Page 32 of One Adult, Please

I grin. I can't help it. "Let's go clear the adventure part," I say.

Grace picks up the friendship paddle. Joel folds the map. I buckle the axe.

We head toward the first building.

Grace trips on the courtyard step and catches herself on Joel's shoulder. His hand comes up to steady her arm. She straightens, keeps walking, and doesn't look back.

Joel's hand stays up for a half-second longer than it needs to.

I follow.

10

WRONG PERSON SOUP

GRACE

The log flume is where I learn that wrong people and ride water are a combination that nobody should ever have to witness with their eyes or their nose or any of their senses, actually.

"Oh no," I say, standing at the entrance to Timber Rapids Log Adventure, which is a name that promises a fun time on a fake river and delivers a reality that fun has left the building and taken the fake river with it.

The ride is a long, winding water channel that loops through a themed building designed to look like a lumber mill. Fake trees. Fake beavers. Fake waterfalls. The log-shaped boats are stacked up at the loading platform, bumping gently against each other in water that's no longer the cheerful blue of a family-friendly attraction. It's brown. It's cloudy. It's the color of water that's given up on its original purpose and is now just existing in a state of liquid regret.

And there are things in it.

Three of them. Partially submerged. Moving in the slow, purposeless way that wrong people move when they're in an environment that their dead brains can't process. They're wading. They're just... in the water. Walking on the bottom. Bumping into boats. One of them keeps walking into the fake waterfall and getting pushed back and then walking into it again.

"It's a wrong person soup," I say.

"Don't call it that," Joel says.

"Joel, look at it. It's broth. They're the ingredients. That's soup."

Beck is evaluating. His whole face lights up like he's receiving a transmission from the part of his brain that solves problems by turning them into games. "We don't need to go in there. We just need to seal it."

"Seal it how?"

"Loading platform entrance, ride exit, two maintenance doors on the east wall. Close them, barricade them, done. Nothing in there can get out and nothing out here needs to get in." He grins. "Unless you want the boats."

"I don't want the boats."

"The boats could be useful."

"Beck, the boats have been marinating in wrong person broth. I don't want the boats. Nobody wants the boats. The boats are retired."

Joel's already at the first maintenance door. He has a key. At this point, the sound of his key ring is becoming dangerously comforting.

The door closes. Locks. Joel moves to the second one. Beck handles the ride exit, dragging a metal crowd barrier across the opening and wedging it with a piece of lumber from the themed landscaping.

I stand guard at the loading platform entrance with the friendship paddle raised and my eyes locked on the three wrong people in the water who are, mercifully, too busy walking into the fake waterfall on repeat to notice us.

The closest log boat bumps the platform.

I look at it.

It bumps again.

"That boat's being rude," I say.