“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.