For my twelfth birthday, I got a new saddle pad for Rainbow, which was white and was supposed to look like sheep’s wool but was fake. It made his old saddle look even more shabby. But by then it didn’t matter because Rainbow had decided he was done with giving me rides and refused to cross the street to the field, even when I swatted him lightly with a crop my mom made out of a stick. Not even the promise of sugar cubes and singing his favorite song would work.

“He’s an old guy,” my mom said to me when I finally gave up trying. “But you got a lot of rides out of him. Maybe you should just sit on him and read, like I did on Buddy.”

“OK,” I said. But instead I put Ivy on his back and read out loud because I didn’t like to read alone the way my mom did. It was more fun sharing stories than reading them by myself.

But today, on my thirteenth birthday, all I get is a phone call from Micah, who sings “Happy Birthday” in an operatic voice so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear.

“Thanks for remembering,” I say.

“What’d you get?” he asks.

I don’t want to answer at first. But Micah is patient. Silence never makes him uncomfortable like it does me.

“Nothing,” I finally say. “I guess they all forgot.”

“Your parents? That’s impossible. I bet your mom is just waiting for some special moment to surprise you. She always does stuff like that. Remember the scavenger hunt when you turned eleven? You were convinced you weren’t getting a present, but your mom hid all those notes that led to Rainbow’s new bridle. That was the best! I bet they have something like that planned.”

“Maybe.” But it’s already seven thirty and we had dinner and it just seems like if there was going to be a surprise, it would have happened by now.

“Well, I love you,” Micah says. “And you should have invited me over because I could have brought you your present and then your family would have clued in and felt guilty and probably gone out and bought you a huge cake or something.”

“It’s OK — they can’t afford it anyway. I would have at least liked a homemade card, though.”

“Sorry, Rachel. That stinks.”

We get off the phone, and I go over to my window to breathe some cool air. It’s dusk, but across the street I can see a big horse trailer in our neighbors’ driveway. The new barn they built has three stalls with actual wood floors, not dirt like the ones in our old barn. I bet it’s a lot easier to muck out the stalls when you have a wood floor.