by E. Lockhart
“Please, can we have this conversation in private?” asked Forrest.
“Just go. Leave me alone for a while,” said Immie. She sounded tired.
Forrest grunted and went upstairs. Brooke followed.
Immie’s face crumpled into tears as soon as they were gone. She walked over to Jule and hugged her, smelling like coffee and jasmine. They stood like that for a long time.
Immie and Forrest drove off in the car twenty minutes later, saying they needed to talk. Brooke stayed in her room.
Jule worked out and then killed the morning on her own. For lunch she ate two pieces of toast with chocolate-hazelnut spread and drank protein powder mixed with orange juice. She was washing up when Brooke clomped downstairs and dragged her duffel bag into the living room.
“I’m off,” said Brooke.
“Right now?”
“I don’t need the drama. I’m going home to La Jolla. My parents will be like, Brooke, you should get an internship! Volunteer! Go back to school! So it’ll be extremely annoying, but you know, I’m kind of homesick, actually.” Brooke turned abruptly and walked into the kitchen. She yanked open the pantry door and took two boxes of cookies and a bag of tortilla chips, shoving them into her shoulder bag. “The food on the ferry is trash,” she said. “Bye.”
—
In the evening, Imogen returned. She came out to see Jule on the deck.
“Where’s Forrest?” Jule asked.
“He went up to his study.” Immie sat down and took off her sandals. “There’s a memorial service for Scott next weekend.”
“Brooke left.”
“I know. She texted me.”
“She took all the cookies with her.”
“Brooke.”
“She said you wouldn’t care.”
“I wasn’t saving them.” Imogen stood and walked over to the switch that flipped the pool lights on. The water lit up. “I think we should go away. Without Forrest.”
Yes.
Would it really be this easy? To have Immie for herself?
“I think we should leave in the morning,” Imogen continued.
“Okay.” Jule made herself sound nonchalant.
“I’ll get us a flight. You understand. I need to get out of here, have some girl time.”
“I don’t need to be here,” said Jule, glowing. “I don’t need to be anywhere.”
“I have an idea,” said Imogen conspiratorially. She stretched back out on the lounge. “This island called Culebra. It’s off Puerto Rico.” Immie reached out and touched Jule’s arm. “And don’t worry about the money. Tickets, hotel, spa treatments—on me.”
“I’m all yours,” said Jule.
FIRST WEEK OF SEPTEMBER, 2016
MENEMSHA, MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS
Two days before he died, Scott was cleaning the pool when Jule came back from her morning run. He had his shirt off. His jeans were low on his hips. He was trailing a leaf skimmer along the edges of the water.
He said good morning brightly as Jule passed him. Immie and Forrest weren’t up yet. Brooke’s rental car wasn’t in the driveway. Jule grabbed a pile of clothes she’d laid out earlier and hung them up on the hook next to the outdoor shower. Then she went in.
She washed, shaved her legs, and thought about Scott. He was very, very pretty. She wondered about his lat workouts and his all-cash payments. How had he become a guy who was willing to bleach other people’s toilets and mow their yards? He looked and sounded like the great white hetero action hero you saw in movie after movie. He could probably have most things he wanted in this world without too much effort. Nothing was pushing him down, but here he was. Cleaning.
Maybe he liked it that way. But maybe he didn’t.
When she turned off the water, Scott and Imogen were talking on the deck.
“You have to help me,” he said, his voice low.
“No, I don’t, actually.”
“Please.”
“I can’t get involved.”
“You don’t have to be involved, Imogen. I came to you for help because I trust you.”
Immie sighed. “You came to me because I have a bank account.”
“That’s not it. We have a connection.”
“Hello?”
“All those afternoons at my place. I didn’t ask for anything. You came there because you wanted to.”
“I haven’t been to your place for a week,” said Imogen to Scott.
“I miss you.”
“I’m not paying your debt.” Immie’s voice was firm.
