Even now, even with all that was happening, he registered her touch like a very different sort of electric shock. Her hand was cold. He liked that.
Quinn picked up a chair that sat on one of the sidelines. It was a substantial wrought-iron chair. Quinn lifted it high, held it in front of him, and slammed the legs into the barrier.
The barrier did not yield.
Quinn hit it again, even harder, hard enough that the recoil spun him back.
The barrier did not yield.
Suddenly Quinn was screaming, cursing, slamming the chair wildly again and again against the barrier.
Sam couldn’t step close enough to stop him without getting hit. He placed a restraining hand on Astrid’s arm. “Let him get it out.”
Again and again Quinn hurled the chair against the barrier. It left no mark.
Finally Quinn dropped the chair, sat down on the tarmac, put his head in his hands, and howled.
The lights were burning bright inside the McDonald’s when Albert Hillsborough walked in. A smoke alarm was blaring. A separate beep, beep, beep called urgently for attention between the louder, angrier bleats of the alarm.
Kids had gone behind the counter and taken the cookies and Danish pastries from the display case. A box of Happy Meal toys, tie-ins to a movie Albert hadn’t seen yet, was open, the toys scattered. There were no fries in the bin but plenty were on the floor.
Feeling self-conscious, Albert walked around to the kitchen door and tried to open it. It was locked. He went back and hopped the counter.
It felt illegal somehow, being on the far side of the counter.
A basket of burned, black fries sat resting in the hot oil. Albert found a towel, grabbed the basket handle, and lifted it out of the oil. He hooked it in place so that the oil drained properly. The fries had been cooking since that morning.
“I guess those are about done,” Albert said to himself.
The fry timer continued to beep. It took him a second, but he found the right button and pushed it. That killed one noise.
Three tiny, black cookies were on the grill. Hamburgers that, like the fries, were about ten hours past done.
Albert found a spatula, scooped up the burgers, and tossed them into the trash. The burgers had long since stopped smoking, but no one had been around to reset the smoke alarm. It took Albert a few minutes to figure out how to climb up without landing on the searing hot grill so he could push the reset.
The silence was a physical relief.
“That’s better.” Albert climbed down. He wondered if he should turn off the fryers and the grill. That would be the safest thing to do. Turn everything off and go outside. Out into the dark of the plaza, where kids were gathering, scared, looking for a rescue that was very late in coming. But he didn’t really know anyone out there.
Albert was fourteen, the youngest of six kids. The smallest, too. His three brothers and two sisters ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-seven. Albert had already checked his home: none of them were there. His mother’s wheelchair was empty. The couch where she would normally be lying and watching TV and eating and complaining about the pain in her back was abandoned. Her blanket was there, nothing else.
It was weird to be alone, even for a while. Weird not to have some bossy sibling telling him what to do. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t being bossed around.
Now Albert walked the McDonald’s kitchen more alone than he could ever have imagined being.
He found the walk-in freezer. He yanked on the big chrome handle and the steel door opened with a gasp and a breath of cold steam.
Inside were metal racks and box upon box of clearly labeled hamburgers, big plastic bags of chicken nuggets, chicken strips, fries. A smaller number of boxes of sausage patties. But mostly, lots of burgers.
He moved on to the walk-in refrigerator, not so cold and pristine, more interesting. There were plastic-covered trays of sliced tomato, bags of shredded lettuce, big plastic tubs of Big Mac sauce and mayonnaise and ketchup, blocks and blocks of sliced yellow cheese.
He found a tiny break room festooned with posters about safety and the Heimlich maneuver, all in both English and Spanish. The dry goods were stacked against the walls of the break room: giant boxes of paper cups and boxes of waxed-paper wraps. Dull metal cylinders loaded with Coca-Cola syrup.
In the back, near the rear door, were tall, wheeled racks of buns and muffins.
Everything had a place. Everything was organized. Everything was clean, albeit with a sheen of grease.
At some point, and he hadn’t really noticed the exact moment, Albert had stopped just seeing it all as interesting, and started seeing it as inventory. He was mentally translating the separate ingredients into Big Macs, chicken sandwiches, Egg McMuffins.
Albert’s sister, Rowena, had taught him to cook. With their mom incapacitated, the kids had always had to fend for themselves. Rowena had been the unofficial cook until Albert hit his twelfth birthday, and then part of the kitchen duties had devolved to him.
He could make red beans and rice, his mother’s favorite dish. He could make hot dogs. He could make French toast and bacon. He had never admitted it to Rowena, but Albert enjoyed cooking. It was a lot better than just doing the cleanup, which, unfortunately, he still had to do even though he was now responsible for the evening meal on Fridays and Sundays.
The manager had a tiny office. The door was ajar. Inside was a cramped desk, a locked safe, a phone, a computer, and a wall shelf straining under the weight of several thick operator’s manuals.
He heard sound: voices, and someone banging into a straw dispenser, then apologizing. Two seventh graders were leaning on the counter, staring up at the overhead menu like they were waiting to order.