Page 116 of One Adult, Please

"Fortify," Joel says immediately. "We don't know them. We don't know their health status, their mental state, their intentions. They have weapons. We have four people and a park we've spent all this time securing. We lock down, we reinforce, we wait them out."

"They have kids, Joel."

"Kids with parents who have guns."

"You can't fortify against kids."

"You can fortify against the adults who brought them."

Beck shifts. The fish vest scrapes against the counter. "I'm with Joel on threat level. Not on response. You don't fortify against fourteen armed people. That's a siege. They'll wait. They'll find the gaps. I found the gaps in two hours on day one."

"So what's your option?"

"Meet them. Make it clear this is our park and entry is on our terms."

"That's just fortifying with eye contact."

"It's negotiating from a position of..."

"Boys." Grant says. "They're scared."

We all look at him.

"Their body language. The way they're clustered. The woman in front is positioned to absorb contact. The others are behind her, tight, overlapping sight lines. That's not an offensive formation. That's a herd protecting its interior. The kids are in the center. The armed individuals are on the perimeter facing outward. They're not pointing guns at us. They're pointing guns at everything that isn't us."

The ticket booth is quiet.

"They're protecting the herd," Grant says. "They just want inside the fence."

I don't have a word for this. I always have a word. Right now all tabs are blank. White screens. Loading animations spinning in my skull and nothing loading.

I'm quiet. I'm never quiet.

The three of them notice at exactly the same time. I see it happen on their faces. The oh no she's not talking expression.

There's a box of Milk Duds on the counter. It's been sitting there since Craig left it on the last normal day when people bought tickets, ate candy, and didn't know what was coming.

I pick up the Milk Duds, open the box, pour approximately six Milk Duds into my hand, and put them in my mouth.

That's a mistake.

Milk Duds aren't a thinking snack. Milk Duds are a dental event. The caramel hits my molars with adhesive enthusiasm, evolving into something between candy and construction material. My teeth fuse. My jaw locks. My mouth becomes a biological consequence of choosing the wrong snack at the worst possible moment.

I chew, refusing to let caramel win. I chew and I think. The thinking is clearer now because my mouth is offline and my brain has the full bandwidth. And sometimes the smartest thing I can do is accidentally shut up.

They watch me fight six Milk Duds in real time, and nobody says anything.

I chew through it. I unstick. I work my jaw in a circle that probably looks unhinged but achieves the critical goal of separating my upper teeth from my lower teeth. Which is a prerequisite for speech and also for life in general.

I swallow.

"We built this for people," I say. "If we keep people out to keep it safe, then it's... it's just walls. Walls with churros."

The ticket booth absorbs this.

"We didn't build a fortress," I say. "We built a park. Parks are for people. All of my crayon plan, every line, every item, everything we've secured and labeled and signed and mapped, it was for the part where someone shows up and needs what we have and we give it to them. That's the plan. That was always the plan. I just didn't know it until right now, standing in Craig's booth, with Milk Duds in my teeth."

Joel is quiet for a long time. "Controlled entry," he says.