"I'm not afraid of being right. I just don't ever want to hurt someone innocent. You can't afford to be wrong about these things."

An Asian girl in her mid-to-late teens, not striking in appearance but otherwise easy on the eyes, as it were. Her frame is petite and boyish. If seen walking down the street, she wouldn't warrant a second leer.

Prior to the incident that put her in juvenile detention, Judith was a friendly, sweet, outgoing girl. She was a good student and a conscientious member of the community - always willing to help others and volunteer her time. She always treated her peers with kindness, even if they weren't as "socially accepted". Which is why what she did stunned everyone who knew her.

Since being released into her parents' care, Judith has become more reticient and pensive, in social situations she is much more apprehensive in trusting people. However, some things about her nature don't change - she wants to believe the best of people. She just doesn't think she can anymore.

I'd always considered myself a good person.

I wasn't the smartest girl in school, or the most talented, or the prettiest. I mean, I had friends and lots of people that I was friendly with, I was a cheerleader - so I guess you could say I was popular. However, to me, my defining trait had always been that I considered myself a good person. I volunteered at the food bank and at the SPCA, I was an active member of Amnesty International and babysat at the Battered Women's Shelter. I considered myself the kind of person who'd do the right thing, no matter what.

So if I'm such a good person, you may ask - and trust me, I ask myself this all the time now, if you're such a good person, Judith Chiu, why were you in juvenile detention for aggravated assault?

Eyebrows raised, huh?

Well, everyone at school knows the story. One day, Judith Chiu, previously the type of person you'd never dream in a hundred years to do such a thing, stabs her history teacher thirteen times in the chest with a kitchen knife. I didn't kill him, unfortunately. The paramedics managed to resuscitate and stabilize him and several hours in surgery brought him back from near-death. Mr. Smart didn't press charges and my parents said that he was more than generous not to do so, but the school board did. I was expelled and had to spend some time in juvenile detention - to consider my crime.

My parents kept asking me why, why would I do such a thing? They thought it was their fault, for pushing me too hard. The rumours flew around school that we were having an affair and he broke it off after finding out I was knocked up and I, of course, retaliated with violence. The school board was convinced I had some form of disassociative disorder. They're mistaken, the truth is more complex.

To be honest, I liked Mr. Smart when I first met him. He was a new teacher and like many new teachers, he was enthusiastic and bold. He really made history interesting. And it helped that he was pretty good-looking, for an old guy anyway. That being said, outside the classroom, we didn't have much contact. Until he invited me to join Debate Club, of which he was the teacher advisor. We used to go as a group to take walks through the woods near his house and talk about everything - life, God, morality, ethics, Pepsi versus Coke.

Then I started noticing things. Sometimes he said things, kind of disturbing things, like about moral nihilism - how all acts were neutral, from taking a walk in the park to murder. I mean, no one else seemed to notice or dismissed it or interpreted it differently. I guess its one thing to profess a philosophy, or to suggest it - this *was* Debate Club.

I started noticing a smell that I only observed when he was around. Kind of sweet and cloying, but acrid too. Kind of like meat that's been left out to rot.

Once, I was in his office with another Debate Club student. He was talking to us with his back to the window and I looked up to see that his reflection had turned in the glass and was staring at me. I tried to write that off as mid-term stress.

Then the nightmares began. Horrible things I can't even begin to describe - Mr. Smart at the center of a maelstorm of death and carnage. Around this time, a girl went missing from the Catholic school across town - no one made too much of a fuss. She wasn't white, her family was poor, and the kids who went to St. Jude's are known as "lost causes".

God. The nightmares gave way to daytime hallucinations. I couldn't look at Mr. Smart anymore, not without seeing walking bloody corpses following him. The missing girl pointed her finger. Body parts twitched on his desk. Gristle and gore was stuck between his teeth. Things moved under the surface of his skin.

Don't think I didn't doubt myself. I thought I was going crazy. I dragged my heels on this, but it just got worse. I mean, everyone else was normal.

I don't think schizophrenic hallucinations are this vivid. I don't know what would be worse - if I was crazy, or if this was true.

So I did what every crazy person does in their lifetime. I broke into his house to look for evidence.

I knew that Mr. Smart would be gone overnight when the Forensics Team went to the regional competition. I had the entire night and, trust me, I went over that place with a fine-tooth comb. Well, as much as I could without disturbing anything. By 5AM, I was losing heart. There was nothing obvious - I mean I wasn't looking for a gore-filled basement, but there wasn't any indication of any wrong doing.

And then I found the newspaper article crumpled up in the garbage, the one with Melanie Guevera's picture - the girl who went missing from St. Jude's. The picture had been cut out.

It was then that I knew, I had to make it stop.

Ok, sure, that isn't much to go on. But why would he have cut the picture out? It didn't make sense to me. Sure, I could rationalize it - but that felt like ignoring the huge red flashing lights and pretending nothing was wrong.

When I went to Mr. Smart's class the following day, he winked at me - like he knew that I had been in his home, that I couldn't prove anything. Now, I hadn't been talking to him for several months, not after the nightmares started. So it wasn't like we actually were confidantes or anything.

So I took a knife from the block and saw him in his office before classes started the next day. And I stabbed him. Thirteen times they said, I don't remember, I wasn't keeping count. I just remember the way that his skin and muscle gave way, the feel of the knife passing through flesh, the way it felt when it hit bone. After he stopped moving, I just dropped the knife, walked outside and vomited.

That's how I was found.

Long story short, he survived and left town - too traumatized to remain, he said. I was expelled and sent to juvenile.

Funny, about two months after Mr. Smart left town, they dredged up the body of the missing girl in the woods near where he used to live. She'd been raped and mutilated - there's some evidence that she had been pregnant. When they dug around, they found, like, four more bodies in various states of decay. I did the math myself - the first one went missing only a week after Mr. Smart moved here.

Connection?

Next time we meet, I'm going to do the right thing - and stab him in the head.

Devon Fitzgerald: Someone had to be the black sheep of the Fitzgeralds, I guess. But despite his unsavoury reputation, I think he might be kind of a diamond in the rough type. I mean, he certainly doesn't make me want to stab him.

Agnes Renfrew: At first, I didn't understand what Agnes wanted from me. Now, I kinda know. She helped me through this and I'm going to pay it forward. I just hope that we're right and not crazy. But then, I guess at least we'll be crazy together.