The Tenth Circle

The Tenth Circle

When Jason noticed her, Trixie tried to pretend she didn't see the look that ghosted over his face - regret, or maybe resignation. She concentrated instead on the fact that he was walking toward her alone. “Hey,” she said evenly. “Can you give me a ride home?”

He hesitated, long enough for her to die inside all over again. Then he nodded and unlocked the car. She slid into the passenger seat while Jason stowed his gear, turned over the ignition, and blasted the heater. Trixie thought up a thousand questions - How was practice? Do you think it'll snow again? Do you miss me? - but she couldn't speak. It was too much, sitting there on the pink seats, just a foot away from Jason, the way she'd sat beside him in this car a hundred times before.

He pulled out of the parking spot and cleared his throat. “You feeling better?”

Than what? she thought.

“You left psych this morning,” Jason reminded her. That class seemed like forever ago. Trixie tucked her hair behind her ear. “Yeah,” she said, and glanced down. Trixie thought of how she used to grasp the stick shift, so that when Jason reached for it, he would automatically be holding her hand. She slid her palm beneath her thigh and gripped the seat so she wouldn't do anything stupid.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Jason said.

“I wanted to ask you something.” Trixie took a deep breath for courage. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“All of it. You know. Go to class and practice. Make it through the day. Act like . . . like none of it mattered,” Jason swore beneath his breath and pulled the car over. Then he reached across the seat and brushed his thumb over her cheek; until then, she hadn't been aware she was crying. “Trix,” he sighed, “it mattered.”

By now, the tears were coming faster. “But I love you,” Trixie said. There was no easy switch that she could flip to stem the flow of feelings, no way to drain the memories that pooled like acid in her stomach because her heart no longer knew what to do with them. She couldn't blame Jason; she didn't like herself like this, either. But

she couldn't go back to being the girl she'd been before she met him; that girl was gone. So where did that leave her?

Jason was wavering, she could tell. When he reached over the console to pull her into his arms, she tucked her head against his neck and rounded her mouth against the salt of his skin. Thank you, she murmured, to God or Jason or maybe both.

His words stirred the hair beside her ear. “Trixie, you've got to stop. It's over.”

The sentence - and that's exactly what it was, in every sense of the word - fell between them like a guillotine. Trixie disengaged herself, wiping her eyes on the puffy sleeve of her coat. “If it's us,” she whispered, “how come you get to decide?” When he didn't answer - couldn't answer - she turned and stared out the front window. As it turned out, they were still in the parking lot. They hadn't gotten anywhere at all.

* * *

The entire way home, Laura planned the way she was going to break the news to Seth. As flattering as it was to have a twenty-something man find a thirty-eight-year-old woman attractive, it was also wrong: Laura was his professor; she was married; she was a mother. She belonged in a reality made up of faculty meetings and papers being published and think tanks conducted at the home of the dean of humanities, not to mention parent-teacher conferences at Trixie's school and worries about her own metabolism slowing down and whether she could save money on her cellular service if she switched companies. She told herself that it did not matter that Seth made her feel like summer fruit about to drop from a vine, something she could not remember experiencing anytime in the last decade with Daniel. Doing something wrong, it turned out, packed a heady adrenaline rush. Seth was dark and uneven and unpredictable and . . . oh, God, just thinking about him was making her drive too fast on this road. On the other hand, Laura's husband was the most solid, dependable, mild-mannered man in all of Maine. Daniel never forgot to put out the recycling bin; he set the coffee to brew the night before because she was a bear when she didn't have any in the morning; he never once complained about the fact that it had taken a good decade longer than he'd liked to make a name for himself in the comics industry because he was the stay-at-home parent. Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness. But then, she had only herself to blame for that - wasn't she the one who'd given him the ultimatum, who'd said he had to change?

The problem was (if she was going to be honest with herself) that when she asked him to change, she was focusing on what she thought she needed. She'd forgotten to catalog all the things she'd lose. What she had loved most about Seth - the thrill of doing something forbidden, the understanding that women like her did not connect with men like him - was exactly what had once made her fall for Daniel.

She had toyed with the idea of telling Daniel about the affair, but what good would that do, except hurt him? Instead, she would overcompensate. She would kill him with kindness. She would be the best wife, the best mother, the most attentive lover. She would give him back what she hoped he never realized had been missing. Even Dante said that if you walked through hell, you could climb your way to paradise.

In the rearview mirror, Laura saw a carnival of flashing lights. “Goddamn,” she muttered, pulling over as the police cruiser slid neatly behind her Toyota.

A tall officer walked toward her, silhouetted by the headlights of his vehicle. “Good evening, ma'am, did you know you were speeding?”

Apparently not, thought Laura.

“I'm going to need your license and . . . Professor Stone? Is that you?”

Laura peered up at the officer's face. She couldn't place it, but he was young enough; she might have taught him. She offered her most humble expression. Had he gotten a high enough grade in her class to keep her from getting a ticket?

“Bernie Aylesworth,” he said, smiling down at Laura. “I took your Dante class my senior year, back in 2001. Got shut out of it the year before.”

She knew she was a popular teacher - her Dante course was rated even higher than the Intro to Physics lectures where Jeb Wetherby shot monkeys out of cannons to teach projectile motion. The Unauthorized Guide to Monroe College named her the prof students most wanted to take out for a beer. Had Seth read that? she thought suddenly.

“I'm just gonna give you a warning this time,” Bernie said, and Laura wondered where he had been six months ago, when she truly needed one. He passed her a crisp piece of paper and smiled. “So where were you hurrying off to?”

