“Right! And he’d have an indoor riding ring, and he wouldn’t have to go out all winter unless he wanted to, and that’s when he’d wear his fancy coat.”

“Exactly.” I picture Rainbow in a fur-lined horse blanket and golden halter. He looks ridiculous. “What about you? What would you do if you won the lottery?”

Micah thinks for a minute. “I guess I’d pay off your parents’ mortgage and buy you a house and a barn for Rainbow.”

Micah always says selfless things like this. I wish I had thought of saying something I would get for him.

We’re quiet for a while after that, both floating on our backs, slowly turning in the water.

“If there were clouds in the sky, this would feel like a scene in a movie where we say what we see and argue about which animal the clouds look like,” Micah says.

I picture us in our own movie and wonder what the plot would be. Two bored friends doesn’t seem like much of a blockbuster.

“I see a bluebird,” I say. “The color of the sky.”

“No, it’s a sky-blue whale,” Micah argues.

“A blue pony. With a blue mane.”

“They have to be real things,” Micah says. “That are really blue.”

That ends our game because I can’t think of any other animals that are blue like the sky.

We swim to shore and lie on our stomachs to let the sun dry our backs, then flip over to dry the other side.

“Do you think being eighth-graders will change everything?” I ask. “What if we don’t have any of the same classes together? What if all our friends get divided up?”

“You really think not being in classes together will change things?” He sounds surprised and disappointed, so I don’t tell him that I do think it could. What if Micah meets someone new? Someone more interesting than me. What if he gets a girlfriend?

He reaches over and takes my hand, as if he can read my thoughts. “I’ll never leave you,” he says. “Together forever. No matter what.” He squeezes my fingers tight, and I squeeze back.

I concentrate on his hand in mine, wishing my heart would feel like a hummingbird trapped in my chest again, like when we were six.

But it doesn’t.

If I would let him, Micah would be my boyfriend. He used to try to kiss me sometimes, but I finally told him to stop. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for him. Or any boy. I never have, at least not since that time we got engaged under the lilac bushes. It’s something I’ve only told him once, last winter, when he tried to kiss me at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“You don’t like any boys?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”