I showed Sam how to get onto the chairlift and lowered the thin metal safety bar across our laps. We waved to Anika and Luca as they watched us sail over the parking lot, and then we cleared the trees and took in the view of the whole peninsula—the dips and valleys, towns with houses like little boxes, and the long stretches of sand hugging the water. Our town was down there somewhere to the left of us too: Sorrento.

If you looked at a map of where we live, you’d see that the Mornington Peninsula is shaped like a fatter version of Italy—a Blundstone boot instead of a fancy high heel—and instead of kicking Sicily, we’re putting the boot into the Bellarine Peninsula. In class last year, we learned that our town, on the toe of the boot, was named after the town Sorrento in Southern Italy (another place that got its name because it looked like someplace else).

I pointed this out to Sam but I didn’t know if he was really listening. After a while there wasn’t much left to say.

The seats in front of us were all full and we kept passing couples to the right of us making their way back up the mountain. I turned around a little to see that behind us was full up too.

“Don’t do that!” Sam yelped.

I sat back around and looked at him. “Do what?”

“Make us move around. Stop it!”

I noticed his hands were gripping the steel bar in front of him, knuckles popping just like Anika’s had been in the car on the way up.

“Are you okay?”

He closed his eyes. “Just stop moving so much!”

I sat back and tried to be still, even with my legs hanging out and dangling a hundred meters in the air. I listened to Sam take shuddery, shaky breaths beside me and watched his knuckles turn whiter on the safety bar.

“Why do you and Luca do this every year anyway?” he asked.

I looked over and saw his eyes were still shut behind his round, red glasses, so I couldn’t just shrug his question away. “I was sad one day and he brought me here, and it didn’t make everything better but it was . . . okay.” I shook my head. “So now he always takes me in the last weeks of the Christmas school holidays—just the two of us.”

I wondered if Sam could hear the hurt behind my words, but he didn’t seem to.

“Kinda like how my dad takes me to his first game of cricket every year,” he said.