Genuine Fraud(39)

“How did they react?”

“A thousand billion emails and texts. ‘Please come home, just for a couple days. We’ll pay for the plane.’ ‘Your father wants to know why you don’t return his calls.’ That kind of thing. My dad’s dialysis prevented them from coming to the Vineyard, but they were literally harassing me.” Immie sighed. “I blocked their texts. I stopped thinking about them. It felt like magic, just switching those thoughts off. Being able not to think about them saved me, somehow. I might be a terrible person, but it was so nice, Jule, not to feel guilty anymore.”

“I don’t think you’re a terrible person,” Jule said. “You wanted to change your life. You had to do something extreme to become the person you’re becoming.”

“Exactly.” Immie touched Jule’s knee with her wet hand. “Now, what about you?” It was Imogen’s usual pattern, to talk in a long ramble until she had thoroughly sorted through an idea, then, tired, to ask a question.

“I’m not going back,” said Jule. “Not ever.”

“It’s that bad back home?” Immie asked, searching Jule’s face.

Jule thought for a bright second then that someone could love her, and that she could love herself and deserve it all. Immie would understand anything Jule said just now. Anything.

“We’re the same,” she ventured. “I don’t want to be that person I was, growing up. I want to be the me who’s here, now. With you.” It was as true a statement as she knew how to make.

Immie leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Families are effed up the world over.”

Jule’s words rushed out of her. “We’re each other’s family now. I am yours and you can be mine.”

She waited. Looked at Immie.

Imogen was supposed to say they were like sisters.

Imogen was supposed to say they were friends for life and that yes, they were family.

They had just talked so intimately, and Imogen was supposed to promise that she would never leave Jule like she’d just left Forrest, like she’d left her mother and her father.

Instead, Immie smiled mildly. Then she got out of the hot tub and walked over to the pool in that gunmetal bathing suit. She smiled at the cluster of teenage boys who were horsing around in the shallow end. American boys.

“Hey, guys. Does one of you want to get me a bag of potato chips or pretzels from the bar inside?” Immie said. “My feet are wet. I don’t want to track water in there.”

They were wetter than she was, but one of them jumped out of the pool and toweled himself off. He was skinny and pimply but had good teeth and the kind of long, narrow body Immie liked. “At your service,” he said, with a silly bow.

“You’re a prince among men.”

“See?” the boy called to his friends in the pool. “I’m a prince.”

Why did Immie have to charm everyone? They were only a pack of boys, with little to offer. But Immie did this kind of thing whenever situations became intense. She turned and shined her light on new people, people who felt lucky she had noticed them. She had done it when she ditched her friends at Greenbriar for new friends who went to the Dalton School. She had done it when she’d left her sick father and her Dalton friends to go to Vassar, and when she’d left Vassar to live on Martha’s Vineyard. She’d left Forrest and Martha’s Vineyard for Jule, but Jule wasn’t novel enough, apparently. Immie needed fresh admiration.

The boy brought out several bags of potato chips. Imogen sat on a lounge chair, eating and asking him questions.

Where were they from? “Maine.”

How old were they? “Old enough! Ha ha.”

No, really, how old? “Sixteen.”

Imogen’s laugh echoed out across the pool. “Babies!”

Jule stood and slid her shoes back on. There was something about those boys that made her skin crawl. She hated the way they competed to keep Imogen entertained, splashing and showing off their muscles in the pool. She didn’t want to talk to a bunch of fawning high schoolers. Let Imogen feed her ego if she needed to.





The next morning, Jule wanted to rent a boat and go to Culebrita. That was the tiny island with the black volcanic rocks, a wildlife preserve with beaches. Immie had talked about it on their first day. You could go by water taxi, but then you had to wait for pickup. It was nicer to drive yourself, because then you could leave when you wanted to. The concierge gave Jule the phone number of a guy with a boat for rent.

Immie saw no need for them to take themselves when someone else could do it for them. She saw no need to go to Culebrita at all. She had seen it already. And there was clear, bright water right here. And a restaurant. And two heated pools. There were people to talk to.

But Jule couldn’t stand a day at the pool with those high school boys, lumpish little show-offs. Jule wanted to go to Culebrita and see the famous black rocks and hike up to the lighthouse.

The boat guy said he’d meet them on the dock that extended from the far end of the beach. It was very informal. Jule and Immie walked down, and two young Puerto Rican men drove up in two small boats. Immie paid in cash. One guy showed Jule how to work the motor and how the oars fit on the edge of the boat, just in case you needed them. There was a number to call when they were done with the boat.

Immie was sulky. She said the life jackets were cracked and the boat needed a paint job. But she got in it anyway.