Punishment With Kisses Part 7

Chapter Twelve.

The real s.e.x diary of Ashley Caulfield, September 14 It happened last night. It hasn't happened in years, but it happened last night and it was terrifying. Well, wait, let me fill you in on the back story. Who knows if in my drug addled state I'll ever remember these things in weeks to come. I like Pat. I don't mind doing scenes with Pat, my pudgy, bis.e.xual photographer. He bottoms for me and takes my photos and usually sets up great scenes with me and other women. Pat is always great at finding m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts who want to be bullied and pushed around, yelled at and tormented by a b.i.t.c.h like me. Sometimes I'll play with men, too, but Pat almost always sets me up with chicks probably because with men I might take it one step too far and Pat knows that. I like to shove my playmates around, show everyone who is boss, at least in the dungeon if not in real life. In real life, they're all doctors and lawyers, and I'm, well, what exactly am I? A spoiled rich girl with no ambitions. These women don't care. They let me be an absolute pig about it, too, pushing and berating them until they're about at the end of their collective ropes, always leaving them wanting and begging for me, for more, for sweet release. But that's not my job. I don't have to worry about their needs because the scenes Pat sets up for me are all about me, baby. And last night was no different.

Except it was. You see, last week I let one of Pat's b.i.t.c.hes switch with me. I've been ratcheting things up for months now, so much so that vanilla s.e.x with any one person is just a huge disappointment. Well, except The One. But I can't have that, now can I? The One isn't really available, isn't always there. I have to get my rocks off somewhere, so I turn to Pat and the scenes and the little beggars that I get to push around with my paddles and pleasures. Then I let one of the women switch with me. I let her try to top me. I wanted to acquiesce, to play a good bottom, to let her control me. But it became so real, and I was flashing back to those days, that first day, and I couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't remember my safe words, so I just started shrieking like a howler monkey, right there in the middle of the dungeon. Everyone around me freaked out and ran to me, unlocking my collar and cuffs and trying to soothe me.

I went home mortified at losing control like that, but then I realized how great it felt afterward. I relived terror and came out the other side of it lighter, calmer. So the next night I went back and bottomed, this time with a pro. I had a dominatrix tie me to the table and drip hot wax down my back, and I felt sensations up and down my spine, but mostly in my c.l.i.t. I was frightened and aroused, and I pushed that panicky feeling back in my throat and down to my s.e.x organs, and soon my fear was blatant and energizing.

I had Pat set up a few more encounters this week. All for play parties where I bottomed, sometimes solo, sometimes with a group. Mostly, there were women, but occasionally there was a transguy there too. The vibe was the same, everybody too cautious to push me over the edge. And then last night, what always happens, happened again. I got bored.

What does a girl do when bondage and domination are no longer enough? When sweet kisses and loving caresses do nothing? When the only way to get off without The One involves taking it deeper and darker until you can't recognize yourself anymore? Because that's what I'm doing, but who knows how far I can take it, you know?

Pat says he can still conjure up a scenario that will scare me into an o.r.g.a.s.m-they don't call it the pet.i.te death for no reason, you know-so I'm letting him come up with something that'll really knock my PVC socks off.

I was in the middle of telling Shane about Ash's s.e.x journal, the one that's more shocking than any of the others I'd already read, when a funny look washed over her face. I hoped to G.o.d it wasn't turning her on, because I could only take things so far and reenacting my sister's S&M play wasn't exactly the direction I was hoping to go.

"What?" I demanded. "Did you already know this?"

"No, it's not that. It's just..." Shane trailed off as she looked away. "I did play with Ash once."

"What do you mean you played with Ash once? You did S&M with her?"

"No, I, um, she asked me to be a part of a s.e.x game with her and someone else and it was kind of humiliating and I don't want to talk about it. I just wanted you to know in case she wrote about it or something."

"What did you do?" I was not shocked. There was little at this point that truly shocked me.

"I just said I don't want to talk about it." Shane was adamant. "Look, I'm just not going to talk with you about my s.e.x life with your sister."

