“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 upuntil 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 lecon to teach her something she'd known for years: Given anything negative or uncertain, there were rules 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 had 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 forty-something 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 hawkhe 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.