Not to, she thought, just back. “Home,” she told him. “I was headed home.” She waited until he was back in the cruiser to put on her signal - a penitent motion if ever there was one - and pulled into the gentle bend of the road. She drove well within the speed limit, her eyes focused ahead, as careful as you have to be when you know someone is watching.

* * *

“I'm leaving,” Laura said the minute she walked through the door. Daniel looked up from the kitchen counter, where he was chopping broccoli in preparation for dinner. On the stove, chicken was simmering in garlic.

“You just got here,” he said.

“I know.” Laura lifted the lid on the skillet, breathed in.

“Smells really good. I wish I could stay.” He could not pinpoint what was different about her, but he thought it had to do with the fact that when she'd just said she wanted to be home, he believed her - most of the time, if she apologized for leaving, it was only because it was expected.

“What's going on?” he asked.

She turned her back to Daniel and began to sort through the mail. “That departmental thing I told you about.” She had not told him; he knew she hadn't told him. She unwound her scarf and shrugged out of her coat, draped them over a chair. She was wearing a black suit and Sorel boots, which were tracking snow in small puddles all over the kitchen floor. “How's Trixie?”

“She's in her room.”

Laura opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of water. “The crazy poet is trying to stage a coup,” she said.

“She's been talking to the tenured professors. I don't think she knows that . . .”

Suddenly, there was a crash, and Daniel turned in time to see the glass explode against the tile floor. Water spread in a puddle, seeping beneath the edge of the refrigerator.

“Damn it!” Laura cried, kneeling to pick up the pieces.

“I've got it,” Daniel said, tossing down paper towels to absorb the spill. “You've got to slow down. You're bleeding.” Laura glanced down at the gash on the pad of her thumb as if it belonged to someone else. Daniel reached for her and wrapped her hand in a clean dish towel. They knelt inches apart on the tile floor, watching her blood soak through the checkered fabric. Daniel couldn't remember the last time he and Laura had been this close to each other. He couldn't remember a lot of things, like the sound of his wife's breathing when she gave herself over to sleep, or the half smile that slipped out like a secret when something took her by surprise. He had tried to tell himself that Laura was busy, the way she always got at the beginning of a trimester. He did not ask if it could be anything more than that, because he did not want to hear the answer.

“We need to take care of that,” Daniel said. The bones of her wrist were light and fine in his hand, delicate as china. Laura tugged herself free. “I'm fine,” she insisted, and she stood up. “It's a scratch.” For a moment she stared at him, as if she knew, too, that there was another entire conversation going on here, one they had chosen not to have.

“Laura.” Daniel got to his feet, but she turned away.

“I really have to go change,” she said.

Daniel watched her leave, heard her footsteps on the stairs overhead. You already have, he thought.

* * *

“You didn't,” Zephyr said.

Trixie pushed her sleeves up and stared down at the cuts on her arms, a red web of regret. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said. "I started walking, and I wound up at the rink

... I figured it was a sign. If we could just talk . . ."

“Trixie, right now Jason doesn't want to talk. He wants to take out a restraining order.” Zephyr sighed. “You are so Fatal Attraction.”

“Fatal what?”

“It's an old movie. Don't you ever watch anything that doesn't have Paul Walker in it?”

Trixie tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear and carefully unwound the screw neck of the X-Acto knife that she'd taken from her father's office. The blade came out, a tiny silver trapezoid. “I'd do anything to get him back.” Closing her eyes, Trixie scored the blade over her left arm. She sucked in her breath and

imagined she was opening up a vent, allowing some of the enormous

pressure to ease.

“Are you going to complain about this until we graduate?” Zephyr asked. “Because if that's the case, then I'm taking matters into my own hands.”

What if her father knocked on the door right now? What if anyone, even Zephyr, found out that she was doing stuff like this?

Maybe it wasn't relief she was feeling, but shame. Both made you burn from the inside out.

“So, do you want my help?” Zephyr asked.

Trixie clapped her hand over the cut, stanching the flow.

“Hello?” Zephyr said. “Are you still there?” Trixie lifted her hand. The blood was rich and bright against her palm. “Yeah,” she sighed. “I guess I am.”

* * *

“Good timing,” Daniel said, as he heard Trixie's footsteps pounding down the stairs. He set two plates on the kitchen table and turned around to find her waiting in her coat, carrying a backpack. Her cascade of hair spilled out from beneath a striped stocking cap.

“Oh,” she said, blinking at the food. “Zephyr invited me for a sleepover.”

“You can go after you eat.”

Trixie bit her lower lip. “Her mom thinks I'm coming for dinner.”

Daniel had known Zephyr since she was seven. He used to sit in the living room while she and Trixie performed the cheerleading moves they'd made up during an afternoon of play, or lip-synched to the radio, or presented tumbling routines. He could practically still hear them doing a hand-clapping game: The spades go eeny-meeny pop zoombini. . .

Last week, Daniel had walked in with a bag of groceries to find someone unfamiliar in the kitchen, bent over a catalog. Nice ass, he thought, until she straightened and turned out to be Zephyr.

“Hey, Mr. Stone,” she'd said. “Trixie's in the bathroom.” She hadn't noticed that he went red in the face, or that he left the kitchen before his own daughter returned. He sat on the couch with the grocery bag in his hands, the ice cream inside softening against his chest, as he speculated whether there were other fathers out there making the same mistake when they happened upon Trixie.