Wow, so they had a "s.e.x life," did they? I was not sure then if I was relieved to not hear the juicy details of their tete-a-tetes, or if Shane's reluctance to share meant she was harboring a secret far worse. What that might be, I was not sure, but the mere fact that she partic.i.p.ated and enjoyed one of Ash's humiliating s.e.x games revealed a great deal about Shane, almost none of it good.

But I was not the sweet girl who fell in love with Shane what seemed like a lifetime ago. I was a chick on a mission, a s.e.xual being in my own right, and I had Ash's journal to keep ciphering. f.u.c.k Shane. I was going to find Pat, this bis.e.xual photographer who played S&M Cupid for my sister, and uncover what he knew about her death.

Tracking down Pat was as easy as finding Cynthia. His studio was set squarely atop the gay district in Portland, amid what local queers call Vaseline Alley. But getting him to sit long enough to talk with me was a different story.

Pat insisted on working while we spoke, so I was following him around all day as we went from one photo shoot to another. It started in his studio with a beautiful woman in a diamond necklace wrapping a striped yellow-and-black snake around her body. It was breathtaking watching her, though the whole scenario begged for a Freudian interpretation. I got the answer when I realized the vixen posing nude in front of us couldn't have been more than fifteen. Society and the youth culture, what a f.u.c.ked up duo.

After the snake girl, we did a location shoot for a gay couple's wedding photo. It was quick and clean and this time everyone was clearly way over twenty-one. The last shoot of the day was at a nightclub called Holocene where a troupe of chubby drag queens and Rubenesque burlesque performers hosted a benefit party for something called The Fat Experience. Not sure if it was something like Esalen or Scientology, I kept my distance, marveling nonetheless at the surety of the large-bodied folks who were prancing around the stage. To be comfortable in one's skin must be so nice. Refreshing.

Finally, at midnight, Pat turned to me and asked, "Well, chica, waddya want to know about your sis?"

I was flummoxed at this point, so the questions gushed out of me like an overactive waterfall. None of them actually stuck because I was saying them so fast even Pat couldn't understand me.

"I have an idea," Pat said, holding up the shush finger in front of his lips. "Why don't I take you to the club where your sister liked to play?"

I had never been to a play party or a dungeon or a power station-descriptors Pat used on the ride over, but none of which were listed on the sign outside, which read, "Love Inc. A Private Retreat for Couples." It was a bas.e.m.e.nt party palace that was only open to private membership. I quickly learned that in the world of s.e.x, "couples only" meant no solo men. Women were always welcome to come alone, especially if they were the pulchritudinous kind.

I followed Pat down an ordinary wood-paneled hall, past a sign in station where we showed our driver's licenses and he a red members card, and we were on our way to the back where people were mostly just milling about in various states of leather and undress.

"Well, Pat, who's the babe?" one middle-aged woman asked, leaning in to hear the answer. "Oh, I should have seen the resemblance. I'm Natalie." Middle-aged pushed her hand toward me in greeting.

"Nice to meet you." Was this how it was in a s.e.x club, I wondered. Shaking hands with folks who were thirty years older than me, not a speck of s.e.x anywhere in sight? But Pat pulled me away and started showing me around the club, back to the solo and group play rooms, where finally there were couples and groups of average-looking people in different scenarios, sporting leather, uniforms, or nothing but boots, each offering up scenes of submission, domination, and bondage. It would be salacious to Father, but nothing that was remotely shocking to me, especially not after reading Ash's journals and watching her DVDs.

After Pat disappeared into another room, I wandered around more, mostly just watching the action unfold in front of me. A few of the women looked vaguely familiar. One was that tall blonde who had the threesome with my sister. Another could have been the woman from the group encounter with the bird beak masks. But in this setting everyone looked somewhat recognizable yet wholly strange. One woman even looked a bit like my stepmother, though I was certain she wasn't. Tabitha would never be at a place like this. The very idea of it made me t.i.tter with giggles.

"Enjoying yourself, I see?" The brunette from another video sidled up to me.

"Oh, I was imagining someone here that wouldn't dare step foot in a joint like this."

