“Luca is my dad” was all I’d said. Because I didn’t think Sam deserved to know all the details of how Luca adopted me when I was three.

“So why don’t you call him that?”

I used to. But I stopped a couple of years ago, after I figured out that he was about to be my father for longer than she had been my mom. I felt sick about that: like I was letting her down somehow. So I started calling him Luca, and then I was afraid that if I stopped, I’d have to explain why I started in the first place. I wonder if there’s a worse feeling than knowing that no matter what you do, you’ll hurt someone you love without meaning to.

But I didn’t tell Sam any of that.

It might have been something I talked about with Luca that day, when we were up in the air and far away from how much everything had been changing on the ground back home.

But instead I was stuck up there with Sam, and his stupid heavy breathing and rude questioning. I started swinging my legs, a little at first and then—maybe even a little bit on purpose—in bigger back-and-forth sways that made the chair rock and tilt.

Sam’s eyes flew open. “Stop it!”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” I said.

“STOP IT!” he screamed.

“Come on, this is the best part!” I rocked my legs just a little more. “Try to touch the treetops!”

But then I saw the grown-ups in front turn around to glare at us, as well as a few passing on our side, so I stilled my legs—but the chair kept rocking anyway, tipping and tilting to my momentum.

“Fred!” Sam yelled again, and he threw his arms out like he was maybe going to hit me to get me to stop. I jerked away and that made the chairlift bob and sway even more, and because his face was suddenly so wet with tears and sweat Sam’s glasses slipped right off his head.

He made a move like he could reach down and grab for them, so I tugged his arm away, afraid that he’d keep leaning and somehow go tumbling over the safety bar.

We watched his glasses plummet into the thick bush below, hitting a couple of branches of a gum tree on the way down, and all the while we kept climbing higher and higher up.

By the time we got back to the summit, Sam was crying in big gulps. I raised the metal bar and Sam jumped off before the attendant said to, and he nearly crashed onto his knees. Sam put his head down and kept running until he literally slammed into Anika and they wrapped their arms around each other.