“Well,” he said now, “I'll just save the leftovers.” He stood up, fishing for his car keys.

“Oh, that's okay. I can walk.”

“It's dark out,” Daniel said.

Trixie met his gaze, challenging. “I think I can manage to get to a house three blocks away. I'm not a baby, Dad.” Daniel didn't know what to say. She was a baby, to him. “Then maybe before you go to Zephyrs you could go vote, join the army, and rent us a car... oh, hang on, that's right. You can't.” Trixie rolled her eyes, took off her hat and gloves, and sat down.

“I thought you were eating at Zephyrs.”

“I will,” she said. “But I don't want you to have to eat all by yourself.”

Daniel sank into the chair across from her. He had a sudden flashback of Trixie in ballet class, the two of them struggling to capture her fine hair in a netted bun before the session began. He had always been the sole father present; other men's wives would rush forward to help him figure out how to secure the bobby pins, how to slick back the bangs with hair spray.

At her first and only ballet performance, Trixie had been the lead reindeer, drawing out the sleigh that held the Sugar Plum Fairy. She wore a white leotard and an antler headband and had a painted red nose. Daniel hadn't taken his eyes off her, not for any of the three minutes and twenty-two seconds that she stood on that stage.

He didn't want to take his eyes off her now, but part of this new routine of adolescence meant a portion of the dance took place offstage.

“What are you guys going to do tonight?” Daniel asked.

“I don't know. Rent a movie off the dish, I guess. What are you going to do?”

“Oh, the same thing I always do when I'm alone in the house. Dance around naked, call the psychic hotline, cure cancer, negotiate world peace.”

Trixie smiled. “Could you clean my room too?”

“Don't know if I'll have time. It depends on whether the North Koreans are being cooperative.” He pushed his food around his plate, took a few bites, and then dumped the rest into the trash.

“Okay, you're officially free.”

She bounced up and grabbed her pack, heading toward the front door. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“Any time,” Daniel said, but the words turned up at the end, as if he were asking her for minutes that were no longer hers to give.

* * *

She wasn't lying. Not any more than her father had when Trixie was little and he said one day they'd get a dog, although they didn't. She was just telling him what he wanted - needed - to hear. Everyone always said the best relationships between parents and kids involved open communication, but Trixie knew that was a joke. The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn't disappointed. She wasn't lying, not really. She was going to Zephyr's house. And she did plan to sleep over.

But Zephyr's mother had gone to visit her older brother at Wesleyan College for the weekend, and Trixie wasn't the only one who'd been invited for the evening. A bunch of people were coming, including some hockey players.

Like Jason.

Trixie ducked behind the fence at Mrs. Argobath's house, opened up her backpack, and pulled out the jeans that were so low rise she had to go commando. She'd bought them a month ago and had hidden them from her father, because she knew he'd have a heart attack if he saw her wearing them. Shimmying out of her sweatpants and underwear - Jesus, it was cold out - she skimmed on the jeans. She rummaged for the items she'd stolen from her mother's closet they were the same size now. Trixie had wanted to borrow the killer

black-heeled boots, but she couldn't find them. Instead, Trixie had settled for a chain-link belt and a sheer black blouse her mother had worn one year over a velvet camisole to a faculty Christmas dinner.

The sleeves weren't see-through enough that you could see the Ace bandage she'd wrapped around the cuts on her arm, but you could totally tell that all she had on underneath was a black satin bra.

She zipped up her coat again, jammed on her hat, and started walking. Trixie honestly wasn't sure she'd be able to do what Zephyr had suggested. Make him come to you, Zephyr had said. Get him jealous.

Maybe if she was hammered enough, or totally stoned. Now there was a thought. When you were high, you were hardly yourself.

Then again, maybe it would be easier than she expected. Being someone else - anyone else, even for one night - would beat being Trixie Stone.

* * *

A human heart breaks harder when it's dropped from a greater height. Seth lay on the sheets of his futon, the ones that smelled of the cigarettes he rolled and - he loved this - of Laura. He still felt her words like the recoil from a shotgun. It's over. Laura had gone to pull herself together in the bathroom. Seth knew there was a hairline fracture between duty and desire; that you might think you were walking on one side of it and then find yourself firmly entrenched on the other. He just also had believed

- stupidly - that it wasn't that way for them. He'd believed that even with the age difference, he could be Lauras future. He hadn't counted on the chance that she might want her past instead.

“I can be whatever you want me to be,” he'd promised. Please, he had said, half question, half command.

When the doorbell rang, he nearly didn't answer. This was the last thing he needed right now. But the bell rang again, and Seth opened the door to find the kid standing in the shadows. “Later,” Seth said, and he started to shut the door.

A twenty-dollar bill was pressed into his hand. “Look,” Seth said with a sigh, “I'm out.”

“You've got to have something.” Two more twenties were pushed at him.

Seth hesitated. He hadn't been lying - he really didn't have any weed - but it was hard to turn down sixty bucks when you had eaten ramen noodles every night that week. He wondered how much time he had before Laura came out of the bathroom. “Wait here,” he said.

He kept his stash in the belly of an old guitar with half its strings missing. The battered case had travel stamps on it, from Istanbul and Paris and Bangkok, and a bumper sticker that said, IF

Text file converted with freeware AcroPad - www.dreamscape.it

YOU CAN

READ THIS, GET THE FUCK AWAY.

The first time Laura had visited his apartment he'd come back from digging up a bottle of wine to find her strumming the remaining strings, the guitar still cradled inside its open case. Do you play? she had asked.