She nodded and smiled and I could see she was quite attractive up close, when not visualized through pixilated video, though I was having trouble imagining her without a ginormous d.i.l.d.o strapped to her thigh. I guess this was the downside to seeing so many folks naked; real life could be a bit of a letdown. No wonder Ash had to keep ratcheting up the tension more and more just to get off.

"You'd be surprised at the people who do come in here,'' the brunette drawled, her short hair flipping up at her collar, a little s.h.a.ggy bang showing off her eyes. "Is this your first time?"

"Indeed it is. I'm Megan."

"I know. I recognize the resemblance." Like everyone else, she clearly knew my sister. She didn't offer up her own name, nor did her demeanor betray curiosity. "What brought you here? If you don't mind me asking."

"I'm trying to find out who my sister Ash really was. She came here a lot."

"Do you know why she came here?"

I shook my head. I was mildly curious, oddly fascinated by these naked, blithe people and their willingness to act out roles of power and submission. The scene fascinated me the way many parts of Ash's world had come to fascinate me, but I still couldn't say I knew why Ash came here, to this particular place, to this particular club, or why she stopped coming here.

"She was working through something in her past. I can't say any more, but I think she'd be glad to know that you knew that about her." The nameless brunette began to turn, to walk away from me, but I stopped her before she did, pushing myself in front of her as nicely and calmly as possible.

"Wait, what do you mean? Please tell me what you mean. I have to find out what was going on with her before she died or I'll never know who killed her."

"Listen, kiddo, some questions are better left unanswered. Your sister's death may just be one of those questions." That was it. I had had enough.

"Oh, for the love of G.o.d," I said, my voice raising just a pinch. "Why does everyone around me speak in f.u.c.king riddles these days? I feel like I'm Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and every time I try to get a logical answer out of someone, something cryptic comes out of their f.u.c.king mouth. It's like living with Mister Miyagi, for f.u.c.k's sake. Don't tell me to go east or west or feel the wind or learn which questions weren't meant to be answered. These cryptic answers might be fine for the Mad Hatter, but they're driving me batty. I have to know what you're talking about. Please just tell me."

She looked stunned, which I hoped was a good thing. She didn't let me know, but steered me rather forcefully down a darkened stairwell that led down another flight below the ground-level club. I began to worry. Where was she taking me? What did I know about this woman, or Pat, for that matter, or any of these people? Nothing. n.o.body knew I was even here. For all I knew this woman was a serial killer, leading me to the fruit cellar to carve my body up like a Halloween pumpkin.

Before our feet hit the ground floor, she stopped and turned toward me, whispering in my ear, "Do you really want to know?"

"Of course," I said with more certainty than I felt.

"Okay," she said and calmly laid it all out. "Ash was abused as a kid. She was trying to work through it with SM."

No, she wasn't. She couldn't have been. How could she have been abused and not told me?

"You're lying. She lied. I don't believe you." A dozen denials rushed forth all at once.

"I figured as much. She shielded you from it." The woman was calm, collected. Why was she lying to me? Maybe Ash wanted attention so badly she told the women here she was an abuse victim.

"Who supposedly abused her? I would have known!" We shared a room until Mother died, had all the same uncles and priests and deacons as each other. It wasn't possible.

"I don't know. All I know is that she was s.e.xually a.s.saulted as a child and took it upon herself to protect you from the abuse. We don't normally let abuse victims play at our parties because it can be hard for them to distinguish pleasure pain from what was thrust upon them, but Ash had already gone through therapy, had moved beyond her abuse to this different place. This was her safe s.p.a.ce to work out her self-injurious behavior without harming herself. We watched over her to make sure she never went too far."

But she did go too far at some point, didn't she? Something must have gone seriously wrong because Ash was dead and I was in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a s.e.x club talking about abuse allegations with a woman with pierced nipples, b.u.t.tless chaps, and a belly harness.

"I have to go," I gasped before sprinting up the stairs and out into the night air, choking back tears and swallowing oxygen like I'd been underwater or buried alive. I couldn't breathe.

