She tiptoed to her sisters’ bedroom and pushed their door open a crack. The light was on, and she could make out the silhouette of a towering man moving about. Her pulse rising, she hit the door with so much adrenaline that it slammed open, and the killer spun around to glare at her.

-

“So you came—as I knew you would…” He sneered. She glared back. “…I knew you would, you stupid little—” She punched him square in the mouth. Her knuckles shrieked with the sharp pain of his teeth chafing her skin. He blindly swung his leg out to kick her, but with all her jump rope training in P.E. class she was able to nimbly jump over it. Her sisters were there in the corner next to the window! If she could just…

A fist swung out and met her right eye. Seeing stars amid the unwelcome blur of tears, she faintly registered that she was hurt again. She didn’t think, but captured him into her strongest headlock. He struggled for a minute before she pressed a pressure point on the side of his immensely grotesque face and he immediately slumped, unconscious. She could just feel her soul rising up in celebration.

Kelly knew what to do now. She freed her sisters, and they each hugged one of her legs.

“Guys, I can’t walk!” she protested, but she was laughing and relieved tears flowed down her sweaty face, making rivers of fresh salt water amid the sea of sweat. “Go get your handcuffs—you know, the ones you got for your birthday,” she instructed Sana, who obeyed reluctantly. They dragged the unconscious malefactor outside and handcuffed him to the fence. Kelly ran inside and called 911, while watching her sisters watch him.

Fifteen sirens seared across town toward their split-level, and she kept her sisters close while answering the rugged officer’s questions. All the while, lines from a song that was on her radio alarm that morning, although morning seemed a hundred years away, ran through her head. “You got a reaction…You got a reaction, didn’t you? …You took a white orchid…You took a white orchid and turned it blue.”

“Miss Quindlen, we have captured the murderer known as ‘Molito,’ and he has been accused of murder and kidnapping. There were murders all over the state that we have been able to connect to him. We could not have done this without you, and you have our greatest condolences for you and your sisters since the majority of your family has been killed by this man…” the head officer droned a speech that Kelly suspected had been said many times before. She glanced around distractedly, and something caught her eye.

A bloodstained black glove drifted around the scene. It got caught on several plants in the garden. When Mother Earth exhaled in gusty breaths, it flittered, and a crumb of sapphire flashed from under it.

A weary- and scruffy-looking detective invited the Quindlens to ride in the police cars to their respective foster homes. Kelly gladly accepted, as she was physically and mentally worn out, but was reluctant to part from her sisters after so long. Contrary to her wish to ride with them, the detective insisted that they ride separately. She would have argued all night, as was her stubborn nature, but she was exhausted.

That car ride was the longest, and somehow the shortest, one of Kelly’s life. The police officer in front attempted to make small talk with her, but after a few answers it was clear that she just wanted to think. She thought about everything, from forgetting to eat lunch that day to wearing a stranger’s shirt. She thought about life in general, from A to Z. They say that your life flashes in front of you before you die. Kelly was just remembering that tomorrow would be her 18th birthday when she looked at the clock in the car, which announced midnight, and glanced out the window. She saw an image that would stay with her: another police car was heading toward the intersection they were waiting at. It was speeding over the limit, sirens blaring, and she could see the driver’s horrified face. Her eyes slowly traveled to the backseat, and through the heavily tinted window she could see Tatyana’s and Sana’s terrified faces. She almost smiled as she remembered the exact noise of their screams. Her own scream was cut short when the sisters were reunited, amid flaming metal, crushing heat, and the red and blue disco lights provided by the crumpled cars. An orchid stood peacefully on the edge of the wreckage, its white petals flickering blue behind the excruciating heat of the blaze.

A day later, the Quindlen sisters were being carried to the ocean in painted porcelain urns. “Surprising acts of righteousness in all of Tasmot Valley radiate from the one act yesterday by Kelly Quindlen, who would be eighteen years old today . . .” a radio blasted from across the bay before someone hurried to turn the noise down. A blue orchid drifted down into the unexpectedly calm ocean tide, causing gentle ripples in every direction. As the Quindlens’ friends scattered their ashes into the sea, they could have sworn they heard someone humming “Happy birthday to you…”

You’re given a miserable time

An orchid of snowy white

You know how to handle

Take a white one, turn it blue

What a happy birthday to you….