Page 10 of One Adult, Please

Tunnel is clear. Moving on.

I continue into the main aquarium wing. The corridor opens up into the big exhibit hall, the one with the floor-to-ceiling tank that marketing calls "The Ocean Window."

The exhibit hall is dim. Emergency lighting only. The interactive displays along the far wall are dark, their touchscreens frozen on a loading animation that will never finish loading. A stroller is overturned near the shark facts kiosk.

I hear a thud, followed by a smaller thud, followed by a whispered word I can't make out, followed by another thud. It's coming from behind the touch-tank exhibit.

I tighten my grip on the wrench. Move along the wall. Stay quiet. I've gotten efficient at quiet. Yesterday I couldn't walk through a room without my keys jingling.

I round the corner of the touch-tank exhibit.

There's a woman sitting on the floor behind the tank with her back against the acrylic wall, her legs stretched out in front of her, and a tote bag in her lap. She's trying to open a bottle of water by hitting the cap against the edge of a bench.

She's small. WonderSphere hoodie three sizes too big, sleeves hanging past her fingers, and somehow she's made that look intentional, like the hoodie chose her and not the other way around. Knees skinned raw through ripped leggings. She has a foam trident leaning against the wall next to her and a purse shaped like a strawberry sitting on the floor. She looks like she was assembled from the lost-and-found bin of a very specific kind of chaos.

There's churro sugar on her chin and a streak near the corner of her mouth. I know exactly why I'm still looking. I just don't have time for it.

She's focused entirely on the water bottle, which she's now holding up to her face and glaring at.

"The tamper ring is caught," I say.

She screams. The water bottle launches out of her hands, arcs through the air, and lands in the touch tank with a splash that startles the two remaining stingrays into the far corner.

A stingray investigates the water bottle.

"Who are you? Are you... are you okay? Are you one of the..." She makes a gesture that I think is supposed to indicate the undead but looks more like someone doing a bad impression of a scarecrow. "The wrong people?"

"The wrong people," I repeat.

"The ones who are walking wrong. The..." She gestures again. "You know."

I know exactly what she means. "I'm not one of them," I say. "I'm Joel. Operations."

"Operations." She says it like she's testing the word for nutritional content. "So you work here."

"Unfortunately."

"Oh, that's... I mean, before all this, that's... was it fun? Working at a theme park?"

"No," I say. "It wasn't fun."

"Right. Yeah. That tracks." She sticks out her hand, then seems to realize she's sitting on the floor and I'm standing above her and the angle is wrong, so she pulls the hand back and does a sort of wave instead. "I'm Grace. I'm... not supposed to be here."

She looks past me at the wall of glass and her face does something I don't expect. It goes soft.

"That's a really big fish window," she says.

I look at the tank. Big fish window. I spent six months sitting through meetings about the name Ocean Window. There were mockups. Surveys. A consultant. She fixed it in three words while looking at three million gallons of water like it was doing her a personal favor by being beautiful.

"Yeah," I say. "It is."

"Do the water stairs still work? The ones outside, near the splash area?"

"No," I say. "Power to the exterior systems is down."

"Okay. What about the glass hallway? The fish tube, tunnel thing under the big..." She points at the tank. "Under this. Is that safe?"

"The viewing tunnel. Yes. One entrance, reinforced acrylic and nothing's gotten in."