Wren asked me to meet her by the north river path on Saturday. She was already there when I arrived, tying red ribbon around a post near the steps. A small notebook lay open on the wall beside her. She had drawn the bend in the path and marked where the ground stayed muddy after rain.
“Is that for the program?” I asked.
“For the practical assessment, if they let me do it.” She tugged the ribbon to check it held. “The younger group won't go past this post. The bank gets steep.”
She took her notebook and walked upstream. I fell in beside her. We passed two cyclists and a woman with a dog that wanted to stop at every patch of grass. Wren stepped aside for them without breaking her count of the railings along the path.
“The pool sent its written report,” she said. “Mara said the two shifts were a temporary hold, not a finding against me. The coordinator kept my assessment on the calendar for Tuesday.”
“That's good.”
“It is. I have to build a lesson now. I can do that.”
She stopped near an old set of stone steps. Water had left a brown line two steps above the edge. She wrote something in her notebook, then looked at me.
“Last year's group used these,” she said. “On a dry day, they make a good place to show how the river changes level. Today the bottom is slick. I'm moving the lesson up to the rail.”
She showed me the page. Her first route had a circle around the steps. She crossed it out and drew a line to a broad patch of path where a whole group could stand without blocking walkers. There was room for an adult guide at either end. She had timed the walk from the pool earlier that morning and written the minutes beside each stop.
“You could use the ribbon to mark the new place,” I said.
“I will. I wanted to see the steps again before I changed it.”
She kept a finger between the pages. I could see she had decided about the route before I spoke. She had brought me here to answer a different question.
“Ms. Cho talked to me again. She said you told her you’d forgotten the copy was in your folder.”
“Yes.”
“She couldn't tell me who took it. I asked her what she'd found so far. She said the school was still checking the exports.”
Wren took her finger from between the pages and pressed the notebook shut.
“You told me you cleared that folder,” she said.
“I said I thought I had.”
“You said it like you wanted me to believe it.”
I looked at the water. On the opposite bank, a boy was throwing stones from a place clearly marked as closed. His father called him back. He came, complaining, and the father didn't have to shout twice.
“I didn't clear it,” I said. “I knew the rough cut was still there.”
Wren held the notebook against her chest. She waited. I could hear the next question in her silence.
“I kept the original at home too. I found it yesterday. It shows you coming back with your aunt. I told Eli it exists. I haven't shown anyone the file.”
“I know what I did that day,” she said. “I asked what you did afterward.”
I swallowed. “You asked me to delete every copy. I said I would. I didn't.”
She turned toward the railing. I could see the side of her face and the red band holding her hair. For a moment I thought she might go back down the path without saying anything. Instead she opened the notebook and wrote a small mark beside the steps.
“Why?” she asked.
“At first I told myself I had to sort the other footage so I wouldn't erase the whole summer. Then I was embarrassed to tell you I'd waited. I kept saying I'd do it later.”
“You could have told me any time in the last two years.”
“I know.”
“You could have told me when I asked at the bus stop.”
“Yes.”
“At the pool. In the meeting. Before you posted.” She counted them with a finger against the notebook. “Every time I thought you were helping me, you knew you had kept the thing I asked you to destroy.”
I wanted to explain that I had made the cut to protect Eli, that I had never wanted anyone to see those two seconds without the rest. Both statements were true. Neither answered why I had lied to her. I said, “I'm sorry.”
“I heard you.”
We stood while a group of kids ran past, their shoes slapping the path. One stopped at the red ribbon and asked Wren what it was for. She crouched to his height.
“I'm marking a safe turn for a practice lesson,” she said. “You can still walk here with your adults. Just don't go down those steps when the water is up.”
He asked whether she worked for the river. She said, “Not yet,” and he ran to catch his friends.
Wren rose and looked at the steps until they had gone. “That was the worst afternoon I've ever had,” she said. “I don't want to spend the rest of my life proving I behaved well in it.”
“You shouldn't have to.”
“Then stop offering to show people my worst afternoon as a way to make them believe me.”
“I didn't bring the file.”
“You were thinking about bringing it. I know that face.”
She did know. I had almost put the drive in my bag. I had left it on my desk because Eli asked me to talk to her before making a decision.
“I thought the original might help you,” I said.
“My aunt wrote what she saw. Eli spoke to the coordinator. You sent the account I asked for. I have my training record. If they won't let me teach after that, making them watch him struggle won't turn this into a fair review.”
I looked at the notebook in her hand. She had a route to plan, a lesson to prepare, a job to win. The file was one piece of a problem she was already working on, and she had chosen not to use it.
“I won't show it without your and Eli's say,” I said.
“You promised me something like that before.”
“I know.”
She walked a little farther. I followed, though I was no longer sure she wanted me there. At a bench beneath a tree, she stopped and put the notebook down.
“Do you remember coming to my house after that summer?” she asked.
I did. Her aunt had let me in. Wren was in the living room with my empty camera case, the one she'd borrowed for a school trip. The case smelled like the lemon soap her aunt used on the floors. I had shown up ready to talk about a new montage I'd made from the summer, because that was the thing I knew how to talk about.
“You said you heard I'd kept river footage,” Wren said. “I told you I didn't care whether you called it practice or private. I wanted it gone.”
I remembered the exact answer I had given. “I said I'd delete every copy.”
“You said it with your hand on the camera case, like you were already done. Then you tried to show me the picnic part.”
I had thought the picnic would remind her of the good afternoon around the bad one. She had looked at my screen for less than a second and put the case between us.
The case had a cracked handle. Wren had repaired it with red tape the week before because I kept dropping the camera when I ran for a shot. For years, she had been the one who carried the spare battery and told me when somebody didn't want to be filmed. She liked finding a better place for me to stand. Once, at the ferry landing, she made me wait while an old man finished telling her a story before I lifted the camera. The story was better because she had listened first.
I remembered looking past the red tape at the picnic footage and thinking she would see the work I had put into it. I had not asked whether she wanted to see it at all. When she pushed the case toward me, I had felt rejected as an artist instead of hearing what my friend was saying.
“I told you that you make everything into something people can watch,” she said. “You said I was angry because you were good at it.”
I had said that too. I had hated her for being able to name what I was doing while I still wanted her to admire the work.
“I was cruel,” I said.
“You were proud. You thought the film mattered more than whether I wanted to be in it.”
“I thought you didn't understand why I kept any of it.”
“I understood. I just didn't agree.” She picked up the notebook again. “We were fifteen. I could have forgiven a stupid argument. I didn't know you had promised one thing and done another.”
The river moved past us without sound from this distance. Wren looked at her route map, then at the path ahead.
“I need to finish this,” she said. “The assessment isn't going to plan itself.”
“Can I help carry anything?”
“No. This part is mine.”
I nodded. I wanted to ask what she would do about the file. I wanted to ask whether we could talk after Tuesday. Both questions asked her to make room for me before she had finished the thing she came here to do.
“I'll tell Ms. Cho the school copy is there because I left it,” I said. “I won't make you carry that part.”
“Tell her because it's true.”
She walked on without looking back. I stayed beside the bench until she reached the next post and tied a second piece of ribbon around it. She tested the knot twice, then made another note. I went the other way, toward town.