The Tenth Circle

She realized that Trixie was staring at her, the same way she used to gaze hard at a math problem she simply couldn?t puzzle into an answer. ?You mean?you and him??

  Laura nodded. ?Yeah.?

  Trixie ducked her head. ?Did you guys ever talk about me??

  ?He knew you existed. He knew I was married.?

  ?I can?t believe you?d do this to Daddy,? Trixie said, her voice rising. ?He?s, like, my age. That?s disgusting.?

  Laura?s jaw clenched. Trixie deserved to have this moment of rage; it was owed to her as part of Laura?s reparation. But that didn?t make it any easier.

  ?I wasn?t thinking, Trixie-?

  ?Yeah, because you were too busy being a slut.?

  Laura raised her palm, coming just short of slapping Trixie across the face. Her hand shook inches away from Trixie?s cheek, rendering both of them speechless for a moment. ?No,? Laura breathed. ?Neither of us should do something we won?t be able to take back.?

  She stared Trixie down, until the fury dissolved and the tears came. Laura drew Trixie into her arms, rocked her. ?Are you and Daddy going to get a divorce?? Her voice was small, childlike.

  ?I hope not,? Laura said.

  ?Did you?love him??

  She closed her eyes and imagined Seth?s poetry, placed word by word onto her own tongue, a gourmet meal mixed with rhythm and description. She felt the immediacy of a single moment, when unlocking a door took too long, when buttons were popped instead of slipped open.

  But here was Trixie, who had nursed with her hand fisted in Laura?s hair. Trixie, who sucked her thumb until she was ten but only when no one could see. Trixie, who believed that the wind could sing and that you could learn the songs if you just listened carefully enough. Trixie, who was the proof that at one time, she and Daniel had achieved perfection together.

  Laura pressed her lips against her daughter?s temple. ?I loved you more,? she said.

  She had nearly turned her back once on this family. Had she really been stupid enough to come close to doing it again? She was crying just as hard as Trixie was now, to the point where it was impossible to tell which one of them was clinging to the other. Laura felt, in that moment, like the survivor of the train wreck, the woman who steps outside the smoking wreckage to realize that her arms and legs still work, that she has somehow come through a catastrophe unscathed.

  Laura buried her face in the curve of her daughter?s neck. It was possible she?d been wrong on several counts. It was possible that a miracle was not something that happened to you, but rather something that didn?t.

  The first place it appeared was on the screen at the school library computer terminal where you could look books up by their Dewey decimal number. From there, it spread to the twenty iBooks and ten iMacs in the computer lab, while the ninth-graders were in the middle of taking their typing skills test. Within five more minutes, it was on the monitor of the desk of the school nurse.

  Trixie was in an elective, School Newspaper, when it happened. Although her parents had tried to talk her out of going to school, it turned out to be the lesser of two evils. Home was supposed to be a safe place, but had become a minefield full of explosions waiting to happen. School, she already knew, wouldn?t be comfortable at all. And right now, she really needed to function in a world where nothing took her by surprise.

  In class, Trixie was sitting beside a girl named Felice with acne and beaver breath, the only one who would volunteer these days to be her partner. They were using desktop-publishing software to move columns of text about the losing basketball team, when the computer blue-screened. ?Mr. Watford,? Felice called out. ?I think we crashed??

  The teacher came over, reaching between the girls to hit Control-Alt-Delete a few times, but the machine wouldn?t reboot. ?Hmm,? he said. ?Why don?t you two edit the advice column by hand instead??

  ?No, wait, it?s coming back,? Felice said, as the screen blossomed into Technicolor. Smack in the middle was Trixie, standing half naked in Zephyr?s living room-the photo Moss had taken the night she was raped.

  ?Oh,? Mr. Watford said faintly. ?Well, then.?

  Trixie felt as if a pole had been driven through her lungs. She tore herself away from the computer screen, grabbed her backpack, and ran to the main office. There, she threw herself on the mercy of the secretary. ?I need to talk to the principal-?

  Her voice snapped like an icicle, as she glanced down at the computer on the secretary?s desk and saw her own face staring back at her.

