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.
One word might have saved them both.
* * *
Could you pinpoint the very moment when your life began to fall apart?
For Laura, it seemed like each instance she found had an antecedent. Trixie's rape. Her own affair with Seth. Her unexpected pregnancy. The decision she made to find Daniel after he drew her. The first time she laid eyes on him and knew that everything else she saw from then on would no longer look the same. Disaster was an avalanche, gathering speed with such acceleration that you worried more about getting out of its path, not finding the pebble at its center.
It was easier for Laura to find the moment Trixie's life had been
ruined. It all started, and ended, with Jason Underhill. If she'd never met him, if she'd never dated him, none of this would have happened. Not the rape, not the cutting, not even the suicide attempt. Laura had given it serious thought today: Jason was to blame for all of it. He had been the root of Trixie's deceptions; he had been the reason Laura hadn't been able to see her own daughter clearly.
She lay alone in bed, wide awake. Sleep was out of the question, with Trixie still at the hospital. The doctors had assured Laura that Trixie would be watched like a hawk, that if all was well, they could bring her home tomorrow - but that didn't keep Laura from wondering if she was comfortable, if there was a nurse taking care of her right now.
Daniel wasn't asleep either. She had been listening to his footsteps downstairs, moving like open-ended questions. But now she heard him heading upstairs. A moment later he stood by the side of the bed. “Are you still up?” he whispered.
“I was never asleep.”
“Can I... can I ask you something?”
She kept her eyes trained on the ceiling. “Okay.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“Forgetting?”
Laura understood what he was trying to say. Although talking about what had happened to Trixie was the hardest thing in the world, they had to do it. If they didn't, they ran the risk of losing - by comparison - the memory of who Trixie used to be. It was a catch-22: If you didn't put the trauma behind you, you couldn't move on. But if you did put the trauma behind you, you willingly gave up your claim to the person you were before it happened.
It was why, even when they weren't actively discussing it, the word rape hung like smoke over all of their heads. It was why, even as they were making polite conversation, every other thought in Laura's and Daniel's heads was unfaithful.
“Daniel,” Laura admitted, “I'm afraid all the time.” He sank to his knees, and it took her a moment to realize that he was crying. She could not remember ever seeing Daniel cry - he used to say that he'd used up his allotment of tears as a kid. Laura sat up in bed, the covers falling away from her. She put her hands on Daniel's bowed head and stroked his hair. “Sssh,” she said, and she drew him up onto the bed and into her arms. At first it was about comfort: Laura being able to give; Daniel softening under her hands. But then Laura felt the air move like liquid as Daniel's body pressed against hers, desperate, his actions full of now and need. She felt her pulse jump under his fingers, as she fell back in time, remembering him like this years ago, and herself reacting. Then just as abruptly as Daniel had begun, he stopped. In the dark, she could see only the shine of his eyes. “I'm sorry,” he murmured, backing away.
“Don't be,” she said, and she reached for him.
* * *
It was all Daniel needed to let loose the last thread of restraint.
He laid siege to Laura; he took no quarter. He scratched her skin and bit her throat. He reached for her hands and pinned them over her head. “Look at me,” he demanded, until her eyes flew open and locked on his. “Look at me,” he said again, and he drove himself into her.
Daniel waited until she was underneath him, writhing, poised for each moment when he came into her. As his arms anchored her closer, she threw back her head and let herself break apart. She felt Daniel's hesitation, and his glorious, reckless fall. As his sweat cooled on her own body, Laura traced a message over Daniel's right shoulder blade. S-O-R-R-Y, she wrote, even though she knew that the truths that sneak up behind a person are the ones he's most likely to miss.
Once, the Yupiit say, there was a man who was always quarreling with his wife. They fought over everything. The wife said her husband was lazy. The husband said his wife only wanted to sleep with other men. Finally, the wife went to a shaman in the village and begged to be changed into another creature. Anything but a woman, she said.
The shaman turned her into a raven. She flew off and built a nest, where she mated with other ravens. But every night, she found herself flying back to the village. Now, ravens can't come inside dwellings, so she would sit on the roof and hope to catch a glimpse of her husband. She'd think of reasons for him to come outside.
One night, he stepped through the entry and stood under the stars. Oh, she thought, how lovely you are.
