Raft of Stars by Andrew Graff (good books for high schoolers .txt) 📕

man was awful, but he was still his dad. For the first time that evening, Fish realized how quiet the night was. He heard a pigeon flap its wings on the roof of the granary. A mouse scurried along the wall of the garage. The panic that carried him at first was all but spent. Fish had killed a man. He shot him in the head. And now Fish felt dreamy and puppetlike, as if his hands weren’t really his hands, his mouth trying to move a tongue that wasn’t his tongue. It reminded Fish—reminded him in his gut—of the night he spent on the kitchen floor with his mom, waiting for the sun to rise. He knew how long the sun could take to rise, what the dark felt like.

“Look,” said Fish, “maybe one of us should go inside and leave a note for my grandpa.”

Bread didn’t move.

“I mean, it doesn’t feel right leaving without a note. Does it?”

His friend needed something. They both did. They needed a destination, a point of aim, no matter how improbable. Even after all their preparations for a moment like this, it was clear that it wasn’t enough to simply survive. Survive for what, or to do what? That was the question they never planned for. And so Fish spoke the half-formed lie that had been in his mind.

“We’re going to the National Guard armory, Bread.” Fish paused here, and then he cursed himself even as the words were leaving his mouth. “We’re going to see my dad. He’ll know what to do.”

Bread shifted on his feet. “Do you think he’ll help us?” Bread’s tone had changed. There was a whisper of hope in his voice. A small light in his eyes. Fish’s lie worked.

“My dad will keep us safe.”

Bread nodded in the darkness, zipped the fishing lure into the pocket of his bag. “I’ll leave a note if you tell me what it should say,” he said.

Bread went inside, and Fish’s throat felt dry as he stood alone in the darkness. Bread had asked so many times when he’d get to meet Fish’s dad—Bear, the famous tank driver of Desert Storm—about whom Fish told so many stories. Bread asked each August if Fish’s dad was going to pick him up instead of his mom. Fish usually told a lie, something like how his dad was planning to come, in uniform too, but had to go back to the desert at the last minute. Desert Storm was over, but there was still a rotation of troops in a place called Saudi. Fish cursed himself. He could have chosen any other destination, like his mom’s house, or the train tracks south of town, or California, anything. Now, if they ever made it to the armory, he’d have to tell more lies. The armory was in Ironsford, on the other side of Mishicot Forest. Fish hadn’t been to the armory since he was six years old. His dad wasn’t there. His dad wasn’t anywhere anymore.

THE AMBULANCE HAD ALREADY PULLED AWAY FROM JACK BREADWIN’S house by the time Teddy Branson knocked on the door. By dumb luck, an ambulance crew was nearby when Cal made the call, for which he was especially thankful. He hated death. When he discovered Jack’s body, he quickly cleared the rest of the home, and then attempted to assess the victim. When he stooped to check for a pulse, he slipped in Jack’s blood, and that got his own heart racing so badly that he couldn’t bring himself to touch the body. The man was headshot, gray and bled out, damn it. That was assessed enough. Cal stood and washed his shaking hands in the sink and made the call. He hadn’t seen this in a while, he reminded himself, not since Houston. He was okay. It was okay. He poured himself a glass of cold water, but it wasn’t much help.

Cal excused himself while the ambulance crew did its work, and he didn’t enter the house again until after they left. He stood in the shadows by the passenger door of his truck, spoke soothingly to his dog. When his hands wouldn’t stop trembling, he took a drink or two of whiskey from the bottle he kept behind the seat. It helped, unfortunately.

The house was silent now. Cal opened another window. Lilacs mixed with the copper. A knock on the door gave him a start.

“Sheriff?” Teddy stepped into the kitchen, then stopped. Cal knew that Teddy knew the smell of blood as well as he did. Teddy knew it from Korea, and from slaughtering hogs.

“Teddy. Thanks for coming.” Cal put on his best sheriff voice, as if the night hadn’t shaken him. He busied his hands by tapping a pen on his notepad, his radio lying next to it on the kitchen table.

“Where are the boys?” asked Teddy. He moved farther into the room and pulled the green cap from his head. When he reached the far side of the kitchen counter, he stopped and moved a step backward. Blood pooled along the linoleum from the counter to the table.

The sheriff looked up from his notes. “I was going to ask you the same. They’re not here.”

The deep lines in the older man’s face relaxed, and then furrowed. “They’ll probably turn up at my place,” said Ted. “I should get back over there.”

“Maybe not,” said Cal, tapping a final dot onto his notepad before folding it into the pocket of his vest. His radio came to life as he picked it up off the table.

“Sheriff, Dispatch,” said the voice in the radio.

“Dispatch, go ahead.”

“We’ve got another call,” said Marge, worry in her voice.

Cal waited, and kept waiting, and then he closed his eyes. This wasn’t Houston. He’d reminded himself of that so many times over the last eight months. He keyed his radio, lifted it to his mouth.

“A call for what?” he said.

“Mrs. Meyers said she heard more gunshots coming from over by Burt Akinson’s farm, and it’s too late