“This book will take your breath away…(Picoult's) imagery is thick with ravens and blizzards and other wild things, plus she wisely parallels the Stones' saga with pages from Daniel's latest comic-in-progress (drawn in real life by Dustin Weaver): the story of a man who must rescue his daughter from hell. This book lands, as Picoult might say, like a fat black crow on your chest. Grade: A.”

— Entertainment Weekly

Book 13: The Tenth Circle

The publisher: Atria Books, 2006. When the hardcover of Tenth Circle was released the week of March 17, 2006, it debuted at #2 on the NY Times bestseller list more… (424kb PDF), and was ranked #1 on the Wall Street Journal and Publisher's Weekly bestseller lists! A paperback edition was released in October, 2006.

Got Art? 

Are you a die-hard fan of The Tenth Circle?  Are you looking for an unforgettable gift for someone...or a treat for yourself?  The artist who drew the illustrations in the Tenth Circle is selling his original, one-of-a-kind artwork - the very pages that were used in the production of the novel.  Interested shoppers can find more information at the artist’s web site.  

A Short Synopsis

When Daniel Stone was a child, he was the only white boy in a native Eskimo village where his mother taught, and he was teased mercilessly because he was different. He fought back, the baddest of the bad kids: stealing, drinking, robbing and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush – where he honed his artistic talent, fell in love with a girl and got her pregnant. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself – jettisoning all that anger to become a docile, devoted husband and father. Fifteen years later, when we meet Daniel again, he is a comic book artist. His wife teaches Dante’s Inferno at a local college; his daughter, Trixie, is the light of his life – and a girl who only knows her father as the even-tempered, mild-mannered man he has been her whole life. Until, that is, she is date raped…and Daniel finds himself struggling, again, with a powerlessness and a rage that may not just swallow him whole, but destroy his family and his future.

What others are saying about The Tenth Circle

Nominated for a 2009 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award

“[This] novel's twists and suspense will satisfy the most adrenaline-addicted reader…Picoult must have set her keyboard on fire as she wrote. The energy and tumble-down acceleration is extraordinary.”

—Midwest Book Review

“A compelling read…Picoult is the women's fiction equivalent of Jerry Bruckheimer, and The Tenth Circle has 11th-hour plot twists reminiscent of a CSI episode…engrossing entertainment.”

—Globe & Mail review, Toronto

“Novels and comic books exhibit many differences. But in Jodi Picoult’s “The Tenth Circle,” the reader witnesses a marriage of the two - and it’s a marriage made in heaven...”The Tenth Circle” is strong enough as only a novel. But when coupled with its illustrated counterpart, it becomes a treat for both the mind and the eye.”

—Book Review, AP News Wire

“Picoult takes two hard-hitting subjects - rape and murder - and pulls them apart with such intelligence and insight that you'll never see them as clear-cut issues again. Tender, compelling and brilliant.”

—EVE Magazine, United Kingdom

“This is the kind of book that Book Clubs will be clamoring after for years to come and could form the basis for an unforgettable film.”

—The Brown Bookloft

“The Tenth Circle is absolutely the thought-provoking and topical novel readers have come to expect. What comes as a surprise is just how thoroughly the book twists the reader's heart…Picoult does a bang-up job on the narrative approach she's known for. She leads readers to consider thorny issues around motives and consequences.”

—Denver Post

“As she is known for in her writing, Picoult skillfully twists and turns this story in so many ways, keeping readers wondering how things will turn out until nearly the last, satisfying page.”

—Orlando Sentinel

“Picoult spins fast-paced tales of family dysfunction, betrayal, and redemption… (her) depiction of of these rites of contemporary adolescence is exceptional: unflinching, unjudgmental, utterly chilling. ”

—The Washington Post

“Another gripping, nuanced tale of a family in crisis from bestseller Picoult.”

—PEOPLE

“Jodi Picoult — here's a name almost guaranteed to make booksellers drool. She's an award-winning, bestselling author and a book clubber's dream: each of her twelve novels is meaty, engrossing, and tackles interesting situations or morally complex conundrums with enough twists and turns to keep the most jaded reader engrossed. And if all this weren't enough, she's profitably prolific as well: she cranks out a new book every year, like clockwork. She's also a very attractive woman who's charming and engaging, a publicists' dream, and every new book sets the Simon & Schuster marketing machines on full-throttle. Picoult is quite the tour de force… THE TENTH CIRCLE manages to remain vintage Picoult while demonstrating the author's clear development as a writer — her novel proves that she's willing to take chances, not only through the incorporation of graphic novel elements, but through her unique way of tackling resolutions. Strip away all of the marketing and publicist trappings behind this author's name, and what you'll find is a well-crafted novel and a smart writer who's not afraid to try something different and go out on a limb.”

