Genuine Fraud

by E. Lockhart

  “You shouldn’t go back to the Vineyard because you feel obligated to Forrest, of all people,” said Jule.

  “I love Forrest.”

  “Then why are you lying to him all the time?” snapped Jule. “Why are you here with me? Why are you still thinking about Isaac Tupperman? That’s not how you act when you’re in love. You don’t leave a person in the middle of the night and expect they’ll be glad when you turn up again. You don’t get to leave them like that.”

  “You’re jealous of Forrest. I get that. But I’m not some doll you can play with and not share.” Immie spoke harshly. “I used to think you liked me for myself—without my money, without anything. I thought we were alike and that you understood me. It was easy to tell you things. But more and more, I feel like you have this idea of me, Imogen Sokoloff”—she said her name as if it were in italics—“and it’s not who I am. You have this idea of a person you like. But it’s not me. You just want to wear my clothes and read my books and play pretend with my money. It’s not a real friendship, Jule. It’s not a real friendship when I pay for everything and you borrow everything and it’s still not enough. You want all my secrets, and then you hold them over me. I feel sorry for you, I do. I like you—but you’ve become, like, an imitation of me half the time. I’m sorry beyond sorry to have to say this, but you—”

  “What?”

  “You don’t add up. You keep changing the details of the stories you tell, and it’s like you don’t even know it. I should never have asked you to come stay with us in the Vineyard house. It was good for a while, but now I feel used, and even lied to, somehow. I need to get away from you. That’s the truth.”

  The sense of dizziness increased.

  Immie couldn’t be saying what she was saying.

  Jule had been doing whatever Imogen wanted for weeks and weeks. She had left Immie alone when she wanted to be alone, had gone shopping when Immie wanted to go shopping. She had tolerated Brooke, tolerated Forrest. Jule had been a listener when required, a storyteller when required. She had adapted to the environment and learned all the codes of behavior for Immie’s world. She had kept her mouth shut. She had read hundreds of pages of Dickens.

  “I’m not my clothes,” Imogen said. “I’m not my money. You want me to be this person—”

  “I don’t want you to be anything that’s not yourself,” interrupted Jule. “I don’t.”

  “But you do,” said Imogen. “You want me to pay attention to you when I don’t feel like it. You want me to be beautiful and effortless, when some days I feel ugly and things come hard. You set me up on a throne and you want me to always make nice food and read great literature and be golden with everyone, but that isn’t me, and it’s exhausting. I don’t want to dress up and perform this idea you have of me.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “The weight of it is enormous, Jule. It smothers me. You’re pushing me to be something to you, and I don’t want to be it.”

  “You’re my closest friend.” It was the truth, and it came out of Jule’s chest, loud and plaintive. Jule had always skimmed past people. They weren’t hers; they never made a mark on her, and she would miss no one. Jule had told a hundred lies to make Immie love her. She deserved that love in exchange for them.

  Immie shook her head. “After a couple weeks at my place this summer? Your closest friend? Not even possible. I should have asked you to leave after the first weekend.”

  Jule stood. Immie was sitting on the edge of the front of the boat.

  “What did I do to make you hate me?” Jule asked her. “I don’t understand what I did.”

  “You didn’t do anything! I don’t hate you.”

  “I want to know what I did wrong.”

  “Look. I only asked you to come with me because I wanted you to keep quiet,” said Imogen. “I asked you here to shut you up. There, that’s it.”

  They were silent. That sentence stood between them: I asked you here to shut you up.

  Imogen went on: “I can’t take this trip anymore. I can’t take you borrowing my clothes and looking at me the way you do, like I’m never enough and you’re threatening me and you want me to care so much for you. I don’t.”

  Jule didn’t think, couldn’t think.

  She picked up an oar from the bottom of the boat. She swung it, hard.

  The paddle end hit Imogen in the skull. Sharp edge first.

  Immie crumpled. The vessel rocked wildly. Jule stepped forward and Immie’s face turned up at her. Immie looked surprised, and Jule felt a moment of triumph: the opponent had underestimated her.