“I just need a loan. To get by. Till these guys get off me.”
“It’s a bad idea,” said Imogen. “You should go to the bank. Or borrow against a credit card.”
“I don’t have a credit card. These guys are—they’re not messing around. They left notes inside my car. They—”
“You shouldn’t have been gambling,” snapped Immie. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Can’t you front me enough to get this debt paid off? Then you won’t have to see me again. I’ll pay you back and disappear, I promise.”
“A minute ago you were all about what a great connection we have. Now you’re promising to disappear?”
“I have nothing,” pleaded Scott. “There’s five bucks in my wallet right now.”
“Where’s your family?”
“My dad split a long time ago. My mom got cancer when I was seventeen,” said Scott. “I don’t have anybody.”
Immie was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”
“Please, Immie. Cupcake.”
“Don’t start with that. Forrest is upstairs.”
“If you’ll just help me, I can leave quietly.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I’m asking for help from a friend to pay a debt, that’s all. Ten thousand dollars is nothing to someone like you.”
“Why do you owe the money? What did you bet on?”
Scott muttered his answer. “Dogfight.”
“No.” Immie sounded shocked.
“I had a good dog.”
“Dogfighting is a blood sport. That’s a felony.”
“There was this rescue dog I knew about; she was a real scrapper. And I know a guy who sets up fights sometimes. He has a couple pit bulls. It wasn’t, like, an organized thing.”
“It was organized if this guy sets up fights. There are laws against that. It’s cruel.”
“This dog liked to fight.”
“Don’t say that,” said Imogen. “Just don’t. If someone adopted her and was kind with her, she would have—”
“You didn’t meet this dog,” said Scott, petulant. “Anyway, we had the fight, and she lost, all right? I stopped it before she got hurt too bad, because you can if you’re the owner of a dog, because she was— The fight wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
Jule held still, protected by the wall of the outdoor shower. She didn’t dare move.
“That meant I lost money for all these guys who bet on her,” Scott went on. “They said I should have let her play it to the death. I said the rules say an owner can stop the fight. They said yeah, but no one does that because you shaft all the people who bet on your dog.” He was crying now. “And they want their bet money back. The guy who organized the fight wants his investment back, too. He says people complained, that I ruined his business by fighting a dog when I was…I’m scared, Imogen. I don’t know how to fix this without your help.”
“Let me explain the situation to you,” Imogen said slowly. “You are my yard boy, my pool boy, my cleaner. You work here. You have done a decent job, and you’ve been a good guy to hang around with now and again. That does not put me under any obligation to help you when you have done an illegal and immoral thing to a poor, defenseless dog.”
Jule began to sweat.
The way Imogen said yard boy, pool boy, cleaner. It was so cold. Jule hadn’t seen Immie face to face with anyone she disdained until now.
“You won’t help me, then?” Scott asked.
“We hardly know each other.”
“Come on, you’ve come over to my house every day, some weeks.”
“I never knew you liked to watch dogs tear each other to shreds until they die. I never knew you were a gambler. I never knew you were anything like so stupid and cruel as you are, because you are nothing more to me than the guy who cleans my house. I think you should go now,” Imogen told Scott. “I can find someone else to scrub the floors.”
Immie had been lying to Forrest. And to Jule. Immie had purposefully made up stories about where she went in the afternoons. She’d lied about why she’d come home with wet hair, about why she was tired, about where she’d bought her groceries. She’d lied about playing tennis with Brooke.
Brooke. Brooke must have known about Scott. She and Imogen had often come home together with rackets and water bottles, talking about their tennis games, when they had probably never played tennis at all.
Scott left without another word. A minute later, Immie banged on the shower door. “I can see your feet, Jule.”
Jule gasped.
“Why do you listen to other people’s conversations like that?” Immie barked.
Jule pulled the towel tighter around herself and opened the shower door. “I was drying off. You came outside. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re always lurking around. Spying. No one likes it.”
