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

Some of the islands were thick with dogwood and picker bushes. The closest, about thirty yards across the river, was more open, with a canopy of cedars growing at its center. Fish started swimming for it.

“Last one there gets a leech in his wiener,” howled Bread, diving forward into his stroke. Bread was an incredible swimmer. Fish was always surprised by his speed. It was as if the water carried him along, parted for him, pulled and pushed him, his arms reaching, feet churning. Fish stretched out his body in his best stroke, an elongated dog paddle, and kicked with all his might as Bread pulled steadily away. When Fish finally felt the island under his hands and lifted himself to wade in, Bread was already standing on dry ground, grinning and shivering in his underpants. The interior of the island loomed behind him. Fish panted. Bread seemed hardly winded. He looked happy, river water dripping from his chin and nose. The sight of Bread so joyful confirmed the hope that maybe they were real woodsmen. Acquiescence was a word Fish learned in school. It meant to give in, to go along with, to accept things the way they were. That seemed to fit what he was trying to think through in his mind—a way to leap.

Fish reached down into the river, looking for mud. He found two fistfuls of silt.

“What are you doing?” asked Bread.

“I’m going all beaver,” said Fish.

Fish smeared a handful of river mud across his chest, and now worked on his neck and face, like a warrior would. As Bread joined him, the boys thought of new names for themselves, names like Eagle Claw, Bear Claw, Coyote Fang, Beaver Tooth. Fully painted, Fish walked up the riverbank, looked at his friend. “Let us explore this new land,” he proclaimed.

Bread nodded solemnly. He reached down for a final clod of mulch, smeared it under his eyes, and pulled two cattail canes from the water. He gave one to Fish.

“Spears,” said Bread.

Fish grunted, and the two boys crept toward the island’s interior, careful to not snap the twigs they felt beneath their bare feet, moving like river water, like woodsmoke, hunters.

AS SOON AS CAL CROSSED THE RIVER ON HIS HORSE—WHICH WAS awful in itself for the way the frigid water soaked his jeans and filled his boots—the forest began closing in on him. The trails disappeared just like Teddy said they would, and they spent the day traversing cedar swamps and poplar stands on the far side of the river. The day grew hot and buggy, and Cal soon itched with sweat and fatigue. His legs burned. His back ached. He had no idea that merely sitting on a horse could be this tiring. He’d ridden a pony once as a kid, at a park in Wichita Falls, but that was a small horse tethered in a stable. This had been a full day’s ride on an absurdly tall horse, picking its way over moss-covered stones and through cattail marshes, ducking between cedar and hemlock trees without concern for the rider dragging in the branches. At one point, while moving up the steep bank of a dry creek bed, Cal tried to urge his horse through a thick tangle of briars. The horse stood up on its hind legs, turned, and slid down the hill. With the horse on two legs, Cal got a good look at the creek bed, about fifteen feet below. Cal felt like he was falling from a ladder. He grabbed two fistfuls of the horse’s mane and held on for his life. He hated ladders. He hated horses. When the horse found its footing again near the creek bed, Cal leapt off and jogged to a tree, shaking the adrenaline from his fingertips. He looked at the ground and spat in the leaves, wiped horsehair from his hands.

“You all right?” Teddy yelled down from the ridge above the creek bed.

“Yeah, I’m all right. Mr. Ed here ain’t all right, though. He’s trying to kill me!”

“For the fifth time, your horse is a mare. And don’t push her into the brush like that and she won’t stand up on you.”

Cal stared at the ground. The morning had been filled with these little lessons. Don’t force the reins. Let the horse find its own way through the trees. Don’t ride so far forward. Don’t call the mare “Mr.” Cal stood and paced for a moment to try to wake his numb legs. He took his hat off, wiped his brow, and looked around at the forest. They were in hardwoods now, a bit more open than some pines they’d pushed through. Though they’d been riding since daybreak, it felt to Cal as if they hadn’t moved more than twenty feet. The trees turned from thick to thicker, from green to gray and back again. There were no signs, no trails, nothing to distinguish one direction from another. The sheriff had been following Teddy’s lead, trying to keep up. Teddy rode effortlessly and high in the saddle, ducking branches, eating on the go. The general strategy seemed to be to crisscross the opposing shoreline, ride a sort of grid across the land, look for any sign that the boys had been that way. At first they spent some time calling out to the boys, but then thought they might have a better chance of coming upon them if they stayed quiet. The boys were scared. The men didn’t want to make them hide. Every now and then during their survey, the river would come back into sight, and that open sunlight called to Cal through the trees. He wanted so badly to be out of the woods. But he had to keep up, had to push through, just follow Ted through the forest. It made him feel like a child, this tagging along, which angered him. He was the sheriff, in charge of this search. Already his confidence in Teddy’s approach was nearly exhausted. His comfort