I still have no idea what happened that night. Or the next morning. I wasn't even sure which was more confusing, the night or the morning.

I'm supposed to be this highly-attuned, near-genius profiler who sees patterns and connections in human behavior, and I do see them all the time, but I'm not great at understanding what has happened to me on a personal level.

Or what is happening to me.

I regularly blame my childhood trauma and my hallucinations for all my problems because I can't always figure out those in close proximity to me. Give me a case and I can predict and measure human responses and inclinations, but ask me how to get my mother to agree to a request and I blank.

I don't understand my mother. I understand my father to a horrific extent, and I kind of get Ansley, but my mother has always been a landmine.

I'll be sitting with her at brunch and she'll wait until I've taken a bite of something and then accuse me of some transgression: not taking my meds, not getting enough sleep, not eating right. By the time I chew and swallow, she's piled up sins, and I just start stammering like a nervous child.

I don't like it.

I have no idea how to change her, and I've tried to up my game, but I don't know how she knows what she knows or how to go about figuring out how she finds out things.

It reminds me of The Shining when Dick Holleran tells telepathic Danny that "All mothers shine a little." I feel more comfortable with believing Mother is mildly psychic than believing she can predict my behavior.

And I don't understand Gil. I don't understand why I went along with him and let him spank me, I don't understand why I didn't fight him off, and I don't understand why I held still for so long.

And worst of all, in that dark place we all keep hidden, I don't understand why I felt so much better afterwards.

Not really that night. I was sore and exhausted then and wanted to sleep.

But the next day . . . I was better.

Ugh, so humiliating and embarrassing, but I was better. That tight, vicelike feeling of trying to keep myself together loosened, a spool of dread and fear unwinding into peace and quiet.

I wanted to explore what I was feeling that morning, but Gil was there and insisted on breakfast and then Mother came and they kept talking in that easy, pleasant way that normal people get to have and we ate and had a pretty good breakfast.

We all went to the park later and Gil brought a bagel to feed birds and Ansley showed up (did Mother call her?) and she said bagels were bad for birds so we went to find birdseed. I ended up having lunch with Mother and Ansley when Gil left and then Ansley and I went to see a movie that evening.

I didn't have time to think about anything until that night, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling. I let my mind replay the night before – Gil finding me, Gil taking me home, Gil bending me over his knee to punish me, Gil putting me to bed.

My stomach was doing an embarrassed flipflop, turning as my cheeks flushed at the memory.

I let my thoughts rove into possibilities. Was I excited, turned-on by the spanking I received?

Not really.

Was I attracted to Gil?

No . . . he was more a father figure. I wanted his approval, his confirmation that I was brilliant and a valuable member of the team, not his romantic interest.

Would I feel excited if someone else spanked me?

Unbidden, the image of Dani came to me.

Dani angry with me, stalking over to me, reaching for me, barking out, "I've had enough of this!"

She would sit down and order, "Over my knee, Bright." And I would lean down obediently to brace myself, and she would raise her hand and bring it down –

The heat that washed over me was so intense, so dizzying, so painfully-sweet that I had to roll on my side in bed. The meds I take often dampen normal sexual responses of guys my age, but I was a thousand percent excited by the thought of Dani spanking me.

I should have kept working on exploring how I felt about Gil punishing me, but I was more engaged with my Dani fantasy. I let myself ride the pleasure as I imagined different scenarios: her with a riding crop in hand, her in revealing clothes, me in revealing clothes, her leaning down to kiss away my tears, me leaning down to kiss up her thigh.

I was asleep before the second orgasm had fully faded.

The next morning, I had to go to work as we had a new case, and now I had two problems: I hadn't figured out how I felt about Gil spanking me and I had indulged in shameful fantasies about a coworker to the point I could barely concentrate on any task at hand.

The casefiles were on the table when I entered, and Dani was finishing laying out the last paper.

"So we concluded the victim was a prostitute," Dani said, "but not for very long. Maybe Bright," a nod in my direction, "can come up with a timeline for her."

"Maybe," Gil said. He smiled briefly at her. "Nice job on the fast summation."

"Thanks," she quirked a half smile and then left.

I dropped my gaze to avoid looking at her, afraid I was wearing my shame on my face.

"You're late," Gil stepped over to the files. "We need a profile on the victim, mainly what she has done for the last two, three years, and why she was in upper Manhattan while she's clearly dressed for street work."

"I can do that. Probably in a few hours."

I wanted him to say "Oh, really? You're fast" or some comment about my skills, but he just asked,

"Did you eat this morning?"

"No," I admitted.

"I'll get you some coffee. You really should come to work ready to work, Bright."

I allowed myself a glare at his back as he left. It was so unfair. He never praised me, even when I deserved it. I got treated like the red-headed stepchild or the whipping boy around here. He liked to focus on my faults, just like Mother, and I had to go along because he was my boss and had decided to play the role of stern, disapproving father.

I didn't have to put up with any of this nonsense. I could leave whenever I wanted. This was just a silly job, and I didn't even know how much it paid because my paychecks were put into a bank account that Mother had control over. I could look at the account, but I didn't have time to worry over ridiculous things like money when there were killers out there that only I could find.

I wanted to storm out, but Gil was back with coffee so I sat down to read the files.

He handed me the cup, warning, "Careful, it's hot."

I took a sip anyway. The burning liquid hurt my tongue, and immediately my eyes stung with tears. I put the cup down, keeping my head down so he couldn't see my pain.

"Don't get the cup too close to the edge. It'll tip off."

He left without another word.

I don't know what came over me, but I couldn't deal with Gil's bossiness anymore. I reached towards the cup, and I moved it to stand an inch from the edge of the table.

I felt excitement twist my stomach again. Exhilarating, triumphant, and defiant.

