by E. Lockhart
It didn’t matter what Jule said or did not say to Brooke anymore. “Let’s go on a hike,” said Jule. “I know a place in the state park. We can drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and it’ll be mad scenic.”
Brooke jangled her car keys in her pocket. “It’s kinda late.”
“Look,” Jule said, “we’ve had a misunderstanding about Immie, and I’m glad you came over. Let’s just go somewhere neutral and talk it out. My apartment is not the best place.”
“I don’t know if I want to talk to you.”
“You showed up early,” said Jule. “You want to talk to me.”
“Okay, we’ll talk it out, hug it out, all that,” said Brooke. “It’ll make Immie happy.” She handed over the keys.
People were stupid when they drank.
Two days before Christmas it was too cold for the convertible, but the top of Brooke’s car was down anyway. Brooke insisted. Jule wore jeans, boots, and a warm wool sweater. Her backpack was in the trunk, and in it were her wallet, a second sweater and a clean T-shirt, a wide-mouth water bottle, a packet of baby wipes, a black garbage bag, and the lion statue.
Brooke took a half-empty bottle of vodka out of her shoulder bag but didn’t actually drink from it. She went to sleep almost immediately.
Jule drove up through the city. By the time they got to the Golden Gate Bridge, she was antsy. The quiet drive was unnerving. She nudged Brooke awake. “The bridge,” she said. “Look.” It loomed above them, orange and majestic.
“People love to kill themselves on this bridge,” said Brooke thickly.
“What?”
“It’s the second most popular suicide bridge in the world,” said Brooke. “I read it somewhere.”
“What’s the first?”
“A bridge on the Yangtze River. I forget the name. I read up on stuff like that,” said Brooke. “People think it’s poetic, to jump off a bridge. That’s why they do it. Whereas, let’s say, killing yourself by bleeding out in a bathtub, that’s just messy. What are you supposed to wear to bleed out in a bathtub?”
“You don’t wear anything.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.” Jule wished she hadn’t engaged Brooke on this topic.
“I don’t want people to see me naked when I’m dead!” yelled Brooke into the air beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. “But I don’t want to wear clothes in the bathtub, either! It’s very awkward!”
Jule ignored her.
“Anyway, they’re building a barrier now, so people can’t jump,” Brooke went on. “Here on the Golden Gate.”
They drove off the bridge in silence and turned toward the park.
Eventually Brooke added: “I shouldn’t have brought that up. I don’t want to give you ideas.”
“I don’t have ideas.”
“Don’t kill yourself,” said Brooke.
“I’m not killing myself.”
“I’m being your friend right now, okay? Something is not normal with you.”
Jule didn’t answer.
“I grew up with very normal, stable people,” Brooke continued. “We acted normal all day long in my family. So normal I wanted to stab my eyes out. So I’m like an expert. And you? You are not normal. You should think about getting help for it, is what I’m saying.”
“You think normal is having a shit-ton of money.”
“No I don’t. Vivian Abromowitz is on full scholarship at Vassar and she’s normal, that witch.”
“You think it’s normal to get what you want all the time,” said Jule. “For things to be easy. But it isn’t. Most people don’t get what they want, like, ever. They have doors shut in their faces. They have to strive, all the time. They don’t live in your magical land of two-seater cars and perfect teeth and traveling to Italy and fur coats.”
“There,” said Brooke. “You proved my point.”
“How?”
“It’s not even normal to say stuff like that. You walked back into Immie’s life after not seeing her for years, and within days you’ve moved into her house, you’re borrowing her stuff, you’re swimming in her effing pool and letting her pay for your haircuts. You went to freaking Stanford, and boo-hoo, you lost your scholarship, but don’t make out like you’re some voice of the effing ninety-nine percent. Nobody is shutting any doors on you, Jule. Also, no one wears fur coats because, hello, that’s not even ethical. I mean, maybe someone’s grandma would, but not a regular person. And I have never said jack about your teeth. Sheesh. You need to learn how to relax and be a human being if you want to have any actual friends and not just people who tolerate you.”
