Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our savior,
Was born on Christmas Day,
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we had gone astray.”
Jule knew she had gone way fucking astray. She had killed a stupid loudmouth girl with brutal premeditation. There would never be a savior who could rescue her from whatever had made her do it. She had never had a savior.
That was it. No going back. She was alone in a bone-cold bus station on December 23, listening to a drunk guy and scraping the last of someone’s blood from underneath her nails with the corner of her bus ticket. Other people, good people, were baking gingerbread cookies, eating peppermints, and tying bows on holiday gifts. They were quarreling and decorating and cleaning up after big meals, tipsy from mulled wine, watching uplifting old movies.
Jule was here. She deserved the chill, the loneliness, the drunks and the trash, a thousand worse punishments and tortures.
The clock went around the dial. It hit midnight and became, officially, Christmas Eve. Jule bought a hot chocolate from a machine.
She drank it and felt warmer. She talked herself up from despair. After all, she was brave, smart, and strong. She had done the deed with credible efficiency. With style, even. She had committed murder with an effing kitty-cat statue in a beautiful state park over a massive and scenic ravine. There had not been a single witness. She had left no blood anywhere.
Killing Brooke had been self-protection.
People needed to protect themselves. It was human nature, and Jule had spent years training to make herself especially good at it. The events of today were proof that she was even more capable than she’d hoped. She was phenomenal, in fact—a fighting mutant, a supercreature. Fucking Wolverine didn’t stop to mourn the people his claws went through. He killed people all the time in self-defense, or for a worthy cause. Same with Bourne, Bond, and the rest of them. Heroes didn’t wish for gingerbread, presents, and peppermint. Jule would not, either. It wasn’t like she’d ever had them anyway. There was nothing to mope about.
“God rest ye merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay…”
The drunk started up again.
“Shut up before I come over there and make you!” Jule yelled at him.
The singing stopped.
She tipped the last of the chocolate into her mouth. She wouldn’t think about going astray. She wouldn’t feel guilty. She would follow this action-hero path and power on.
—
Jule West Williams spent December 24 on a nineteen-hour bus ride and fell asleep early Christmas morning in a Portland, Oregon, airport hotel. At eleven a.m., she shuttled to the airport and checked her bags for the night flight to London, business class. She ate a burger in the food court. She bought books and sprayed herself with unfamiliar perfume in duty-free.
MID-DECEMBER, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO
The day before the hike, Jule had a call from Brooke. “Where are you?” Brooke barked, without saying hello. “Have you seen Immie?”
“No.” Jule had just finished a workout. She sat down on a bench outside Haight-Ashbury Fitness.
“I’ve sent her like a gazillion texts, but she doesn’t answer,” said Brooke. “She’s off Snapchat and Insta. I’m verging on hostile, so I thought I’d call and see what you know.”
“Immie doesn’t answer anyone,” said Jule.
“Where are you?”
Jule saw no reason to lie. “San Francisco.”
“You’re here?”
“Wait,you’rehere?” La Jolla, where Brooke was supposed to be, was a good eight-hour drive away.
