There's about four metres of shelf on the downhill side before the edge. We're not going to go off unless the shelf breaks."
"Is it solid?" she said.
"I don't know," he said. "I think so. This is limestone country — the shelves are usually solid. But I don't know."
"How do you know about limestone shelves?" she said. She asked it the way you asked useful questions in a crisis — directly, not as a challenge.
"My father is a geologist," he said. "He took me to this gorge last year. I've been on this ledge. It's solid rock. But there's water coming over the edge of the road up there—" He pointed forward, uphill. "If that builds up, it could—"
"Okay," she said. She made herself say it with the flatness of someone who has heard a thing and is proceeding. "Okay. The driver is unconscious. He's breathing." She looked at Vikram. "Are you okay? Any injuries?"
"Bruise on my arm. I'm fine." He paused. "Are you—"
"I'm fine." She wasn't sure if this was true. Her shoulder hurt — she had hit the wall when she was thrown. She was aware of it the way you were aware of things that were not currently the priority. "I need to check all the children. Can you help me?"
"Yes," he said. Immediately. The yes of someone who had been waiting to be asked.
"Start from the back. Call me if anyone has a serious injury — head, neck, can't move. Otherwise I need everyone in a seat on the uphill side—" She gestured to the left side of the bus, the side that was higher. "Move everyone that way. Away from the gorge-side windows."
She turned to the bus. Thirty-two children, seventeen minutes into the school year, on a rock shelf above a gorge in a flash flood.
"Listen," she said. Loud enough to cut through the crying without being loud enough to be alarm. "My name is Priya Nair. I am the adult in this bus and you are all going to be fine. We are on solid rock. The water is not inside the bus. The first thing I need you to do is move to the left side and sit down and let me look at you." She used the voice — the teacher's voice, the one that had been developed over three years of substitute teaching for exactly this purpose: to be heard, to be trusted, when trust was the resource. "All of you are going to be fine. We are going to work through this together. But first I need everyone sitting on the left side. Now."
