Page 26 of One Adult, Please

"The snare system was an accident, honestly. I set up the trip wires to slow them down and then I realized if I added a counterweight I could actually grab them. It's crowd control." He grins. The grin is enormous and unfortunately it works for him.

I can't tell if he's thriving or medically interesting.

"Crowd control," Joel says slowly.

"Yeah! Like, the park was already designed for it, right? Lines and funnels and single-file sections and chokepoints." Beck pauses. Looks at Joel. Looks at me. "Wait, did you guys already figure that out?"

"She figured that out," Joel says, and he tips his head toward me.

I blink. Joel voluntarily gave me credit for an idea. To a stranger. Out loud.

I'll treasure this forever, but first I have gummy sharks to recover because some of the little bags are still sealed and I refuse to abandon viable candy.

Beck wedges the funnel cake between his teeth and crouches beside me. He helps gather the gummy sharks that are still sealed, dropping them into my tote with powdered sugar on his fingers.

"Snare get your ankle bad? I've got a first-aid kit where I'm staying."

"I'll live."

He looks up at me. "That kick really was beautiful."

This time, he isn't looking at the chute.

He takes another bite of funnel cake. "So you're, what, clearing the park? Moving in?"

"Keeping it," I say. "We're keeping the park. Zone by zone. Clearing it out. Making it a home."

Beck's grin somehow gets bigger. "That's exactly what I've been doing. I mean, I got most of this zone blocked off and part of the open area."

"Solar Plaza," Joel says.

Beck takes another bite. "I've been living on the pirate ship. The big ride, the galleon thing?" He points behind him, past the collapsed facades and the barricade network, deeper into the adventure part, where I can just barely see the top of a structure rising above the themed buildings. Masts. Rigging. A crow's nest. "I've been sleeping up on the deck. Nothing can climb up there because the access ramp retracts and I pulled the ramp up. It's like a treehouse but a boat."

"You live on the crime boat," I say.

Beck stops chewing. "The crime boat," he repeats. "Because pirates commit crimes. And they're on a boat."

"Yes."

"Crime boat." He says it one more time, rolling it around in his mouth like a piece of candy he's deciding to keep. "Oh, that's perfect. That's the name now. It was the pirate ship and now it's the crime boat. That's non-negotiable. That's permanent."

Joel looks at me. There's a flicker of amusement or it might be the horrified realization that there are now two of us.

"Show us the crime boat," I say. I retrieve the friendship paddle from the cobblestones and inspect it for emotional damage. It's fine. Our bond survives.

Beck walks through his own trap field with casual confidence and talks the entire time. Joel is efficient silence. Beck is enthusiastic noise. I'm somehow in the middle, which feels suspicious because I've never been in the middle of any spectrum in my life. I'm usually at one end with a flag.

"So the park has four zones, right? I've been working on this one because it has the most stuff. Ride parts, construction materials, tools in the maintenance building. The forge," Beck says.

"The forge?" Joel says.

"Well, it's a blacksmith exhibit. In the castle courtyard. But it's a real forge. They do demonstrations, or they did, where a guy in a costume makes horseshoes and stuff for the kids. Real fire. Real anvil. Real tools." He holds up the sharpened battle axe. "Real useful."

"You sharpened that in the blacksmith shop," Joel says.

"I sharpened a lot of things there. I've got like three of these. The big ones are from the Viking section. The small ones are from the fairy-tale section, which, you wouldn't think fairy tales would have weapons, but there's a whole Brave Knight display."

We round a corner and the crime boat comes into full view.