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

just churned in place, forever breaking over itself. Tiffany was hit in the chest and face, submerged in the frigid wall of water. The tarp did its job. The bow punched and dove and then resurfaced, shedding its water and riding high over the peak of the wave. Tiffany wiped the water from her eyes. Explosions of white rose to her right and left, behind and in front of her.

Somewhere within the roar of the water, Tiffany heard Miranda’s voice calling commands, and she did her best to follow them. The voice went silent as a wave washed over it, and then it reemerged.

“Back on the right!” she yelled. “Back on the right!”

Tiffany, remembering the paddle in her hands, stuffed the blade into the whitewater. She braced it forward for a moment, as Miranda had taught her, and then lifted the blade and braced again. The effect wasn’t immediate, but with Miranda drawstroking on the left, the bow began to point toward the right shoreline. The canoe weathered another wave, smaller than the first, but the boat’s new angle made the impact seem far more precarious. Tiffany lifted her paddle, dug in, and braced it forward again. She looked downstream and saw the peak of a hidden boulder, revealing itself between surges of whitewater.

“Now forward, Tiffany! Forward! Make this boat move!”

Frightened, Tiffany reached and pulled with everything she had, leaning out with the paddle, grabbing a bladeful of water, and sitting up with it. The canoe slid across the current, avoided the boulder, bumped sideways down a shallow ledge of rock, and fell into another hole in the river.

“Lean downriver—lean! Lean left—left!”

Tiffany did as she was told just in time. When the canoe reached the bottom of the hole, it slammed into the wave face, and the canoe’s momentum was stopped in its tracks. Tiffany felt the force of the hit in her knees and back.

The canoe stalled sideways in the bottom of the river hole, surfing in place. Tiffany crouched forward on her knees, trying to stay low and left. The current leading into the hole rushed beneath the right side of the canoe in streaks of black and green and white. A pile of froth rose to her left. The canoe shuddered and bucked as it tried to climb out of the hole. Water flooded across Tiffany’s lap. The canoe wallowed.

“Brace downstream!”

Tiffany had no idea what that meant. She was busy clutching the gunwales and trying not to lose her paddle. She glanced backward and saw Miranda leaning out over the downstream side, her paddle buried vertically in the white curl of the wave. Tiffany was struck by the sight of her, Miranda leaning out of the canoe in her wet denim, her sinewed arms buried in a pile of leaping water, wet hair wrapped around her face and neck, teeth bared. And then the realization struck her in that compressed and precarious moment: Tiffany was in the boat too, alongside that fierce woman. It was her clothing wet and plastered, her strong arms, her wet and worthy hair.

Tiffany released a battle cry, leaned out, and jammed her paddle down to shovel the whitewater. At first the blade just fluttered in the wave. But when she pressed it down deeper, as Miranda had done, her whole arm in the water, the blade seemed to catch against a firmer current that pulled downstream. Tiffany pushed her blade deeply into that hard water, pulled against it, and the canoe lifted and broke free of the hole.

The boat rose into the sun, and Tiffany unleashed another howl into the blue sky.

But the celebration was short-lived, because Miranda started cussing. Loudly. And it was bad cussing, too, the kind even Tiffany rarely let fly.

“Back left! Back on the left!” boomed Miranda.

The canoe felt much heavier and cumbersome now that it was half filled with water. It wasn’t as responsive as before. Tiffany glanced downstream as she pulled back against her paddle. There was another drop ahead. And downstream of that, a massive boulder arched its back into the morning sunlight. The river formed a pillow of water against the rock, and then shattered down either side of it.

Tiffany cussed too.

“Back left! Back left!” Miranda hadn’t stopped yelling.

Tiffany paddled with everything she had, but the sodden canoe wouldn’t respond. They were headed right for the boulder, dead center, broadside. The canoe sped down the face of the wave toward the hissing pillow of water. For a split second, as they crashed into the spray, Tiffany felt as if the canoe might be buoyant enough to rise and spin off, but as they rose, the upstream gunwale slipped just beneath the surface, and instantly—Tiffany actually thought about this as it happened, how instantly the craft seemed swallowed—the canoe disappeared from beneath her. Tiffany’s world became white. The froth rose to her neck. She saw the black gleam of a wet boulder, reached out for it, and then everything in her field of vision became tea-colored. Sound stopped. Water rushed into her throat and nose, pressed on her ears. She felt tangled in something, the canoe or her paddle, and she kicked away from it. She felt herself being dragged along something hard and smooth. She closed her eyes and opened them. She saw darkness and light. Her outstretched arms raked glass-smooth river rock, pockets of gravel. And just when she began to be really afraid, she was carried upward, burst into air and light. She gasped, wiped her eyes, and found herself riding the peak of a high white wave. She held her breath as another came. All was tea again. She held her breath. And then all was light. The cycle repeated until the river calmed and Tiffany drifted along gentle black waves washing toward a shoreline.

She pulled herself to her knees in the gravel, took two deep breaths, and blinked. She flexed her hands, her toes. She was okay. She made it. She was alive.

“Tiffany!”

Tiffany turned to see Miranda floating along downstream