People were glancing at me as I sniffled, tears rolling freely down my cheeks. I rubbed a fist over them to try to clean myself up. I must have been the most overgrown child to ever burst into tears in the middle of Disneyland.

“This calls for bread bowls,” Ainsley said, making a beeline for the Pacific Wharf Café. And she must have understood the gravity of the situation, because Ainsley had never particularly liked the bread bowls.

With Ainsley as my guide leading the way, I zombie-shuffled past the red bricks of the Boudin Bakery, and didn’t even look up as we passed the enormous windows showcasing the bakers inside. When I was little I used to plant my feet firmly outside these windows and stare inside for what felt like hours, mesmerized by the golden-brown sourdough bread, begging my parents to take us on one more tour inside so I could watch the finely choreographed production process of dough to oven to tray. Even the rich, yeasty smell of the area should’ve been enough to wrap me in a cozy bubble. But though my stomach growled at the smell as we reached the soft browns and blues of the Pacific Wharf Café, everything from my chest up was numb.

“Are you gonna call her?” Ainsley asked as we joined the cattle-style lineup.

“I can’t right now. Maybe later.”

“Do you know who she might be dating?”

“Yeah. Raina from Q and Q.”

“Raina with the French bulldog face?”

I cracked a tiny smile. “What?”

“She’s always frowning like this.” Ainsley lowered her eyebrows and scrunched up her face into a dramatic frown.

“Well … yeah, that is who I mean.”

“See? Efficient. If I’d said, ‘Raina who’s yea high and has brown hair,’ we would’ve been here all night. Besides, I’m sure she has a great personality … when you get to know her.”

“Her personality sucks,” I snapped. “She’s always competing with Brooke and talking down to her and I’ve never even seen her have a nice word to say. Not once.”

“So, what you’re telling me is Brooke has inexplicably fallen for someone with a French bulldog face and a Persian cat’s personality?”

“… I mean, yeah, I guess.”

“Sounds plausible.”

From the tone of her voice, it sounded more like she meant “sounds like you’re jealous and skewing Raina into an irredeemable caricature so you can convince yourself the relationship won’t last long.” Which was simply the rudest, most accurate thing she’d ever said to me. I suddenly hoped her bread bowl was stale.

We carried our orders—mac and cheese for me, clam chowder for Ainsley—outside to sit in the cooling dusk. Instead of eating, I reread the message over and over again, like it might magically say something different on the twentieth opening.