Page 52 of Genuine Fraud
They were silent. That sentence stood between them:I asked you here to shut you up.
Imogen went on: “I can’t take this trip anymore. I can’t take you borrowing my clothes and looking at me the way you do, like I’m never enough and you’re threatening me and you want me to care so much for you. I don’t.”
Jule didn’t think, couldn’t think.
She picked up an oar from the bottom of the boat. She swung it, hard.
The paddle end hit Imogen in the skull. Sharp edge first.
Immie crumpled. The vessel rocked wildly. Jule stepped forward and Immie’s face turned up at her. Immie looked surprised, and Jule felt a moment of triumph: the opponent had underestimated her.
She brought the oar down again on that angel face. The nose cracked, and the cheekbones. One of the eyes bulged and gushed. Jule hit a third time and the noise was terrific, loud and somehow final. Imogen’s jaw and the entitlement and beauty and uncaring self-importance, all of it was smashed by the power of Jule’s right arm. Jule was the fucking victor, and for a quick moment it felt glorious.
Immie slid off her perch into the water. The boat tipped as her weight fell off. Jule stumbled back, hitting her hip hard against the side.
Immie splashed twice, struggling. Gasping. Her eyes were filled with blood. It leaked out into the turquoise water. Her white shirt floated out around her.
The feeling of triumph waned and Jule jumped into the sea, grabbing Immie by the shoulder. She wanted a response.
Immie owed her a response.
They weren’t done yet, damn it. Immie couldn’t run away. “What do you have to say to me?” Jule cried, treading water and lifting Immie up as best she could. “What do you have to say to me now?” Blood ran down her arms from Immie’s face. “Because I’m not your fucking pet, and I’m not your fucking friend anymore, either, you hear?” Jule shouted. “You look the fuck down on me, but I’m the strong one, I’m the fucking strong one here. Do you see, Immie? Do you see?”
Jule tried to turn Immie over, to keep her face in the air, to keep her breathing, and listening, but the wounds were enormous. Imogen’s face was pulpy and leaking blood from the ear, from the nose, from the smashed side of her cheek. Her body jerked and shook. Her skin was slippery, so slippery. She threw her limbs around, hitting Jule in the face with the back of a flailing hand.
“What the fuck do you have to say now?” Jule said again, begging. “What is it that you want to tell me?”
Imogen Sokoloff’s body jerked once more, and then grew still.
The blood pooled around them both.
Jule climbed back in the boat and time stopped.
An hour must have passed. Maybe two. Maybe only a couple of minutes.
No fight had ever gone like this. It had always been action, heroics, defense, competition. Sometimes revenge. This was different. There was a body in the sea. The edge of a small ear, triple-pierced. The buttons on the cuff of the shirt, a cool blue against the white linen.
Jule had loved Immie Sokoloff as well as she knew how to love anyone. She really had.
But Immie hadn’t wanted it.
Poor Immie. Beautiful, special Immie.
Jule’s stomach heaved. She gagged and gagged over the side of the boat. She clutched the edge, thinking she was being sick, her shoulders shaking. She heaved, but nothing came up, and nothing came up. It went on for a minute or two before she realized she was crying.
Her cheeks were slick with tears.
She had not meant to hurt Imogen.
No, she had.
No, she hadn’t.
She wished she had not.
She wished it could be undone. She wished she were a different human in a different body with a different life. She wished Immie had loved her back, and she sobbed because it would never happen now.
She reached out and took Immie’s wet, limp hand. She held it, leaning far over the edge of the boat.
