The Class 8 crossings went. One student — a boy named Deepak — slipped halfway across and grabbed the rope with both hands exactly as instructed and was held by the rope and found his footing again and continued. She watched this happen in the two seconds of it and felt her heart do something she could not describe and then Deepak was upright and moving again and she breathed.
The Class 7 students. Seven of them. Three pairs and one group of three. They had been watching the crossings and they knew the system and they were, she estimated, at the apex of the fear-to-determination ratio that made people effective under pressure — afraid enough to be careful, not so afraid as to freeze. The inventory team — the three twelve-year-olds she had assigned to rationing — crossed as a group, each holding the rope with one hand and each other with the other, the central student holding it with both hands. They made it with the particular grace of people who have committed fully to a thing and not left themselves a retreat option.
Now the Class 6 students. The youngest. Eleven and twelve years old, the smallest, the ones she had been watching most carefully all morning. Nine of them. Including Ritu, who had gone very quiet when Priya had explained the crossing, the same interior stillness the girl had gone into at the very beginning. Including Asha — the small girl whose name she had noticed specifically because one of the older students had been calling her "Asha didi" in a way that suggested she was the youngest or smallest. Including Divya, with the wrist splint, who could not hold the rope with both hands.
She rearranged. Divya she would take herself — one adult and one injured child, Divya's good hand on the rope, Priya's arm around her. The other eight Class 6 students she paired with the older students who were now on the far side — she signalled Vikram, who she could see on the slope above, and indicated through gestures that she was sending the young ones over and that she needed a person at the far end of the rope to receive each one. He understood. He came down to the edge of the dry section.
