What Follows After: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Coca-Colas for an extra twenty cents, but he had to conserve his money, so they drank water instead. Cost almost everything he had for these bus tickets to Savannah, where they were headed now. Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose, their favorite relatives, lived there. Aunt Rose was their mom’s sister.
    “Do they even know we’re coming?” Timmy said. “Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose?”
    “No,” Colt said. “I couldn’t take a chance. If I called them, they might say no.”
    “What if they say no when we get there?” Timmy was still chewing.
    Colt heard his mother’s voice in his head, correcting Timmy for talking with his mouth full. “They won’t.”
    “But what if they do? You have enough money to buy tickets home?”
    He didn’t. He barely had enough left to pay for dinner if the bus stopped again between here and Savannah. “It doesn’t matter, Timmy. They won’t turn us away. We’re family. Families stick together. They don’t send other family members out into the cold.”
    “It’s gonna get cold tonight?”
    “That’s just an expression. I mean they won’t make us go home.” Colt glanced at a wall clock. “Now, finish your pie. The bus driversaid we only got till three-thirty. That’s less than fifteen minutes. Then he wants us on that bus.”
    He looked out the window, saw their bus parked right where it should be. He didn’t see the driver, who was probably still in his seat. The man said this was only going to be a twenty-minute stop. Two other buses were here when they arrived, one pointed north, the same direction they were headed. The other facing south. A few people from the diner had already left and were boarding that bus. He wondered where they were going. Obviously somewhere in Florida; that was the only possibility going south.
    “Where are we, anyway?” Timmy said.
    “I’m not sure. Somewhere north of Jacksonville. That was that big city we drove through a few miles back.”
    “That was the biggest city I ever saw.”
    “Me too. I wouldn’t want to live there.”
    “Me either. Seems like you could get lost in a place like that without even trying.” He took another bite of pie. “Savannah that big?”
    “Not even close. I heard Uncle Mike telling Dad about it when they visited two summers ago. He said it was just a little bit bigger than Daytona Beach. Supposed to be a neat place. It’s got all kinds of Civil War history stuff.”
    “What’s the Civil War?”
    Colt didn’t feel like explaining. “It’s a war that happened a hundred years ago. You’ll learn about it a few grades from now. Keep eating your pie. We have to go in a few minutes.” He had no idea how Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose would react when he and Timmy showed up tonight. They were always so much fun when they visited. They laughed the most and smiled the most too, of all their relatives. When Colt had decided to run away, they were the only ones he’d thought of.
    They had to take Colt and Timmy in.
    Or maybe—and Colt thought this could be what really happened—when he told them what was going on between his mom and dad, how they’d split up, how they’d made the boys lie about it to everyone, Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose would be able to get his folks to see how wrong it was, how bad they’d been treating him and Timmy, and get them talking about whatever had made them so angry with each other. Get them back together again.
    Colt still had no idea what caused the split. But living like this was horrible for him and Timmy. Their mom was always depressed when she got home. She yelled at them all the time, made them do all kinds of chores she used to do. She complained about everything, how hard her life was now, how difficult it was being a single mom, like nobody understood what she was going through.
    What she’s going through? What about us , what about me and Timmy , what we’ re going through ? Did anyone understand that? Did she? Did she even care? He wasn’t sure anymore. This running away would