Page 7 of One Adult, Please

I wedge myself between two mermaids in the back arc. One has blue hair. The other has green hair and is holding a fake shell. The blue one is Brenda. The green one is Sheila. I nestle into the gap between them, pull my tote bag onto my lap, rest the stabby fork across my knees, and try to become a mermaid.

"Be a mermaid," I whisper. "Fish don't have problems. That's probably not scientifically accurate, but neither is Brenda."

The park speakers, muffled through the walls, chirp their loop. But it sounds different now. The music underneath has a drag to it, like the audio system is losing power or losing its mind. Wondie comes through warped, the pitch dropping mid-sentence.

"Wonder... never... stooops..."

My phone buzzes. Fifteen percent.

A text from my mom: Did you get the sweatshirt?

I text back: Yes. Got you one too. Pink with glitter.

Oh that sounds cute. Is it warm?

Mom I think something really bad is happening.

Long pause. Dots appearing and disappearing. Then: I know, baby. The news is saying things. Just stay inside. Stay where you are. Don't open doors for strangers.

I love you. Kiss Biscuit. Phone's dying.

I love you. Be careful. Don't trip.

I put my phone on airplane mode to save what's left and I sit in the dark between two animatronic mermaids and I listen to the park fall apart outside.

Distant sounds that don't belong: a crash from somewhere in the outdoor exhibits. A shout that starts as words and ends as something that isn't words anymore. The walkie-talkie chatter that's been constant since I arrived is getting faster, with people talking over each other with voices that are climbing in pitch the way voices climb when professionalism is losing the fight against panic.

The lights in the animatronic room flicker. The mermaids' fiber-optic hair stutters, flashing once, twice, then goes dark. The control panels dim. The hum of idle machinery drops to a lower register.

I sit very still between Brenda and Sheila. They're my best friends now and they have excellent posture and no opinions and they're the most emotionally stable beings in this building.

Something moves in the theater beyond the maintenance door.

I hear footsteps, but not right. These are the shuffling, uneven, wrong-footed sounds of someone whose body has forgotten the original instructions for walking and is working from a bad photocopy.

The maintenance door is closed. I closed it. I know I closed it because I specifically thought "Grace, close the door behind you" and then I did it and then I checked it because I don't trust myself and checking was the right call because I did close it.

The door doesn't have a lock.

The footsteps get closer.

I stop breathing. I become a mermaid. I'm Brenda's sister. Sheila's cousin. I was born in this semicircle. I've always been here, between the blue one and the green one. I have glass eyes and a painted smile and I've never once had a heartbeat, which is convenient because if I did have one it would currently be audible from space.

The door opens.

It's not Sheldon. It's a person. A guest, from the look of what's left of their clothes. Cargo shorts. A WonderSphere T-shirt, the same shirt they sell in the gift shop where I got my hoodie, except this one isn't in retail condition. This one has been through something. The collar is torn. The front is stained with the same dark, wet wrongness that was seeping through Sheldon's costume.

The guest is a man, maybe in his forties, average height, average build, and he's not average anymore. His skin has gone the color of convenience store lunch meat, that grayish-pink that says "technically this was food at some point but the warranty has expired." His mouth is open and his jaw is chewing-but-with-nothing-in-it, which is somehow worse than chewing with something in it, and I hate that I now have a preference.

He walks into the animatronic room, bumps into the first row of mermaids, and stops. His head turns, slow. The chewing intensifies. A sound comes out of him, like someone trying to gargle with a throat that's forgotten what gargling is for.

He's four mermaids away from me.

I'm not breathing. I'm fiberglass. I'm silicone and glass eyes and fiber-optic hair that is currently not functioning due to the power situation.

He takes another step. Then another.

He isn't wandering anymore. He's coming down the narrow space between the platforms, directly toward Brenda and Sheila and the woman between them who's made several catastrophic decisions today and would like the opportunity to make more.