—Bookreporter.com

“Some of Picoult's best storytelling distinguishes her twisting, metaphor-rich 13th novel (after Vanishing Acts) about parental vigilance gone haywire, inner demons and the emotional risks of relationships …This story of a flawed family on the brink of destruction grips from start to finish.”

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Jodi Picoult's books explore all the shades of gray in a world too often judged in black and white. She does it again in The Tenth Circle”

—The St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“When it comes to the freeze-frame of a family caught in the headlights of loss and irreversible regret, Picoult has no equal.”

—Jacquelyn Mitchard

“When a comic book artist married to a Dante scholar writes a graphic novel, what better title than The Tenth Circle? Picoult's latest novel actually features artwork in a tale that parallels his real life, and readers are drawn into the mystery. What truths will be revealed? And who, ultimately, will find justice? Picoult had this reader up until the very end of this fast-paced tale.”

—Library Journal

“There are no black and whites in Picoult's latest novel, except for the drawings that graphic artist Daniel Stone inks… Picoult's sad, complex novel should appeal to the many readers who have enjoyed her previous works.”

—Booklist

Book club discussion questions for The Tenth Circle

  1. Daniel says, “the real mistake he made...was believing that you could lose someone you loved in an instant, when in reality, it was a process that took months, years...lifetime.” How does this apply to his relationship with his wife? His daughter?
  2. In what way does the graphic novel complement the story that's being told in the narrative novel? Do you believe that there are many different ways to tell a story? To what end does the art in The Tenth Circle support this? Are there spots where the drawn story deviates from what you learn in the written narrative, and if so, is this important?
  3. Jodi Picoult often gives her characters names that are extremely significant to the story. Of what significance is the family name 'Stone'?
  4. In Dante's Inferno, God takes away Lucifer's ability to make choices - his free will - and this is represented as the ultimate hell. Do you agree? Why or why not? What inaction on the part of Daniel can be compared to this?
  5. Each of the main characters in The Tenth Circle makes one significant mistake that comes back to haunt them. What are these mistakes? Who do you think suffers the most for this, and who changes the most as a result?
  6. On page 30, Trixie talks about not controlling her own destiny. Do you believe that we “get what's coming to us”, as Dante suggested...or that we can change our circumstances? In what way do the actions of Trixie, Laura, and Daniel support or refute this?
  7. How does Wildclaw's loss of humanity (p.32) when angered or afraid reflect itself in Daniel's personality and what we know about Daniel?
  8. In both Yup'ik folklore and graphic art, people have the ability to reinvent themselves by morphing into different forms. Daniel, too, has a history of violent behavior that he's successfully repressed...until his daughter's raped. Is it realistic to think that this might be a permanent change, or are older incarnations of personality always simmering just beneath the surface?
  9. How does Trixie's rape affect the fragile web of the Stone family? Do you think they would have been able to grow and move on without a catastrophic event like a rape occurring?
  10. Is Trixie to blame for the set of circumstances in which she finds herself?
  11. On page 94, the judge refuses the attorney's request for house arrest for Jason so that the star player could play hockey. Do you agree with his decision? Do you think this is art imitating true life? Can you give examples.
  12. Dante perceived the circles of hell as a learning process for his central protagonist and for the reader, the former of whom is the Christian everyman whose status as a sinner and need for redemption is reflected in all humans. His nine circles of hell do not include betrayal of self...this is Picoult's invention of a tenth circle. Do you agree that lying to oneself is the worst betrayal of all? How do Daniel, Trixie and Laura's actions support or refute this claim? Does this novel suggest ultimately that it is possible, once you've crossed into that tenth circle, to seek redemption...or are we doomed to make the same mistakes over and over?
  13. What do you think happens to the Stone family after the book ends? Which character, in your opinion, has learned the most...and which has learned the least?
  14. A recurrent theme in many of Picoult's books involves how far a person will go for the sake of love. Does this theme explain the actions of the three protagonists? Does it excuse their actions?

