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

Miranda drew it back to her chest. “May I?” she asked.

“Oh,” Tiffany said, biting her lip for the briefest moment. “Okay.”

Miranda smiled, sat next to her on the cedar log, and motioned for Tiffany to turn her back toward her. Tiffany complied. The brush pulled deftly along her temples and the back of her neck before working upward from the tips of her hair. It felt wonderful. Tiffany laughed out loud.

“I’ve never had my hair brushed before,” she said.

The brushing stopped abruptly, then resumed. “What do you mean?” Miranda asked.

“I mean, no one’s ever brushed my hair. I didn’t even brush it myself until first grade. The school nurse taught me.”

The brushing stopped again. Miranda’s voice was cautious now. “Your mom never brushed it?”

Tiffany shook her head.

“Friends?”

No.

“Well,” Miranda said, running her hands through it to gauge her progress. “It is lovely hair. It deserves to be brushed. It is worthy of brushing.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“What you just said.”

Miranda paused again. Tiffany sat forward a bit. It was difficult being spoken to that way when she’d grown so accustomed to its absence. She had a grandmother who called her pretty girl a few times, but it always sounded as if she was speaking to a parrot. And there was that boy with cigarette breath who called her pretty once, but he said it so he could kiss her, and when he tried to do more than kiss her she kicked him in the stomach, and that was the last boyfriend she ever had. That was in seventh grade, after which the decent boys wouldn’t talk to her, and none of the girls. She wanted to tell her mother about it, but the woman had a way of playing solitaire in front of the TV that walled the world off, and little girls too. Tiffany wasn’t worth the time. She’d gotten used to it.

“I think the sun’s coming up now, Miranda,” said Tiffany in far too quiet a voice.

There were indeed the slightest purple hints of dawn behind the tops of the cedar trees. To Tiffany the cedars looked like torn construction paper pasted against the stars. She inhaled.

“The sun is not up yet,” Miranda said in a voice that seemed both gentle and fierce. “And the sun is not allowed to come up until I finish brushing your hair. Okay?”

“Okay,” whispered Tiffany.

After Miranda put out the fire they loaded the canoe. The sky was orange and red and blue now, and Tiffany’s hair felt as light on her neck as the wisps of clouds overhead. Something had occurred in the darkness of the previous hour that didn’t need to be spoken of in the light—like a gift or secret that can be received in silence. That’s all she could call it. And she accepted the warmth of it, which both frightened and thrilled her. As she stowed her gear quietly in the canoe, a new thought came to mind. The problem with her poem wasn’t that the coyote had no aim. The problem was that the coyote ran alone. Coyotes have packs. They have tribes. Her coyote needed a pack. Tiffany would write in a pack somehow. She tugged a tight knot into her gear rope and made note of the revision in her mind.

They hadn’t worn the life vests before, but now Miranda insisted they put them on. Tiffany tugged the straps of hers more tightly around her torso, while Miranda secured a few lines that held a tarp over the gunwales, to keep out as much water as possible. Satisfied, she removed the mooring line she’d tied to a birch tree.

“You’re sure you’re up for this?” Miranda asked before completely loosening the knot.

Tiffany nodded and clutched her paddle across the gunwales. She trusted this woman, frightening as she was. Her time with Miranda had been a time of firsts. She looked downstream where the river bent sharply to the right, beyond which it would begin its run downhill to the whitewater. Her stomach filled with knots.

“It’s really okay if you want to hike down, you know. I’m pretty sure I can make it without you. It doesn’t mean anything if you change your mind.”

Tiffany rapped her paddle against the gunwales. It made an impatient thump.

“Miranda,” she said, “if you ask me again, I will push off with this paddle and run these rapids myself. Now let’s go.” Tiffany’s voice was firmer than she meant it to be. Miranda smiled, let the mooring rope drag in the water, and pushed off into the current with a smooth, one-footed glide. She sat and pointed the canoe downstream.

“Now listen to my paddle calls,” she said. “There will be times we need to be sideways in the current. Just let that happen. Don’t try to straighten the boat.”

“Okay,” said Tiffany. The canoe picked up speed toward the bend in the river. The flat surface began to hint of the disturbance that lay ahead.

“And if I ask you to lean in a certain direction, do so without hesitation.”

“Okay.”

Tiffany could start to see around the bend. There was a definitive horizon to the river, a glassy ledge with whitewater licking up like flames beyond it. The flames grew larger. The cutbank drifted past, and the rapids opened up to full view. Tiffany forgot what it was she was supposed to do. The horizon of river drew them in and Tiffany could see over the edge of it now. Whitewater churned and dropped, leapt up in peaks, smashed against the black hulls of boulders. The canoe accelerated into a glassy depression and then lifted along a rise before dropping steeply into what could only be described as a hole in the river. Tiffany froze as the maw opened up to swallow them.

“Tiffany, paddle forward! Now!”

Miranda’s voice got lost in the water as the bow of the canoe smashed downward and disappeared beneath the surface. It was like an ocean wave about to wash ashore. But it didn’t wash ashore, it