When May reached me, she blinked up, rain gathered on her eyelashes like tiny crystals. “I can hear the rain in my shoes,” she whispered.
“We’ll make it a song,” I said, wrapping the blanket. She nodded gravely, as if we’d agreed on a plan only she could keep.
“Count?” Ms. Patel asked, breath catching, eyes on the pizza box. The woman with the pen—hair plastered to her cheeks—scanned the sodden list. “Twenty-three,” she said. “No—wait—twenty-four. All here.”
“All out,” June echoed, looking in anyway. “We sweep the floor.”
“Copy,” the captain said, already signaling. A firefighter clipped a safety line to June’s harness—someone had put it there without making a speech—and braced at the anchor. “Quick check. No heroics.”
Bear tapped the frame: two, one, two. Still under there, still shoring the world with quiet math. June slid inside to her hips, then to her chest, voice floating back: “Front to rear clear… lunchboxes, backpacks… no small shoes.”
