The Tenth Circle Read online

When the lecture hall was empty, Laura turned off the overhead lights. She dug in her pocket for her office keys. Damn, had she left them in her computer bag?

  �Veil.�

  Laura turned around, already recognizing the soft Southern curves of Seth Dummerston�s voice. He stood up and stretched, unfolding his long body after that nap. �It�s another anagram for evil,� he said. �The things we hide.�

  She stared at him coolly. �You fell asleep during my lecture.�

  �I had a late night.�

  �Whose fault is that?� Laura asked.

  Seth stared at her the way she used to stare at him, then bent forward until his mouth brushed over hers. �You tell me,� he whispered.

 

  Trixie turned the corner and saw them: Jessica Ridgeley, with her long sweep of blond hair and her dermatologist�s-daughter skin, was leaning against the door of the AV room kissing Jason.

  Trixie became a rock, the sea of students parting around her. She watched Jason�s hands slip into the back pockets of Jessica�s jeans. She could see the dimple on the left side of his mouth, the one that appeared only when he was speaking from the heart.

  Was he telling Jessica that his favorite sound was the thump that laundry made when it was turning around in a dryer? That sometimes he could walk by the telephone and think she was going to call, and sure enough she did? That once, when he was ten, he broke into a candy machine because he wanted to know what happened to the quarters once they went inside?

  Was she even listening?

  Suddenly, Trixie felt someone grab her arm and start dragging her down the hall, out the door, and into the courtyard. She smelled the acrid twitch of a match, and a minute later, a cigarette had been stuck between her lips. �Inhale,� Zephyr commanded.

  Zephyr Santorelli-Weinstein was Trixie�s oldest friend. She had enormous doe eyes and olive skin and the coolest mother on the planet, one who bought her incense for her room and took her to get her navel pierced like it was an adolescent rite. She had a father, too, but he lived in California with his new family, and Trixie knew better than to bring up the subject. �What class have you got next?�

  �French.�

  �Madame Wright is senile. Let�s ditch.�

  Bethel High had an open campus, not because the administration was such a fervent promoter of teen freedom but because there was simply nowhere to go. Trixie walked beside Zephyr along the access road to the school, their faces ducked against the wind, their hands stuffed into the pockets of their North Face jackets. The crisscross pattern where she�d cut herself an hour earlier on her arm wasn�t bleeding anymore, but the cold made it sting. Trixie automatically started breathing through her mouth, because even from a distance, she could smell the gassy, rotten-egg odor from the paper mill to the north that employed most of the adults in Bethel. �I heard what happened in psych,� Zephyr said.

  �Great,� Trixie muttered. �Now the whole world thinks I�m a loser and a freak.�

  Zephyr took the cigarette from Trixie�s hand and smoked the last of it. �What do you care what the whole world thinks?�

  �Not the whole world,� Trixie admitted. She felt her eyes prickle with tears again, and she wiped her mitten across them. �I want to kill Jessica Ridgeley.�

  �If I were you, I�d want to kill Jason,� Zephyr said. �Why do you let it get to you?�

  Trixie shook her head. �I�m the one who�s supposed to be with him, Zephyr. I just know it.�

  They had reached the turn of the river past the park-and-ride, where the bridge stretched over the Androscoggin River. This time of year, it was nearly frozen over, with great swirling art sculptures that formed as ice built up around the rocks that crouched in the riverbed. If they kept walking another quarter mile, they�d reach the town, which basically consisted of a Chinese restaurant, a minimart, a bank, a toy store, and a whole lot of nothing else.

  Zephyr watched Trixie cry for a few minutes, then leaned against the railing of the bridge. �You want the good news or the bad news?�

  Trixie blew her nose in an old tissue she�d found in her pocket. �Bad news.�

  �Martyr,� Zephyr said, grinning. �The bad news is that my best friend has officially exceeded her two-week grace period for mourning over a relationship, and she will be penalized from here on in.�

  At that, Trixie smiled a little. �What�s the good news?�

  �Moss Minton and I have sort of been hanging out.�

  Trixie felt another stab in her chest. Her best friend, and Jason�s? �Really?�

  �Well, maybe we weren�t actually hanging out. He waited for me after English class today to ask me if you were okay�but still, the way I figure it, he could have asked anyone, right?�

  Trixie wiped her nose. �Great. I�m glad my misery is doing wonders for your love life.�

  �Well, it�s sure as hell not doing anything for yours. You can�t keep crying over Jason. He knows you�re obsessed.� Zephyr shook her head. �Guys don�t want high maintenance, Trix. They want�Jessica Ridgeley.�

  �What the fuck does he see in her?�

  Zephyr shrugged. �Who knows. Bra size? Neanderthal IQ?� She pulled her messenger bag forward, so that she could dig inside for a pack of M&M�s. Hanging from the edge of the bag were twenty linked pink paper clips.

  Trixie knew girls who kept a record of sexual encounters in a journal, or by fastening safety pins to the tongue of a sneaker. For Zephyr, it was paper clips. �A guy can�t hurt you if you don�t let him,� Zephyr said, running her finger across the paper clips so that they danced.

  These days, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend was not in vogue; most kids trolled for random hookups. The sudden thought that Trixie might have been that to Jason made her feel sick to her stomach. �I can�t be like that.�

  Zephyr ripped open the bag of candy and passed it to Trixie. �Friends with benefits. It�s what the guys want, Trix.�

  �How about what the girls want?�

  Zephyr shrugged. �Hey, I suck at algebra, I can�t sing on key, and I�m always the last one picked for a team in gym�but apparently I�m quite gifted when it comes to hooking up.�

  Trixie turned, laughing. �They tell you that?�

  �Don�t knock it until you�ve tried it. You get all the fun without any of the baggage. And the next day you just act like it never happened.�

  Trixie tugged on the paper clip chain. �If you�re acting like it never happened, then why are you keeping track?�

  �Once I hit a hundred, I can send away for the free decoder ring.� Zephyr shrugged. �I don�t know. I guess it�s just so I remember where I started.�

  Trixie opened her palm and surveyed the M&M�s. The food coloring dye was already starting to bleed against her skin. �Why do you think the commercials say they won�t melt in your hands, when they always do?�

  �Because everyone lies,� Zephyr replied.

  All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn�t yet been slammed in your face. For years, Trixie�s own parents had told her that she could be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she�d been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big, fat wall of reality. As it turned out, she couldn�t have anything she wanted. You didn�t get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn�t control your own destiny; you were too busy trying to fit in. Even now, as she stood here, there were a million parents setting their kids up for heartbreak.

  Zephyr stared out over the railing. �This is the third time I�ve cut English this week.�

  In French class, Trixie was missing a quiz on le subjonctif. Verbs, apparently, had moods too: They had to be conjugated a whole different way if they were used in clauses to express want, doubt, wishes, judgment. She had memorized the red-flag phrases last night: It is doubtful that. It�s not clear that. It seems that. It may be that. Even though. No matter what. Without.

  She didn�t need a stupid le�on to teach her something she�d known for years: Given anything negative or uncertain, there were ru
les that had to be followed.

 

  If he had the choice, Daniel would draw a villain every time.

  There just wasn�t all that much you could do with heroes. They came with a set of traditional standards: square jaw, overdeveloped calves, perfect teeth. They stood half a foot taller than your average man. They were anatomical marvels, intricate displays of musculature. They sported ridiculous knee-high boots that no one without superhuman strength would be caught dead wearing.

  On the other hand, your average bad guy might have a face shaped like an onion, an anvil, a pancake. His eyes could bulge out or recess in the folds of his skin. His physique might be meaty or cadaverous, furry or rubberized, or covered with lizard scales. He could speak in lightning, throw fire, swallow mountains. A villain let your creativity out of its cage.

  The problem was, you couldn�t have one without the other. There couldn�t be a bad guy unless there was a good guy to create the standard. And there couldn�t be a good guy until a bad guy showed just how far off the path he might stray.

  Today Daniel sat hunched at his drafting table, procrastinating. He twirled his mechanical pencil; he kneaded an eraser in his palm. He was having a hell of a time turning his main character into a hawk. He had gotten the wingspan right, but he couldn�t seem to humanize the face behind the bright eyes and beak.

  Daniel was a comic book penciler. While Laura had built up the academic credentials to land her a tenured position at Monroe College, he�d worked out of the home with Trixie at his feet as he drew filler chapters for DC Comics. His style got him noticed by Marvel, which asked him numerous times to come work in NYC on Ultimate X-Men, but Daniel put his family before his career. He did graphic art to pay the mortgage-logos and illustrations for corporate newsletters-until last year, just before his fortieth birthday, when Marvel signed him to work from home on a project all his own.

  He kept a picture of Trixie over his workspace-not just because he loved her, but because for this particular graphic novel-The Tenth Circle-she was his inspiration. Well, Trixie and Laura. Laura�s obsession with Dante had provided the bare-bones plot of the story; Trixie had provided the impetus. But it was Daniel who was responsible for creating his main character-Wildclaw-a hero that this industry had never seen.

  Historically, comics had been geared toward teenage boys. Daniel had pitched Marvel a different concept: a character designed for the demographic group of adults who had been weaned on comic books yet who now had the spending power they�d lacked as adolescents. Adults who wanted sneakers endorsed by Michael Jordan and watched news programs that looked like MTV segments and played Tetris on a Nintendo DS during their business-class flights. Adults who would immediately identify with Wildclaw�s alter ego, Duncan: a fortysomething father who knew that getting old was hell, who wanted to keep his family safe, whose powers controlled him, instead of the other way around.

  The narrative of the graphic novel followed Duncan, an ordinary father searching for his daughter, who had been kidnapped by the devil into Dante�s circles of hell. When provoked, through rage or fear, Duncan would morph into Wildclaw-literally becoming an animal. The catch was this: Power always involved a loss of humanity. If Duncan turned into a hawk or a bear or a wolf to elude a dangerous creature, a piece of him would stay that way. His biggest fear was that if and when he did find his missing daughter, she would no longer recognize who he�d become in order to save her.

  Daniel looked down at what he had on the page so far, and sighed. The problem wasn�t drawing the hawk-he could do that in his sleep-it was making sure the reader saw the human behind it. It was not new to have a hero who turned into an animal-but Daniel had come by the concept honestly. He�d grown up as the only white boy in a native Alaskan village where his mother was a schoolteacher and his father was simply gone. In Akiak, the Yupiit spoke freely of children who went to live with seals, of men who shared a home with black bears. One woman had married a dog and given birth to puppies, only to peel back the fur to see they were actually babies underneath. Animals were simply nonhuman people, with the same ability to make conscious decisions, and humanity simmered under their skins. You could see it in the way they sat together for meals, or fell in love, or grieved. And this went both ways: Sometimes, in a human, there would turn out to be a hidden bit of a beast.

  Daniel�s best and only friend in the village was a Yup�ik boy named Cane, whose grandfather had taken it upon himself to teach Daniel how to hunt and fish and everything else that his own father should have. For example, how after killing a rabbit, you had to be quiet, so that the animal�s spirit could visit. How at fish camp, you�d set the bones of the salmon free in the river, whispering Ataam taikina. Come back again.

  Daniel spent most of his childhood waiting to leave. He was a kass�aq, a white kid, and this was reason enough to be teased or bullied or beaten. By the time he was Trixie�s age, he was getting drunk, damaging property, and making sure the rest of the world knew better than to fuck with him. But when he wasn�t doing those things, he was drawing-characters who, against all odds, fought and won. Characters he hid in the margins of his schoolbooks and on the canvas of his bare palm. He drew to escape, and eventually, at age seventeen, he did.

  Once Daniel left Akiak, he never looked back. He learned how to stop using his fists, how to put rage on the page instead. He got a foothold in the comics industry. He never talked about his life in Alaska, and Trixie and Laura knew better than to ask. He became a typical suburban father who coached soccer and grilled burgers and mowed the lawn, a man you�d never expect had been accused of something so awful that he�d tried to outrun himself.

  Daniel squeezed the eraser he was kneading and completely rubbed out the hawk he�d been attempting to draw. Maybe if he started with Duncan-the-man, instead of Wildclaw-the-beast? He took his mechanical pencil and started sketching the loose ovals and scribbled joints that materialized into his unlikely hero. No spandex, no high boots, no half mask: Duncan�s habitual costume was a battered jacket, jeans, and sarcasm. Like Daniel, Duncan had shaggy dark hair and a dark complexion. Like Daniel, Duncan had a teenage daughter. And like Daniel, everything Duncan did or didn�t do was linked to a past that he refused to discuss.

  When you got right down to it, Daniel was secretly drawing himself.

  Jason�s car was an old Volvo that had belonged to his grandmother before she died. The seats had been reupholstered in pink, her favorite color, by his grandfather for her eighty-fifth birthday. Jason had told Trixie he used to think about changing them back to their original flesh tone, but how could you mess with that kind of love?

  Hockey practice had ended fifteen minutes ago. Trixie waited in the cold, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her jacket, until Jason came out of the rink. His enormous hockey bag was slung over his shoulder, and he was laughing as he walked beside Moss.

  Hope was a pathological part of puberty, like acne and surging hormones. You might sound cynical to the world, but that was just a defense mechanism, cover-up coating a zit, because it was too embarrassing to admit that in spite of the bum deals you kept getting, you hadn�t completely given up.

  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 p
sych 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 twentysomething 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.