  Trixie flew out of the office, out the front doors of the school. She didn?t stop running until she was standing on the bridge over the river, the same bridge where she and Zephyr had stood the day before she became someone different. She dug in her backpack through loose pencils and crumpled papers and makeup compacts until she found the cell phone her father had given her-his own, for emergencies. ?Daddy,? she sobbed, when he answered, ?please come get me.?

  It wasn?t until her father assured her he would be there in two minutes flat that she hung up and noticed what she hadn?t when she first placed the call: Her father?s phone screen saver-once a graphic of Rogue, from the X-Men-was now the topless picture of Trixie that had spread to three-quarters of the cell phone users in Bethel, Maine.

  The knock on Bartholemew?s door caught him off guard. It was his day off-although he?d already been to Bethel High and back. He had just finished changing into pajama pants and an old police academy sweatshirt with a sleeve that Ernestine had chewed a hole through. ?Coming,? he called out, and when he opened the door he found Daniel Stone standing on the other side of it.

  It wasn?t surprising to him that Stone was there, given what had happened at the school. It also wasn?t surprising that Stone knew where Bartholemew lived. Like most cops, he didn?t have a listed address and phone number, but Bethel was small enough for most people to know other people?s business. You could drive down the street and recognize folks by the cars they drove; you could pass a house and know who resided inside.

  He was aware, for example, even before Trixie Stone?s case came to his attention that a comic book artist of some national renown lived in the area. He hadn?t read the comics, but some of the other guys at the station had. Supposedly, unlike his violence-prone hero Wildclaw, Daniel Stone was a mild-mannered guy who didn?t mind signing an autograph if you stood behind him in the grocery store checkout line. In his few dealings with Stone so far, the guy had seemed protective of his daughter and frustrated beyond belief. Unlike some of the men Bartholemew had run across in his career, who put their fists through glass walls or drowned their wrath in alcohol, Daniel Stone seemed to have a handle on his emotions-until now. The man was standing at the threshold of Bartholemew?s door, literally shaking with rage.

  Stone thrust a printout of the now-infamous picture of Trixie into Bartholemew?s hand. ?Have you seen this??

  Bartholemew had. For about three straight hours this morning, at the high school, on the computers at the town offices, everywhere he looked.

  ?Hasn?t my daughter been victimized enough??

  Bartholemew instinctively went into calming mode, softening his voice. ?I know you?re upset, but we?re doing everything we can.?

  Stone scraped his gaze over Bartholemew?s off-duty attire. ?Yeah. You look like you?re working your ass off.? He looked up at the detective. ?You told us that Underhill?s not supposed to have anything to do with Trixie.?

  ?Our computer tech guys traced the photo to Moss Minton?s cell phone, not Jason Underhill?s.?

  ?It doesn?t matter. My daughter?s not the one who?s supposed to be on trial.? Stone set his jaw. ?I want the judge to know this happened.?

  ?Then he?s also going to know that your daughter was the one who took off her clothes. He?s going to know that every eyewitness at that party I?ve interviewed says Trixie was coming on to a whole bunch of different guys that night,? Bartholemew said. ?Look. I know you?re angry. But you don?t want to press this right now, when it might wind up backfiring.?

  D
aniel Stone ripped the printed photo from the detective?s grasp. ?Would you be saying that if this was your daughter??

  ?If it was my daughter,? Bartholemew said, ?I?d be thrilled. I?d be fucking delirious. Because it would mean she was still alive.?

  The truth rolled like mercury, and like any poison, it was the last thing either of them wanted to touch. You?d think, in this age of technology, there?d be some kind of network between fathers, one that let a guy who was in danger of losing his daughter instinctively recognize someone who?d already walked that barren road. As it turned out, hell wasn?t watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.

  He expected Daniel Stone to offer his condolences, to tell Bartholemew he was sorry for mouthing off. But instead, the man threw the printed photo onto the ground between them like a gauntlet. ?Then of all people,? he said, ?you should understand.?

  She didn?t have a lot of time.

  Trixie?s mother?s voice swam up the stairs. Her mom was on babysitting detail and hadn?t let Trixie out of her sight until she had headed for the bathroom. Her father, right now, was chewing out Detective Bartholemew or the superintendent of schools or maybe even both of them. And what difference would it make? They could burn every last copy of that awful picture of her, and a few months from now, someone else would have a chance to strip her naked in court.

  Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, she accidentally banged her funny bone against the wall. ?Fuck!? she cried, tears springing to her eyes.

  Once, Trixie had had her mouth washed out with soap for road-testing four-letter words. She was four years old, at the supermarket with her father, and she repeated what he?d whispered under his breath when the cashier couldn?t do the math to make change: Use the damn register.

  She knew all sorts of four-letter words now; they just weren?t the ones that most people considered foul language.

  Love.

  Help.

  Rape.

  Stop.

  Then.

  As a child, she?d been afraid of the dark. The closet door had to be shut tight, with her desk chair wedged under the knob, to keep the monsters from getting out. Her blanket had to be pulled up to her neck, or the devil might get her. She had to sleep on her belly, or a vampire could come and put a stake through her heart.

  She was still afraid, years later-not of the dark but of the days. One after another, and no end in sight.

  ?Trixie??

  Trixie heard her mother again and swiftly reached into the medicine cabinet. The hilarious thing-the thing that no one bothered to tell you-was that being raped wasn?t the worst part of everything she?d been through. In fact, that first frantic fall didn?t hurt nearly as much as getting back on your feet afterward.

  It was the kind of doorknob that needed only a straightened wire hanger to pop the bolt. The minute Laura stepped inside the bathroom, she saw it-blood smearing the white wall of the sink, blood pooling beneath Trixie on the floor, blood covering Trixie?s shirt as she hugged her slashed wrists to her chest. ?Oh, my God,? Laura cried, grabbing Trixie?s arms to try to stop the flow. ?Oh, Trixie, no??

  Trixie?s eyelids fluttered. She looked at Laura for a half second and then sank into unconsciousness. Laura held her daughter?s limp body up against her own, knowing that she had to get to a phone and equally sure that if she left Trixie alone, she?d never see her alive again.

  The paramedics who came minutes later asked Laura a barrage of questions: How long had Trixie been unconscious? Had Trixie been suicidal before? Did Laura know where the razor blade had come from? Laura answered each of these, but they didn?t ask the question she was expecting, the one she didn?t have a response for: What if Jason Underhill wasn?t the biggest threat to Trixie? What if that was Trixie herself?

  Trixie had been doing this for a while. Not in-your-face suicide attempts but recreational cutting. Ironically, the doctors said, that might have been what saved her. Most girls who cut did so horizontally across the wrist, in light little lines. Today, Trixie had cut a deeper slash, but in the same direction. People who meant business, or who knew better, killed themselves by cutting vertically, which meant they?d bleed out faster.

  Either way, if Laura hadn?t gone in when she did, they probably would have been standing over their daughter?s grave instead of her hospital bed.

  The lights were turned off in the room, and there was a glowing red clamp on one of Trixie?s fingers, keeping tabs on her oxygen levels. Someone-a nurse?-had put Trixie in a hospital gown. Daniel had no idea what had happened to her clothes. Did they get saved as evidence, like the ones she had been wearing the night she was raped? As proof of a girl who desperately wanted to trade in her title of survivor?

  ?Did you know?? Laura asked softly, her voice reaching through the dark.

  Daniel looked up at her. All he could see was the shine of her eyes. ?No.?

  ?Do you think we should have??

  She wasn?t blaming him; that note wasn?t in her voice. She was asking if there had been clues missed, trails ignored. She was trying to pinpoint the moment that it all started to disintegrate.

  Daniel knew there was no answer to that. It was like a trapeze act: How could you really tell at what second the acrobat pushed away, at what moment the anchor let go? You couldn?t, and that was that. You made your deductions from the outcome: a successful landing or a spiraling fall. ?I think Trixie was doing her best to make sure we didn?t know.?

  He had a sudden memory of Trixie dressed as a bunch of grapes for Halloween one year. She was five and had been so excited about the costume-they?d spent a month making papier-m?ch? globes in the basement and painting them purple-but when the time came to trick-or-treat, she refused to get dressed.

  It was dark outside, there were trolling monsters and witches-plenty of reasons, in short, that a kid might get cold feet. Trix, he had asked, what are you scared of?

