During a family trip to the beach, Shayla, Tweet and two other kids are tossed from a raft into a rip current, and Shayla revises her thinking about God: “He was the burn of salt in my nose, the blueblackness of the underside of the waves.” Shayla is beginning to question what adults tell her, including whether God exists or is just a “story” to scare children. In Outside the Raft, Shayla envies her slightly older cousin, Tweet, despite the fact that Tweet’s parents are in prison. She is newly thirteen, hollowed out and filled back up with venom and dust-cloud dreams.” Kiera, too, is hungry for new experience, but she will take a shocking path. For Ava, it’s confusing but empowering: “She is Frankenstein’s monster.

As is true in many of these stories, in which most of the characters are Black, race is a factor in their relationship but just one part of its complexitiesīoth girls feel themselves changing into something unfamiliar. It’s told from the point of view of Ava, who is Black Kiera is white, and her parents have doubts about the friendship. The title story focuses on the bond - sealed with a blood ritual - between Kiera and Ava, who recognize something wild in each other. Moniz writes powerfully about adolescent girls as they navigate that perilous age.

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz