The Tenth Circle

by Picoult, Jodi

  - equally sure that if she left Trixie alone, she'd never see her 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-mache 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 Lauras 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.

  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 highfived 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. He held the boy at knifepoint, backing Jason up against a pine tree until he was kneeling, securing his arms and ankles behind him with duct tape so that he was effectively trussed. The whole time, Daniel kept thinking of what Laura had said about Dante - of Trixie's soul trapped in that tree, with Jason's body wrapped around it. That image was all he needed to give him the strength to subdue a seventeen-year-old athlete when Jason started fighting back.

  Jason struggled, pulling on the tape unt
il his wrists and ankles were raw, while Daniel built a campfire. Finally, the boy sagged against the trunk and let his head fall forward. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Daniel took his knife and slipped it under the hem of Jason's T-shirt. He dragged it up to the boy's throat in one long line, cutting the fabric in half. “This,” he said. Daniel systematically shredded Jason's clothing, until the kid was naked and shivering. He tossed the strips of fabric and denim into the flames.

  By then, Jasons teeth were chattering. “How am I supposed to get home?”

  “What makes you think I'm going to let you?” Jason swallowed hard, his eyes on the knife Daniel still held in his hand. “How is she?” he whispered.

  Daniel felt the granite gate of restraint burst inside him. How could this bastard think he had the right to ask after Trixie?

  Leaning down, Daniel pressed the blade against Jason's testicles,

  “Do you want to know what it's like to bleed out? Do you really want to know how she felt?” .

  “Please,” Jason begged, going pale. “Oh, Jesus, don't.” Daniel pushed the slightest bit, until a line of blood welled up at the crease of Jason's groin.

  “I didn't do anything to her, I swear it,” Jason cried, trying to twist away from Daniel's hand. “I didn't. Stop. God. Please stop.”

  Daniel set his face an inch away from Jason's. "Why should I?

  You didn't."

  In that moment between reason and rage, Trixie slipped into both of their minds. It was all Jason needed to break down, sobbing; it was all Daniel needed to remember himself. He looked down at his

  hand, holding the knife. He blinked at Jason. Then he shook his head to clear it.

  Daniel was not in the bush anymore, and this was no village corporation store he was robbing for booze or cash. He was a husband, he was a father. Instead of having something to prove, he had everything to lose.

  Lifting the blade, Daniel staggered to his feet. He hurled the knife the hundred feet it would take to land in the middle of the river

  and then walked back to Jason, who was fighting for breath. He took the boy's car keys from his own pocket and wrapped them tight in the only morsel of mercy he had left. These, he wedged into Jason's hand, still bound by duct tape.

  It was not compassion that led to Daniel's change of heart, and it was not kindness. It was realizing that, against all odds, he had something in common with Jason Underhill. Like Daniel, Jason had learned the hard way that we are never the people we think we are. We are the ones we pretend, with all our hearts, we can't become.

  4

  It took Jason a half hour to saw through the duct tape with his keys. When he could pull his arms forward again, the blood burned as it circulated, a severe pain that overtook the numbness caused by the cold. He stumbled to his feet, running toward the spot where Stone had made him leave the truck, praying it was still there.

  The only clothes he had were in his hockey equipment bag, so he wound up dressing in a jersey and his padded pants. He kept expecting to be ambushed again at any moment. His hands shook so badh that it took four tries to get the key into the ignition. He drove to the police station, thinking only that there was no way he was going to let Trixie's father get away with something like this. But as he pulled into the parking lot, he heard Daniel Stone's voice in his head again: Tell anyone, he'd said, and I'll kill you. Frankly, Jason could believe it. There had been something in the man's eyes - something inhuman - that made Jason think he was capable of anything.

  He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't see the pedestrian walking across the parking lot. As Jason braked hard, the car lurched forward and stopped. Detective Bartholemew, the same

  man who'd arrested Jason, stood with one hand on the hood of his car, staring him down. And suddenly Jason remembered what the judge had said at the arraignment: If Jason had any contact whatsoever with Trixie Stone or her family, he'd be shipped off to the juvenile detention facility. He was already accused of rape. If he reported what had happened to the cops, would they even believe him? What if they confronted Daniel Stone . . . and he insisted it had been Jason who approached him?

  The detective walked to the driver's side of the car. “Mr. Underhill,” he said. “What brings you here?”

  “I... I thought I might be getting a flat,” he managed. The detective walked around the vehicle. “Doesn't look that way.” He leaned closer to the car; Jason could see him doing a quick visual assessment. “Anything else I can help you with?” It was all right there, caught behind the fence of his teeth: He dragged me off, he tied me up, he threatened me. But Jason found himself shaking his head. “No, thanks,” he said. He put the car into gear and drove at snail speed out of the parking lot, aware of Bartholemew's gaze following him.

  In that moment, Jason made the decision to tell no one what happened: not his buddies, not his parents, not his lawyer. Not the police. He was too damn scared that telling the truth, in this case, would severely backfire on him.

