The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  “Have you happened to read the latest Lying in the Gutters?” Paulie asked.

  He was referring to an online trade gossip column by Rich Johnston. The title was a double entendre—gutters were the spaces between panels, the structure that made a comic illustration a comic illustration. Johnston encouraged “gutterati” to send him scoop to post in his articles, and “guttersnipes” to spread the word across the Internet. With the phone crooked against his shoulder, Daniel pulled up the Web page on his computer and scanned the headlines.

  A Story That’s Not About Marvel Editorial, he read.

  The DC Purchase of Flying Pig Comics That Isn’t Going to Happen.

  You Saw It Here Second: In The Weeds, the new title from Crawl Space, will be drawn by Evan Hohman . . . but the pages are already popping up on eBay.

  And on the very bottom: Wildclaw Sheathed?

  Daniel leaned toward the screen. I understand that Daniel Stone, It Kid of the Moment, has drawn . . . count ’em, folks . . . ZERO pages toward his next Tenth Circle deadline. Was the hype really just a hoax? What good’s a great series when there’s nothing new to read?

  “This is bullshit,” Daniel said. “I’ve been drawing.”

  “How much?”

  “It’ll get done, Paulie.”

  “How much?”

  “Eight pages.”

  “Eight pages? You’ve got to get me twenty-two by the end of the week if it’s going to get inked on time.”

  “I’ll ink it myself if I have to.”

  “Yeah? Will you run it off on Xerox machines and take it to the distributor too? For God’s sake, Danny. This isn’t high school. The dog isn’t allowed to eat your homework.” He paused, then said, “I know you’re a last-minute guy, but this isn’t like you. What’s going on?”

  How do you explain to a man who’d made a life out of fantasy that sometimes reality came crashing down? In comics, heroes escaped and villains lost and not even death was permanent. “The series,” Daniel said quietly. “It’s taking a little bit of a turn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The story line. It’s becoming more . . . family oriented.”

  Paulie was silent for a moment, thinking this over. “Family’s good,” he mused. “You mean a plot that would bring parents and their kids together?”

  Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I hope so,” he said.

  • • •

  Trixie was systematically removing all traces of Jason from her bedroom. She tossed into the trash the first note he’d passed her in class. The goofy reel of pictures they’d taken at a booth at Old Orchard Beach. The green felt blotter on her desk, where she could feel the impression of his name, after writing it dozens of times on paper.

  It was when she went to throw the blotter out in the recycle bin that she saw the newspaper, the page open to the letter her parents had not wanted her to see.

  “If the town of Bethel was to pass judgment on this case,” Trixie read, “Jason Underhill would surely be found innocent.”

  What they hadn’t said, in that awful editorial letter, was that this town had already tried and judged the wrong person. She ran upstairs again, to her computer, and connected to the Internet. She looked up the Web page for the Portland Press Herald and started to type a rebuttal letter.

  To Whom It May Concern, Trixie wrote.

  I know it is the policy of your paper to keep victims who are minors anonymous. But I’m one of those minors, and instead of having people guess, I want them to know my name.

  She thought of a dozen other girls who might read this, girls who had been too scared to tell anyone what had happened to them. Or the dozen girls who had told someone and who could read this and find the courage they needed to get through one more day of the hell that was high school. She thought of the boys who would think twice before taking something that wasn’t theirs.

  My name is Trixie Stone, she typed.

  She watched the letters quiver on the page; she read the spaces between the words—all of which reminded her that she was a coward. Then she hit the delete button.

  • • •

  The phone rang just as Laura walked into the kitchen. By the time she’d picked up, so had Daniel on an upstairs connection. “I’m looking for Laura Stone,” the caller said, and she dropped the glass she was holding into the sink.

  “I’ve got it,” Laura said. She waited for Daniel to hang up.

  “I miss you,” Seth replied.

  She didn’t answer right away; she couldn’t. What if she hadn’t picked up the phone? Would Seth have started chatting up Daniel? Would he have introduced himself? “Do not ever call here again,” Laura whispered.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Her heart was beating so hard she could barely hear her own voice. “I can’t.”

  “Please. Laura. It’s important.”

  Daniel walked into the kitchen and poured himself some water. “Please take me off your call list,” Laura said, and she hung up.

  • • •

  In retrospect Laura realized that she’d dated Daniel through osmosis, taking a little of his recklessness and making it part of herself. She broke up with Walter and began sleeping through classes. She started smoking. She peppered Daniel with questions about the past he wouldn’t discuss. She learned how her own body could be an instrument, how Daniel could play a symphony over her skin.

  Then she found out she was pregnant.

  At first, she thought that the reason she didn’t tell Daniel was because she feared he’d run. Gradually, though, she realized that she hadn’t told Daniel because she was the one considering flight. Reality kicked at Laura with a vengeance, now that responsibility had caught up to her. At twenty-four years old, what was she doing staying up all night to bet on cockfights in the basement of a tenement? What good would it be in the long run if she could lay claim to finding the best tequila over the border but her doctoral thesis was dead in the water? It had been one thing to flirt with the dark side; it was another thing entirely to set down roots there.

  Parents didn’t take their baby trolling the streets after midnight. They didn’t live out of the back of a car. They couldn’t buy formula and cereal and clothes with the happenstance cash that dribbled in from sketches done here and there. Although Daniel could currently pull Laura like a tide to the moon, she couldn’t imagine them together ten years from now. She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someone with whom she could spend a lifetime.

  When Laura broke up with Daniel, she convinced herself she was doing both of them a favor. She did not mention the baby, although she had known all along she would keep it. Sometimes she’d find herself losing hours at a time, wondering if her child would have the same pale wolf-eyes as its father. She threw out her cigarettes and started wearing sweater sets again and driving with her seat belt fastened. She folded Daniel neatly away in her mind and pretended not to think about him.

  A few months later, Laura came home to find Daniel waiting at her condo. He took one look at her maternity top and then, furious, grabbed her by her upper arms. “How could you not tell me about this?”

  Laura panicked, wondering if she’d misinterpreted the jagged edge of his personality all along. What if he wasn’t just wild, but truly dangerous? “I figured it was best if—”

  “What were you going to tell the baby?” Daniel said. “About me?”

  “I . . . hadn’t gotten that far.”

  Laura watched him carefully. Daniel had turned into someone she couldn’t quite recognize. This wasn’t just some Bad Boy out to buck the system—this was someone so deeply upset that he’d forgotten to cover the scars.

  He sank down onto the front steps. “My mother told me that my dad died before I was born. But when I was eleven, the mail plane brought a letter addressed to me.” Daniel glanced up. “You don’t get money from ghosts.”

  Laura crouched do