Page 63 of One Adult, Please

"I'm fine."

"You're staring."

"I'm observing."

"Is that a vet thing? The observing?"

"It's a me thing."

She holds my gaze for a moment. "You can observe," she says. "But if you see something weird, tell me. I can't always tell when I'm being weird because weird is my baseline and I've lost the reference point."

"You're not weird," I say. "You're associative. Your brain makes connections that skip the conventional path between points. You get to the same destination, you just take a route that nobody else would map."

For the first time since I've met her, Grace is completely still. "That's..." She blinks. "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about my brain."

"It's an observation."

"Joel says that too. When he says something nice and doesn't want credit for it." She smiles. "You're all going to make me think I'm normal."

"You're not normal. Normal is a herd behavior. You're something else."

Kevin walks into the center of the group, stands directly between Grace and the flower bed, and begins eating the decorative flowers that Grace placed the broken trident on.

"Kevin."

Kevin chews.

"Kevin, that's a memorial. That's the stabby fork's grave and you're eating it."

He's located the newest emotional landmark in Wonder Garden and begun consuming it. This is, in my professional opinion, deliberate. Kevin is magnificent.

"Grant, your goat is desecrating a weapon's funeral."

"He's not my goat."

"He's your goat. He's a garden part animal. You're the garden part vet. Kevin is your jurisdictional responsibility."

"Kevin transcends jurisdiction."

"Kevin transcends nothing. Kevin is a criminal."

Captain screams from the east perimeter. One last scream, fainter now, signaling the end of his shift. The infected will start drifting back. We need to move.

I whistle. Two short notes.

Captain launches from the lamppost, a dark shape against the morning sky, and glides back to us in a descending spiral that's efficient and beautiful and makes Beck say "oh sick" which I'm learning is Beck's default response to anything that impresses him, because Beck has maintained the capacity for wonder in a world that's actively discouraging it.

I find that remarkable.

Captain lands on my glove. Settles. His working eye surveys the group, the garden.

"He's done," Grace says. "So the wrong people are going to start wandering back."

"Yes."

"I hate that yes."

Joel already has the map open. "East perimeter."