The Things We Wish Were True Read Online Free PDF Page A

girl was up off her chair and over to where Jencey and Zell were in no time. She wrapped her arms around the startled Jencey, then stepped back to give her a good look. “I can’t believe it’s you! You’re here! You’re back!” she marveled.
    “Bryte?” Jencey asked, looking as stunned as her friend. Zell was witnessing a reunion. “Bryte Bennett? I can’t believe it!” Jencey reached out and gave her friend another hug then pulled back to give her a good look. “You’re all grown up.”
    The other young woman, another child whose mother had once been one of the women Zell whiled away her summer days with, laughed and said, “So are you!” Zell couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized her, either. But now that she heard the name, she thought, Of course .
    “You look just great!” Jencey said to Bryte. “I mean, really beautiful.” There was a note of incredulity in her voice, overshadowing the compliment, if you asked Zell. But both young women had all but forgotten she was there.
    Bryte colored. “Um, thanks.” She looked down at the little boy hovering at her knee, taking the chance to veer the conversation away from the uncomfortable fact of her beauty. Zell remembered this girl as being sort of plain as a child. She’d certainly grown into the name; light emanated from her now.
    “This is my son, Christopher,” Bryte said. “He’s almost three. And you? I heard you have kids?”
    Zell started to speak, to point out something that would loop her back into the conversation, to make her presence in their midst necessary. But she thought better of it. She listened to the two younger women talk, feeling superfluous not unlike the discarded towels, the crumpled juice boxes, the wet footprints that appeared on the concrete, then just as quickly faded away.

JENCEY
    The girls were coming out of that dirty bathroom sans flip-flops, and she’d been about to go warn them (again) about the dangers of foot fungi when someone called out to her. She turned to take in this person who knew her name, her brain taking a few seconds to register just who she was seeing. She hadn’t expected to run into Bryte here, though now she realized it had always been a likely encounter. Bryte had never intended to go far.
    Deep down she’d known that this moment—or one close to it—would come. She couldn’t wind up back in her childhood neighborhood and not run headlong into the people from that childhood. In hindsight, taking the girls up to the pool might not have been the smartest move. But she’d been desperate to take their minds off things. When they were playing in the pool and making new friends, they weren’t asking her what would happen next. And at the pool she wasn’t under her mother’s watchful, concerned eye.
    Bryte had married Everett. Of course she’d known that. Her parents had gone to the wedding, urged her to come, too. “Bring Arch,” they’d said, as if Arch’s presence would alleviate the awkwardness. But she’d been nursing Zara and begged off, saying it was just too hard to travel with a nursing baby. It had been a lie that no one could argue with. She’d sent the happy couple an expensive silver tray.
    She examined the little boy holding on to Bryte’s hand—Bryte and Everett’s child, how strange it all was—and looked for a trace of Everett. The hair and eye colors were the same. But mostly he just looked like Bryte. This heartened her some, gave her the courage to keep standing there making small talk with the girl she had once both loved and betrayed, and who had ultimately betrayed her right back. But could it really be called betrayal? Now that they were older, she wasn’t as certain that’s what it had been.
    She knew what real betrayal was now. An image entered her mind: Arch behind the glass in prison.
    The lifeguard blew the whistle, and she watched as the girls and their new friend dove back into the pool. Bryte urged her to come with her into the pool to appease