An excerpt from The Tenth Circle 

Laura Stone knew exactly how to go to Hell. 
      She could map out its geography on napkins at
departmental cocktail parties; she was able to recite all of
the passageways and rivers and folds by heart; she was on a
first-name basis with its sinners.  As one of the top Dante
scholars in the country, she taught a course in this very
subject; and had done so every year since being tenured at
Monroe College.  English 364 was also listed in the course
handbook as Burn Baby Burn (or: What the Devil is the
Inferno?), and was one of the most popular courses on campus
in the second trimester even though Dante’s epic poem
– the Divine Comedy – wasn’t funny at all.
 Like her husband Daniel’s artwork, which was neither
comic nor a book, the Inferno covered every genre of pop
culture:  romance, horror, mystery, crime.  And like all of
the best stories, it had at its center an ordinary, everyday
hero who simply didn’t know how he’d ever become
one.  
      Of the three parts of Dante’s masterpiece, the
Inferno was Laura’s favorite to teach – who
better to think about the nature of actions and their
consequences than teeangers?  The story was simple:  over
the course of three days – Good Friday to Easter
Sunday – Dante trekked through the nine levels of
Hell, each filled with sinners worse than the next, until
finally he came through the other side. The poem was full of
ranting and weeping and demons, of fighting lovers and
traitors eating the brains of their victims – in other
words, graphic enough to hold the interest of today’s
college students…and to provide a distraction from
her real life.  
      She regarded the students packing the rows in the
utterly silent lecture hall.  “Don’t
move,” she instructed.  “Not even a
twitch.”  Beside her, on the podium, an egg timer
ticked away one full minute.  She hid a smile as she watched
the undergrads – all of whom suddenly had gotten the
urge to sneeze or scratch their heads or wriggle.  Finally,
the timer buzzed, and the entire class exhaled in unison. 
“Well?” Laura asked.  “How did that
feel?”  
      “Endless,” a student called out.
      “Anyone want to guess how long I timed you
for?”
      There was speculation:  Two minutes.  Five.  
      “Try sixty seconds,” Laura said. 
“Now imagine what it would be like to be encased in
ice for eternity.  Imagine that the slightest movement would
freeze the tears on your face and the water surrounding you.
 God, as Dante saw Him, was all motion and energy – so
the ultimate punishment for Lucifer is to not be able to
move at all in his lake of ice.  No fire, no brimstone
– just the utter inability to take action.”
      That – at its heart – was why Laura loved
this poem…and why, right now, she felt so viscerally
connected to it. Sure, it could be seen as a study of
religion, or politics.  Certainly it was a narrative of
redemption.  But when you stripped it down, this poem was
the story of an ordinary guy in the throes of a midlife
crisis.
      Not unlike Laura herself.
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      As Daniel Stone waited in the long queue of cars
pulling up to the high school, he glanced at the stranger in
the seat beside him and tried to remember when she used to
be his daughter.
      “Traffic’s bad today,” he said to
Trixie, just to fill up the space between them.  
      Trixie didn’t respond.  She fiddled with the
radio, running through a symphony of static and song bites
before punching it off entirely.  Her red hair fell like a
gash over her shoulder; her hands were burrowed in the
sleeves of her North Face jacket.  She turned to stare out
the window, lost in a thousand thoughts, not a single one of
which Daniel could guess.
      These days it seemed like the words between them were
only there to better outline the silences.  Daniel
understood better than anyone else that, in the blink of an
eye, you might reinvent yourself.  He understood that the
person you were yesterday might not be the person you are
tomorrow.  But this time, he was the one who wanted to hold
onto what he had, instead of letting go.  
      “Dad,” she said, and she flicked her eyes
ahead, where the car in front of them was moving forward. 
      It was a complete cliché, but Daniel had
assumed that the traditional distance that came between
teenagers and their parents would pass by him and Trixie. 
They had a different relationship, after all; closer than
most daughters and their fathers, simply because he was the
one she came home to every day.  He had done his due
diligence in her bathroom medicine cabinet and her desk
drawers and underneath her mattress – there were no
drugs, no accordion-pleated condoms.  Trixie was just
growing away from him, and somehow that was even worse.
      This September – and here was another
cliché – Trixie had gotten a boyfriend.  Daniel
had had his share of fantasies:  how he’d be casually
cleaning a pistol when she was picked up for her first date;
how he’d buy a chastity belt on the Internet. In none
of those scenarios, though, had he ever really considered
how the sight of a boy with his proprietary hand around his
daughter’s waist might make him want to run until his
lungs burst.  And in none of these scenarios had he seen
Trixie’s face fill with light when he came to the
door, the same way she’d once looked at Daniel. 
Overnight, the little girl who vamped for his home videos
