But it isn’t The Wife coming up the stairs.

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

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

Which is a lot, actually.

I do the circuit with the keys until I have one left that could only be for the office door.

I lift it in the air. “Got it!”

My words are practically silent, that’s how low we are whispering.

“I’m out,” Rosa breathes, her hands over her stomach. And none of us blame her. She is four months pregnant and seventeen years old. She doesn’t need anything else on her plate.

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

“Give me the knife,” Tommy says to Carissa. “I’m bigger.”

Sure, he’s bigger than Carissa. But he is way smaller than The Pastor. I have the sense not to say that out loud, but we are all thinking it.

I can tell by our faces we are thinking how bad all of this could go.

“I’ll get Beth,” she says and Tommy nods. The two of them co-conspirators in murder. Murder? Are we planning on murder?

I’ve been down this road. It doesn’t end well.

“You can’t kill him,” I say. Because someone needs to say that. Needs to make that clear.

“I can’t?”

“You’ll go to jail.”

“Dude,” he sneers, “I’m going to jail anyway. Now or years from now, it don’t matter.”

“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 has been at St. Joke’s for years, and she runs this shit. There isn’t a thing that happens in these walls that she isn’t fully on top of.

And she stands next to Tommy at this door like she has no plans on bailing.

Because what is happening in that office isn’t right. Not by a mile.

They are badass. There is no other word for it. And I am on their side.

Because their side is right.

There is a thump on the other side of the door and I swear under my breath. No part of this is good. But it is, somehow, right. And the distinction has never been so clear in my head. Sometimes you have to do some bad shit for the right reasons.

My fingers are rock solid as I put the key in the lock and slowly, silently, turn it. The door pops open and then eases forward.

There is this very still place in the center of my brain where I understand what I might see on the other side of the door. Where I think I know what I am going to see. But there is no place in my brain or my body where I can understand the sight of a teenage girl fighting against a grown man double her size while he pulls up her nightgown.

I haven’t been innocent in a long time. But something in me shatters at the sight of that, of the man who is supposed to be caring for us hurting Beth like that.

Tommy screams beside me and I jump, startled. I drop the keys as Tommy lifts the knife and charges The Pastor.

“Tommy,” I yelled, uselessly. Stupidly.

The Pastor brings up his arm just as Tommy slashes at him with the knife, drawing blood. The Pastor shouts in shock and pain and Carissa rushes forward pulling Beth off the desk.

“Tommy,” The Pastor says, bleeding from the hand and stomach. “Put down the knife.”

“No!”

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

“Fuck you!”

The Pastor pushes Tommy into the chair like he is nothing. Like he is a bug.

“Tommy!” I yell again like I am the worst cheerleader on the planet. And Tommy glances up just as a thundering punch catches him across the face.

There is another. Another. Tommy is on the floor, getting the shit kicked out of him.

Tommy shoves the knife across the floor, hard enough that it skitters to a stop in front of me. I stare at it, stupid and scared for one moment.

“Simon,” Tommy says. “Please —”

And The Pastor clips him in the chin, knocking Tommy out.

It’s not right.

It’s so not fucking right.

I grab the knife. It’s slippery in my hands. Blood and sweat.

I look at Carissa and Beth who are standing in the hallway. Beth is bleeding from her lip because The Pastor hit her. The places on my back where he hit me suddenly burn like they are on fire.

“Simon!” Beth yells and I turn just as the Pastor is charging towards me and it’s nothing… It’s a reflex really. I put out my hands to stop him, but one of my hands is holding the knife.

I catch him in the stomach and I jerk my hand, freaking out and shocked. The knife slices through him. He gurgles, eyes wide, mouth foaming pink.

Oh God, I think. I killed him. I killed him.

And then he reels back, the knife sliding out of his body, blood running down the blade, across my fingers. It’s warm. Like hot.

The Pastor slips, staggers and suddenly falls onto his back.

I stand there. Beth and Carissa behind me and we watch the rise and fall of his chest slow down.

And then stop.

I stumble to the side, my stomach heaving and I throw up the over-cooked carrots from dinner. I throw up everything. Everything in my body.

Carissa is suddenly running across the room as Beth slides to the floor beside Tommy. Carissa is frantically opening drawers. Rifling through papers.

“What…?” I swallow, my mouth gross. “What are you doing?” I ask Carissa.

She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she goes to the bookshelf behind the desk and starts pulling down books.

“We need…we need to run,” I say.

“We can’t leave Tommy,” Beth breathes and she’s right. We can’t. Maybe I can carry him? I cross the room to them, stepping over the pool of blood, my body in shock, my brain sinking fast as I’m unable to bail.

“Where did you put it, you asshole!” Carissa screams and it’s so shocking to hear her scream that we all turn and watch her run across the room and fall to her knees beside The Pastor’s body.

She’s checking his pockets, laying her body across his to get to each one, covering herself with blood.

“Carissa,” I say. It occurs to me that we aren’t whispering anymore, but I can’t think that it matters.

I killed him.

What’s a little yelling after that?

Carissa is speaking under her breath, wild and frantic as she digs through The Pastor’s clothes.

“What are you looking for?” I ask her in a careful voice, wondering if she’s maybe, with all this, lost her mind.

Have I?

She’s got The Pastor’s wallet in her hand and she’s pulling out dollar bills and throwing them on the floor. IDs, loyalty cards to the grocery store.

And then she gasps. Tears in her eyes. A small square piece of paper in her hand. Something folded? A picture? I can’t see. I can’t tell. She tucks it into the pocket of her pajamas then stares at me, blood all down the front of her like she was the one to kill him.

And she smiles. It occurs to me this is the first time I’ve ever seen her smile and it’s beautiful. Illuminating.

I smile at her because I can’t help myself.

For the first time since knowing her — Carissa is happy.

“Oh, my God,” a voice gasps from the doorway. And I don’t have to turn my head to see. It’s The Wife. And our time to run is over.

“He was hurting Beth,” I say, in a rush. “Tommy tried to save her and The Pastor beat him unconscious. The Pastor did this.” I point at Tommy in a lump beside the chair he’s been knocked out of, Beth beside him with her split lip and wild eyes.

But The Wife is silent in the doorway. She wears the robe we sometimes see her in, when she’s sick. And her blond hair is back. Her cell phone in her hand.

And she doesn’t care. Not about any of it.

We all watch as she presses dial on the phone and lifts it to her ear.

Her voice is frantic, wild with sobs.

But her eyes, as she looks at us, are stone-cold sober.

“Help, please, my foster kids have killed my husband.”

As an act, it is pure conviction.