He had frozen, but only for a moment. He took the case, snapped it shut, and put it off to the side. Depends on the game, he had answered.

Now he reached into the sound hole and rummaged around. He considered his sidelight vocation philosophically: Grad school cost a fortune; his tech job at the vet's office barely paid his rent; and selling pot wasn't much different from buying a six-pack for a bunch of teenagers. It wasn't like he went around selling coke or heroin, which could really mess you up. But he still didn't want Laura to know this about him. He could tell you how she felt about politics or affirmative action or being touched along the base of her delicate spine, but he didn't know what she'd say if she discovered that he was dealing.

Seth found the vial he was looking for. “This is powerful shit,” he warned, passing it outside.

“What does it do?”

“It takes you away,” Seth answered. He heard the water stop running in the bathroom. “Do you want it or not?” The kid took the vial and shrank back into the night. Seth shut the door just as Laura walked out of the bathroom, her eyes red and her face swollen. Immediately, she froze. “Who were you talking to?” Although Seth would have gladly crowed to the world that he loved Laura, she had too much at stake to lose - her job, her family. He should have known that someone trying so hard to keep from being noticed would never really be able to see him.

“No one,” Seth said bitterly. “Your little secrets still safe.” He turned away so that he would not have to bear witness as she left him. He heard the door open, felt the gasp of cold air.

“You're not the one I'm ashamed of,” Laura murmured, and she walked out of

his life.

* * *

Zephyr was handing out tubes of lipstickhot pink, Goth black, scarlet, plum. She pressed one into Trixie's hand. It was gold, and Trixie turned it upside down to read the name: All That Glitters. “You know what to do, right?” Zephyr murmured. Trixie did. She'd never played Rainbow before, she'd never had to. She'd always been with Jason instead.

As soon as Trixie had arrived at Zephyr's, her friend had laid out the guidelines for Trixie's surefire success that night. First, look hot. Second, drink whenever, whatever. Third - and most important - do not break the two-and-a-half-hour rule. That much time had to pass at the party before Trixie was allowed to talk to Jason. In the meantime, Trixie had to flirt with everyone but him. According to Zephyr, Jason expected Trixie to still be pining for him. When the opposite happened - when he saw other guys checking Trixie out and telling him he'd blown it - it would shock him into realizing his mistake.

However, Jason hadn't showed up yet. Zephyr told Trixie just to carry on with points one and two of the plan, so that she'd be good and wasted by the time Jason arrived and saw her enjoying herself. To that end, Trixie had spent the night dancing with anyone who wanted to, and by herself when she couldn't find a partner. She drank until the horizon swam. She fell down across the

laps of boys she could not care less about and let them pretend she liked it.

She looked at her reflection in the plate-glass window and applied the gold lipstick. It made her look like a model in an MTV

video.

There were three games that had been making the rounds at parties recently. Daisy-chaining meant having sex like a conga line you'd do it with a guy, who'd do it with some girl, who'd do it with another guy, and so on, until you made your way back to the beginning. During Stoneface, a bunch of guys sat at a table with their pants pulled down and their expressions wiped clean of emotion, while a girl huddled underneath giving one of them a blow joband they all had to try to guess the lucky recipient. Rainbow was a combination of the two. A dozen or so girls were given different colored lipsticks before having oral sex with the guys, and the boy who sported the most colors at the end of the night was the winner.

An upperclassman that Trixie didn't know threaded his fingers through Zephyr's and tugged her forward. Trixie watched him sit on the couch, watched her wilt like a flower at his feet. She turned away, her face flaming.

It doesn't mean anything, Zephyr had said.

It only hurts if you let it.

“Hey.”

Trixie turned around to find a guy staring at her. “Um,” she said. “Hi.”

“You want to ... go sit down?”

He was blond, where Jason had been so dark. He had brown eyes, not blue ones. She found herself studying him not in terms of who he was, but who he wasn't.

She imagined what would happen if Jason walked in the door and saw her going at it with someone. She wondered if he'd recognize her right away. If the stake through his heart would hurt as much as the one Trixie felt every time she saw him with Jessica Ridgeley.

Taking a deep breath, she led this boy - what was his name? did it even matter? - toward a couch. She reached for a beer on the table

beside them and chugged the entire thing. Then she knelt between the boy's legs and kissed him. Their teeth scraped. She reached down and unbuckled his belt, looking down long enough to register that he wore boxers. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like if the bass in the music could beat through the pores of her skin.

His hand tangled in her hair, drawing her down, head to a chopping block. She smelled the musk of him and heard the groan of someone across the room and he was in her mouth and she imagined the flecks of gold on her lips ringing him like fairy dust. Gagging, Trixie wrenched herself away and rocked back on her heels. She could still taste him, and she scrambled out of the pulsing living room and out the front door just in time to throw up in Mrs. Santorelli-Weinstein's hydrangea bush.

When you fooled around without the feelings attached, it might not mean anything ... but then again, neither did you. Trixie wondered if there was something wrong with her, for not being able to act like Zephyr - cool and nonchalant, like none of this mattered anyway. Is that really what guys wanted? Or was it just what the girls thought the guys wanted?

Trixie wiped a shaking hand across her mouth and sat down on the front steps. In the distance, a car door slammed. She heard a voice that haunted her each moment before she fell asleep: “Come on, Moss. She's a freshman. Why don't we just call it a night?” Trixie stared at the sidewalk until Jason came into view, haloed by a streetlight as he walked beside Moss toward Zephyrs front door.

