To be honest, I just wanted to hang out with Duncan. I didn’t want to skip one of our tasks. I wanted to keep things going and not lose momentum. I couldn’t resist a chance to spend time with him.

You know that feeling when you just click with somebody—when something about that person just lights you up? It’s so rare. When it happens, it feels like a little miracle—and all you want is more of that person. I wanted more of Duncan. This Duncan.

And if I had to ride a roller coaster to get it, fine.

I put what we were doing out of my mind—and just gave in to being there.

Before I knew it, we were seated side by side in the very first car, and I was starting to question my life choices. I pushed the restraint down and clicked it into place at my waist.

“Wait—” I said, turning to Duncan. “There’s no shoulder harness? Where’s the shoulder restraint?” I reached up behind my head and mimed pulling an imaginary shoulder restraint down over me.

“There is no shoulder restraint,” Duncan said.

I felt a tightening of alarm. “Just—waist? A ‘waist restraint’? That’s not a thing.”

“It works,” he said. “It’s fine.”

But I shook my head. “So the top half of your body is just loose?”

“Well, yeah. That’s part of the fun.”

“Oh, my God,” I said. “We’re going to die.” As I said those words, I looked straight in front of me and saw—really saw, for the first time—the vertical wall of tracks ahead.

A black hole of fear opened up in my stomach. This was happening.

“You okay?” Duncan asked.

I had a clear view of the tracks: They eased out about thirty feet from the loading dock and then curved in a right angle straight up. And up. And up.

“This maybe wasn’t a good idea,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Duncan said. “It’s a terrible idea.” He said it with relish—as if the fact that it was a bad idea made it awesome.

“I think I need to get off,” I said, tugging at the waist restraint—which, of course, didn’t budge—just as another coaster car whooshed over our heads and muffled my words.

I turned to look for someone to signal on the platform …

But that’s when we started moving.

“No turning back now,” Duncan said

He wasn’t wrong. We were in motion. This was happening. How long did this ride last, again? Three minutes? Four? I felt my fingers get cold and then a sandpapery tingle of fear spread through my body.

How had I let myself wind up here? My heart rate had doubled—or possibly tripled—like it was not just beating, but more like convulsing in my chest.

I squeezed my eyes closed, but that was worse. I opened them again just as we tilted back and back on the tracks until we were fully sideways, and gravity pulled every unharnessed part of me back against the seat. It felt so vertical it seemed like we were tilting backward, and I decided to argue with the fear. All you have to do, I said to myself, is wait for it to be over. Just sit tight, and wait, and don’t die of a heart attack.

I’ll say this: they really draw out the anticipation during that ten-story climb.

“Are you okay?” Duncan asked.

But I couldn’t answer.

The anticipation was the worst part, I told myself.

But, actually, no.

The worst part was yet to come.

Because just as we reached the tippy-top of the ten-story-high scaffolding, just as we were barely starting to tip up to start the U-turn that would send us plunging back toward the earth … the coaster car stopped.

Like, stopped moving entirely.

Just went dead.

After a second, I said, “Is this part of the ride?” Maybe they were trying to intensify the anticipation.

“No,” Duncan said.

Not what I wanted him to say.

“What’s going on?” I said, my voice sounding like it was somebody else’s.

But next, a voice sounded through a speaker between our seats.

“Nothing to worry about, folks,” the voice said pleasantly.

“What the hell is going on!” I yelled at the speaker, as if it could hear me.

“We’re experiencing a normal pause of the system. The system is not broken, and there is no reason for alarm. Our computer sensors are highly calibrated to detect the presence of any foreign objects on the tracks. If the sensors detect an impediment, they immediately stop all rides until our technicians can resolve the issue.”

I met Duncan’s eyes. “What kind of foreign objects?”

The loudspeaker barreled on. “Foreign objects include, but are not limited to, newspapers, kites, beer cans, and pelicans.”

Duncan shrugged at me.

“Please sit tight and enjoy the view until the situation is resolved.”

