Keya’s perma-smile disappeared. “Are we stuck?” She hit L again and again.

“Looks like it.” I tried not to sound too happy. The truth was, I would have done anything to delay hearing everyone back at the Petersmobile tell me how proud they were.

Besides, it’s not as if I hadn’t been stuck in an elevator before, a tiny, rickety elevator it was easy to believe was seconds from plunging down the elevator shaft. Stuck in Grandma Esme’s elevator had felt like a scene in a disaster movie. This elevator was shiny and spacious and sturdy and being stuck in it right then felt like a gift. Like the Earth had stopped turning and I was getting a time-out, but not the bad kind, the kind the Knicks get with two seconds left in a game they have no prayer of winning just so they can pretend a little longer that there’s hope.

It was pretty obvious that, unlike me, Keya wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy about being stuck in that elevator. She’d gone from hitting just L to pressing all the buttons and shouting, “Help!” The hand that wasn’t madly punching buttons was gripping tight to the railing that ran around the elevator.

Keya was in the disaster movie.

“Can anybody hear me?”

“Here.” I reached around her and pressed the one button she hadn’t, the one marked EMERGENCY.

She gasped as if the button’s purpose were to bring on the emergency, not deal with it.

A second later, we heard ringing coming out of the speaker below the panel.

She made a sound that was half exhale, half laugh.

“Hello, front desk, 611 Fifth Avenue,” a man’s voice said.

“Hey, we’re stuck in one of the elevators,” I said.

“Not again,” he said. “Sorry, we had some maintenance work done recently and I don’t know what they did, but ever since, we’ve been having problems. Just sit tight. We’ll get you moving shortly.”

“Okay, thanks.” There was a click, followed by a long tone. I pressed the button again, and the noise stopped.

Keya took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Sorry. I’m not much for elevators.”

“Don’t worry about it. This isn’t my first rodeo.”

“What’s a rodeo?”

“Oh, sorry. I don’t know why I said that anyway. It’s dumb. My dad always says it. He thinks it’s funny.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to tell me what a rodeo is?”

“Sorry.” Why did I keep apologizing? “It’s like a show. People ride bulls to see how long they can stay on before they get thrown off. It’s like a cowboy thing. Cowboys are—”

“I know what cowboys are.”

“Sorry.” I slid down the wall of the elevator. We were going to be there a while. Might as well get comfortable.

Keya sat then too, not against one of the walls but cross-legged right in front of me, smack in the middle of the elevator, which no longer seemed so spacious. “Am I being thick? I still don’t follow. You’ve ridden a bull and this is useful to us in an elevator that has stopped working because…”