Neither of them said anything for the rest of the drive.
They parked and Jule got her backpack from the trunk. She took the gloves out of her jeans pocket and put them on. “Let’s leave our phones in the trunk,” she said.
Brooke looked at her for a long minute. “Yeah, fine. We’re getting our nature on,” she said, slurring her speech. They locked up the phones and Jule pocketed the car keys. They checked the sign on the edge of the parking lot. Hiking trails were marked in several colors.
“Let’s go to the lookout,” Jule said, pointing to the trail marked in blue. “I’ve been there before.”
“Whatever,” said Brooke.
It was a four-mile hike round-trip. The park was nearly empty because of the cold and the Christmas season, but a few families were leaving as the day came to a close. Tired kids were whining or being carried. Once Brooke and Jule began heading uphill, the path was empty.
Jule felt her pulse increase. She led the way.
“You have a thing for Imogen,” said Brooke, breaking the silence. “Don’t think that makes you special. Everyone has a thing for Imogen.”
“She’s my best friend. That’s not the same as having a thing,” said Jule.
“She’s no one’s best friend. She’s a heartbreaker.”
“Don’t be mean about her. You’re just mad she hasn’t texted you.”
“She has texted me. That’s not the point,” said Brooke. “Listen. When we made friends freshman year, Immie was in my dorm room all the time: in the morning, bringing me a latte before class; dragging me out to movies the film department was screening; wanting to borrow earrings; bringing me Goldfish crackers because she knew I liked them.”
Jule didn’t say anything.
Immie had dragged her out to movies. Immie had bought her chocolate. Immie had brought her coffee in bed, when they lived together.
Brooke went on: “She’d come by every Tuesday and Thursday because we had this early-morning Italian class. And at first, I wouldn’t even be awake. She’d have to wait while I got clothes on. My roommate bitched because Immie was in there so early, so I started setting my phone. I’d get up and be standing outside the door before Imogen got there.
“And then one day, she didn’t come. It was early November, I think. And you know what? She never came again after that. She never brought me a latte or dragged me to the movies. She’d switched over to Vivian Abromowitz. And you know what? I could have been all grade-school about it, Jule. I could have gotten huffy and acted like, ooh, poor me because you can’t have two best friends and wah, wah, wah. But I didn’t. I was nice to the two of them. And we were all friends. And it was fine.”
“Okay.”
Jule hated this story. She hated, too, how she had never understood before that the reason Vivian and Brooke disliked each other was Imogen herself.
Brooke went on: “What I’m saying is, Imogen broke Vivian’s little heart, too. Later. And Isaac Tupperman’s. She led all these different guys on when she was going out with Isaac, and Isaac, of course, got all jealous and insecure. Then Immie was surprised when he broke up with her—but what did she expect, when she hooked up with other guys? She wanted to see if people would lose their cool and obsess over her. And you know what? That is exactly what you’ve done, and exactly what a lot of people did in college. That’s something Imogen likes, because it makes her feel awesome and
sexy, but then you don’t get to be friends any longer. The other way to handle it is, you prove yourself a bigger person. Imogen knows you’re as strong as she is, or maybe even stronger. Then she respects you, and you go on together.”
Jule was silent. This was a new version of the Isaac Tupperman story, Isaac of the Bronx, Coates and Morrison, the poems left on Imogen’s bicycle, the possible pregnancy. Hadn’t Immie looked up at him with wide eyes? She’d been infatuated and then disillusioned—but only after he’d dumped her. It didn’t seem possible she had stepped out on him.
Then, suddenly, it did seem possible. It seemed obvious to Jule now that Imogen—who had felt shallow and second-rate next to Tupperman’s intellect and masculinity—would have made herself feel stronger and more powerful than he was by betraying him.
They kept walking through the woods. The sun began to set.
There was no one else on the path.