“I got it. Now can I please put my clothes on?”
Imogen walked away.
Jule wanted to follow and slap Immie’s false, beautiful face.
She wanted to feel righteous and strong instead of embarrassed and betrayed.
But she’d have to burn off that anger another way.
She grabbed her swimsuit and goggles from a hook in the shower. In the pool, she swam a mile, freestyle.
A second mile. She swam until her arms were shaking.
Finally, she threw herself onto a towel on the wooden deck. She turned her face to the sun and felt nothing besides tired.
Imogen came out a little while later. She was carrying a bowl of warm chocolate chip muffins. “I baked these,” she said. “To say sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” said Jule, not moving.
“Everything I said was mean. And I’ve been lying to you.”
“Like I care.”
“You do care.”
Jule didn’t answer.
“I know you care, bun. We shouldn’t have lies between us. You understand me so much better than Forrest does. Or Brooke.”
“Possibly true.” Jule couldn’t help herself. She smiled.
“You have a right to be mad. I was wrong. I know it.”
“Possibly true as well.”
“I think the whole thing was a means for me to push Forrest away. I do that when I get tired of guys. Cheat on them. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m really not proud of myself.”
Imogen set the muffins down by Jule’s shoulder. She lay on the deck. Their bodies were parallel.
“I want to be at home somewhere, and I want to run away,” Immie went on. “I want to be connected to people, and I want to push them away. I want to be in love, and I pick guys I’m not sure I even like all the way. Or I love them and I ruin it and maybe I ruin it on purpose. I don’t even know which it is, and how messed up is that?”
“It’s medium messed-up,” said Jule, chuckling. “But not drastic. On a scale of one to ten, it’s like a seven, I think.”
They lay there in silence for another minute.
“But level seven messed-up is probably normal,” Jule added.
“Can I pretty please bribe you with muffins to forgive me?” Immie asked.
Jule took a muffin and bit into it. “Scott is gorgeous,” she said, swallowing. “Guy like that, what are you going to do: leave him alone and watch him clean the pool? I think you might have been legally obligated to jump him.”
Imogen moaned. “Why did he have to be so sexy?” She grabbed Jule’s hand. “I was such a witch. Forgive me?”
“Always.”
“You are made of sugar, my bun. Come to the store with me now!” She said it like the store was going to be wonderfully fun.
“I’m tired. Make Brooke go with you.”
“I don’t want Brooke.”
Jule stood up.
“Don’t tell Forrest we’re leaving,” Immie said.
“I won’t.”
“Of course you won’t.” Imogen smiled up at Jule. “I know I can count on you. You won’t tell him anything at all, will you.”
END OF JUNE, 2016
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, MASSACHUSETTS
Ten weeks before Immie made the muffins, Jule found herself on Moshup Beach without a towel or a swimsuit. The sun was bright and the day hot. After the long trek down from the parking lot, she walked along the edge of the water. Huge clay cliffs loomed over her in colors of chocolate, pearl, and rust. The clay was cracked and slightly soft to the touch.
Jule took her shoes off and stood still with her toes in the sea. Some fifty yards away, Imogen and her friend set up for the afternoon. They had no beach chairs, but the guy unpacked a bag that held a cotton beach blanket, towels, magazines, and a small cooler.
They threw their clothes in the sand, put on sunblock, and drank from cans they took from the cooler. Imogen lay on the blanket to read. The guy collected rocks and piled them, one on top of another, to build a delicate sculpture in the sand.
Jule walked toward them. A few yards off she called: “Immie, is that you?”
Imogen didn’t turn around, but her boyfriend poked her in the shoulder. “She’s calling your name.”
“Imogen Sokoloff, right?” Jule said, coming to stand over them. “It’s me, Jule West Williams. Do you remember?”
Imogen squinted and sat up. Fumbled for her sunglasses in the mesh bag she carried and put them on.