now moved like a vixen when she wasn’t even trying. 
Overnight, his daughter’s actions and habits stopped
being cute, and started being something terrifying.
      His wife reminded him that the tighter he kept Trixie
on a leash, the more she’d fight the chokehold.  After
all, Laura pointed out, rebelling against the system was
what led her to start dating Daniel.  So when Trixie and
Jason went out to a movie, Daniel forced himself to wish her
a good time.  When she escaped to her room to talk to her
boyfriend privately on the phone, he did not hover at the
door.  He gave her breathing space; and somehow, that had
become an immeasurable distance.
      “Hello?!” Trixie said, snapping Daniel out
of his reverie.  The cars in front of them had pulled away;
the crossing guard was furiously miming to get Daniel to
drive up. 
      “Well,” he said.  “Finally.”
      Trixie pulled at the door handle.  “Can you let
me out?”
      Daniel fumbled with the power locks. 
“I’ll see you at three,” he said.
      “I don’t need to be picked up.” 
      Daniel tried to paste a wide smile on his face.
“Jason driving you home?”
      Trixie gathered together her backpack and jacket. 
“Yeah,” she said.  “Jason.” She
slammed the truck door and blended into the mass of
teenagers funneling toward the front door of the high
school.  
      “Trixie!” Daniel called out the window, so
loud that several other kids turned around with her. 
Trixie’s hand was curled into a fist against her
chest, as if she was holding tight to a secret.  She looked
at him, waiting.  
      There was a game they had played when Trixie was
little, and would pore over the comic book collections he
kept in his studio for research when he was drawing. Best
transportation? she’d challenge, and Daniel would say
the Batmobile.  No way, Trixie had said.  Wonder
Woman’s invisible plane.  
      Best costume?
      Wolverine, Daniel said; but Trixie voted for the Dark
Phoenix.  
      Now, he leaned toward her.  “Best
superpower?” he asked.
      It had been the only answer they agreed upon:  Flight.
 But this time, Trixie looked at him as if he were crazy to
be bringing up a stupid game from a thousand years ago. 
“I’m going to be late,” she said, and she
started to walk away.
      Cars honked, but Daniel didn’t put the truck
into gear.  He closed his eyes, trying to remember what he
had been like at her age.  At fourteen, Daniel had been
living in a different world, and doing everything he could
to fight, lie, cheat, steal, and brawl his way out of it. 
At fourteen, he had been someone Trixie had never seen her
father be.  Daniel had made sure of it.
      “Daddy.”
      Daniel turned to find Trixie standing beside his
truck.  She curled her hands around the lip of the open
window; the glitter in her pink nailpolish catching the sun.
 “Invisibility,” she said, and then she melted
into the crowd behind her.
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      Trixie Stone had been a ghost for fourteen days, seven
hours, and thirty-six minutes now, not that she was
officially counting.  This meant that she walked around
school and smiled when she was supposed to; she pretended to
listen when the algebra teacher talked about commutative
properties; she even sat in the cafeteria with the other
ninth graders.  But while they laughed at the lunch
ladies’ hairstyles (or lack thereof), Trixie studied
her hands and wondered whether anyone else noticed that if
the sun hit your palm a certain way, you could see right
through the skin, to the busy tunnels with blood moving
around inside.  Corpuscles.  She slipped the word into her
mouth and tucked it high against her cheek like a sucking
candy, so that if anyone happened to ask her a question she
could just shake her head, unable to speak.
      Kids who knew (and who didn’t? the news had
traveled like a forest fire) were waiting to see her lose
her careful balance.  Trixie had even overheard one girl
making a bet about when she might fall apart in a public
situation. High school students were cannibals; they fed off
your broken heart while you watched, and then shrugged and
offered you a bloody, apologetic smile.
      Visine helped.  So did Preparation H under the eyes,
as disgusting as it was to imagine.  Trixie would get up at
5:30 in the morning and carefully select a double-layer of
long-sleeved t-shirts and a pair of flannel pants; gather
her hair into a messy ponytail.  It took an hour to make
herself look like she’d just rolled out of bed; like
she’d been losing no sleep at all over what had
happened.  These days, her entire life was about making
people believe she was someone she wasn’t anymore.
      Trixie crested the hallway on a sea of noise –
lockers gnashing like teeth; guys yelling out afternoon
plans over the heads of underclassmen; change being dug out
of pockets for vending machines.  She turned Trixie turned
the corner and saw them:  Jessica Ridgeley, with her long
sweep of blonde hair and her dermatologist’s-daughter
skin, was leaning against the door of the AV room kissing
Jason.  
      He was wearing the faded denim shirt she’d
borrowed once when he spilled Coke on her while they were
studying; and his black hair was a mess.  You need a part,
she used to tell him, and he’d laugh.  I’ve got
better ones, he’d say.  
      She could smell him -- shampoo and peppermint gum and
believe it or not, the cool white mist of utter ice.  It was
