Page 14 of One Adult, Please

He bites the tail off and chews. I watch for a reaction. His face gives me absolutely nothing. This man could eat a cookie or receive devastating news and his face would be the same face. I find that both impressive and deeply concerning.

"We need to sleep at some point," I say, looking around the tunnel. The benches are about five feet long. Not quite enough for a full human in the horizontal position, definitely not comfortable, but better than the floor and significantly better than the space between two animatronic mermaids.

"You sleep," Joel says. "I'll keep watch."

"For how long?"

"Until you wake up."

"Joel, that's not... you have to sleep too. Your eyes look like they're applying for a vacation. There's bags under your bags. It's very distracting. Not the bags. The face. The face is distracting. I'm worried about the bags. These are two separate observations."

He stares. Longer this time. I think I've offended him. Or impressed him. With Joel it's genuinely impossible to tell.

"I'll sleep when it's safe," he says.

"It's safe. You said so. Really thick glass. Locked tube. You just said this is the safest room in the building."

"Reinforced acrylic. I said safer. Not safe."

"Oh, so we're doing grammar now. Very comforting. The world is ending but at least we have proper word usage."

He almost smiles. A micro-movement at the corner of his mouth that lasts maybe half a second before his face catches it and puts it back into storage. But it was there. I saw it. I'm counting it. I'm putting it in my pocket. If Joel's face is a slot machine, I just got one cherry, and unfortunately I'm now a woman with a purse full of emotional quarters.

I take first sleep because my body is making non-negotiable demands and Joel takes first watch because he appears to be fueled by stress, protein bars, and a low-grade refusal to be vulnerable. I get a bench. He gets the bench across from me. I use one of the rain ponchos as a pillow, which is a terrible pillow, but my head is horizontal and at this point that's all I need.

"Hey, Joel? If I snore, I'm sorry. I've been told I snore like a pug with a head cold."

"Who told you that?"

"My cat. Not verbally. But she leaves the room and sleeps on the couch instead and that's a review."

"Go to sleep, Grace."

"Okay. Goodnight. Thank you for not being a wrong person."

"Goodnight, Grace."

I close my eyes. The tank hums. The building is still alive because Joel from Operations apparently looked at the apocalypse and said not on my shift, which is an unreasonable level of competence and I resent how comforting it is.

I sleep. I don't dream.

I wake up to blue light and the sound of Joel's voice saying, "Don't scream." Which is a terrible way to wake someone up because the first thing I want to do is scream.

"What. What is it. What's happening."

"Nothing. There's one in the tank and I didn't want you to scream and draw more." He points at the glass.

I sit up. My poncho pillow crinkles. My neck has a crick that feels like it was installed by a professional. I blink until the blue blur resolves into shapes.

Something's floating on the other side of the glass.

It's too big to be a fish and the wrong shape. It's not swimming so much as drifting, bumping gently against the acrylic with the slow, mindless persistence of a pool toy caught in a current. It's a person. Was a person. The WonderSphere polo is billowing in the water, inflated like a tiny parachute. The face is pressed against the glass and the eyes are open and the mouth is doing something that might be chewing or might be the water moving the jaw.

"That's the worst fish I've ever seen," I say. "How did it get in the tank?"

"Fell through the open-top feeding platform on the upper level. It's a twenty-foot drop into the deep end." He says it with the detachment of a man who's already processed this information and filed it under Things I Can't Fix. "It's been circling for a while."

"How long is a while?"