  He found himself wondering: Had Trixie felt that, too?

  * * *

  The way drunks kept a bottle of gin hidden in the toilet tank, and addicts tucked an emergency hit in the hem of a threadbare old coat, Daniel kept a pad and a pen in his car. In the parking lot of the hospital, he sketched. Instead of his comic book hero, however, he started penciling his daughter. He drew her when she was only minutes old, rolled into a blanket like sushi. He drew her taking her first steps. He froze moments - the birthday when she made him

  spaghetti for breakfast; the school play where she fell off the stage into the audience; the high-rise hotel they visited, where they spent hours pushing all the elevator buttons to see if the floors looked an> different.

  When his hand cramped so badly that he couldn't sketch another line, Daniel gathered up the pictures and got out of the car, heading toward Trixie's room.

  Shadows reached across the bed like the fingers of a giant. Trixie had fallen asleep again; in a chair beside her, Laura dozed too. For a moment he stared at the two of them. No question about it: Trixie had been cut from the same cloth as her mother. It was more than

  just their coloring: Sometimes she'd toss him a glance or an expression that reminded him of Laura years ago. He'd wondered if the reason he loved Trixie so damn much was that, through her, he got to fall in love with his wife all over again.

  He crouched down in front of Laura. The movement of the air against her skin made her stir, and her eyes opened and locked onto Daniel's. For a fraction of a second, she started to smile, having forgotten where she was, and what had happened to her daughter, and what had gone wrong between the two of them. Daniel found his hands closing into fists, as if he could catch that moment before it disappeared entirely.

  She glanced over at Trixie, making sure she was still asleep.

  “Where were you?”

  Daniel certainly couldn't tell her the truth. “Driving.” He took off his coat and began to lay the sketches he'd done over the pale green blanket on the hospital bed. There was Trixie sliding into his lap the day Daniel got the phone call about his mothers death, asking, If everyone died, would the world just stop? Trixie holding a caterpillar, wondering whether it was a boy or a girl. Trixie pushing his hand away as he brushed a tear off her cheek, and saying, Don't wipe off my feelings.

  “When did you do these?” Laura whispered.

  “Today.”

  “But there are so many . . .”

  Daniel didn't answer. He knew no words big enough to explain to Trixie how much he loved her, so instead, he wanted her to wake up covered with memories.

  He wanted to remember why he could not afford to let go. It was from his friend Cane that Daniel learned language was a force to be reckoned with. Like most Yup'ik Eskimos, Cane lived by three rules. The first was that thoughts and deeds were inextricably linked. How many times had Cane's grandfather explained that you couldn't properly butcher a moose while you were yammering about which girl in the fifth grad
e had to mail-order for an honest-to-God bra? You had to keep the thought of the moose in your mind, so that you'd make way for them to come back to you another time, during another hunt.

  The second rule was that individual thoughts were less important than the collective knowledge of the elders - in other words, do whatever you're told and stop complaining. But it was the third rule that was the hardest for Daniel to understand: the idea that words were so powerful they had the ability to change someone else's mind .. . even if they remained unspoken. That was why, when the Moravian church moved into the bush and the Reverend told the Yupiit they had to leave fish camp on a Sunday to attend services about Jesus, they agreed, without ever having any real intention of going. What the reverend saw as a blatant lie, the Yup'ik Eskimos saw as a measure of respect: They liked the reverend to much to tell him he was wrong; instead, they just acquiesced and pretended otherwise.

  It was this rule, ultimately, that divided Daniel and Cane.

  “Today's going to be a good day for hunting,” Cane would tell Daniel,

  and Daniel would agree. But the next day Cane would go off with his grandfather for caribou and never ask Daniel to join them. It took years for Daniel to get up the nerve to ask Cane why he wasn't invited. “But I do invite you,” he said, confused. “Every time.”

  Daniel's mother tried to explain it to him: Cane never would have come right out and asked Daniel to go hunting, because Daniel might have had other plans. It would be disrespectful to issue a formal invitation, because simply putting the words out into the world might cause Daniel to change his mind about what he wanted to do the next day, and Cane liked Daniel too much to risk that. When you are thirteen, though, cultural differences hardly matter. What you feel is every minute of the Saturday you spend by yourself, wishing you'd been asked to tag along. What you notice is the loneliness.

  Daniel started to isolate himself, because it hurt less than being pushed away. He never really considered that a Yup'ik boy who couldn't ask him to come hunting might have even more difficulty asking Daniel what he'd done to make him angry. Within two years' time, Daniel had taken to occupying himself vandalizing the school building and getting drunk and stealing snow machines. Cane was just someone Daniel used to know. It wasn't until a year later, when Daniel was standing over Cane's body in the gymnasium and his hands were covered with Cane's blood, that he realized the Yupiit had been right all along. One word might have changed everything. One word might have spread like fire.