“We were at school together,” Jule went on. “At Greenbriar.”
Immie was special to look at, Jule thought. A long neck, high cheekbones. Sun-kissed. She was skinny on top, though, and weak. “Were we really?” she asked.
“Only for part of freshman year. Then I transferred out,” said Jule. “I remember you, though.”
“Sorry, what’s your name again?”
“Jule West Williams,” said Jule again. When Imogen furrowed her brow, she added: “I was a year behind you.”
Immie smiled. “Well, good to re-meet you, Jule. This is my boyfriend, Forrest.”
Jule stood there awkwardly. Forrest was adjusting his lank hair back into its bun. A copy of the New Yorker sat next to him. “You want a drink?” he asked, surprisingly friendly.
“Thanks.” Jule kneeled on the edge of the blanket and accepted a can of Diet Coke.
“You look like you’re going somewhere,” said Imogen. “With the bag, carrying your shoes.”
“Oh, I—”
“Don’t you have beach things?”
Jule thought of the most appealing thing she could say, and it turned out to be the truth. “I came on impulse,” she said. “I do that sometimes. I hadn’t planned on the beach today.”
“I have an extra bathing suit in my bag,” said Imogen, suddenly warm. “You want to go for a swim with us? I’m so effing hot, I have to get in the water now or I’ll get heat exhaustion and Forrest will have to carry me back up that long-ass path.” She ran her eyes over Forrest’s narrow body. “I don’t know if he’s up to it. So you want to swim?”
Jule raised her eyebrows. “I could take you up on that.”
Imogen pulled a bikini out of her bag and handed it to Jule. It was white and very minimal. “Wiggle it on under your skirt and we’ll meet you in the water.”
She and Forrest ran laughing into the sea.
Jule put on Imogen’s clothes for the first time.
In Immie’s suit, she dove under the waves and came up feeling miraculously happy. The day was sparkling, and i
t seemed impossible to be anything other than grateful for the chance to stand in the ocean, looking out at the horizon while the salt water smacked them around. Forrest and Immie didn’t talk much but rode the waves, screaming and laughing. When they tired out, they stood on tiptoe beyond where the waves broke, jumping gently and letting the water carry them up and down. “Here comes a big one.” “No, the one after is even bigger. There, see?” “Oh, damn, I almost died, but that was excellent.”
When all three of them were blue in the fingers and shivering, they returned to Imogen’s blanket, and Jule found herself in the center of it. Forrest lay on one side, wrapped in a nautical-themed towel, and Imogen lay on the other, face up to the sun and still covered in water droplets.
“Where did you go after Greenbriar?” Imogen asked.
“After they kicked me out,” said Jule, “my aunt and I left New York.”
“They did not kick you out,” Imogen said gleefully. Forrest put down his magazine.
“Oh yes, they did.” Both of them were interested now. “Prostitution,” Jule said.
Imogen’s face went dark.
“Kidding. That was a joke.”
Imogen began laughing low and slowly, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Tina whatshername used to give me wedgies and say threatening shit to me in the locker room,” said Jule. “Finally I banged her head against a brick wall. She ended up needing stiches.”
“Was she that one with the curly hair? The tall one?” asked Imogen.
“No. The shorter one who followed that one around.”
“I can’t picture her.”
“Better off that way.”
“And you banged her head against the wall?”
Jule nodded. “I’m a scrapper. You could call it a talent.”
“Scrapper?” Forrest asked.
“A fighter,” said Jule. “Not for fun, but—you know. Self-defense. Battling evil. Protecting Gotham City.”
“I can’t believe I never heard about you sending a girl to the hospital,” said Imogen.
“They kept it quiet. Tina didn’t want to talk about it because of what she did to me before I made her stop, you know? And it made Greenbriar look bad. Girls fighting. It was right before winter concert,” said Jule. “When all the parents come. They let me sing in it before they kicked me out. Remember? That Caraway girl had the solo.”