I had felt calmness and relief after the spanking, and I kind of wanted that feeling again, but I concentrated instead on the thrill of being bad. I had acted out against direct orders, and I let myself wallow in the beauty of my resistance.

What else could I do to be bad? I took the coffee and gently tipped the cup until the top spilled over. And then I sat there, gleefully looking at the small mess on the floor.

And I kept going.

For the rest of the day, my misdeeds mounted in number and severity. I mixed up casefile papers, I lost pens and hid my smile while JT and Gil looked for them, I wandered off when Gil wanted to regroup, and I deliberately avoided reading the casefiles so I didn't have the profile ready at all. And at 4pm, I slipped out without telling anyone where I was going.

Trembling with the audacity of my own daring, I searched for the next act to keep my adrenaline going. All day, the fear of being caught had been growing like a fire, spreading and intensifying with each new bit of defiance. I wanted more. I wanted to feel it surge through me, a reckless disregard of the established rules.

I went into a small grocery store and committed my first crime.

I stole a candy bar and left with it in my pocket, a whole $1.28 lump of chocolate unpaid for. I went into an alley and ripped the paper from the bar. I ate it ferociously.

The wages of my sin tasted glorious. And I wanted more.

I walked up the streets, turning corners and navigating crowds. I jaywalked between cars waiting at lights, smirking when drivers leaned out of their windows to swear at me. I pickpocketed a receipt out of woman's purse for the sheer sport of it, crumpling it up in my hand and dropping it in a trash can a block later. I felt invincible.

Was this how my father felt when he was killing?

The horror of that thought made me stumble, and I almost fell into the man in front of me.

I could not face the implications of my thought; I refused to.

Breaking into a run, I dashed down the sidewalk, leaping around people and zigzagging obstacles on the concrete.

I got home with my heart pounding and my clothes soaking with sweat. Going to the fridge, I downed half a bottle of Evian water. My hands shook, my eyes were rimmed with tears, and a panic attack crawled up my body.

Darkness flickered at the edges of my peripheral vision, and I knew if I looked to the side, I would see the box with the girl in it.

"No!" I yelled in kitchen. "No, I'm not doing that. I'm not playing that game. It isn't fair. You know it's not fair. He's always hard on me. He doesn't understand me."

My words sounded pitiful out loud, and I latched onto the rage that followed. I chose rage over the swelling sadness at the back my throat. Rage I could do.

I stomped over to the drawer where I kept the pain drugs and I grabbed up two serious bottles: hydrocodone and oxycodone. I stuffed them into my pocket and I went out, not bothering to lock the door.

I walked west, following the setting sun as it disappeared behind buildings and then reappeared to shine dark gold over street breaks between city blocks.

It wasn't quite dark, but I felt determined to stay out all night long. Out all night with opiates in my pocket, entering dangerous neighborhoods with high crime rates. I was so badass.

On a street corner, several young guys were loitering. They looked to be late teens, early twenties – all ethnicities with tats and earrings.

I went right up to them, remembering with a flash of anger the group of young men that Gil had pointed out when he drove me home. He had wanted to embarrass me, but whatever. I would make my own friends.

"Hey," I grinned at them, "know anyone who wants to buy cotton?"

The guys blinked me.

"You mean codone?" an Asian-looking guy asked.

"Yeah, that," I shrugged. "Words, right?"

No one moved. One of the three black guys put his hand in his pocket, and the one white guy there was making a fist.

I pulled out the hydrocodone. "Five milligrams, pure Vicodin. No generic stuff."

"Really?" they came close to look at it. The stench of sweat and pot nearly made me gag, but I shook the little bottle to rattle the white pills. In the light of the setting sun, they seemed almost to glow.

"How much?" one guy asked.

"Twenty a piece."

I was selling drugs on a street corner. I was unstoppable, uncontainable, Malcolm Bright who defied all attempts to rein him in -

A whoop sounded behind us.

In slow motion, I turned.

I was hallucinating. I had to be hallucinating the blue lights of the cop car.

The guys were yelling behind me, and footsteps were running hard on pavement, but I stared at the flashing lights, mesmerized by the strobing glare that blazed into my eyes, lessened, blazed, lessened – over and over again.

Another whoop, and another car was there.

When the first officer tackled me, I came to the sickening realization that I was not hallucinating. The next realization arrived when I got thrown over the hood of one car and hands searched me. They put the two bottles of drugs on the hood, right in front of my face. I gazed at them, seeing the words Malcolm Bright on both bottles.

No denying here.

I kind of zoned out then. One officer was proclaiming my arrest, another read me my Miranda rights. I always thought the bit about providing a lawyer if I couldn't afford one was funny; why would the police give you a lawyer that would keep them from asking you questions? I really needed to study more law.

"Sir," a woman was in front of me. "Sir, do you understand these rights?"

"Yes," I said dumbly.

"He probably dosed before he went to sell," another officer said. "We get anyone else?"

"They all scattered, but no good in chasing them. This is Malcolm Bright by his license and the drugs are his. He had intent to sell, but we stopped the transaction so we couldn't really hold anyone else. This bust is enough."

Handcuffs closed around my wrists, and someone pulled me off the car.

I saw a male officer look at me curiously. "You know, somehow Malcolm Bright seems familiar. How do I know you, kid?"

I shook my head. I couldn't speak without the tears erupting, and I did not want my stint in crime to end with me bawling on a street corner in handcuffs. I wanted to rewind the day. I would not steal the candy bar, I would not leave early, I would not act out, and I would put the coffee cup on the table away from the edge. I would eat breakfast before work, I would not jerk off the night before, and I would face my discomfort with being spanking as an adult should.

Instead of the day rewinding, the sun kept setting.

And I got marched to the car and helped inside.

The closing door sealed my fate with its finality.