The loudspeaker shut off, and for a second, there was only wind.

Wind, and nothingness. Because there was nothing at all around us. We were at the tip-top, perched at a slight angle like a jaunty hat, with nothing but sky in every direction.

That’s when the panic really hit.

“Duncan?” I said then.

“Yeah?”

“I’m freaking out.”

Duncan angled his head so he could stare at me. “You look fine. Great, even.”

“I am not fine. Or great.”

Then, forcing a chuckle, he said, “Why? Because there’s a pelican on the tracks?”

But that’s when I started hyperventilating.

“Hey,” he said, leaning closer. “What’s going on?”

“I want to get down,” I told him—and saying the words made it worse.

“Hey. This is a modern roller coaster—it’s not like there’s some old geezer in a choo-choo hat pulling a rickety old lever.”

“That’s not helping.”

“I’m right here,” he said, his voice now all business. “I’m right here with you, and we are safe. We are safely strapped into a ride that hundreds of people ride every day for, you know—for fun. I’m sure this pelican thing happens all the time. No big deal. We’ll just wait for them to shoo it away, and then we’ll get this done.”

“That’s just it, though,” I said, panting now. “I don’t want to get it done. I want to get off.”

“We can’t get off,” he said. “But the good news is, this scary roller coaster seems about average for scary roller coasters.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“I’m just saying, once we get going, it won’t be so bad.”

“I don’t ride scary roller coasters, okay?”

“What? Ever?”

“Pretty much never.”

“So why are you here?”

“It just kind of happened, okay? I was having fun. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Silence from next to me. Then: “You’re only here because of me?”

“Yes,” I said, in a voice that was half frustrated sigh, half eye roll. And then my explanation came out fast: “Babette told us to do it, and you seemed excited about it, I got caught up in the moment, and I wasn’t really thinking.”

“That might be the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

“Okay. But I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“What makes you think that?”

This came out sarcastic: “Um. Might be all the panic I’m feeling.”

“Fair enough.”

“Hey,” I said then. “I need to warn you about something.”

“Okay.”

I sucked in a tight breath, and said, “It’s possible that at some point I might wind up having … a seizure.”

“A seizure?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Anytime, really.” Then I amended: “Probably not now. But possibly. Who knows?”

He said, “Could you elaborate, please?”

I looked up at the sky while I said the words. I watched the stars, and they watched me back. “So…” I said then, keeping my face turned up, “I have epilepsy.”

“Okay.”

I sped up a little, to get it over with. “I mostly had it in grade school. It was very bad then—I had a lot of seizures—like at least one a month—and sometimes they happened in school, and if you’re wondering if little kids think epilepsy is cool … they do not.”

“You got teased.”

“Teased. Ostracized. Shunned. All of it. Everything. The worst part was—with a grand mal seizure, first you go completely rigid, like everything in your body goes as tight as it can go, and then you go completely limp, like a rag doll. And when I was little, though this doesn’t actually happen to me anymore, I used to lose all control of my bodily functions.”

“Oof.”

“Yeah. Not great in a school situation. I basically had no friends. At all.”

“I’m sorry.”

“But when I got older, the seizures went away. We found a medicine that worked, and then we slowly weaned me off of it, and I was fine. Middle school—less frequent; high school, college—nothing. Totally normal. I thought I was cured. But then it came back just after I moved here.”

“Why did it come back?”

“Nobody knows. Just happens sometimes. And it’s much milder now—like once or twice a year. I don’t even take medicine for it, because the medicine has lots of side effects.” I glanced over. “That’s why I don’t drive.”

Duncan nodded.

“I just try to control it by getting enough sleep, and eating right, and … you know … making good choices.”

“Are those things enough to control it?”

“No. Yes. Kind of.”

Duncan nodded.

“Eating no carbohydrates at all helps some people, so I eat that way. And I don’t drink. And I get enough sleep, and drink enough water, and basically try to keep my life pleasant and drama-free. Because one of the biggest triggers for seizures?”

“Roller coasters?” Duncan offered.