Wish Read Online Free PDF Page B

her eyes at the empty, run-down shop, before vigorously tossing her head from side to side, as if to shake out something that hurt too much to remember.
    “So what can I do for you?” Posey asked abruptly, tilting the broom back against the corner and settling her petite frame onto a wooden rocking chair.
    “Oh,” Olivia said, dropping one hand into her bag and searching for the soft folds of fabric inside. “I have this dress, and it has a really big rip up one side…”
    Posey gestured for Olivia to spread the dress out over her knees. She searched the material lovingly with her hands, her small, agile fingers quickly landing on the torn zipper. “It’s a beauty,” she said. “Vintage?”
    Olivia smiled uncertainly. “I really have no idea; it’s—it was—my sister’s.”
    Posey nodded, staring past Olivia, or through her.
    “Great style,” she remarked approvingly, hoisting herself up and laying the dress over the back of an empty chair. “Definitely a dress for someone who knows how to have a good time.”
    “Yeah,” Olivia said. “That was Violet.”
    She hadn’t meant to sound so sad, but she could tell as soon as the words escaped that they had landed hard.
    Posey smiled, her eyes now light and twinkling. “Come back next week,” she said, folding the dress back up and placing it on top of her book. “Is Thursday good for you?”
    Olivia anxiously chewed at the inside of her cheek and crossed her arms. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I kind of need it by tomorrow.”
    Posey froze, one hand still resting on the couch, the other curling into a tight little ball in her lap.
    “I know it’s short notice,” Olivia apologized. “My mom is making us go to this reception thing, and I don’t really have a choice. It’s not really a big deal. I mean, I’ll just be standing in a corner all night, probably, so it doesn’t matter what I wear. I just thought, I don’t know, if there was any way…”
    Posey looked up with her head tilted to one side. Her eyes held Olivia’s for a long moment before shifting across the room. In between two bare windows was a child-size wooden desk, scratched and complete with a built-in seat. The surface was bare except for a single spiral-bound notebook, lying open with a pencil beside it. “Leave your address,” she said softly. “I can drop it off tomorrow.”
    It wasn’t until Olivia exhaled a heavy sigh of relief that she realized she hadn’t been breathing. She hadn’t thought the dress was so important, but something about the look in Posey’s eyes sent a flood of raw emotion washing over her body, like standing under a bitter-cold waterfall, with the sun at your back.
    Olivia nodded once and walked to the desk, writing her address in careful print at the top corner of the open page.
    She turned to the door. The sky was streaked with a cloudy pink trail, the sun disappearing behind a row of pastel houses at the top of the hill.
    Olivia turned back to wave good-bye, but Posey was already lost again in her book. She wanted to say thank-you, or something like it, but feared the words would be too plain, too loud to mean what she wanted them to.
    Olivia smiled and stepped out onto the sidewalk, where the air was moist and thick enough to bottle.
    At last, the rain had stopped.

5
    “O livia, are you in there?”
    Olivia sat wrapped in a fluffy white bath towel at the foot of her bed, staring dumbly at the garment bag lying open beside her.
    “Your father went to get the car,” her mom continued from the hall. “Meet us out front in a minute?”
    “Sure,” Olivia said flatly. “I’ll be right there.”
    Just as Posey had promised, a floppy garment bag with Olivia’s name safety-pinned to one side had arrived on her stoop that afternoon. Olivia reached for the zipper and pulled it down slowly, careful not to catch any loose fabric in its wake. She tugged the front flap open, angling the hanger to free the material, and gasped. Sinking backward