Was Ash really s.e.xually abused? Who could have done such a thing to her? All our uncles were old men now, our church elders all the same old men that we had as kids. n.o.body sprang to mind. That was the disturbing thing about pedophiles, how easily they blended into society. But why had it never come out over all these years? And who would have dared harm the favorite daughter of Bradford Thomas Caulfield? Surely whoever did such a thing must not have known Father, because if they had they would have known they were risking their very lives by touching Ash. I had absolutely no doubt that if my father had found someone even looking at Ash that way when she was just a child, he would have literally choked the life out of them.

I didn't recall any of our family friends going missing, or any male relatives dying in suspicious circ.u.mstances. Wasn't that proof that it didn't happen?

That night I fell into bed without a word to Shane, exhausted from a day of revelations and debauchery. Was this how Ash felt? s.e.xually stimulated one moment, embarra.s.sed and mortified the next? It left me with both a terrible sense of shame and a burning desire to return as soon as possible.

Chapter Thirteen.

It was the fifth round of a knock-down, drag-out match between Shane and me.

In the weeks since the s.e.x club fiasco I'd been back at least half a dozen times, usually for research but sometimes for more personal reasons. I didn't tell Shane, but she sensed something was up. The girlfriend usually knows. I almost told Tabitha once, too. I ached to tell someone about my s.e.xual odyssey, but the fear Father would find out was too great to make that leap.

Pat had taken me under his wing, introducing me to the other clubs in the city, sending me off alone or with his other friends to the girls-only affairs by the college, instructing me on going incognito to the city's rarified mixed-gender bathhouse, even accompanying me to the couples swing parties where a girl like Ash-or me-could bounce from room to room only accepting pleasure if she were so inclined.

Pat liked to swing, with girls, with boys, and even though Ash mostly liked women, I could see why she put out for Pat, too. He was all about pleasure, pure hedonism. It was thrilling, living only for that moment, not just that o.r.g.a.s.m, or the flush on skin when someone touched me, not even for the sheer joy of having a roomful of people l.u.s.t after you, if only for a night. It was the moment, being surrounded in that moment by nothing but s.e.xuality. It might be vacuous, living among these denizens of the night, planning nothing beyond my next trick. But I found my new world wholly intoxicating. I was no longer Megan Caulfield, bookworm and little sister. Here I was Queen Christina, Helen of Troy, Xaviera Hollander, Erica Jong. I was the happy hooker, the coffee, tea, or me girl, every erotic icon I had ever read about in literature, and I couldn't get enough of it.

There was an emptiness inside me that hadn't been filled, couldn't be filled until all of me was filled, and believe me, in these darkened nameless s.e.x clubs, I was finally getting my fill-in every sense of the word.

Unfortunately, there was little room for Shane in my new life and she seemed fully aware of it. She never once asked to join me in these adventures, and though she used to complain about my dullness in the sack, now she couldn't wait to have me scale things back s.e.xually.

"You're spending too much time in these s.e.x clubs, Megan," she yelled. "You're so far into that world that you're becoming just like your sister. Do you want to end up like her too?"

"My G.o.d, Shane, I would think you would care more about me than to threaten me like that." I was livid. How dare she try to suppress my s.e.xual exploration with scare tactics!

"Babe, I'm not threatening you. I'm worried about you. You go out every night, you stay out all hours, I never know what you're doing out there. I feel like you're not just trying to find out what happened to Ash, you're trying to become Ash."

Maybe I was. Maybe I liked the feeling. The truth was, I was enjoying the s.e.xual explorations more than I wanted to admit. But Shane, well f.u.c.k, Shane was the one who was bored with our old s.e.x life, so I'd think she'd be happy about these changes, maybe even proud of my s.e.xual expansion.

I was enraged that she wanted to thwart everything now that it was no longer convenient for her. I didn't want to be under her thumb, but she was determined to keep me there. It was like living with Father again, and the whole thing made me scream and cry all at once.

"You know, Shane, this is all rather rich coming from the woman who trolled around my sister like a tabby in heat for weeks on end. If you loathed Ash so much, why did you spend every waking moment hanging on her?"