“You want to be like Immie, then be like her. Fine,” Brooke said. They had reached a walkway over a ravine. It led to wooden steps built up to a lookout tower that gave a view of the deep valley and the surrounding hillsides. “But you’re not Imogen, you understand?”
“I know I’m not Imogen.”
“I’m not sure you do,” said Brooke.
“None of that is your business.”
“Maybe I’ve made it my business. Maybe I think you’re unstable and the best thing would be for you to back away from Immie and get some help for your mental problems.”
“Tell me this. Why are we out here?” asked Jule. She stood on the steps above Brooke.
Below them was the ravine.
The sun was nearly down.
“Why are we out here, I asked,” Jule said. She said it lightly, swinging her backpack off her shoulder and opening it as if to get out her water bottle.
“We’re going to talk it out, like you said. I want you to stop dicking around with Immie’s life, living off her trust fund, making her ignore her friends, and whatever else you’re doing.”
“I asked you why we’re out here,” said Jule, bent over her backpack.
Brooke shrugged. “Here exactly? In this park? You drove us here.”
“Right.”
Jule hefted the bag that held the lion statue from the Asian Art Museum. She swung once, hard, coming down on Brooke’s forehead with a horrid crack.
The statue didn’t break.
Brooke’s head snapped back. She stumbled on the wooden walkway.
Jule moved forward and hit her again. This time from the side. Blood spurted from Brooke’s head. It splattered across Jule’s face.
Brooke collapsed against the railing, her hands clutching the wooden bars.
Jule dropped the statue and went at Brooke low. She grabbed her around the knees. Brooke kicked out and hit Jule in the shoulder, scrabbling with her hands to regain her grip on the railing. She kicked hard, and Jule’s shoulder popped out, dislocating with a jolt of pain.
Fuck.
Jule’s vision went white for a minute. She lost hold of Brooke, and with her left arm hanging lame, locked her right arm and slammed it up under Brooke’s forearms, making Brooke let go of the railing. Then she bent over and went in low again. She got Brooke’s legs, which scrabbled on the ground, grabbed them, got her good shoulder underneath Brooke’s body, and lurched her up and over.
Everything was still.
Brooke’s silken blond hair plummeted.
There was a dull crack as her body hit the tops of the trees, and another as she landed at the bottom of the rocky ravine.
Jule leaned over the railing. The body was invisible beneath the green.
She looked around. Still no one on the path.
Her shoulder was dislocated. It hurt so much she couldn’t think straight.
She hadn’t bargained on an injury. If she couldn’t move her dislocated arm, she was going to fail, because Brooke was dead and her blood was everywhere and Jule had to change clothes. Now.
Jule forced herself to calm her breathing. Forced her eyes to focus.
Holding her left wrist with her right hand, she lifted the left arm up in a J-movement, pulling away from the body. Once, twice—God, it hurt—but on the third try, the left shoulder popped back in.
The pain disappeared.
Jule had seen a guy do that once, in a martial arts gym. She had asked him about it.
All right, then. She looked down at her sweater. It was splattered with blood. She pulled it off. The shirt underneath was wet, too. She yanked her shirt off and used a clean corner of it to wipe her hands and face. She pulled off her gloves. She took the baby wipes from the backpack and cleaned herself up—chest, arms, neck, hands—shivering in the winter air. She shoved the bloody clothes and wipes into the black garbage bag, tied it shut, and tucked everything into the backpack.
She put on the clean shirt and the clean sweater.
There was blood on the bag that held the statue.
Jule pulled that bag off and turned it inside out so the blood was inside. She put the statue in her backpack and stuffed the dirty bag into her wide-mouth water bottle.
She used the wipes to take spots of blood off the walkway, then stuffed all her trash into the water bottle, too.
She looked around.
The path was empty.
Jule touched her shoulder gingerly. It was okay. She washed her face, ears, and hair four more times with wipes, wishing she’d remembered to bring a compact mirror. She looked over the edge of the bridge, into the ravine.
