“This girl knew him from around town and went back there with him when he asked her to because he had a pretty face. This stupid girl didn’t know how to say no the right way. Not with her fists. Or maybe it didn’t matter what she said because he didn’t listen. Point is, this girl had no muscle. No skills. She had a plastic baggie full of milk and doughnuts.”
“Are you from the South, honey?” said Kenny’s lady. “I didn’t notice before. I’m from Tennessee. Where you from?”
“She didn’t tell any grown-ups what happened, but she told a couple friends in the ladies’ room. That was how I found out about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“This boy, this same boy, he was walking home from a movie one night. Two years later. I was sixteen and, you know, I’m in shape. Did you know that about me? I’m in shape. So one night I went to the movies and I saw him. I saw the boy as I was going home. I shouldn’t have been on the street alone, most people woulda said. But I was. That boy shouldn’t have been alone, either.”
This whole idea suddenly seemed funny. Jule felt she needed to stop walking in order to laugh. She planted her feet and waited for the laugh to come. But it didn’t.
“I had a blue slush in my hand,” she went on, “the big kind you get at the movies. Strappy heels. It was summer. Do you like pretty shoes?”
“I have bunions,” said the lady. “Come on, let’s walk now.”
Jule walked. “I took off my shoes. And I called that boy’s name. I told him a fib about needing to call a cab, there on the corner in the dark. I said my phone was dead and could he help me? He thought I was harmless. I had a shoe in one hand and a drink in the other. My second shoe was on the ground. He came over. I tossed the slush in his face left-handed, swung at him with the heel. It hit him in the temple.”
Jule waited for the lady to say something. But the lady was silent. She kept hold of Jule’s arm.
“He lunged for my waist, but I brought up my knee and caught him in the jaw. Then I swung the shoe again. I brought it right down on the top of his head. Soft spot.” It seemed important to explain exactly where the shoe had gone. “I hit him with the shoe, again and again.”
Jule stopped walking and forced the lady to look her in the face. It was very dark. She could only see the kind wrinkles around the lady’s eyes, but not the eyes themselves. “He lay with his mouth hanging open,” Jule said. “Blood out his nose. He looked dead, ma’am. He didn’t get up. I looked down the street. It was late. Not even a porch light was on. I couldn’t tell if he was dead. I picked up the slush cup and my shoes and I walked home.
“I took everything I had been wearing and put it all in a plastic grocery bag. In the morning I pretended like I was going to school.”
Jule dropped her hands to her sides. She suddenly felt tired and dizzy and empty.
“Was he dead?” Kenny’s lady asked.
“He wasn’t dead, ma’am,” Jule said slowly. “I searched for his name online. I searched every day for it and it never came up, except in a local paper, next to a photograph. He won a poetry contest.”
“For real?”
“He never reported what happened. That was the night I knew who I was,” Jule told Kenny’s lady. “I knew what I was capable of. Do you understand me, ma’am?”
“I’m glad he wasn’t dead, honey. I think you’re not used to drinking.”
“I never drink.”
“Listen. I had that thing happen to me, years back,” said the lady. “Like that girl you talked about. I don’t like to bring it up, but it’s true. I worked through it and I’m all right now, you hear?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I thought you’d want to know that.”
Jule looked at the lady. She was a beautiful lady, and Kenny was a lucky man. “Do you know Kenny’s real name?” Jule asked. “What’s Kenny’s real name?”
“Let me take you to your room,” the lady said. “I should make sure you get there all right.”
“That was when I felt the hero inside me,” said Jule.
After that she was in her room and the world went black.
Jule woke up the next morning with blisters. Each hand had four pus-filled lumps on the palms, just below the fingers.
She lay in bed and looked at them. She reached for her jade ring on the bedside table. It wouldn’t slide on. Her fingers were too swollen.
She popped each blister and let the liquid soak into the soft white hotel sheet. The skin would callous over faster this way.
This isn’t a movie about a girl who breaks up with her undermining boyfriend, she thought. This isn’t a movie about a girl who breaks away from her controlling mother, either. It’s not about some great white hetero hero who loves a woman he needs to save or teams up with a lesser-powered woman in a skintight suit.
I am the center of the story now, Jule said to herself. I don’t have to weigh very little, wear very little, or have my teeth fixed.
I am the center.
As soon as she sat up, the gagging started. Jule rushed to the bathroom and pressed her blistered palms to the cool of the bathroom floor and heaved nothing into the toilet.
Nothing and more nothing. The gagging went on for what seemed like hours, her throat constricting and releasing. She pressed a washcloth to her face. It came back wet. She huddled around herself, shaking and heaving.
Finally, her breathing slowed.
Jule stood up. She made coffee and drank it. Then she opened Immie’s backpack.
There was Immie’s wallet. It had a million small pockets and a silver clasp. Inside were credit cards, receipts, a Martha’s Vineyard library card, a Vassar ID, a Vassar dining hall meal card, a Starbucks card, a health insurance card, and the key card for Immie’s hotel room. Six hundred and twelve dollars, in cash.
Jule opened Immie’s package, delivered yesterday. Inside were clothes FedExed from an online retailer. Four dresses, two shirts, a pair of jeans, a silk sweater. Each item was so expensive Jule put her hand over her mouth involuntarily when she looked at the packing sheet.
Immie’s room was next door. Jule had the key card now. The room was clean. In the bathroom, a grubby makeup bag sat on the counter. In it, Jule found Imogen’s passport, plus a surprising number of tubes and compacts, all disorganized. On the towel rack hung an ugly beige bra. There was a razor with a few stray hairs in it.
Jule took Immie’s passport and looked at the photograph next to her own face in the glass. The height difference was only an inch. The eye color was listed as green. Immie’s hair was lighter. Jule’s weight was significantly higher, but most of that was muscle and didn’t show under certain clothes.
She pulled the Vassar IDs from Immie’s wallet and looked at those. The meal card photo clearly showed Immie’s long neck and her triple-pierced ear. The student ID was smaller and blurrier. It didn’t show the ear. Jule could easily use that one.
She cut the meal card into tiny pieces with nail scissors and flushed the pieces down the toilet.
Then she plucked her eyebrows—thin, like Immie’s. She cut her bangs shorter with nail scissors. She found Immie’s collection of vintage engraved rings: the amethyst fox, the silhouette, the wooden carving of the duck, a sapphire one with a bumblebee, a silver elephant, a silver leaping rabbit, and a green jade frog. They wouldn’t fit on her swollen hands.
The next couple of days were spent going through Immie’s computer files. Jule used both rooms. They were air-conditioned. Sometimes she opened a terrace door to let the thick heat pour in over her. She ate chocolate chip pancakes and drank mango juice from room service.
Immie’s bank and investment accounts had a total of eight million dollars in them. Jule memorized numbers and passwords. Phone numbers and email addresses, too.