She spun around, took the lipstick out of her pocket, and reapplied a fresh coat. It sparkled in the dark. It felt like wax, like a mask, like none of this was real.

* * *

Laura had called to say that since she was on campus, she was going to stay there and catch up on some grading. She might even just crash overnight in her office.

You could work at home, Daniel said, when what he really meant was, Why does it sound like you've been crying?

No, I'll get more done here, Laura answered, when what she really meant was, Please don't ask.

Love you, Daniel said, but Laura didn't.

When your significant other was missing, it wasn't the same bed. There was a void on the other side, a cosmic black hole, one that you couldn't roll too close to without falling into a chasm of memories. Daniel lay with the covers drawn up to his chin, the television screen still glowing green.

He had always believed that if someone in this marriage was going to cheat, it would have been himself. Laura had never done anything wayward, had never even gotten a damn traffic ticket. On the other hand, he had a long history of behavior that would have surely landed him in jail eventually, had he not fallen in love instead. He assumed you could hide infidelity, like a wrinkle in your clothing stuffed underneath a belt line or a cuff, a flaw you knew existed but could conceal from the public. Instead, cheating had its own smell, one that clung to Laura's skin even after she'd stepped out of the shower. It took Daniel a while longer to recognize this sharp lemon scent for what it was: a late and unexpected confidence.

At dinner a few nights ago, Trixie had read them a logic problem from her psych homework: A woman is at the funeral of her mother. There, she meets a man she doesn't know and has never met, who she thinks is her dream partner. But because of the circumstances, she forgets to ask for his number, and she can't find him afterward. A few days later, she kills her own sister. Why?

Laura guessed that the sister had been involved with the man. Daniel thought it might be something to do with an inheritance. Congratulations, Trixie had said, neither one of you is a psychopath. The reason she murdered her sister was because she hoped the guy would show up at that funeral, too. Most serial killers who had been asked this question had given the right answer.

It was later, while he was lying in bed with Laura sleeping soundly beside him, that Daniel came up with a different explanation. According to Trixie, the woman at the funeral had fallen in love. And like any accelerant, that would change the equation. Add love, and a person might do something crazy. Add love, and all the lines between right and wrong were bound to disappear.

* * *

It was two-thirty in the morning, and Trixie was bluffing. By now, the party had wound down. Only four people remained: Zephyr and Moss and Trixie and Jason. Trixie had managed to avoid finishing out the Rainbow game by playing Quarters in the kitchen instead with Moss and Jason. When Zephyr found her there, she had pulled Trixie aside, furious. Why was Trixie being such a prude?

Wasn't this whole night supposed to be about making Jason jealous?

And so Trixie had marched back to Moss and Jason, and suggested the four of them play strip poker.

They had been at it long enough for the stakes to be important. Jason had folded a while ago; he stood against the wall with his arms crossed, watching the rest of the game develop. Zephyr laid out her cards with a flourish: two pairs - threes and jacks. On the couch across from her, Moss tipped his hand and grinned. “I have a straight.”

Zephyr had already taken off her shoes, her socks, and her pants. She stood up and started to peel off her shirt. She walked toward Moss in her bra, draping her T-shirt around his neck and then kissing him so slowly that all the pale skin on his face turned bright pink.

When she sat back down, she glanced at Trixie, as if to say, That's how you do it.

“Stack the deck,” Moss said. “I want to see if she's really a blonde.”

Zephyr turned to Trixie. “Stack the deck. I want to see if he's really a guy.”

“Hey, Trixie, what about you?” Moss asked. Trixie's head was cartwheeling, but she could feel Jason's eyes on her. Maybe this was where she was supposed to go in for the kill. She looked to Zephyr, hoping for a cue, but Zephyr was too busy hanging on Moss to pay attention to her.

Oh, my God, it was brilliant.

If the goal of this entire night was to get Jason jealous, the surest way to do it would be to come on to his best friend. Trixie stood up and tumbled right into Moss's lap. His arms came around her, and her cards spilled onto the coffee table: two of hearts, six of diamonds, queen of clubs, three of clubs, eight of spades. Moss started to laugh. “Trixie, that's the worst hand I've ever seen.”

“Yeah, Trix,” Zephyr said, staring. “You're asking for it.” Trixie glanced at her. She knew, didn't she, that the only reason she was flirting with Moss was to make Jason jealous? But before she could telegraph this with some kind of ESP, Moss snapped her bra strap. “I think you lost,” he said, grinning, and he sat back to see what piece of clothing she was going to take off.

Trixie was down to her black bra and Ace bandage and her low-rise jeans - the ones she was wearing without underwear. She wasn't planning on parting with any of those items. But she had a plan - she was going to remove her earrings. She lifted her left hand up to the lobe, only to realize that she'd forgotten to put them on. The gold hoops were sitting on her dresser, in her bedroom, just where she'd left them.

Trixie had already removed her watch, and her necklace, and her barrette. She'd even cut off her macrame anklet. A flush rose up her shoulders - her bare shoulders - onto her face. “I fold.”

“You can't fold after the game,” Moss said. “Rules are rules.” Jason pushed away from the wall and walked closer. “Give her a break, Moss.”

“I think she'd rather have something else . . .”

“I'm out,” Trixie said, her voice skating the thin edge of panic. She held her hands crossed in front of herself. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would burst into her palm. Suddenly, this seemed even worse than Rainbow, because the anonymity was gone. Here, if she acted like a slut, everyone knew her by name.