the same smell on the t-shirt she’d hidden in the
bottom of her pajama drawer, the one he didn’t know
she had, the one she wrapped around her pillow each night
before she went to sleep.  It kept the details in her
dreams:  a callus on the edge of Jason’s wrist, rubbed
raw by his hockey glove.  The flannel-covered sound of his
voice when she called him on the phone and woke him.  The
way he would twirl a pencil around the fingers of one hand
when he was nervous, or thinking too hard.
      He was doing that, she remembered, when he broke up
with her.
      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 only
appeared 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 criss-cross
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 that 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,” Zephyr said.  “You
can’t keep crying over Jason.  He knows you’re
obsessed.”  She 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 it she could dig inside for a pack of
M&Ms.  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?”
      “Sure,” Zephyr said.  “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, they why are you
keeping track?”
      “Once I hit a hundred, I can send away for the
free decoder ring,” Zephyr joked  “I don’t
know.  I guess it’s just so I remember where I
started.”   
      Trixie opened her palm and surveyed the M&Ms.  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 slammed into 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 leçon to teach
her something she’d known for years: Given anything
negative or uncertain, there were rules that had to be
followed.
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      “You have to do something pretty awful, to wind
up in the bottom level of Hell,” Laura said, surveying
her class.  “So what did Lucifer do to tick God
off?”
        	It had been a simple disagreement, Laura
thought.  Like almost every other rift between people,
that’s how it started.  “Well, one day God
turned to his right-hand-man, Lucifer, and said that he was
thinking of giving those cool little toys he created –
namely, people – the right to choose how they acted. 
Free will.  Lucifer thought that power should belong only to
angels.  He staged a little coup; and he lost big
time.”  
      Laura started walking through the aisles – one
of the caveats of free Internet access at the college was
that kids used lecture hours to shop online and download
porn, if the professor wasn’t vigilant.  “What
makes the Inferno so brilliant are the contrapassos –
the punishments that fit the crime.  In Dante’s mind,
sinners pay in a way that reflects what they did wrong on
earth.  Lucifer didn’t want man to have choices; so he
himself winds up paralyzed.  Fortunetellers walk around with
their heads on backward.  Adulterers end up joined together
for eternity, without getting any satisfaction from
it.”  Laura shook off the image that rose in her mind.
 “Apparently,” she joked, “the clinical
trials for Viagra were done in Hell.”
      Her class laughed as she headed toward her podium. 
“In the 1300s -- before Italians could tune into The
Matrix or Star Wars or Lord of the Rings -- this poem was
the ultimate battle of good versus evil,” she said.
“I like the word evil.  Scramble it a little, and you
get vile, and live.  Good, on the other hand, is just a
command to go do.”  
      The four graduate students who would lead the class
sections for this course were all sitting in the front row
with their computers balanced on their knees.  Well, three
of them were.  There was Alpha, the self-christened
retro-feminist, which as far as Laura could tell meant that
she gave a lot of speeches about how modern women had been
driven so far from the home they no longer felt comfortable
inside it.  Beside her, Aine scrawled on the inside of one
alabaster arm – most likely her own poetry.  Naryan,
who could type faster than Laura could breathe, looked up
over his laptop at her, a crow poised for a crumb.  Only
Seth sprawled in his chair, his eyes closed; his long hair
spilling over his face.  Was he snoring?  
      She felt a flush rise up the back of her neck; and
immediately tried to will it away.  But physical responses
didn’t always knuckle down to rational thought, Laura
knew.  She turned her back on Seth Dummerston and glanced up
at the clock in the back of the lecture hall.  “Read
through the fifth canto,” Laura instructed. 
“Monday, we’ll be talking about poetic justice,
versus divine retribution. Have a nice weekend,
folks.”  
      The students gathered their backpacks and laptops,
chattering about the bands that were playing near campus
later on, and the B__ party that had brought in a truckload
of real sand for Caribbean Night.  They wound scarves around
their necks like bright bandages and filed out of the
lecture hall, already dismissing Laura’s class from
their minds.
      Laura didn’t need to prepare for her lecture
Monday; she was living it.  Be careful what you wish for,
she thought.  You just might get it.
      Six months ago, she had been so sure that what she was
doing was right – a liaison so natural that stopping
it was more criminal than letting it flourish.  When his
hands roamed over her, she transformed:  no longer Professor
Laura Stone, but a woman who felt before she reasoned.  But
now, when Laura thought of what she had done, she wanted to
blame a tumor, temporary insanity, anything but her own
