the walls in this place. All the walls between me and Beth.

There was a knock on the wall from Carissa, who had the room on the other side of us. Two fast knocks.

I knocked back three times.

Everything okay?

Fine.

But not really. And we all kind of knew it.

Any minute the Pastor was going to come for me.

Simon closed one big heavy textbook and opened another.

“It’s after one, dude,” I said, picking a fight because I had to do something. “What are you doing studying?”

Simon didn’t say anything. He didn’t say shit. Ever. He studied and he kept his head down and he didn’t get in trouble or get involved in any of the scary business that went on in this place.

His dad had been an immigrant from Pakistan, married his mom, had Simon, was living the American Dream, but then a few months ago he lost everything in some shady business deal. His dad killed his mom and then shot himself.

Murder suicide for real.

It was fucked-up and I was ready to cut the guy some slack on it, but Simon looked away when some pretty heinous shit went down in this place. And that I cut no slack with. No one here was going to take care of us—we had to do it ourselves.

But Simon walked around like he didn’t see any of it. And worse—didn’t care.

Also—he was some kind of genius, so on principle I hated him.

“You know we share a room,” I said. “How am I supposed to sleep with your fucking lamp on all the time?”

“You were sleeping just fine—”

The sound came again and I could identify it now because I wasn’t sleeping.

Not a scream.

It was the sound of a scream cut off before it could get started. It was a sound a thousand times worse than a scream, and all the hair on my body stood up. A door shut and there were footsteps walking down the hallway away from our room. Away from the girl’s room next to ours.

There was heavy thump. The footsteps stopped for a second and then started back up.

“That was from Beth and Rosa’s room, wasn’t it?” Simon whispered.

I said nothing, staring out the window at the bright white light of the streetlamp. When I first moved here I pretended it was the moon. Like the moon out the window of the apartment I’d shared with my mom. Like the moon outside the bedroom in my first foster home.

“Shit,” Simon whispered.

He didn’t come for me. He came for Beth.

And I just sat there. We both did. We sat there doing nothing.

When I curled my hands into fists and I could still feel the scars, the rough papery skin over my palms like burns that never went away from my last trip to the office after the graham cracker incident.

The scars matched the ones on my back. Across my ass.

Simon probably had the same ones.

The office was a fucked-up place where fucked-up shit went down.

As bad as my punishments were, I had this sinking fear that when the girls got taken to the office they got something different. Something worse. Carissa said when he took her all he wanted to do was pray with her, but I was pretty sure that was only part of the story. She left the worst of it out.

There was another thump and then a sob.

Silence.

All at once, I couldn’t fucking take it. Not for another night. Another second. He had us so scared we couldn’t stand up for each other. He had us so terrified we couldn’t tell anyone what he did to us. How we were treated.

For years I’d kept my mouth shut, told myself half the time that I deserved what The Pastor did to me. Or I didn’t deserve any better.

But I couldn’t sit here, staring at these walls and pretend nothing was happening. Like I did when Simon got taken. When Carissa got taken.

The way they pretended nothing was happening when I got taken.

Not again.

Because Beth fucking deserved better.

I charged for the door even though I knew it was locked. Locked on the outside. Like it was every night. We were trapped inside.

I grabbed the doorknob with both hands and rattled the door as hard as I could, but nothing budged. In this old fucking shithole of a house, the doors had all been reinforced. I braced both feet against the wall and pulled as hard as I could. And then I put my shoulder against the door and pushed as hard as I could. Nothing. Not any movement.

“What are you doing?” Simon asked.

“What does it look like?”

“Like you’re being an idiot.”

“I need to help her,” I said, straining against the door, counting all the ways I’d made this happen. I knew the art room was a bad idea but Beth just had to smile at me and I didn’t care about anything but her.

This was my fault.

“You gonna fucking help me or not?” I said to Simon, but I knew he wasn’t going to help. He was going to sit at that fucking desk pretending no one was getting hurt in the other room.

I was so sure of that, that when Simon showed up at my shoulder, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“The hinges,” he said. “They’re on the inside of the door. If we can get those off—”

“With what?” I asked, even though it was a great fucking idea. “We don’t have any tools in here, Simon.”

He ran the three steps back to his desk and pulled open his book bag.

“If you have a screwdriver in there I’ll take back every single shit thing I’ve ever—”

He pulled out a metal protractor. The thing nerds used in high-level math class. Disappointment bottomed me out.

“Are you kidding me?”

“It’s what we’ve got.” He pushed me out of the way so he could get down on his knees and start trying to pry open or unscrew or who the fuck knows what to get the hinges off the door.

I ran to the window, which was locked and sealed. Every kid who came to St. Joke’s figured that out the first night, when they tried to run away from this place. Jacob, a kid who was here when I got here, he broke a window open one night and the cops came and took him away.