  She brought the oar down again on that angel face. The nose cracked, and the cheekbones. One of the eyes bulged and gushed. Jule hit a third time and the noise was terrific, loud and somehow final. Imogen’s jaw and the entitlement and beauty and uncaring self-importance, all of it was smashed by the power of Jule’s right arm. Jule was the fucking victor, and for a quick moment it felt glorious.

  Immie slid off her perch into the water. The boat tipped as her weight fell off. Jule stumbled back, hitting her hip hard against the side.

  Immie splashed twice, struggling. Gasping. Her eyes were filled with blood. It leaked out into the turquoise water. Her white shirt floated out around her.

  The feeling of triumph waned and Jule jumped into the sea, grabbing Immie by the shoulder. She wanted a response.

  Immie owed her a response.

  They weren’t done yet, damn it. Immie couldn’t run away. “What do you have to say to me?” Jule cried, treading water and lifting Immie up as best she could. “What do you have to say to me now?” Blood ran down her arms from Immie’s face. “Because I’m not your fucking pet, and I’m not your fucking friend anymore, either, you hear?” Jule shouted. “You look the fuck down on me, but I’m the strong one, I’m the fucking strong one here. Do you see, Immie? Do you see?”

  Jule tried to turn Immie over, to keep her face in the air, to keep her breathing, and listening, but the wounds were enormous. Imogen’s face was pulpy and leaking blood from the ear, from the nose, from the smashed side of her cheek. Her body jerked and shook. Her skin was slippery, so slippery. She threw her limbs around, hitting Jule in the face with the back of a flailing hand.

  “What the fuck do you have to say now?” Jule said again, begging. “What is it that you want to tell me?”

  Imogen Sokoloff’s body jerked once more, and then grew still.

  The blood pooled around them both.

  Jule climbed back in the boat and time stopped.

  An hour must have passed. Maybe two. Maybe only a couple of minutes.

  No fight had ever gone like this. It had always been action, heroics, defense, competition. Sometimes revenge. This was different. There was a body in the sea. The edge of a small ear, triple-pierced. The buttons on the cuff of the shirt, a cool blue against the white linen.

  Jule had loved Immie Sokoloff as well as she knew how to love anyone. She really had.

  But Immie hadn’t wanted it.

  Poor Immie. Beautiful, special Immie.

  Jule’s stomach heaved. She gagged and gagged over the side of the boat. She clutched the edge, thinking she was being sick, her shoulders shaking. She heaved, but nothing came up, and nothing came up. It went on for a minute or two before she realized she was crying.

  Her cheeks were slick with tears.

  She had not meant to hurt Imogen.

  No, she had.

  No, she hadn’t.

  She wished she had not.

  She wished it could be undone. She wished she were a different human in a different body with a different life. She wished Immie had loved her back, and she sobbed because it would never happen now.

  She reached out and took Immie’s wet, limp hand. She held it, leaning far over the edge of the boat.

  There was a sound from an airplane overhead.

  Jule dropped Immie’s hand and swallowed her tears. Her instinct for self-preservation kicked in.

  She
was quite far out to sea. A twenty-minute boat ride from Culebra, and ten minutes from Culebrita. Jule touched her hand to the water. There was a current running toward the open ocean from the well-traveled channel between the two islands. She pulled Immie’s hand toward her until she was close enough that she could loop a rope underneath the arms, making sure to keep it loose so it wouldn’t leave a mark. The rope was rough, and tying it was awkward. Jule’s palms were sore with it, the skin rubbing off. It took several tries before she got it into a knot that would hold.

  She started the engine and motored slowly out in the direction of the open water, following the current. When the sea grew dark and deep, when they were well outside the traveled way between Culebra and Culebrita, Jule untied the rope and let Imogen go.

  The body sank very, very slowly.

  Jule rinsed the rope and scrubbed it with a brush she found in a small box of supplies. Her hands were raw and bleeding slightly, but otherwise she was unmarked. She coiled the rope neatly and put it back where it belonged in the boat. She scrubbed and rinsed the oar.