“I'll pinch-strip for her,” Zephyr suggested, leaning into Moss.

But at that moment, Trixie looked at Jason and remembered why she had come to Zephyr's in the first place. It's worth it, she thought, if it brings him back. “I'll do it,” she said. “But just for a second.”

Turning her back to the three of them, she slipped the straps of her bra down her arms and felt her breasts come free. She took a

deep breath and spun around.

Jason was staring down at the floor. But Moss was holding up his cell phone, and before Trixie could understand why, he'd snapped a picture of her.

She fastened her bra and lunged for the phone. “Give me that!” He stuffed it in his pants. “Come and get it, baby.” Suddenly Trixie found herself being pulled off Moss. The sound of Jason's fist hitting Moss made her cringe. “Jesus Christ, lay off!” Moss cried. “I thought you said you were finished with her.” Trixie grabbed for her blouse, wishing that it was something flannel or fleece that would completely obliterate her. She held it in front of her and ran into the bathroom down the hall. Zephyr followed, coming into the tiny room and closing the door behind her.

Shaking, Trixie slipped her hands into the sleeves of the blouse. “Make them go home.”

“But it's just getting interesting,” Zephyr said. Trixie looked up, stunned. “What?”

“Well, for God's sake, Trixie. So he had a camera phone, big fucking deal. It was a joke.”

“Why are you taking his side?”

“Why are you being such an asshole?”

Trixie felt her cheeks grow hot. “This was your idea. You told me that if I did what you said, I'd get Jason back.”

“Yeah,” Zephyr shot back. “So why were you all over Moss?” Trixie thought of the paper clips on Zephyr's backpack. Random hookups weren't random, no matter what you told yourself. Or your best friend.

There was a knock on the door, and then Moss opened it. His lip was split, and he had a welt over his left eye. “Oh, my God,” Zephyr said. “Look at what he did to you.” Moss shrugged. “He's done worse during a scrimmage.”

“I think you need to lie down,” she said. “Preferably with me.” As she tugged Moss out of the bathroom and upstairs, she didn't look back.

Trixie sat down on the lid of the toilet and buried her face in her

hands. Distantly, she heard the music being turned off. Her temples throbbed, and her arm where she'd cut it earlier. Her throat was dry as leather. She reached for a half-empty can of Coke on the sink and drank it. She wanted to go home.

“Hey.”

Trixie glanced up to find Jason staring down at her. “I thought you left.”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right. You need a ride?” Trixie wiped her eyes, a smear of mascara coming off on the heel of her hand. She had told her father she would be staying overnight, but that was before her fight with Zephyr. “That would be great,” she said, and then she began to cry. He pulled her upright and into his arms. After tonight, after everything that had happened and how stupid she'd been, all she wanted was a place where she fit. Everything about Jason was right, from the temperature of his skin to the way that her pulse matched his. When she turned her face into the bow of his neck, she pressed her lips against his collarbone: not quite a kiss, not quite not one.

She thought, hard, about lifting her face up to his before she did it. She made herself remember what Moss had said: I thought you were done with her.

When Jason kissed her, he tasted of rum and of indecision. She kissed him back until the room spun, until she couldn't remember how much time had passed. She wanted to stay like this forever. She wanted the world to grow up around them, a mound in the landscape where only violets bloomed, because that was what happened in a soil too rich for its own good.

Trixie rested her forehead against Jason's. “I don't have to go home just yet,” she said.

* * *

Daniel was dreaming of hell. There was a lake of ice and a run of tundra. A dog tied to a steel rod, its nose buried in a dish of fish soup. There was a mound of melting snow, revealing candy wrappers, empty Pepsi cans, a broken toy. He heard the hollow thump of a basketball on the slick wooden boardwalk and the tail of a green tarp rattling against the seat of the snow machine it covered. He saw a moon that hung too late in the sky, like a drunk unwilling to leave the best seat at the bar.

At the sound of the crash, he came awake immediately to find himself still alone in bed. It was three thirty-two A.M. He walked into the hall, flipping light switches as he passed. “Laura,” he called, “is that you?”

The hardwood floors felt cold beneath his bare feet. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary downstairs, yet by the time he reached the kitchen he had nearly convinced himself that he was about to come face-to-face with an intruder. An old wariness rose in

him, a muscle memory of fight or flight that he'd thought he'd long forgotten.

There was no one in the cellar, or the half bath, or the dining room. The telephone still slept on its cradle in the living room. It was in the mudroom that he realized Trixie must have come home early: Her coat was here, her boots kicked off on the brick floor.

“Trixie?” he called out, heading upstairs again. But she wasn't in her bedroom, and when he reached the bathroom, the door was locked. Daniel rattled it, but there was no response. He threw his entire weight against the jamb until the door burst free.

Trixie was shivering, huddled in the crease made by the wall and the shower stall. “Baby,” he said, coming down on one knee.

“Are you sick?” But then Trixie turned in slow motion, as if he were the last person she'd ever expected to see. Her eyes were empty, ringed with mascara. She was wearing something black and sheer that was ripped at the shoulder.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, and started to cry.

“Trixie, what happened?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but then pressed her lips together and shook her head.

“You can tell me,” Daniel said, gathering her into his arms as if she were small again.

Her hands were knotted together between them, like a heart that had broken its bounds. “Daddy,” she whispered. “He raped me.” 2

She had kissed him back. They must have both fallen asleep for a while, because Trixie woke up with him leaning over her, his lips against her neck. She'd felt her skin burn where he touched her.

