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

“Sheriff, I lost your dog.”

Cal shook his head, and Tiffany’s heart sank.

“Cal, I’m sorry.”

He kept shaking his head and rubbing his neck as she apologized. “No,” he said. “You didn’t. I mean you did, but you didn’t.”

With a spray of sand, Miranda burst into the orb of light, racking a pump shotgun as she did so. She leveled it at Cal’s chest.

“Back off, pervert!” she said, ferocity in her voice.

Miranda raised the muzzle up into the night sky and loosed a deafening round of twelve-gauge buckshot. Spark and flame erupted from the muzzle. Cal hit the dirt. Tiffany sprang from where she knelt. Miranda racked the pump gun again and leveled it at Cal, who was very nearly burying himself in the sand, yelling, “No, no, no, no, no!”

Tiffany leapt between Miranda and Cal.

“Don’t! It’s the sheriff, Miranda! It’s the sheriff.”

It took a moment for Miranda to lower the muzzle. Her eyes flicked from Tiffany to Cal and back. The three remained in deafened silence for a time.

“Miranda,” said Tiffany, “meet Sheriff Cal.”

Cal got up, painfully, to his feet. He stooped, painfully, and picked up his hat and used it to slap the sand from his jeans.

“What is wrong with you two?” he said. “Beat me down. Blow my ear out. Damn it!”

“Cal, she didn’t know who you were.”

“I know that.” He spat.

Miranda held out her good hand and cradled the shotgun with the other. Cal shook it.

“Nice to meet you, Sheriff,” she said, wincing.

He nodded and released her hand and then punched his fist into his squashed hat and put it on his head. “You’re injured,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I am, and I’m sorry for shooting,” said Miranda. “I just thought—”

“I know what you thought, and you had every right to think it. I was just excited to see somebody, anybody, to see you,” he said, glancing at Tiffany when he said it. He seemed to catch on the words a bit as he said them, so he waved his hand in the air to clear it. “I was glad to see you all brought a boat.”

Tiffany looked into his eyes when he spoke of her, and looked away when he said he was glad she brought a boat. It was ridiculous. She’d just pummeled the man with a flashlight, and now she worried whether he loved her. It was foolish, but she didn’t care. He looked even more handsome muddy and bug-bitten, like he’d been fighting bears. She wasn’t afraid of how she felt anymore. She wasn’t afraid to trust the warmth, to gather it along with all the fear. She wanted her weed-patch rental in Claypot. She wanted her poems and small kitchen table. And she wanted him.

“Do you know where my father is?” Miranda asked, tucking the shotgun under her arm. “And have you seen Fischer or his friend? They were here. We found footprints.”

Cal nodded. “Yes, and yes, and yes. Look, I still don’t understand what—”

“And what were you saying about the dog? Sheriff, I lost your dog,” said Tiffany.

Cal rubbed the back of his neck again, tried to roll it and test it a bit. “We just saw the boys. They left here less than an hour ago. And you didn’t lose my dog.”

“Where, Sheriff? Which direction!” demanded Miranda.

Cal nodded at the river, but held his hands out when Miranda took a step toward the water, as if she were about to drop the shotgun and swim for them. “Everyone hang on just a second. I’m trying—”

“Did they swim?” Miranda asked.

Tiffany spoke up. “They took a raft.”

“A raft!” said Miranda. “What raft?”

“They built one,” Tiffany informed her.

“How?” said Miranda, and then, turning to Cal, “Sheriff, I demand answers.”

“Now everyone hang on a second,” Cal said. “I’ve been out here for days, and I’m tired, and hungry, and I lost my pistol, and found my dog, and got bucked from a horse—and by the way, I had to arrest your father and then unarrest him because it did me no good. And before we go any further, you both may as well know that the second we get out of these woods I’m not sheriff anymore, so please stop calling me—”

“You found Jacks!” Tiffany exclaimed. “And what do you mean you’re not sheriff anymore?”

Cal opened his mouth and closed it.

“You arrested my father? What for? And what horse, Sheriff? I don’t see any horse.”

“Yes, and yes, and no. Would everyone just—dang it, my neck hurts!”

Everyone stopped talking. Cal’s yell echoed. Miranda shifted uneasily, until a mare whinnied from beyond the riverbank, near the broken stand of hardwood.

Cal took a breath. “First, Miranda, do you think you can still ride?”

Miranda nodded. “Better than I can paddle.”

“As I was saying, the boys headed downstream. Teddy took off after them onshore and asked me to stay here. That’s when you showed up.”

“Why did you stay?”

Cal took a breath, let it out. “Teddy said I’d slow him down, and if I never ride a horse again it’s too soon. Also, if the boys hit a dead end in this slough and circle back, I’ll be here. It’s less than ten miles between here and the gorge, and Teddy’s headed downriver where he can cross over to the left bank. I sent Jacks with him, in case his nose becomes useful.”

At the mention of the gorge, Miranda took one step back from the circle of light.

“That horse, Sheriff. Is it tied in those trees?” she asked, moving away into the shadows.

“What? No, that horse ain’t tied.”

Miranda let out a piercing whistle.

Cal took a step toward her. “So now that you’re here, I’m thinking the plan might be for you to ride on and join your dad, and Tiff and I could paddle downriver. We’d be able to get on both sides of the boys, upstream and down. Miranda?”

There was no reply. Miranda was gone.

Cal took off his hat and slapped his leg with it. “Wow—if that woman isn’t just like her father.” Cal spat