Luke moved without standing—big frame made smaller on purpose—crawling with a wrestler’s patience. The river chewed under the lip and spat mud. Rook flung the neon strap tail like a lariat; it snagged a volunteer’s ankle. “Don’t roll!” he warned. “Stay long. We’ll reel you.”
The business suit man was suddenly there on his belly, tie gone long ago, chin scraping grit, reaching a hand like he’d always trained for this job. The teenager with the laundry basket belly-slid beside him and pinned his sneakers against a patched crack so he wouldn’t kick free of his own courage. The woman in scrubs flattened at the edge and told one small boy to look at her eyes and not the water; he did, and his breathing found her rhythm.
“On me,” June said to the starfish girl, and the child began to inch—thumb-width, pause, thumb-width—toward June’s voice. The volunteer with the first rope wriggled a knee over the lip. The second volunteer’s shoe vanished into a seam and stuck like it had been nailed there. He made a sound the storm pretended not to hear.