  Then she motored back.

  —

  “Miss Sokoloff?” The clerk in the lobby waved at Jule.

  Jule stopped and looked at him.

  He thought she was Imogen. No one had mistaken her for Imogen until now.

  They didn’t look that much alike, but of course they were two young white women, short, with cropped hair and freckles. They had the same East Coast inflection to their speech. They might pass for each other.

  “There’s a package that came for you, Miss Sokoloff,” said the clerk, smiling. “I have it right here.”

  Jule smiled back. “You’re made of sugar,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  SECOND WEEK OF SEPTEMBER, 2016

  MENEMSHA, MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS

  Six days before Jule took that package, the cleaner didn’t show up for work at Immie’s house on Martha’s Vineyard. His name was Scott. He was maybe twenty-four, older than Immie, Jule, Brooke, and even Forrest, but Imogen still called him the cleaner.

  Scott had been recommended by the owners of the rental house to do yard work and housekeeping. The pool and hot tub needed maintenance. The house was airy and windowed, with double-height ceilings in the living and dining rooms. Six skylights, five bedrooms. Decks in front and back. Rosebushes and other plantings. It was a lot to keep clean.

  Scott had a wide, open face and a flat nose. He was white, with pink cheeks, a square face, and unruly dark hair. He had narrow hips and serious muscles in his arms. He usually wore a baseball cap and no shirt.

  When Jule first met Scott, she couldn’t quite tell what he was doing there. He was simply in the kitchen, cleaning the floor with a mop and a bucket. He seemed no different from Forrest and Immie’s various temporary island friends, but here he was, naked to the waist, doing housework. “Hi, I’m Jule,” she said, standing in the doorway.

  “Scott,” he said, still mopping.

  “You coming to the beach?” she had asked.

  “Ha, no. I’m good here. I’m Imogen’s cleaner.” His accent was general American.

  “Oh, I see.” Jule wondered if Imogen talked to the cleaner like a regular person, or if Scott was supposed to be invisible. She didn’t know what the codes of behavior were yet. “I’m Immie’s friend from high school.”

  He didn’t say anything else.

  Jule watched him for a bit. “You want a drink?” she asked. “There’s Coke and Diet Coke.”

  “I should keep working. Imogen doesn’t like me to sit around.”

  “She’s that tight?”

  “She knows what she wants. I gotta respect that,” he said. “And she pays me.”

  “But do you want a Coke?”

  Scott got on his knees and sprayed cleaning fluid in the area underneath the dishwasher, where dirt collected. Then he scrubbed at it with a rough sponge. The muscles of his back shone with sweat. “She doesn’t pay me to take stuff out of her fridge,” he finally answered.

  In later days, it became clear that Scott was not precisely supposed to be invisible, because he was in fact so decorative that nobody could possibly ignore his presence, but no one talked to him beyond a hello. Immie just said “hey” when she saw him, though her eyes tracked his body. Scott scrubbed the toilets and took out the trash and straightened up messes people left in the living room. Jule never offered him a Coke again.

  The day Scott didn’t show up was a Friday. Friday mornings he usually cleaned the kitchen and bathrooms, then watered the lawn. He was out of the house by eleven a.m., so no one thought too much of his absence.

  The next day, however, he didn’t show up, either. On Saturdays he cleaned the pool and did garden maintenance. Immie always left him cash for the previous week’s work on the kitchen counter. The cash was there as usual, but Scott never came.

  Jule walked downstairs, dressed to work out. Brooke was sitting on the kitchen counter with a bowl of grapes. Forrest and Immie were eating granola with heavy cream and raspberries at the dining table. The sink was full of dishes. “Where’s the cleaner?” Brooke called into the dining room as Jule poured herself a glass of water.

  “He’s annoyed with me,” answered Immie.

  “I’m annoyed with him,” said Forrest.

  “I’m annoyed, too,” called Brooke. “I want him to wash my grapes, strip down, and lick my whole body from head to toe. And yet he is still not doing that. He’s not even here. I don’t know what went wrong.”

