Page 31 of One Adult, Please

Joel's jaw does something that I think might be the very first stages of him realizing that I'm going to side with her on things, that this is going to be a pattern, and that the pattern is going to be annoying in a way he can't argue with because she keeps being right.

"We clear the adventure part first," Grace says, pulling a perfect golden spiral out of the oil with a pair of tongs and setting it on a paper plate like she's presenting evidence in a trial. "Beck's already started. We finish what he started. Then we do the garden part."

"Wonder Garden," Joel says.

"The garden part. Then the big middle."

"Solar Plaza."

"Joel, I love that you know all the names. They're just not the names my brain keeps." She dusts the funnel cake with powdered sugar from a shaker. The sugar falls in a cloud that covers the funnel cake and the plate and the counter and the front of her hoodie and approximately thirty percent of the surrounding courtyard. It looks like a very localized snowstorm hit a frying station. "Okay. Fresh funnel cake. From the dessert armory. For the team."

She holds it out. It's golden. It's perfect. It's the first funnel cake she made and it has her fingerprints in the batter.

I take a piece. It's hot, crispy, and sweet. It tastes like Thursday, like the day I showed up here without a plan and found something I wasn't looking for, which is a forge, a crime boat, a kill chute, and now a team.

Joel takes a piece. He chews. His face gives nothing. But he takes a second piece before the first one is finished.

Grace eats the rest. Of course she does. She made it and she's eating it and she's grinning.

I watch her. I watch Joel watch her. I watch the way his eyes track her movements, not like surveillance. And I watch the way she doesn't notice either of us watching because she's too busy being alive, too busy existing at full volume in a world that's gone quiet, and I think:

She's going to die from a stumble at the wrong time. One day her feet are going to betray her when the ground isn't forgiving, the dead people are too close, the friendship paddle isn't enough, and the comedy won't save her.

I'm going to make sure she doesn't.

That's the new data field. That's the value that got entered when she said "we're keeping the park." Her. I'm keeping her.

"Okay," she says, tossing the paper plate into the trash can. "The adventure part isn't going to clear itself. What's our next move?"

Joel pulls out the map. He unfolds it on the counter next to the fryer and the three of us lean over it, heads close.

"There are six structures in Mythic Frontier we haven't checked," Joel says. "The castle, the forge building, the log flume, the coaster maintenance warehouse, the Viking pavilion, and the Enchanted Quest."

"The Enchanted Quest?" Grace asks.

"Indoor ride. Dark corridors, animatronic scenes. One entrance, one exit."

"So it's a haunted house," Grace says.

"It's not a haunted house."

"Joel, it's a dark building with one way in and one way out and there might be wrong people inside. That's a haunted house. I don't make the rules."

"There are no rules. We're in the apocalypse."

"The apocalypse has many rules. Rule one: check the dessert armory. Rule two: never enter the haunted house."

"We have to clear it."

"Then we clear it last. After everything else. When we're full of funnel cake and courage."

"She's right," I say. Joel looks at me. "Clear the open stuff first. I've already scouted the castle and the forge. The castle's empty, I sealed it yesterday. The forge is clear, obviously, I've been using it. That leaves the flume, the warehouse, the Viking pavilion, and the haunted house."

"Enchanted Quest," Joel says.

"The haunted house," Grace and I say at the same time.

Joel closes his eyes.