selfishness.  Now, all she wanted was damage control:  to
break it off, to slip back into the seam of her family
before they had a chance to realize how long she’d
been missing.
      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.
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      If he had the choice, Daniel would draw a villain
every time.
      There just wasn’t all that much you could do
with a hero.  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.  Good and evil were like all of those other
bipolar terms that were defined by their opposite:  light
and dark, full and empty, rich and poor.  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 a
face behind the bright eyes and beak.  
      Daniel was a comic book penciller.  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, who 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 comic – 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 come to Marvel with 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 GameBoy SPs during their business class
flights.  Adults who would immediately identify with
Wildclaw’s alter ego, Duncan:  a forty-year-old 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 comic book followed Duncan, an
ordinary father searching for his daughter, who had been
stolen away into Dante’s levels of Hell.  When
provoked, through rage or fear, he’d 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 in drawing the hawk
– he could do that in his sleep – it was in
making sure the reader saw the human behind it.  It was not
new to have a hero who morphed into an animal – but,
then, Daniel had come by it honestly.  He’d grown up
as the only white boy in a native Alaskan village where his
mother was a schoolteacher.  In Akiak, people spoke freely
of children who went to live with seals; of men who shared a
home with polar 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.  There was no firm
line between man and animal -- an animal was simply a
non-human person, 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.  Cane’s grandfather had
taken it upon himself to teach the kas’saq how to hunt
and fish and learn everything else that he would really need
to know.  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 kas’saq, 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 that 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 – one who coached soccer and grilled burgers
and mowed the lawn – a man you’d never expect
had been accused of something so awful, 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 the Duncan-the-man, instead
of the 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.
·   ·   ·   ·   ·   ·
      Trixie wasn’t lying, not really.  She had told
her father she was going to her best friend Zephyr’s
house, and she was.  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 had come, including some hockey
players.  
      Like Jason.
      Zephyr had laid out the guidelines for Trixie’s
surefire success that night:  First, look hot.  Second,
drink whenever, whatever.  Third – and most
importantly – 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.
      By now, the party had wound down.  Only four people
remained:  Zephyr and Trixie, Jason, and his best friend
Moss, another hockey player.    They had been playing strip
poker 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,” she said.  “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 had been 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:  the two of hearts, the six of diamonds, a
queen of clubs, a three of clubs, and the 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 E.S.P., 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
macramé anklet.  A flush rose up her shoulders
– her bare shoulders – onto her face.  “I
fold.”
      “You can’t fold after the game,”
Moss said.
      She swallowed hard and stood up.  Flirting with other
guys was one thing; being a total slut was another.  
      “Rules are rules,” Moss said.
      Jason pushed away from the wall and walked closer. 
“Give her a break, Moss.”
      “I think she’d rather have something
else...” 
      “Leave me alone,” 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.
      “I’ll pinch-strip for her,” Zephyr
suggested, leaning into to Moss. 
      But at that moment, Trixie looked at Jason, and
remembered why she had suggested this game 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 over and over
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 her, 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.”
      Zephyr threaded her fingers through his.  “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 home?”
      Trixie wiped her eyes, a smear of mascara coming off
on the heel of her hand.  She could only imagine how awful
she looked right now.  “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 snowmachine 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 4:32 AM –
and Laura hadn’t come home.  He walked into the hall,
flipping light switches as he passed.  “Laura,”
he called again, “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 was 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. 
“Daddy,” she said, and she started to cry.
      “Did something happen at Zephyr’s?” 
      Trixie nodded.  She opened her mouth to speak, but
then pressed her lips together; shaking 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.”
illustration by Dustin Weaver