She was jerked back to the present as her father reached for the controls of the heater on the dashboard. “Are you too hot?” Trixie shook her head. “No,” she said. “It's okay.” But it wasn't, not anymore, not by a long shot.

Daniel fiddled with the knob for another moment. This was the nightmare that sank its teeth into every parent's neck. Your child is hurt. How quickly can you make it better?

What if you can't?

Beneath the tires, he heard the name that he couldn't get out of his head, not since the moment he'd found Trixie in the bathroom.

Who did this to you?

Jason. Jason Underhill.

In a tornado of pure fury, Daniel had grabbed the first thing he could lay hold of - a soap dish - and hurled it into the bathroom mirror. Trixie had started shrieking, shaking so hard it took him five minutes to calm her down. He didn't know who'd been more

shocked at the outburst: Trixie, who'd never seen him like this, or

Daniel himself, who'd forgotten. After that, he'd been careful which questions he asked his daughter. It wasn't that he didn't want to talk to her; he was just afraid to hear her answer, and even more afraid he would again do the wrong thing. He had never learned the protocol for this. It went beyond comfort; it went beyond parenting. It meant transforming all the rage he felt right now - enough to breathe fire and blow out the windshield - into words that spread like balm, invisible comfort for wounds too broad to see.

* * 8

Suddenly, Daniel braked hard. The logging truck in front of them was weaving over the median line of the divided highway.

“He's going to kill someone,” Daniel said, and Trixie thought, Let it be me. She felt numb from the waist down, a mermaid encased in ice. “Will Mom meet us there?”

“I hope so, baby.”

It was after her father had wrapped her in a blanket and rocked her and told her they were going to the hospital, when Trixie was still crying softly for her mother, that her father admitted Laura wasn't home. But it's three-thirty in the morning, Trixie had said. Where did she go? There had been a moment where the pain had stopped belonging to Trixie and started to belong to her father instead, but then he'd turned away to get her another blanket, and that was when Trixie realized she wasn't the only casualty of the night.

The logging truck veered sharply to the left. HOW AM i DOING?

read the bumper sticker on its back door, the one that encouraged motorists to report reckless driving to an 800 number. I am doing fine, Daniel thought. I am hale and whole, and next to me the person I love most in this world has broken into a thousand pieces.

Trixie watched the side of the logging truck as her father accelerated and passed it, holding down his horn. It sounded too loud for this hour of the morning. It seemed to rip the sky in half. She covered her ears, but even then she could still hear it, like a scream that sounded from inside.

Weaving back into the right-hand lane of the highway, Daniel stole a glance at Trixie across the front seat. She was curled into a ball. Her face was pale. Her hands were hidden in her sleeves. Daniel bet she didn't even know she was crying. She'd forgotten her coat, and Daniel realized this was his fault. He should have reminded her. He should have brought one of his own.

Trixie could feel the weight of her father's worry. Who knew that the words you never got around to saying could settle so heavy? Suddenly, she remembered a blown-glass candy dish she had broken when she was eleven, an heirloom that had belonged to her mother's grandmother. She had gathered all the pieces and had glued them together seamlessly - and she still hadn't been able to fool her mother. She imagined the same would be true, now, of herself.

If this had been an ordinary day, Daniel thought, he would have been getting Trixie up for school about now. He'd yell at her when she spent too much time in the bathroom doing her hair and tell her she was going to be late. He'd put a cereal bowl out for her on the breakfast table, and she'd fill it with Life. From the moment it was over until the moment she entered her own home, Trixie had said only two words, uttered as she got out of his car. Thank you.

Daniel watched the logging truck recede in his rearview mirror. Danger came in different packages, at different points in a lifetime. There were grapes and marbles and other choking hazards. There were trees too tall for climbing. There were matches and scooters and kitchen knives left lying on the counter. Daniel had obsessed about the day Trixie would be able to drive. He could teach her how to be the most defensive driver on the planet, but he couldn't vouch for the moron truckers who hadn't slept for three days, who might run a red light. He couldn't keep the drunk from having one more before he got behind the wheel of his car to head home.

Out the passenger window, Trixie watched the scenery stream by without registering a single image. She couldn't stop wondering: If she had not kissed him back, would it never have happened?

* * *

The phone rang ten times in Laura's office, a room the size of a walk-in closet, but Daniel couldn't seem to hang up. He had tried everything, everywhere. Laura was not answering the phone in the office; she was not at home; her cell automatically rolled over to the voice message system. She had disconnected herself, on purpose.

Daniel had made excuses for his wife on his own behalf, but he couldn't make them for Trixie's sake. Because for the first time in

his life, he didn't think he could be everything his daughter needed right now.

He cursed out loud and called Laura's office again to leave a message. “It's Daniel. It's four in the morning. I've got Trixie at Stephens Memorial, in the ER. She was . .. she was raped last night.” He hesitated. “Please come.”

* * 8

Trixie wondered if this was what it felt like to be shot. If, even after the bullet went through flesh and bone, you would look down at yourself with detachment, assessing the damage, as if it wasn't you who had been hit but someone else you were asked to appraise. She wondered if numbness qualified as a chronic ache. Sitting here, waiting for her father to come back from the restroom, Trixie cataloged her surroundings: the squeak of the nurse's white shoes, the urgent chatter of a crash cart being rolled across linoleum, the underwater-green cinder block of the walls and the amoeba shapes of the chairs where they had been told to wait. The smell of linen and metal and fear. The garland and stockings hung behind the triage nurse, the afterthought of a Christmas tree that sat next to the wire box holding patient charts. Trixie didn't just notice all these things, she absorbed them, and she decided she was saturating herself with sensation to make up for the thirty minutes she had blocked out of her consciousness.