Last I heard he was down in San Bernardino serving four years.

The door slammed at the end of the hallway, and Simon and I both looked at each other.

“It’s Beth, isn’t it?” Simon asked. “What’s he doing-“

“You know what he’s fucking doing,” I sneered, guilt chewing a hole right through me. “Hurry the fuck up.”

“It’s not…” Simon shook his head. “The hinges have been sealed with something. I can’t do it.”

I grabbed Simon’s chair, lifting it over my head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, getting up off his knees, coming at me like I was the problem.

“I’m going to throw it through the window—”

“And then what? We’re on the third floor!”

“I’ll climb down!”

“You’ll fall and break your neck.”

“So we do nothing!” I whisper-shouted. “I can’t do nothing anymore! He’s hurting her.”

“You don’t know that. Not for sure.”

“What happened when he took you into the office after that shit with the candle?”

His face got red and he looked away because none of us talked about what happened in that office. And it wasn’t just because he said if we told we’d lose our court placement and go to jail. I mean, we were all scared of that.

But if we all pretended like it didn’t happen, then we could believe that it didn’t happen. We could just put it away. Hide it someplace where we didn’t look at it, think about it and never…ever…talked about it.

It was the only way we could survive this place.

Not talking about it meant not going crazy with it.

The sound of a key in the lock of the door made both of us go still. I could feel my blood turn to ice, like it was cracking in my veins. We’d been whispering but we’d still been too loud.

“Fuck,” Simon breathed, his dark eyes wide. “It’s him.”

Or worse. Her.

“I hope so,” I whispered and tiptoed to the far side of the door, the chair still in my hands. I’d fucking kill him if I had to. And her. I’d kill them both.

I wasn’t some genius like Simon, I didn’t have someone who loved me like Rosa, my future was as shitty as my past. And jail for killing him would be worth it.

The door eased open and Simon stood at the end of my bed, his wide eyes darting from me to the door and back again. I lifted the chair over my head, wondering how hard I’d have to hit him to kill him. I was pretty big and I would use all my strength and I’d hit him as many times as it took. I locked my knees. Swallowed down the vomit in my throat.

I’d done some shit, but nothing like this.

I saw the toe of a shoe on the floor and I swung the chair in a wide arc around my shoulder, hoping to hit the fucker in the face.

“Stop!” Simon put his hand up and caught the swing of the chair that I tried to check but couldn’t stop. Simon grunted as the chair hit his shoulder, knocking him back toward the bed.

I turned, ready to charge, but…it was Rosa at the door.

Rosa. Out of her room.

It was so strange I could only blink at her.

She had her black hood up over her long hair. The baggy sweatshirt she wore pulled taut over her pregnancy.

“I’m out,” she whispered. “I’d rather be in jail than here.”

“How’d you get our door open?” I asked, my voice as low as I could make it. I knew Rosa had a whole history with B and E, but getting out of these rooms was no joke. Not when he locked the door from the outside.

She held up a key ring with five keys on it. “Fucker’s not as careful as he could be when he’s excited about raping teenage girls.”

My stomach curdled.

“Did he just drop them in your room?” Simon asked. “The keys—”

“You got bigger problems than how I got the keys,” Rosa said. “He just took Beth. You’ve got time before shit gets real,” Rosa said.

This place needed to be burned down to the ground and I’d be the guy to do it. Right after I found him and killed him. I’d light a match and watch it all burn.

And the memory would keep me warm in jail for the rest of my life.

I stepped past Rosa into the hall. Five doors. Ours was open. So was Rosa and Beth’s. Carissa’s on the other side was opened too. There was another locked and empty bedroom and then his office at the end of the hall.

I stepped toward the door, the keys in my hand. They had those colored plastic things around the edges. A different color for each key. All I could think was:

He has us fucking color-coded?

“Wait,” Simon whispered. “If you try a bunch of keys in the lock he’ll hear you. You need to know which one is the right one.”

Solid. That was solid thinking. But my fingers were shaking so hard I couldn’t even separate one key from the ring.

“Hey,” Simon stood beside me, his hand out for the keys. “Let me help you.” I dropped the keys in his hand, never expecting when I woke up three minutes ago that I’d be grateful to him.

There was a creak on the stairs and we all went totally still.

The Wife.

When I first got placed at St. Joke’s I had a baseball bat. My first foster family gave it to me but the second I got to St. Joke’s, The Pastor took it away.

A kid like me with a bat, he’d said, shaking his head.

And I’d thought, yeah, no shit. Who in their right mind trusts someone like me with a bat?

I wanted that bat back with everything in me. I could do some damage with that bat.

Every muscle tensed, I figured I would just charge when she got to the top step. Push her down the steps and hope for the best.

