On Sunday afternoon the weather was beautiful. It was windy, the kind of wind that makes your hair fly around like crazy. But it was warm and sunny — one of those days that lets you believe spring really will come soon.

Josh showed up at my house for our friendship date holding a khaki-green canvas bag. “What’s that?” I asked as I opened the door and stepped out. “Kites?”

“Boats.”

“Excuse me?”

He pulled open the drawstring mouth of the bag and I peered inside. “Are those toy sailboats?” I asked.

He nodded. “They were in my garage. I’d forgotten all about them. I was trying to find some old kites but I found these instead. I thought we could sail them in the pond at Miller’s Park.”

A blast of wind wrapped my hair around my face. “Good idea,” I said, from behind my hair. “It’s sure windy enough.”

Miller’s Park is on the outskirts of Stoneybrook. It’s a good twenty-five-minute walk from my house. We didn’t mind, though.

For the first time in a while, talk flowed easily between us. We chatted about school and people. I told him about my role-play with Haley the day before.

“That took guts,” he commented. “A lot of kids couldn’t deal with a confrontation like that. I bet some adults couldn’t either.”

“I was nervous,” I admitted. “But facing it turned out to be the right thing.”

“Just like with us,” he commented.

I nodded, feeling awkward. “Yeah,” I agreed.

We arrived at Miller’s Park and walked along the rushing stream. On one bank stood an abandoned sawmill with a real waterwheel on the outside. In a patch of bright sun, I spotted a cluster of daffodils with fat buds just about to pop.

We followed the stream to a pond. “I never even knew this pond was here,” I told Josh, although I’d been to the park a number of times.

“It’s nice, isn’t it? This pond must have an underground spring that feeds it and the stream,” he said as he took the boats from the bag. Each was about two feet long and just as high. The one he handed me had two red sails, while his had three white ones.

We put the boats in the pond and watched as the wind filled their sails. Off they sped, tilting to one side as they went along.

“How are we going to get them back?” I asked.

“By keeping our fingers crossed,” he replied.

“You’re kidding.”

“Sort of. They usually hit the shore eventually.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon running along the edge of the pond like lunatics, trying to keep up with the boats.

I screamed, then laughed, then screamed again as my boat crashed into a patch of water reeds. “Oh, no!” I cried. “What do I do now?”

Josh picked up a long branch from the ground. “Try this,” he suggested.

He gripped my wrist for support and I leaned far over the water with the branch in my hand, batting at the boat, trying to set it free.

“Whoa!” he shouted when I leaned too far, throwing us both off balance. Thinking fast, he grabbed the long branches of a nearby willow tree and steadied us. The motion of falling forward, then pulling back set my boat free, and we laughed as we watched it shoot off into the middle of the pond.

“Thank goodness,” I said, laughing. “I didn’t want to land in that water.”

“I know,” he agreed. “It’s a nice day, but not that nice.”

We stayed for more than two hours and had a great time. As Josh had predicted, the boats did eventually skirt along the edge of the pond, about three feet from us.

With long branches, we were able to pull them close enough so they could be plucked from the water.

“Ew, they’re cold,” I said, shaking the pond water from my hands.

“At least this day proves one thing,” Josh said.

“What?”

“That our friendship is really going to work.”

I looked at him and smiled. “I think you’re right,” I said, setting down my boat.

It seemed like the moment for a kiss. But that would have been out of place on a friendship date. Yet a handshake seemed wrong also. Way too formal.

Josh opened his arms and folded me into a hug. I hugged him back. We both held on tight.

And it felt absolutely, one hundred percent, perfectly right.