She realized, with a start, that she had already begun to divide her life into before and after.

* * *

Hi, you've reached Laura Stone, her voice said. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you.

Leave me.

I'll get back to you.

Daniel hung up again and walked back inside the hospital, where cell phones were prohibited. But when he got back to the waiting area, Trixie was gone. He approached the triage nurse. “Which room is my daughter in? Trixie Stone?”

The nurse glanced up. “I'm sorry, Mr. Stone. I know she's a priority case, but we're short staffed and . . .”

“She hasn't been called in yet?” Daniel said. “Then where is she?” He knew he shouldn't have left her alone, knew even as she was nodding at him when she asked if she'd be all right by herself for a moment that she hadn't heard him at all. Backing away from the horseshoe desk, he started through the double doors of the ER, calling Trixie's name.

“Sir,” the nurse said, getting to her feet, “you can't go in there!”

“Trixie?” Daniel yelled, as patients stared at him from the spaces between privacy curtains, their faces pale or bloodied or weak. “Trixie!”

An orderly grabbed his arm; he shook the massive man off. He turned a corner, smacking into a resident in her ghost-white coat before he came to a dead end. Whirling about, he continued to call out for Trixie, and then - in the interstitial space between the letters of her name - he heard Trixie calling for him. He followed the thread of her voice through the maze of corridors and finally saw her. “I'm right here,” he said, and she turned to him and burst into tears.

“I got lost,” she sobbed against his chest. “I couldn't breathe. They were staring.”

“Who was?”

“All the people in the waiting room. They were wondering what was wrong with me.”

Daniel took both of her hands. “There's nothing wrong with you,” he said, that first lie a fissure crack in his heart. A woman wearing a trowel's layer of cosmetics approached.

“Trixie Stone?” she said. “My name's Janice. I'm a sexual assault advocate. I'm here to answer questions for you and your family, and to help you understand what's going to be happening.” Daniel couldn't get past the makeup. If this woman had been called in for Trixie, how much time had been lost applying those false eyelashes, that glittery blush? How much faster might she have come?

“First things first,” Janice said, her eyes on Trixie. “This wasn't your fault.”

Trixie glanced at her. “You don't even know what happened.”

“I know that no one deserves to be raped, no matter who she is and what she's been doing,” Janice said. “Have you taken a shower yet?”

Daniel wondered how on earth she could even think this. Trixie was still wearing the same torn blouse, had the same raccoon circles of mascara under her eyes. She had wanted to shower - that was why, when he'd found her, she was in the bathroom - but Daniel knew enough to keep her from doing it. Evidence. The word had swum in his mind like a shark.

“What about the police?” Daniel heard, and he was stunned to realize he'd been the one to say it.

Janice turned. “The hospital automatically reports any sexual assault of a minor to the police,” she said. “Whether or not Trixie wants to press charges is up to her.”

She will press charges against that son of a bitch, Daniel thought, even if I have to talk her into it.

And on the heels of that: If he forced Trixie to do something she didn't want to, then how was he any different from Jason Underhill?

As Janice outlined the specifics of the upcoming examination, Trixie shook her head and folded her arms around herself. “I want to go home,” she said, in the smallest of voices. “I've changed my mind.”

“You need to see a doctor, Trixie. I'll stay with you, the whole time.” She turned to Daniel. "Is there a Mrs. Stone . . . ?

"

Excellent question, Daniel thought, before he could remember not to. “She's on her way,” he said. Maybe this was not even a lie by now.

Trixie grabbed onto his arm. “What about my father? Can he come in with me?”

Janice looked from Daniel to Trixie and then back again. “It's a pelvic exam,” she said delicately.

The last time Daniel had seen Trixie naked, she had been eleven and about to take a bubble bath. He had walked into the bathroom, thinking she was only brushing her teeth, and together they had stared at her blossoming body in the reflection of the mirror. After that, he was careful to knock on doors, to draw an invisible curtain of distance around her for privacy.

When he was a kid in Alaska, he had met Yu'pik Eskimos who hated him on sight, because he was a kass'aq. It didn't matter that he was six or seven, that he hadn't been the particular Caucasian who had cheated that person out of land or reneged on a job or any of a hundred other grievances. All they saw was that Daniel was white, and by association, he was a magnet for their anger. He imagined, now, what it would be like to be the only male in the room during a sexual assault examination.

“Please, Daddy?”

Behind the fear in Trixie's eyes was the understanding that even with this stranger, she would be alone, and she couldn't risk that again. So Daniel took a deep breath and headed down the hall between Trixie and Janice. Inside the room, there was a gurney; he helped Trixie climb onto it. The doctor entered almost immediately, a small woman wearing scrubs and a white coat. “Hi, Trixie,” she said, and if she seemed surprised to see a father in the room, instead of a mother, she said nothing. She came right up to Trixie and

squeezed her hand. “You're already being very brave. All I'm going to ask you to do is keep that up.”

She handed a form to Daniel and asked him to sign it, explaining that because Trixie was a minor, a parent or guardian had to authorize the collection and release of information. She took Trixie's blood

pressure and pulse and made notes on her clipboard. Then she began to ask Trixie a series of questions.

What's your address?

How old are you?

What day did the assault occur? What approximate time?

What was the gender of the perpetrator? The number of perpetrators?