Luckily, Oriella had taught me exactly what to do in a situation like this. And I’d taught others what to do in a situation like this.

“Honestly,” I said, “all I want to do is eat junk food and go on some more rides and not worry about shit for an hour.”

“So do it.”

I looked over at Ainsley. She’d lost interest in Brougham and me, and was scrolling through her phone while she leaned against a trash can across the bridge. “I would, but Ainsley was talking about heading home.”

“Oh.” Brougham rocked back and forth on his heels, like he was debating something. Then he gave me a one-sided shrug. “If Ainsley wants to head off now, I could always give you a lift home later?”

I broke into a slow smile.

Forty minutes later, Brougham and I were sitting across from each other in a carriage on Pixar Pal-A-Round, my personal Disneyland must-do, and the perfect thing to distract me. Because Pixar Pal-A-Round, or “The Mickey Wheel” as Ainsley and I had called it as kids, was less like your standard Ferris wheel and more like a thrill ride hidden under a calm, unassuming exterior. At least, if you chose one of the moving carriages, it was. And if you asked me, it was nonnegotiable to do so. Basically, you’d be gently cruising upward, gazing at the lights and crowds beneath you, when the carriage would suddenly slide down several feet like you were falling to your death, and swing back and forth using the momentum of your terrifying plummet.

It seemed Brougham hadn’t bothered trying the Mickey Wheel before, because the whole “unexpected plummeting” thing caught him off guard. The first time we went down he screamed like he’d been shoved off a building. Once the carriage stopped swinging—or, at least, stopped swinging quite so ferociously—he turned large, accusing eyes onto me like I’d tricked him.

“You don’t like it?” I asked through a torrent of giggles.

He took a moment to catch his breath, pressed back firmly against the caged wall, his hands splayed out to touch the carriage on either side of him while we rocked. “This is not safe, this is not safe, I want to get off.”

“It’s Disneyland, it’s safe.”

“People have died here!”

“Shout that a little louder, I think some of the small children up there didn’t hear you.”

“Is it too late to get off?”

“’Fraid so. But you get used to the rocking, I promise.”

He looked doubtful. Slowly, but surely, though, I was proven correct. By our third fight with gravity, Brougham was down to a single scream of fear per fall. Calm enough to bring back up something he’d apparently really wanted to discuss. “Hey, so. You know how this morning you said using silence as a weapon is emotionally abusive?” he asked. “It’s complicated, I think.”