Page 11 of One Adult, Please

"Can we go there?"

"We?"

She looks at me. Brown eyes, wide and irritatingly direct, the kind of eye contact that doesn't let you steer around it.

"I'm not going to go away," she says. "I know you probably want me to. I know I'm not supposed to be here. Craig made that very clear. But I'm here and I'm not leaving because the outside is worse and..." She pauses, searching for something. "I don't want to be by myself anymore. In the dark. With the wrong people and the mermaids."

"The mermaids?"

"I was hiding in the mermaid room. With Brenda and Sheila. They're very supportive but the conversation is one-sided and I need someone who talks back." She looks at me. "You talk back, right?"

She's ridiculous, but she's not stupid. She came here because the park has walls. Then picked the aquarium because it has fewer entrances. Now she's asking about the tunnel because somewhere under the panic and churro sugar, she's building a map of survivable spaces. Or she's just really lucky.

"When required."

"Great. That's... yeah. Okay."

She stands up. Or tries to. Her foot catches in the tote strap, and she pitches forward.

I catch her around the waist. Her hand lands flat against my chest, fingers knotting in my shirt, and for one strange second neither of us moves.

Then her elbow clips the foam trident. It skitters across the tile and cracks into the base of the touch tank.

The sound travels through the empty exhibit hall.

Something answers from the corridor. One hard impact against a wall. Then a dragging step.

I pull Grace behind the tank and hold one finger to my mouth. She presses against me without argument, eyes fixed on the corridor. Her hand is still twisted in my shirt.

The dragging sound comes closer, stops, and then slowly recedes.

Grace releases my shirt. "Sorry."

"You almost called every infected person in this wing."

"I know. I said sorry. It was the stabby fork's fault."

I look at the foam trident on the floor. "The what?"

"The stabby fork. The..." She picks it up, holds it out. "It's for protection."

"From what?"

"Things. General things. It's a deterrent."

"It's foam."

"It's a deterrent, Joel."

I look at this small woman who broke into a theme park during a crisis and just nearly killed us both with a foam trident she calls a stabby fork. She's a liability of a magnitude I've never encountered and I once watched a summer intern pour concrete mix directly into a storm drain. But she said she doesn't want to be alone anymore and neither do I.

"Come on," I say. "I know a place that locks."

"Oh thank God. I love locks. Locks are my favorite thing about buildings. Locks and also walls. And ceilings. The whole structure situation, really. I'm very pro-structure right now."

She collects her things. She follows me toward the corridor that leads to the viewing tunnel.

"Watch the cable."