Shane stared, full of bitterness and rage, but clearly mulling her words carefully. "Megan, your sister was a wh.o.r.e. I hung around for the same reason everyone else hung around. Probably the same reason people hang around you nowadays. Feel better?" With that carefully metered yet bitter retort, Shane just turned and marched off, slamming the bedroom door behind her and then the front door, as she left the house. I heard the engine gun and I knew she and her stupid motorcycle were gone for the night, if not forever, and I threw myself on the bed crying like I had the day we buried my sister. It was a long, tortured night.

I was sitting at Father's office, the gnarled oak desk a rather foreboding presence there. I didn't know why he commanded my company, but I was there, the ever-dutiful daughter, sitting in the room I was usually banished from. In the very few times in my life that he had asked me to come here, I never noticed before how large and imposing the desk was. I was tempted to make an a.n.a.logy about my father and this beast of office furniture as my mind was doing its best to not focus on why I had been summoned by the man I so rarely had contact with.

So instead, I wondered why the CEO of a lumber corporation didn't even have a computer. Did his secretary do all his typing? What about monitoring the stock market or something? It was baffling. Combined with his charcoal leather executive chair-also about three times larger than the visitor chair I was seated in-the giant desk and dark wood walls made me feel like I was tiny and insignificant and powerless, like a third grader in the princ.i.p.al's office. I supposed this worked for Father, making his visitors and employees feel powerless and malleable, but it made me wonder about his confidence, his virility, even his desire to appear the authority at work and home.

Father was always so powerful, so foreboding, that I never dared cross him. After my mother's death, he detached himself from the family, sending Ash and me to boarding school for a time, and removing every indication of Mom from the home. I didn't even know where all her stuff went-maybe to the Junior League thrift store-but a lot of our childhood memories went with it. The dinosaur drawings, the Popsicle stick pot holder, that stupid clay ashtray, the family photos from the Grand Canyon-all of them were gone when we came back from that winter at Hollingsworth Academy.

We never once spoke about her after she was gone. Father wasn't an emotional guy. No, sc.r.a.p that. He was a clinical guy, and stern pragmatist, so I figured his aloofness made it so he was insensitive to a fault. He married almost immediately after Mom's death, when Tabitha was nineteen. It was the first time Father did anything that the country club set might frown upon, but I learned early on that at least half of his peers-the male half-were more than just okay with it, they were envious.

My best friend that year told me Father was having a midlife crisis, but he certainly never talked to us about it. Maybe he was. Maybe my mother's death jolted him awake and he decided to bank on the youth and beauty of a woman only two years older than his daughter. But the truth was, he remained an enigma to me, and honestly, to everyone around us. If he had a breakdown and turned to v.i.a.g.r.a and teen p.u.s.s.y as the cure-all for watching my mother die, I'd never know it. For us, she died, we were sent away, he got a new wife, we came home. n.o.body in our home ever discussed emotions after my mother died, least of all him.

When we did have talks with Father, they felt much like they did today, with me sitting in his office, surrounded by the trappings of masculinity, waiting to find out exactly what he or Tabitha thought I had done wrong this time.

"Your mother isn't happy about the shenanigans." He didn't bother filling in the gaps, knowing that with a little information I'd hang myself.

"I've asked you not to call Tabitha my mother," I retorted. The woman graduated high school the same year I arrived there, for f.u.c.k's sake. Why did he have to push this all the time? "And I'm not sure I know what you're talking about."

"I know about your visit to the pool house, Megan. You're certainly welcome to visit our house any time you like, but it's not appropriate for you to be breaking in, in the middle of the night, with some hooligan in tow. I want to know what the h.e.l.l you think you were doing?" He was trying to sound reserved, but I could sense a darkness underscoring his words. It was my house, too, until last year, and now it was their house and if I didn't plan to come to Sunday dinner I was somehow breaking in. Well, in this case I did, but still, it was the principle of the matter.

"f.u.c.k. I did not break in!" I protested a bit too loudly.

"Megan," Father exclaimed in an odd monotone whisper. The yell whisper I liked to call it. "We're in a professional setting here. I don't know what your workplace is like, but that's not appropriate language at my company."

"I'm sorry. It's just frustrating. I didn't break in. I had the key and I let myself in. Is Tabitha upset, or are you upset?" He ignored my questions.