The top step creaked like it always did and I bounced on my tiptoes, ready to charge. I was lightheaded from not having enough food, but I was ready to do this.

But it wasn’t the wife coming up the stairs.

It was Carissa in her pale pink pajamas. The moonlight coming through our bedroom door turned the long butcher knife in her hand to silver.

Relief made me nauseated. Adrenaline made me numb.

I collapsed against the door, sucking in air.

Carissa was the youngest of us. The smallest. That knife was half the length of her leg.

“Open the door,” she whispered, all murderous business. Well, as much as a fifteen-year-old half-Chinese girl in a pair of pink pajamas could mean murder business.

Which was a lot, actually.

Simon who’d been checking the keys, lifted one in the air. “Got it!”

“I’m out,” Rosa said, her hand over her stomach, and none of us blamed her.

She and Carissa hugged briefly and Rosa was gone like she’d never been there at all.

“Give me the knife,” I said to Carissa. “I’m bigger.” I was bigger than Carissa, sure, but I was way smaller than The Pastor. I was tall, but he had a hundred pounds on me, easy.

I had the element of surprise and not much else going for me.

“I’ll get Beth,” she said and I nodded. Yes. Someone would need to see to Beth.

“You can’t kill him,” Simon said.

“I can’t?” Because I could. And killing him was the plan. The scars on my hand burned like they agreed.

“You’ll go to jail.”

“Dude,” I sneered, “I’m going to jail anyway. Now or years from now, it don’t matter.” Jail was the natural course of things for a kid like me.

“Yeah, but murder?”

“You don’t want to do this, fine. Go back to your books. No judgment, Simon. For real. You helped a lot. But me and Carissa can do this on our own.”

Carissa had been at St. Joke’s before I got here, and she ran this shit. There wasn’t a thing that happened in these walls that she wasn’t fully on top of.

And she stood next to me at this door like she had no plans on bailing.

There was a thump on the other side of the door and Simon swore under his breath. But his fingers… man, they were rock solid. I was shaking like a leaf but Simon was steady. He put the key in the lock and slowly, silently, turned it. The door popped open and then eased forward.

And I knew in the pit of my stomach that whatever I saw in this room, whatever horror Beth was experiencing, it was on me. I’d known we were going to get caught. But I didn’t care. I only cared about her. And how it felt when we were together.

I’d lost my head over her.

Don’t look. I told myself as the office was revealed, slice by slice. Don’t see.

But it was impossible not to. The reality of it was so big. So horrible.

I saw the way her bare toes tried to get a grip against the floor. Her nightgown was pushed up to her thigh. Her knees thumped against the solid wood of the desk. Her hair was loose across the desk where she was pushed on to her stomach. The Pastor had one hand over mouth but I could hear her muffled screams. Her panicked breaths.

Her amber eyes, when they saw me, they opened wide and I read a thousand things there.

Fear and pain and a relief so wild she started to sob.

I roared when I was supposed to stay silent. I fucking screamed and I gave him warning, that we were here, that we were coming for him. He turned, pushing himself away from her, and I saw his open belt but couldn’t tell if his pants were open. If he’d raped her or only planned on raping her.

And it didn’t fucking matter.

I lifted the knife and charged him. He brought his arm up just as I slashed at him with the knife and felt the thick give of skin and muscle as the blade went through his hand. I tried again. To get his belly this time, that sickening wobble of it under the clothes he wore and I hit something, felt him grunt and heard him swear, and then he punched me.

He hit me so hard I fell sideways, nearly losing my grip on the knife. I shoved at him, with all my strength, the knife cutting across his hand.

“Tommy,” he said. “Put down the knife.”

“No!”

“Put down the knife, Tommy, or this will not go well for you.”

“Fuck you!”

He pushed me into the chair like I was nothing. Like I was a bug. Like all my fear and all my worry were made of air. The hate I felt for him was weightless.

“Tommy!” Simon yelled and I glanced up just as a thundering punch caught me across the face, making my ears ring and my eyes cross. There was another and another. I felt my nose pop, blood rushing into my mouth. I fell to my knees. And then to my side.

Carissa got Beth off the desk and into the hall, I saw that. I saw Beth screaming and reaching for me, but Carissa was stronger than she looked and she pulled Beth away.

She was safe.

The Pastor kicked me and there was a crack and a bright white-hot pain in my side. A rib, probably.

I couldn’t do this. Black was seeping into the sides of my vision. I pushed the knife across the floor where it skidded to a stop in front of Simon, who was watching me, horrified.

I tried to will Simon into grabbing that knife and charging at The Pastor while he was occupied with killing me. But as my chin came up The Pastor kicked me in the face, snapping my head back, and the lights went out.