  How are you going to know who I am, she finally said, if I don?t look like me?

  Laura?s head was bent over her folded hands, and her lips were moving. She didn?t go to church anymore, but she?d been raised Catholic. Daniel had never been particularly religious. Growing up, he and his mother hadn?t gone to church, although most of their neighbors had. The Yupiit got Christianity from the Moravian church, and it had stuck fast. For an Eskimo, it wasn?t inconsistent to believe both that Jesus was his Savior, and that a seal?s soul lived in its bladder until a hunter returned it to the sea.

  Laura brushed Trixie?s hair off her face. ?Dante believed God punished suicides by trapping the person?s spirit in a tree trunk. On Judgment Day, they were the only sinners who didn?t get their souls back, because they tried to get rid of them once before.?

  Daniel knew this, actually. It was one of the few points of Laura?s research that intrigued him. It had always struck him as ironic that in the Yup?ik villages, where there was such an epidemic of teen suicide, there weren?t any trees.

  Just then, Trixie stirred. Daniel watched her as the unfamiliar room came into focus. Her eyes widened, hopeful, and then dimmed with disappointment as she realized that in spite of her best intentions, she was still here.

  Laura crawled onto the bed, holding Trixie tight. She was whispering to Trixie, words that Daniel wished came as easily to him. But he didn?t have Laura?s facility with language; he could not keep Trixie safe with promises. All he?d ever been able to do was repaint the world for her, until it became a place she wanted to be.

  Daniel stayed long enough to watch Trixie reach for Laura, grab on with a sure, strong hold. Then he slipped out of the hospital room, moving past nurses and orderlies and patients who were too blind to witness the metamorphosis happening before their eyes.

  This is what Daniel bought:

  Work gloves and a roll of duct tape.

  A pack of rags.

  Matches.

  A fisherman?s fillet knife.

&
nbsp; He drove thirty miles away, to a different town, and he paid in cash.

  He was determined that there would be no evidence left behind. It would be his word against Daniel?s, and as Daniel was learning, that meant a victim would not win.

  Jason found that the only time of day his mind was truly occupied was during hockey practice. He simply gave himself over to the game, cutting hard and skating fast and stick-handling with surety and grace. It was this simple: If you were giving a hundred percent at hockey, you didn?t have room left for anything else-such as obsessing over the rumor going around school that Trixie Stone had tried to kill herself.

  He?d been getting ready for practice in the locker room when he heard, and he started to shake so violently that he?d gone into a bathroom stall to sit down. A girl he?d cared for-a girl he?d slept with-had nearly died. It freaked him out to imagine Trixie laughing as her long hair fell over her face, and then the next minute to picture that face six feet underground and crawling with worms.

  By the time he?d regained his composure, Moss was in the locker room, lacing up his skates. It had been Moss who, as a joke, had hacked into the computer system at the school and sent out the photo he?d taken of Trixie during the poker game. Jason had been totally furious, but he couldn?t say that out loud to the kids who high-fived him and told him that they were on his side. His own attorney had even said Jason couldn?t have asked for a better stroke of evidentiary luck. But what if that prank had been the one to put Trixie over the edge? He was already being blamed for something he didn?t do. Would he have been blamed for her death?

  ?You are surely the most unlucky bastard on this planet,? Moss had said, giving voice to the other thought in Jason?s head. Had Trixie succeeded, then he?d have been off the hook.

  Now practice was over, and with it came the casual conversation that would-inevitably-turn to Trixie. Jason hurried off the ice and pulled off the gladiator layers of his equipment. He was the first player out of the rink, the first player to his car. He slid into the driver?s seat and turned the ignition, then rested his head on the wheel for a second. Trixie. ?Jesus,? he murmured.

  Jason felt the blade of the knife on his Adam?s apple before he heard the voice at his ear. ?Close enough,? Daniel Stone said. ?Start praying.?

  Daniel made Jason drive to a bog near the river. He?d driven past once or twice and knew that local hunters liked it for deer and moose, and that their cars stayed well hidden while they were out in their stands. Daniel liked it especially because the evergreens marched thick to the edge of the water and had created enough cover to keep snow from blanketing the ground, which meant that their footsteps would be lost in the marsh instead of preserved.