Imogen drank a lot. She had waiters bringing her margaritas poolside. But she didn’t seem sad. The magic feeling of their initial escape from Martha’s Vineyard threaded itself through the days. As far as Jule could tell, they were triumphant. This was the life Imogen described herself as wanting, free of ambition and expectations, with nobody to please and nobody to disappoint. The two of them just existed, and the days were slow and tasted of coconut.
Late on the fourth night, Jule and Immie sat with their feet in the hot tub, just as they had so many nights at Immie’s house on the Vineyard. “Maybe I should go back to New York,” said Imogen thoughtfully. “I should see my parents.” They had eaten dinner a while ago. She had a margarita in a plastic cup with a lid and a straw.
“No, don’t,” said Jule. “Stay here with me.”
“That guy in the bar the other night? He said the longer you don’t go back, the less there is to go back to.” Imogen stood, then, and pulled off her shirt and shorts. She wore a gunmetal one-piece with a gold hoop at the chest and a deep plunge. She sank her body slowly into the hot tub. “I don’t want there to be nothing left. With my mom and dad. But I also hate being there. They just—they make me so sad. Last time I was home, did I tell you this? About winter break?”
“No.”
“I left school and I was so glad to get away. I had failed political science. Brooke and Vivian were squabbling all the time. Isaac had dumped me. And when I got home, my dad was way more sick than I’d expected. My mom was in tears all the time. My stupid pregnancy scare and friendship drama and boyfriend problems and bad grades—it was all too trivial to even mention. My dad was shriveled into himself, breathing from his oxygen tank. The kitchen table was covered in pill bottles. One day he clutched my arm and whispered, ‘Bring your old man a babka.’?”
“What’s a babka?”
“You never had babka? It’s like a cinnamon roll times forty.”
“Did you bring him one?”
“I went out and bought six babkas, and gave him one every day till winter break was over. It gave me something to do for him, when there wasn’t anything, really, to do….Then the morning I left, while my mom was driving me up to Vassar, I got hit with dread. I didn’t want to see Vivian. Or Brooke. Or Isaac. College seemed pointless, like a finishing school where I was going to learn to be the kind of daughter my mother wanted me to be. Or the kind of girl Isaac wanted me to be. But not what I wanted to be, at all. As soon as she left, I called a taxi and went to the Vineyard.”
“Why there?”
“An escape. We had been on vacation there when I was little. After the first couple days I let my phone go dead. I didn’t want to answer to anybody. I know that must sound selfish, but I had to do something radical. With my dad that sick, I hadn’t talked to anyone about my problems. The only way I could figure myself out was to try what life was like away. Without all those other people wanting things from me, being disappointed in me. And then I just stayed. I had been living in the hotel for a month when I realized I wasn’t going back. I emailed my parents that I was okay, and I rented the house.”
“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.