it again.
Her mother walked outside and immediately sank ankle-deep in snow. She was wearing Trixie's boots, which she must have dug out of the closet wreckage after Trixie had commandeered her own Sorels. “You want help?” her mother asked. Trixie didn't. If she'd wanted help, she would have invited someone outside with her in the first place. But she couldn't for the life of her imagine how she was going to get that stupid belly on top of the snowman's base. “All right,” she conceded. Her mother got on one side of the ball and pushed, while Trixie tried to pull it from the front. Even together, they couldn't budge the weight. “Welcome to the Fourth Circle,” her mother said, laughing.
Trixie fell onto her butt on the snow. Leave it to her mother to
turn this into a classics lesson.
“You've got your tightwads on one side and your greedy folks on the other,” her mother said. “They shove boulders at each other for all eternity.”
“I was kind of hoping to finish this up before then.” Her mother turned. “Why, Trixie Stone. Was that a joke?” Since coming home from the hospital, there had been precious few of those in the household. When a television sitcom came on, the channel was immediately changed. When you felt a smile coming on, you squelched it. Feeling happy didn't seem particularly appropriate, not with everything that had gone on lately. It was as if,
Trixie thought, they were all waiting for someone to wave a magic wand and say, It's okay, now. Carry on.
What if she was the one who was supposed to wave that wand?
Her mother began to sculpt a snow ramp. Trixie fell into place beside her, pushing the middle snowball higher and higher until it tipped onto the bigger base. She packed snow between the seams. Then she lifted the head and perched it at the very top. Her mother clapped... just as snowman listed and fell. His head rolled into one of the basement window gutters; his midsection cracked like an egg. Only the massive base sphere remained intact. Frustrated, Trixie slapped a snowball against the side of it. Her mother watched and then packed her own snowball. Within seconds they were both firing shots at the boulder until it cleaved down the center, until it succumbed to the assault and lay between them in fat iceberg chunks.
By then, Trixie was lying on her back, panting. She had not felt .. . . well, this normal . . . in some time. It occurred to her that had things ended differently a week ago, she might not be doing any of this. She'd been so focused on what she had wanted to get away from in this world she forgot to consider what she might miss.
When you die, you don't get to catch snowflakes on your tongue. You don't get to breathe winter in, deep in your lungs. You can't lie in bed and watch for the lights of the passing town plow. You can't suck on an icicle until your forehead hurts.
Trixie stared up at the dizzy flakes. “I'm kind of glad.”
“About what?”
“That it didn't.. . you know ... work out.” She felt her mother's hand reach over to grab her own. Their mittens were both soaked.
They'd go inside, stick their clothes inside the dryer. Ten minutes later, they'd be good as new.
* * *
Because of the storm, hockey practice had been canceled. Jason came home after school, as per the conditions of his bail, and holed himself up in his bedroom listening to the White Stripes on his iPod. He closed his eyes and executed mental passes to Moss, wrist shots and slapshots and pucks that hit the top shelf. One day, people would be talking about him, and not just because of this rape case. They'd say things like, Oh, Jason Underhill, we always knew he'd make it. They'd put up a replica jersey of his over the mirror behind the town bar, with his name facing out, and the Bruins games would take precedence over any other programming on the one TV mounted in the corner. Jason had a lot of work cut out ahead of him, but he could do it. A year or two postgrad, then some college hockey, and maybe he'd even be like Hugh Jessiman at Dartmouth and get signed in the first round of the NHL draft. Coach had told Jason that he'd never seen a forward with as much natural talent as Jason. He'd said that if you wanted something bad enough, all you had to learn was how to go out and take it.
He was living out his fantasy for the hundredth time when the door to his room burst open. Jason's father strode in, fuming, and yanked the iPod's headphones out of Jason's ears. “What the hell?” Jason said, sitting up.
“You want to tell me what you left out the first time? You want to tell me where you got the goddamned drugs?”
“I don't do drugs,” Jason said. “Why would I do something that's going to screw up my game?”
“Oh, I believe you,” his father said, sarcastic. “I believe you didn't take any of those drugs yourself.”
The conversation was spinning back and forth in directions Jason couldn't follow. “Then why are you flipping out?”
“Because Dutch Oosterhaus called me at work to discuss a little lab report he got today. The one they did on Trixie Stone's blood that proves someone knocked her out by slipping her a drug.” Heat climbed the ladder of Jason's spine.
“You know what else Dutch told me? Now that drugs are in the picture, the prosecutor's got enough evidence to try you as an adult.”
“I didn't . . .”
A vein pulsed in his father's temple. “You threw it all away, Jason. You fucking threw it all away for a small- town whore.”
“I didn't drug her. I didn't rape her. She must have fooled around with that blood sample, because ... because .,.” Jason's voice dropped off. “Jesus Christ... you don't believe me.”
“No one does,” his father said, weary. He reached into his back pocket for a letter that had already been opened and passed it to Jason before leaving the room.
Jason sank down onto his bed. The letter was embossed with a return address for Bethel Academy; the name of the hockey coach had been scrawled above it in pen. He began to read: In lieu of recent circumstances . . .
