6. I Didn’t Commit a Misdemeanor to Leave #2
It's color-coded. Each zone has little icons for bathrooms and band-aid houses and the important stuff, which is food. It's designed for tourists and I'm repurposing it for war.
"We need this," I say, holding it up.
"I work here."
"Right, but what if something happens to you?
What if you get grabbed by a wrong person and I'm alone and I don't know where the band-aid house is?
What if I need to find the food rooms? What if I need emergency access to fries?
What if civilization collapses and I'm wandering around beside a dolphin mural with no snacks and no leadership? "
"You won't get lost. I'll be with you."
"Joel. Joel, look at me." I hold the paper against my chest like it's a baby I'm protecting. "Things happen. Things happen all the time. Things happened yesterday. I'm a person to whom things happen at an above-average rate and I need a where picture."
"A where picture."
"A picture. Of where things are. With colors."
"A map."
"That's what I said."
He does the stare. There's something behind it that lives in the space between exasperation and warmth. "Take the map," he says.
"I'm taking two. One for each of us in case things happen and then you need the where picture and if you don't have it you're just a person standing in a building with no colors and no labels and that's just a building, Joel, that's just a big empty building with halls."
He takes it. Folds it. Puts it in his back pocket. Doesn't say anything.
I move deeper into the shop. And then I find it.
It's in the Nautical Adventures section, wedged between a display of rope bracelets and a barrel of rubber ducks wearing pirate hats. A piece of atmosphere meant to make you feel like you're on a ship even though you're in a gift shop spending forty dollars on a rubber duck.
It's a decorative oar, about four feet long, made of actual wood with a painted handle in the WonderSphere blue and gold.
It's got a little plaque on it that says CELESTIAL BAY MARITIME COLLECTION and a price tag of sixty-five dollars, which is robbery but also irrelevant because I'm not paying for it, I'm conscripting it.
I take it off the wall. It's heavier than I expected. The kind of weight that says, "I could change a man's dental plan," as opposed to the stabby fork, which says, "I cost twenty-eight dollars and believe in myself."
I test-swing it. A nice wide arc. Powerful. Decisive. Naval, even. Unfortunately, the ceiling is low, my math is decorative, and the oar comes down on the back of my skull with a thock that reverberates through my body, my ancestry, and at least one disappointed pioneer woman.
I blink. I adjust my grip. I don't acknowledge what just happened because I'm choosing a different timeline, where I executed a flawless practice swing and looked cool doing it.
"Thoughts?" I say, holding up the oar like a soldier presenting arms at inspection.
Joel's mouth is doing the almost-thing that isn't quite a smile but lives in the neighborhood. "It's an oar," he says.
"It's the friendship paddle."
"The what?"
"The friendship paddle. Because I'm going to use it to make friends with anything that tries to eat us.
" I hold it across my body. The thock site on the back of my head is throbbing gently.
I ignore it. "It's got reach. It's got weight.
It's got maritime authority. The stabby fork was a starter weapon. This is the upgrade."
"You just hit yourself in the head with it."
"Preliminary calibration. I've mapped the swing radius."
"It's going to happen again."
"Statistically, yes. But when it connects with a wrong person, it'll connect with maritime authority. Look at this thing." I hold it up. The wood grain catches the emergency lighting. "This is a serious piece of friendship."
He's quiet for a beat too long. "You should keep the trident too," he says. "As a backup."
"The stabby fork gets to come?"
"It gets to come."
"Joel. That's the nicest thing you've said to me and you said I could sleep in the fish tube."
I strap the stabby fork to the outside of my tote bag using the drawstring from one of the rain poncho pouches. I carry the friendship paddle in my right hand because it feels right there, balanced, purposeful. A weapon for a woman with a plan.
We load the remaining tote bags. More water.
More snacks. I grab a handful of protein bars, the bad kind, the sawdust kind, because Joel eats them and they're going to be currency when civilization remembers it needs calories.
I also grab more gummy sharks, two bags of trail mix, a box of granola bars that are a slight step above the sawdust ones, and a sleeve of crackers shaped like starfish.
"Snack distribution," I announce, organizing the haul on the checkout counter. "Two bags for food. One bag for tools and first aid, which we'll fill at the band-aid house on the way. One bag stays empty for whatever we find in the adventure part."
"Mythic Frontier."
"The adventure part, Joel."
"It has a name."
"It has the wrong name. Mythic Frontier sounds like a board game my uncle would buy at a garage sale. The adventure part tells you exactly what it is."
He inhales through his nose.
I pull on my Wondie hoodie, resettle the strawberry purse across my body, hoist the tote bag onto my left shoulder, and grip the friendship paddle. This is my aesthetic now. Post-apocalyptic gift shop warrior. Not OSHA-compliant. But spiritually accurate.
"Okay," I say. "Route. How do we get from here to the adventure part?"
Joel pulls the where picture he said he didn't need from his back pocket.
Unfolds it. I say nothing, which is the hardest thing I've ever done, because the smug joy of being right is burning a hole through my chest, and I let it burn in silence because I'm growing as a person. Briefly. Against my will.
"We go back through the main corridor, past the theater, out through the Celestial Bay west exit," he says. "That puts us on the connector path between zones. About two hundred meters of open pathway before we reach Mythic Frontier's east gate."
"Two hundred meters of outside."
"Outside-adjacent. The pathway is covered. Pergola structure with lattice walls. Partial concealment."
"Cool. Cool cool cool. Two hundred meters of partial concealment. Just a light jog through an open-air hallway with lattice walls, which, for the record, lattice is the wall equivalent of a suggestion. Lattice says 'I'm technically here but I'm not going to try very hard.'"
"Do you have a better route?"
"No. I have this route and my feelings about this route and I'm bringing both."
"Stay behind me. Move when I move. Stop when I stop. If we encounter one of them, don't swing the oar."
"Why not?"
"Because you'll hit yourself in the head again."
"That's hurtful and also probably accurate. What do I do instead?"
"You run. Back the way we came. Tunnel door, lock it, wait for me."
"What if you don't come back?"
"I'll come back."
I believe him. Joel from Operations will come back because Joel from Operations has a building to maintain, a filtration system to babysit, and, apparently, a woman with a friendship paddle who can't be trusted near ceilings.
"Okay," I say. "Let's go. First the adventure part, then the churro cart. That's the order of operations. Adventure, then churros. I need you to commit to the churro cart. I need verbal confirmation that the churro cart is part of the long-term plan."
He looks at me for a long time. Behind us, a fish bumps the acrylic and neither of us flinches because we're locked in a negotiation about fried dough and this is serious business.
"The churro cart is part of the long-term plan," he says, and I swear the corner of his mouth moves. A smile standing in the lobby filling out the paperwork.
"Thank you," I say. "That's all I needed."
He turns to the door. Wrench in one hand. Two loaded tote bags over his shoulder, packed with an efficiency that makes my tote bag look like a yard sale had a seizure.
Joel opens the door and holds it and I walk through and I don't trip.
"If I die in the adventure part, tell my mom I died near food. Lie if you have to. Put a churro in my hand for continuity."
"You're not going to die."
He walks faster. I walk faster. We move through the corridor toward the boundary between the territory we've claimed and the territory that's still full of wrong people and whatever else is waiting in a zone built for adventures that nobody asked for.
I grip the friendship paddle, square my shoulders, and take a breath.
Let's go find the adventure part.
And, ideally, not become part of it.