Back when everything was perfect, sometimes it rained, but I didn’t hate the rain yet. I loved it. It meant I couldn’t ride (or rather, I shouldn’t), but I still went to Bray, because by then I was already close enough with Joey that he was reason enough to visit, not just the horses. The more I got to know him, the more I fell in love with him. It wasn’t just his kind, warm, happy personality—the one that always calmed me, no matter what. It was also because he was beautiful—truly beautiful, in a way no one else I knew was. What did our solid, predictable skin colors, with our checkbox labels and predetermined effects on society, have on him? His skin glowed with a creamy, mysterious radiance; his eyes, brown like mine on paper, had flecks of gold, green, and even blue that were impossibl