She could not see Brooke.
She hiked back out along the trail. She felt she could walk forever and never get tired. She saw no one on the path until near the entrance, where she passed four sporty guys wearing Santa hats and holding flashlights, starting up the trail marked in yellow.
At the car, Jule paused.
It should stay here. If she drove it anywhere, it wouldn’t make sense when people found Brooke’s body in the ravine.
Carefully, she got inside. She took out the wipes and began to rub down the emergency brake, then stopped.
No, no. That was the wrong plan. Why hadn’t she thought it through before? It would look bad if there were zero prints in the car. Brooke’s prints should be there. It would seem odd, now that the brake was clean.
Think. Think. The bottle of vodka lay on the floor of the passenger seat. Jule picked it up with a wipe and unscrewed the cap. Then she poured some of the vodka onto the brake, as if it had spilled accidentally. Maybe that would make it seem legit that there were no prints there. She had no idea if crime scene investigators looked at that sort of thing. She didn’t know what they looked at, actually.
Damn.
She got out of the car. She forced herself to think logically. Her own prints weren’t on file anywhere. She had no criminal record. Police would be able to tell that someone else had driven the car, if they looked—but they wouldn’t know it was Jule.
There was no evidence that anyone named Jule West Williams had ever lived in or visited the city of San Francisco.
She popped the trunk and took Brooke’s phone out, as well as her own. Then, still shaking, she locked the car and walked away.
It was a cold night. Jule walked quickly to stay warm. A mile on foot from the park and she was feeling calmer. She dumped the water bottle into a trash can by the side of the road. Farther down, she tossed the bloody clothes in their black plastic bag deep into a dumpster.
Then she kept walking.
The Golden Gate Bridge was ablaze against the night sky. Jule was small beneath it but felt as if a spotlight shone on her from above. She hurled Brooke’s car keys and phone out over the side of the bridge and into the water.
Her life was cinematic. She looked superb in the light from the streetlamps. After the fight, her cheeks were flushed. Bruises were forming underneath her clothes, but her hair looked excellent. And oh, her clothes were so very flattering. Yes, it was true that she was criminally violent. Brutal, even. But
that was her job and she was uniquely qualified for it, so it was sexy.
The moon was a crescent and the wind harsh. Jule sucked in big lungfuls of air and breathed the glamour and pain and beauty of the action-hero life.
Back in the apartment, she took the lion statue out of her backpack and poured bleach on it. Then she ran the shower on it, dried it, and placed it on the mantel.
Imogen would have liked that statue. She loved cats.
Jule bought a plane ticket to London that left from Portland, Oregon, under Imogen’s name. Then she got a taxi to the bus station.
Arriving, she realized she had just missed the nine p.m. bus. The next bus wasn’t until seven in the morning.
As Jule settled down to wait, the adrenaline high of the past few hours seeped away. She bought three packs of peanut M&Ms from a vending machine and sat on top of her bags. Suddenly she was exhausted and afraid.
There were only a couple of other people in the room, all of them using the station for a night’s shelter. Jule sucked on the M&Ms to make them last. She tried to read, but she couldn’t concentrate. After twenty-five minutes, a drunk man sleeping on a bench woke up and began to sing loudly:
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our savior,
Was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we had gone astray.”
Jule knew she had gone way fucking astray. She had killed a stupid loudmouth girl with brutal premeditation. There would never be a savior who could rescue her from whatever had made her do it. She had never had a savior.
That was it. No going back. She was alone in a bone-cold bus station on December 23, listening to a drunk guy and scraping the last of someone’s blood from underneath her nails with the corner of her bus ticket. Other people, good people, were baking gingerbread cookies, eating peppermints, and tying bows on holiday gifts. They were quarreling and decorating and cleaning up after big meals, tipsy from mulled wine, watching uplifting old movies.
Jule was here. She deserved the chill, the loneliness, the drunks and the trash, a thousand worse punishments and tortures.