The words stuck in the air and made a bridge more dependable than the one under our boots. Kids rose. Blankets cinched. The teenager with the hoodie snapped the laundry basket under one arm like it was a drum and said, “Sock train, this way,” and a little boy actually smiled.
“Parents are staging at the north barricade,” Ms. Patel told the captain, eyes scanning names. “We can route around behind the hardware store lot, avoid the low drain.”
“Do it,” the captain said. “Doc, you take rear. June, you and…” She looked at me. “Mail truck?”
“Nia,” I said.
“Nia,” she repeated, making it a unit of measure. “You and June take point with Ms. Patel. Luke, you’re warm and walk, not warm and drag. Rook, you’re with me on the cable. Operator, you sing me every change in pitch.”
We became the kind of parade the town never puts on a flyer: firefighters and bikers and postal carriers and strangers in damp scrubs, moving like a classroom on a field trip through weather that didn’t RSVP. Zoe slid up alongside June, Liam’s hand in her hem again.
