Punishment with Kisses by Diane Anderson-Minshall Page A

the television. I looked up and discovered the set wasn’t on. Something was wrong.
    I jumped up and something pulled me to the sliding glass doors that led to my balcony. I shoved aside the heavy curtains just in time to witness some sort of flash of light. Was that someone disappearing into the trees? Was that a scream, or maybe just a gunning engine? My heart jumped at the thought of Shane’s motorcycle, and as pathetic as it was, I immediately searched for her bike. It wasn’t there.
    Could she have left that quickly? Was I wrong in thinking I’d heard the distinct sound of a motorcycle? I stood on the balcony for a moment, sweeping my eyes across the estate, seeking anything that might have caused the noise. I found nothing. Maybe Ash had her TV turned up really loud. I listened intently for the sound to repeat. It didn’t. There was no backfiring car, no late night foray on a golf cart, no landscaper firing up a chainsaw for midnight pruning, nothing.
    I realized that everything had gone still. Even the crickets had stopped chirping and fallen silent. I looked down at the pool house, checking for the flashing lights of Ash’s television, but it was dark. I couldn’t tell if there was a problem, but an ominous sense of foreboding washed over me. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with the night air. It was too quiet.
    And then it wasn’t. I heard yelling, doors slamming, feet pounding hard against the ground, people running this way—toward the pool house. Toward Ash. Something was very wrong. Flashlights bobbed closer and the voices resolved and I heard Father’s husky voice howling out Ash’s name.
    I almost jumped. I almost dove right off the balcony because that would have been the fastest way down, the quickest method to reach the ground. Oh, my God—Ash! I didn’t pause to speculate on what was wrong, I didn’t waste any time stitching together my darkest fears. In that moment I didn’t remember any of the terrible things Ash had done lately, the things that had made me hate her, not even what she had done with Shane—none of it. In that instant all of that was gone. I just ran. I flew out of my room without even bothering to throw on a robe or slippers.
    I took the stairs three at a time, landing hard on a bent ankle and not even flinching at the pain. The front door stood open. The sinking feeling in my stomach plummeted with all the force of an out of control elevator plunging a hundred floors.
    There was something incredibly disturbing about the sight of a home’s front doors gaping wide open. There was almost a perversity to it, and I wanted to look away, to shield my eyes from the obscenity.
    I thought of Ash. The image of her face in my mind was enough to block out the doors as I sprinted through them and down the path. The ground was cold and damp under my bare feet. I’ve always had sensitive feet, and normally I couldn’t stand to go barefoot unless I was walking in weathered beach sand. When forced to, I’d have to hobble slowly along, grimacing at every step, as though I were walking over hot coals. But that night I didn’t even slow down.
    As soon as I hit the ground I could see that the French doors to the pool house were wide open and all the lights turned on. I could hear someone wailing, or was it a dog howling? It didn’t seem real, didn’t seem possible that the sound I was hearing could be coming from a person. Silhouetted against harsh lights of the exposed pool house, I could see figures hunched and bent over. As I got closer, I could see there was something heaped on the floor in front of them, a pile of some kind.
    I ran faster. I could hear the sound of the surf pounding in my ears. Was that my pulse? I ran. One of the figures swept the pile into their arms and stood up. The heap unfolded into the shape of a person.
    I froze. The shape didn’t stand up on its own. Its feet didn’t touch the ground. It just hung there in the air as limp as a rag doll. I heard