Vikram had been counting things.
He did this because he needed to keep his mind on something specific, and because the specific things were useful to know. He had counted the water level changes — four marks on a piece of paper he had taken from his textbook, each mark representing ten minutes, each with an estimated water level and the time it was taken. He had counted the children on the slope every fifteen minutes — thirty-two, thirty-two, thirty-two, the number that was the most important number he knew right now. He had counted the calls he had made on the radio — seven in forty minutes, each time reporting their status, each time receiving the update from Rudraprayag that the team was getting closer.
He had also been managing the children. This had not been the plan — the plan had been that Ms. Nair would go back to the bus and he would hold the radio and call for updates. But thirty-two children on a rock shelf in a monsoon required more than someone holding a radio, and of the thirty-two children on the shelf, he was the oldest and the one who had been designated responsible adult by Ms. Nair before she left, and so managing them was what he did.