  “Very funny,” said Forrest.

  “He’s everything I want in a guy,” said Brooke. “He’s built, he keeps his mouth shut, and unlike you”—she popped a grape in her mouth—“he does dishes.”

  “I do dishes,” said Forrest.

  Immie laughed. “You do like a single dish that you ate out of.”

  Forrest blinked and went back to the previous topic. “Did you call him yet?”

  “No. He wants a raise and I won’t give it to him,” Immie said smoothly, glancing up at Jule and meeting her eyes. “He’s fine, but he’s been late lots of times. I hate waking up to a messy kitchen.”

  “Did you fire him?” asked Forrest.

  “No.”

  “After you talked about the raise, did he say he’d keep working here?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure.” Immie stood up to clear her mug and bowl.

  “How can you not be sure?”

  “I thought so. But I guess he’s not,” Immie said from the kitchen.

  “I’m calling him,” said Forrest.

  “No, don’t.” She came back into the dining room.

  “Why not?” Forrest picked up Immie’s phone. “We need a cleaner, and he already knows the job. Maybe there was a misunderstanding.”

  “I said, don’t call him,” snapped Immie. “That’s my phone you’re holding, and it is not your house.”

  Forrest put the phone down. He blinked again. “I’m being helpful,” he said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You leave everything here to me,” Immie said. “I take care of the kitchen and the food and the cleaner and the shopping and the Wi-Fi. Now you’re annoyed when I’m not handling something the way you want it?”

  “Imogen.”

  “I’m not your effing housewife, Forrest,” she said. “That’s the opposite of what I am.”

  Forrest went to his laptop. “What’s Scott’s last name?” he asked. “I think we should search his name and see if anyone’s complained about him, what his deal is. He must be listed on Yelp or something.”

  “Cartwright,” said Immie, apparently willing to stop the argument. “But you’re not going to find him. He’s a Vineyard guy who does handyman stuff for cash. There won’t be a website.”

  “Well, I can find out— Oh God.”

  “What?”

  “Scott Cartwright of Oak Bluffs?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead.”
/>   Immie rushed over. Brooke was off the counter, and Jule came back from the hall, where she’d been stretching. They clustered around the computer.

  It was an article on the Martha’s Vineyard Times website, reporting the suicide of one Scott Cartwright. He had hanged himself with rope from a beam high up in a neighbor’s barn. He had kicked out a twenty-foot ladder.

  “It’s my fault,” said Imogen.

  “No, it’s not,” said Forrest, still looking at the screen. “He wanted a raise and he was consistently late. You wouldn’t give him more money. That has nothing to do with him killing himself.”

  “He must have been depressed,” said Brooke.

  “It says here he didn’t leave a note,” said Forrest. “But they’re sure it was a suicide.”

  “I don’t think it was,” Immie said.

  “Come on,” said Forrest. “Nobody forced him to climb up a twenty-foot ladder in a barn and hang himself.”

  “Yeah,” said Immie. “I think maybe they did.”

  “You’re overreacting,” said Forrest. “Scott was a nice guy, and it’s sad that he died, but nobody killed him. Act rational.”

  “Don’t tell me to act rational,” Immie said, her voice steely.

  “Nobody’s going to kill the cleaner and make it look like suicide.” Forrest stood up from the computer. He twisted his long hair into a ponytail with an elastic he’d had on his wrist.

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”

  “Imogen, you’re upset about Scott, which is understandable, but—”

  “This is not about Scott!” cried Immie. “It’s about you telling me to act rational. You think you’re superior because you have a college degree. And because you’re a man. And because you’re a Martin of the Martins of Greenwich and—”

  “Immie—”

  “Let me finish,” barked Imogen. “You live in my home. You eat my food and drive my car and have your messes cleaned up by that poor boy I used to pay. Some part of you hates me for that, Forrest. You hate me because I can afford this life and I make my own decisions—so you patronize me and dismiss my ideas.”