"And what were you doing there? Why did your friend need to be there?" Father said friend like it was an insult, a word that should be spat out in certain circ.u.mstances. I wondered what he envisioned when he imagined Shane. Did he simply see the woman corrupting his daughter, or something far more sinister? Did every mention of her and me lead him back to s.e.x? Another irony, given that so few things lead us to s.e.x nowadays.

The conversation continued on for what seemed like hours but must have only been a few minutes given Father's tight schedule. I managed to stave him off with a confession that I was missing Ash and wanted to feel close to her again-which wasn't untrue-and I promised not do it again. If I came to the house again I'd have to come alone and plan to stay for dinner per Tabitha's request. By the time I got back to my apartment, all I wanted to do was throw myself in a hot tub, pop in some schmaltzy meditation CD, and wash away the whole episode. Someone had other plans.

I didn't pay heed to the unlocked door. It was not uncommon for either Shane or me to walk out without locking it. It was Portland, after all, not Mexico City. In fact, I was slightly thrilled at the discovery, because it could mean that Shane had been back. But as I raced through the unlocked door, not even thinking about whether I should take her back after the way she spoke to me, my foot snagged something and I fell headfirst onto the gla.s.s coffee table. As I lay there, moaning, I glanced around, focusing, realizing that someone had torn the place apart. I couldn't tell if anything was missing, but everything was tattered like a scene from an old detective movie.

Except I wasn't fishing some dead hooker out of a reservoir and following Whitey back to the smoking gun. I was just a chick with a girlfriend who hated me and a dead sister and an apartment that generally looked like Ikea furnished it completely. Today the whole place was...annihilated. Every drawer upturned, clothes, CDs, tchotchkes everywhere. The pillows and sofa cushions had been slashed so violently I couldn't help think about Ash, the knife, her body, that night. Was this a sign of rage, or was I reading into it? Were those cushions supposed to be me?

I didn't even race to the bathroom to vomit. I just knelt there, bewildered and frightened and throwing up on an area rug that once looked like a Lichtenstein painting and now felt like an eerie reminder of how unsafe I was.

Did Shane do this? Why would she come in and do this? When I could finally control my sobbing, I called her, not the police, which I know was the mark of a hysterical woman. I just couldn't believe she could hate me this much. Within twenty minutes Shane was by my side, calling the police and holding me as I rocked back and forth on the carpet, still sitting next to a pool of my own filth. She sounded genuinely concerned when I called, though I didn't recall even stringing together more than a few sentences before sobbing again. My gut instincts were right...well, to a point. Shane had been there that morning and packed her few meager belongings in a duffel she was planning to return. She swore to me that she didn't molest the apartment. That must have been left to a burglar, but why on earth they picked me I had no idea.

As Shane and I made our way through each corner and drawer of the few rooms, we tried cataloguing all that could've been worthwhile to an ordinary thief-DVD player, stereo, laptop, iPod, Gucci bags. s.h.i.t, thieves have been known to take Calphalon pans and faux jewelry, but none of that was gone, not even the diamond ring I got for my high school graduation gift or a giant Louis Vuitton suitcase that belonged to Ash. In fact, nothing was missing. Nothing at all, except two of Ash's tattered old diaries that were sitting on my nightstand (next to a pricey Jonathan Adler lamp, even).

The horror of what might really have been going on hit me: Ash's killer knew I was on to her. Or him. The killer knew I was getting close. h.e.l.l, I didn't even know I was getting close until this very moment when I realized that my home was burglarized, torn apart piece by piece, all in search of Ash's diaries.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" I heard myself shout as I darted to the vanity. Ash's other diaries, including the one I dubbed The Real s.e.x Diary, were hidden along with her home movies and the camera. Usually they were all stored in a cubby, hidden in the wall behind a two-way mirror in front of the bed. But one day I got worried and I had Shane fashion a new hiding place in the bottom of the vanity. The bottom drawer had a false front so when you pulled it out, you only saw the usual cosmetics, but behind the drawer was another door that opened into an attached cubicle fashioned into the brick and drywall behind the cabinet. It was ingenious. I thought so when Shane built it, and now as I was pulling the drawer apart and jamming my hand inside the opening, feeling around for all that was left of Ash, I was convinced that Shane was telling the truth.

Even if she had been there, she knew exactly where everything was-including those diaries and DVDs. If she wanted to get rid of them, she could have done so a long time ago. Since they were still there, that exonerated Shane. So if the burglar was after these diaries, they only got two of them because they didn't know where the rest were hidden. So just who, then, didn't know?

The real s.e.x diary of Ashley Caulfield, July 4 Last night I transcended it all. I feel like things are changing for me from the inside out. I'm getting to the point where I can demand that The One give me everything I need. I'll offer it too. I've taken this to the point of no return. There's no turning back for us now. Last night I was at another play party strapped into a PVC jacket that held my arms close to my chest, while women took turns lapping at my c.u.n.t, juices running down the sides of their faces like e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e from me. It made me delirious and I came like rockets watching them on all fours begging me for more. Sure, pleasure me, b.i.t.c.hes. But at the end, something did click, something did change, because they opened up the jacket and released my arms, and for the first time in a long time I felt a bit free myself. I know I'm going to walk away from this life and I'm taking The One with me. I'm resolved. It's going to happen. I won't let anyone stop us.

Though Shane wasn't responsible for the break-in, she was still insistent on the breakup. It hardly mattered to me, though, because all I wanted to do was absorb myself in Ash's diaries-the ones the burglar didn't discover. I was worse than I was that summer I returned home. At least then I would stop to eat or stare at Ash's beautiful friends from the balcony. But now I was a woman possessed. The first few days I called in sick, but soon my boss insisted I take a personal leave, never once asking me to set a date for my return. I couldn't. I was busy spending every waking moment poring through Ash's entries over and over again trying to understand her all-too-cryptic pa.s.sages. She must have been serious about her privacy to go to these lengths-hiding diaries, making acronyms and pseudonyms for so many people and places. But what was my sister hiding, and from whom? I felt like the pa.s.sages in her journals were trying to say something, she was trying to speak to me, as cliched as it sounds, and I just couldn't wrap my d.a.m.n head around it.

I had to read and reread and then go to the Internet and scour online groups to unlock each reference. Was Double Down a bar? A person? An action? Who were the s.l.u.ts and Squares? When I did discover the answers-that s.l.u.ts and Squares was a dance night with queer burlesque performers, for instance, or that the Double Down was a lesbian party or that Bruce was a local drag king or that Persephone was a s.e.xy fire dancer at Rose City Vaudeville-it didn't lead me to any real keys to unlocking the mysteries of my dead sister. Everything seemed rather ordinary by the time I unlocked it. So why then all the subterfuge? Maybe she was just too high to make sense? Or maybe drugs made her paranoid?

Even more frustrating were the clues that were entirely indecipherable. Was MILF truly the American Pie definition-that is, a "Mom I'd Like to f.u.c.k"-or some other obscure Portland underground reference? m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic Inters.e.x Lesbian Femme? Married Illiterate Lesbian Friend? Often times I had to skip an entry altogether as I had no clue what it was really about. Who f.u.c.king knows? And until a moment ago I was wondering, who f.u.c.king knows if any of it even had anything to do with why she died.

And then it struck me. One pa.s.sage that left me shaking my head not with frustration but with sudden awareness.

The real s.e.x diary of Ashley Caulfield, October 31 The One isn't a MILF. Or is a MILF? DDO's MILF, but not my MILF. Hard to gauge what anyone feels inside, though. I know that from how much I want to turn myself inside out, cut a scar from throat to c.u.n.t and just turn it all inside out so the whole world can know what I'm feeling, the pain of hiding, of wanting, of holding back, of keeping it all in for so long feels today like way too much. But what would He say? What would they all say? The Junior League. Chaste little kiddo with her nose in a book so long she's lost touch with how I hurt, how I bleed, just like her. Or does she remember? Does she already know? She looks like she knows something. Oh, Mother May I tell? Tell her, tell him, tell them all you're the one offering me a punishment with kisses now?